what is an automated lottery system for charter schools? 

the best way to answer this is to give you an example

  • You are in charge of the lottery and your enrollment form has been online for a few months accepting applications.
  • You now have 100's or 1000's of applications, enough to require a lottery for all grades.
  • Your lottery is scheduled for tonight at 7PM in your schools auditorium.
  • Anxious parent's start arriving at 6:30PM and by 7:15 the room is still filling up. 
  • You begin by providing the parents some information and telling everyone that the official lottery will be run at 7:25PM
  • The clock strikes 7:25PM and by 7:26PM your lottery is successfully run!
  • Every parent (even the ones who stayed home) has been notified if their child was accepted to your school and if not they were informed of their position on the waitlist and the time is now 7:30PM.
  • Your drive home is uneventful and you can't wait until the weekend.
  • Congratulations, the time is now 8PM and your school's lottery was 100% successful, 100% compliant, and 100% audit proof.
  • Now it's time to let the system run itself, you can sit back and relax and the system will manage the rest of the work for you.
So what happened?

every parent knows exactly how long they have to accept or decline their invitation to the school

wait-listed parents are processed automatically and are invited to accept a seat as their wait-list number is called 

every parent knows how to begin filling out their formal student registration application
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your seats for every grade are filled to full enrollment automatically

wait-listed parents know their child's exact place on the wait-list and are updated as it changes
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after the first day of school if you have to fill an empty seat you can do it in minutes without every picking up the phone

and did you know that parents were not required to attend the lottery, they each received the same information immediately regarding their child's lottery status.