Common high school application coming to CPS?

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Brian Jackson/Sun-Times

“If you can navigate this process, college will be a breeze,” Chicago Public Schools’ Janice Jackson said she used to tell parents applying to George Westinghouse College Prep High School while she was principal.

That’s because applying to CPS’ myriad high schools and programs had gotten super complicated. It might soon get a little easier.

Jackson, CPS’ chief education officer, plans to create a common high school application to make those programs accessible to a wider range of students, while boosting open-enrollment neighborhood high schools, which have suffered enrollment declines too.

She’s asking the Board of Education on Wednesday to approve $250,000 to build a single application for district-run high schools. If the school board agrees, then current seventh-graders will be the first to use it next fall. Jackson hopes to eventually pull charter schools into the process, too, voluntarily or with pressure applied during their renewals.

“The expectation is that charters will use this,” she said.

CPS plans to hire a Silicon Valley company, Schoolmint Inc., to build an an “online, mobile-friendly application that allows parents and administrators to manage CPS enrollment across the district using a single system,” according to the meeting agenda. The company has done similar work in other districts with a single application.

Included in the services will be a parent website featuring an application form, the ability to schedule appointments and a “guided step-by-step school selection process.”

Students will choose up to 20 high schools, be they test-in schools, military programs or open-enrollment neighborhood high schools. And parents can see what kinds of programs their children qualify for.

“I can’t tell you how many students would come to me after the fact — and they qualified for selective enrollment schools — and they didn’t apply because they didn’t now how to navigate the system,” Jackson said.

And families will finally see where they fall on a wait list and how many spaces a school has free if their child isn’t accepted outright, making the process more transparent than it is now, Jackson said.

“You can see your placement on the waiting list, but you can also see how many available seats there are in the school,” she said. “And that helps parents make choices as well. You might see the number and know there really isn’t a chance, or you might see that you’re very close and want to hold out hope for a slot in that school.”

Another bonus for open-enrollment high school principals is that they’ll be able to see who’s interested in their programs and start reaching out to those students. Currently, students don’t have to apply ahead of time to neighborhood schools, which are sometimes viewed as schools of last resort.

Applying to one of the 170-plus high schools in Chicago is tricky. Different types of district-run schools have different requirements and applications. Add in admissions bids to publicly funded, privately run charter schools adds another layer of paperwork and separate deadlines depending on each of more than a dozen high school charter school operators.

Carmelita Kilpatrick has just been through applications for her daughter, Jeleyah, an eighth-grader at Plato Learning Academy.

“I’m a single parent at this moment. I was very stressed out by the process,” said Kilpatrick, who lives in Lawndale. She managed to find some help in filling out applications to 17 Noble Network of Charter School campuses, five CPS-run test-in schools and two other charters, but she said she almost missed deadlines. “She’s my first child, my only child. I’ve just never dealt with this before. I didn’t think it would be this difficult.”

The district has attempted common applications before, even spending hundreds of thousands in recent years to give it a try, but it hasn’t yet been able to pull it off.

The price tag for this new application is higher than the $200,000 CPS pays two companies to manage its application process. The Chicago Community Trust also has given a $1 million grant so district leaders can discuss the system and how it’ll be implemented with the community at large. Parent focus groups have already been convened.

But one problem any application process won’t be able to solve, though, is improving the troubled schools that few students choose. One high school enrolled just 15 freshmen last fall, another just 23.

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