From Gatekeepers to Greeters

The last five years have been bleak when it comes to public school enrollment. Nationwide, thousands of students disappeared from public schools during the Covid-19 pandemic—and many never returned. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, 73 of the 100 largest school districts in the country declined in enrollment from 2019 to 2023.

While this trend is especially pronounced in urban districts, city schools aren’t the only ones with empty seats: Public schools in all sizes and types of communities have seen declines in enrollment in recent years, largely driven by decreases in elementary enrollment.*

This is true from coast to coast and in-between. Boston Public Schools enrolled just over 47,000 students in 2024, down from more than 53,000 in 2020. Across the country, enormous Los Angeles Unified has lost nearly that many students: Enrollment there dropped by about 55,000 students, a decline of 13.1 percent, from 2020 to 2024. Houston Independent School District in Texas has declined by 12.4 percent since 2020; suburban Evanston, Illinois has lost around 20 percent of its enrollment since 2018. Many school districts have been facing declines for even longer: Enrollment in rural schools in Massachusetts, for example, declined around 14 percent between 2012 and 2020, even before the pandemic hit.

Several factors have contributed to this pattern. Besides the pandemic, declining birth rates and competition from charter and private schools, plus more families opting for homeschooling (in some states through popular Educational Savings Accounts), have all reduced the share of students enrolling in traditional public schools. With some of their funding tied to enrollment, small districts are trying to stay afloat as they lose students. Larger ones are wrestling with painful decisions about school closures.

Given these dynamics, one might expect districts to be doing everything they can to encourage families to enroll and to make the process as easy as possible. After all, smoother, simpler enrollment processes benefit everyone involved: They help ensure classroom seats are filled, which supports a school district’s bottom line. They ease the burden and stress on families and prevent students from missing learning time, while also decreasing capacity demands on district staff responsible for processing complex paperwork (and answering phone calls and emails from confused caregivers). They also nurture family engagement, creating an important first impression and beginning to build a trusting relationship.

Unfortunately, our experience supporting hundreds of families with enrollment since 2021 has shown that, too often, districts seem more interested in keeping families out than welcoming them in. Instead of clear communication, straightforward processes, and helpful support, parents are just as likely to encounter confusing instructions, locked office doors, and black-hole voicemail systems. Instead of greeters, they meet gatekeepers.

Cumbersome enrollment processes create unnecessary frustration and stress for all families. For the most vulnerable families, however—those whose first language is not English, who don’t have a permanent address, or whose children need special education support—they can exact a much higher cost, delaying access to classrooms and critical in-school services for months, or deterring families from enrolling altogether. The consequences can be life-changing for students who start school behind academically and exacerbate the enrollment, attendance, and achievement challenges plaguing many schools.

School enrollment may never be effortless. Steps like residency verification are often unavoidable. Budget constraints will limit investments in enrollment staff and systems. Special education evaluations for new students will always be complicated to coordinate. But there are simple steps public school districts can and should take to make the enrollment process more functional, straightforward, and welcoming for new families—starting with adopting a “Greeter” mindset, rather than a “Gatekeeper” one.

Unfortunately, our experience supporting hundreds of families with enrollment since 2021 has shown that, too often, districts seem more interested in keeping families out than welcoming them in. Instead of clear communication, straightforward processes, and helpful support, parents are just as likely to encounter confusing instructions, locked office doors, and black-hole voicemail systems. Instead of greeters, they meet gatekeepers.

Cumbersome enrollment processes create unnecessary frustration and stress for all families. For the most vulnerable families, however—those whose first language is not English, who don’t have a permanent address, or whose children need special education support—they can exact a much higher cost, delaying access to classrooms and critical in-school services for months, or deterring families from enrolling altogether. The consequences can be life-changing for students who start school behind academically and exacerbate the enrollment, attendance, and achievement challenges plaguing many schools.

School enrollment may never be effortless. Steps like residency verification are often unavoidable. Budget constraints will limit investments in enrollment staff and systems. Special education evaluations for new students will always be complicated to coordinate. But there are simple steps public school districts can and should take to make the enrollment process more functional, straightforward, and welcoming for new families—starting with adopting a “Greeter” mindset, rather than a “Gatekeeper” one.

In many school districts, very little about the enrollment process feels built for families. Instead, Gatekeeper policies and practices are the norm. It’s not uncommon for families without computers at home to encounter online registration interfaces that aren’t accessible from their mobile devices; rules requiring them to submit documentation they don’t have readily available; long waits for appointments to get their children the immunizations they need to start school; or delays because a district’s homelessness liaison or special education coordinator is on leave (or simply very busy).

Even in straightforward cases, multi-step registration processes can take hours of caregivers’ time and require multiple in-person appointments. For working parents, this can mean giving up working hours (and the accompanying income) to get it done. If there is a need to request a special education evaluation, they typically have to complete an entirely separate batch of forms and appointments.

Even well-resourced caregivers—who speak English fluently, have adequate access to technology, and understand the U.S. education system—sometimes find themselves flummoxed by school enrollment processes. But obstacles loom even larger for the most vulnerable families. For the many families juggling compounded challenges, the barriers to enrollment can be so profound that students are lost from education for months or years at a time, or even permanently.

Through our work with families, Navigators have observed that the largest gatekeeping challenges to enrollment fall into four categories: unclear communication, cumbersome processes, lack of language accessibility, and frequent delays.

We asked Navigators for their impressions of how often they encounter these challenges; they report observing barriers like these “frequently or almost always” in seven out of nine districts where we regularly support enrollment. Navigators note that in some districts, enrollment works mostly smoothly with just one or two areas of friction, while others are repeat offenders with multiple types of barriers in place for families.

Here's how our Navigators describe these barriers and their impact on families:

1. Unclear Communication

In Gatekeeper districts, information about the enrollment process is often confusing or hard to find. Families struggle to sort out what they’re going to need to do, when, and how long it’ll all take. This is especially problematic in districts with school choice lotteries, where parents have to make complex decisions about how to rank schools, and must do so within the correct timeline to have the best chance at their top choices.

Opaque Processes
Our Navigators point out that without a clear view into the entire process from the outset, it’s challenging for caregivers to find time to make sure everything gets done. Navigator Ashly Marmol supported a family who had to appear at their local school and call and visit the newcomer center on multiple occasions before they were able to enroll. The process was hampered by unforeseen steps, such as a home visit to verify residency, that had to occur before the child could start school.

A lack of clarity into the process can be especially trying for caregivers that have to take off work to enroll their children in school. Marmol points out, for example, that the caregiver she supported took time off to be home for a mandatory residency check, but no one from the school district ever appeared—further delaying the enrollment process and adding stress and inconvenience for the family. And in districts that lack a centralized welcome center or enrollment office, registration often happens at individual school sites, which means that families with children of varied ages must trek around town, possibly on multiple days, to enroll them all.

Inconsistent Messages
In some cases, families get different information from different staff members within the district. Navigator Isabel Romero describes a family’s experience of being asked for an affidavit signed by their landlord and then notarized as proof of residency, because they lacked a proper lease. (Missing an official lease is not uncommon, and districts often offer an alternative form landlords can sign.) The out-of-town landlord initially refused to sign the document. After much back and forth, the landlord ultimately charged the parent $75 to have the document notarized. Meanwhile, Romero approached the district’s residency office, where a staff member confirmed that the family’s MassHealth paperwork would suffice to confirm residency—an easier option than dealing with an uncooperative landlord, and one that wouldn’t have put the family out $75. But no one had informed the family that it was available to them.

Outdated Information
It’s not uncommon for enrollment information to be available in multiple places—on a district website, on an enrollment-specific landing page, and in hard copy in central offices and schools. This is well-intentioned, but it makes it more difficult for enrollment teams to keep every resource up to date. When families encounter a website that still references last year’s registration dates, or a hand-out and an online resource listing different enrollment deadlines, or documents that state different eligibility criteria for afterschool seats, the added stress and confusion can lead them to delay taking next steps until they know confidently what must be done – and when.

2. Cumbersome Processes

The nuts and bolts of school enrollment are often riddled with bureaucratic obstructions. These impediments are what Harvard legal scholar Cass Sunstein refers to as “sludge”—the extra steps that send families back and forth across town, the repetitive paperwork, even forms that ask caregivers for their pediatrician’s phone number. (How often does the school district call your child’s doctor?) Others are problems of technology and language access.

Technology Hurdles
One of Ana’s experiences is instructive: When she visited her new school district’s welcome center to enroll her children after moving, the process went smoothly because she had pre-registered with the district’s website. But pre-registering was no simple task: She didn’t have computer access at home, and was overwhelmed by juggling the process alongside work and caretaking. Her Navigator, Ivette Rubio, stepped in and created a pre-registration account and uploaded the documents for her, after Ana sent them to her via text. Rubio estimates that it took her—an English-speaking, tech literate, professional Navigator—around two hours to complete the pre-registration for Ana’s three children.

Another common technology issue is registration websites that are not optimized for use on mobile devices. Many families only access the internet at home through phones or tablets, so caregivers must jump through extra hoops, like traveling to a public library, to complete enrollment requirements.

Paper Chases and Extra Steps
Proving residency is often a cumbersome step to enrollment, particularly since many districts require separate proof of residency and proof of occupancy. The latter is often satisfied with a utility bill, but the former typically requires a lease, mortgage payment slip, Section 8 letter, or signed affidavit from a landlord, like the one Isabel Romero’s family struggled to provide. Some districts require families to get these documents notarized, adding another in-person step (and sometimes added cost as well).

In one Greater Boston district where we frequently support families, registration packets are available at individual schools, but families need to visit the town hall to have their residency “verified” before they can enroll. Romero speaks of families going to the town hall first, then being told they need to go to school to get the registration packet, and then returning to the town hall to complete the process.

“Why would they need to take that extra step?” Romero wonders. Even as a Navigator, skilled in the process of managing all the school-related challenges a family can face, Romero was mystified by the barriers the district seemed to be deliberately erecting for families.

“The vibe is that they don’t want to fill their seats with non-English speakers,” she says. “I’m sure that’s not the whole district, but that is the vibe from the personnel these families are engaging with.”

Even families who, by law, don’t have to prove residency because they are experiencing homelessness, can be subjected to convoluted procedural requirements. Director of Navigation Victoria Paulino describes a district requiring families to provide documentation of their homelessness—to document, in other words, the reason they don’t have the required documents for school enrollment. How does one “document” homelessness? Whatever the reason for this (which Paulino suspects may be rooted in pressure from state agencies to ensure that families aren’t taking advantage of the law), it is as nonsensical as it is illegal.

Even when families have proof of residency, they can run into other surprising challenges. Romero is currently supporting a family who recently moved to a new town. When the parents sought to enroll their child, they learned that the room they were renting was out of compliance with local zoning laws related to occupancy. The town refused to verify the family’s residency, which meant they couldn’t complete the enrollment process. When Romero spoke to a clerk in the town hall, she was told that zoning is for the welfare of families. “I had to remind [the clerk] that so is school enrollment.”

While Romero works to get the family’s case resolved, their six-year-old has been out of school for two months—and counting.

Inaccessible “Support”
Districts often offer enrollment support in-person—or in some cases, even require in-person visits to complete registration. But appointments and walk-in opportunities may only be available on certain days each week for limited hours. Even full-time enrollment offices are typically open during standard workday hours, not early mornings, evenings, or weekends, when parents are less likely to be working.

3. Lack of Language Accessibility

For the nearly 90 percent of families we’ve supported with school enrollment who speak a language other than English—and for caregivers of all language backgrounds who have limited literacy—lack of language access is among the most common and flummoxing barriers to enrollment.

English-only Communication
Securing a substantially separate classroom placement for Ana’s son Miguel required a slew of back-and-forth emails over the course of a month—all of which came through in English. Because most of these emails went through Navigator Ivette Rubio, with Ana cc’d, Rubio was able to translate each of her own messages, pasting Spanish copy beneath the English so Ana could follow along. But the replies continued to come back in English, leaving Ana to rely on translation apps or Rubio’s support. While it’s inevitable that not all school and district personnel will be multi-lingual, it should be a baseline expectation that communication with non-English-speaking caregivers should include at least app-based translations of key information when an interpreter isn’t available.

Lack of Interpreters and Translated Documents
While the need for translated documents and interpretation services should be obvious (children have the legal right to a public education regardless of their immigration status or the language they speak at home), getting access to language services is nearly always a battle. Navigator Isabel Romero recalls hearing town hall personnel over speakerphone with a Spanish-speaking family, being “less than collaborative” about the need for an interpreter.

Caregivers often bring an English-speaking relative or friend to help them register in school (as Ana did with her sister before she had access to Rubio’s support). But if they don’t have someone available to join them—or if their enrollment process extends over multiple days and appointments—they are often reliant on a district’s willingness and ability to make the process accessible. Unfortunately, this varies widely.

Awkward Interpretation Technology
Even tools that are meant to facilitate language access, like interpretation phone lines, can be clunky and inefficient. With a language interpreter over the phone, nuance in the conversation can be missed, audio can be of poor quality, and it’s difficult to establish the trust that an enrollment team member can build in-person with a caregiver. (On one occasion, we observed a family down phone-based interpretation services entirely.) The rapid growth of AI tools and virtual interpretation services means that districts may now have opportunities to update older systems with tools that, while still imperfect, are improvements on the status quo.

4. Frequent Delays

Understaffed Enrollment Teams
Our Navigators routinely encounter delays related to understaffing. Under the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act, for example, districts must assign a homelessness liaison who acts as an expert in the law and facilitates enrollment for students experiencing homelessness. But families often run into delays and confusion—and even outright misinformation—when a district’s designated McKinney-Vento expert is unavailable and other family-facing staff don’t understand the law’s provisions (for example, that students experiencing homelessness can enroll immediately without documentation or immunizations).

The same is true for families who need special education evaluations for their children, or English language testing and support. When other district staff, especially those working in school front offices, don’t have a clear sense of the process for these relatively common situations, families can be given the runaround or turned away altogether.

Compliance Failures
In our 2023 report Lag Time, we found that one in four families we’d worked with in Greater Boston encountered a delay that violated federally-mandated timelines while trying to enroll their child in school or secure special education services (which often take place at the same time, when the family registers for school). The federal Individuals with Disabilities in Education Act (IDEA) requires states to provide evaluations of students in a timely manner, with specific timelines set by individual states. (Under IDEA’s “Child Find” law, districts must work to identify, locate, and evaluate school-aged children who may need special education services, beginning at age three.)

But while the timelines and processes for evaluating students are legally binding, we found that families regularly experienced delays that kept their children out of school or missing special education services for an average of three to six months. Families with young children were most at-risk for these delays, which occurred largely when they tried to enroll their preschool-aged children in public school after receiving services through Early Intervention in their infant and toddler years.

While delays and disrupted learning time are more common at school entry points—most often at preschool and kindergarten registration, but also when students transition into sixth and ninth grades—families can encounter these challenges anytime they transfer a child between schools for any reason. Ana’s son Miguel missed over a month of school when his family moved, because his new district failed to place him in a substantially separate classroom as required by his IEP.

Any single piece of Ana’s family’s experience—being new to the country, living in unstable housing, speaking a language other than English, having a child with a disability—adds complexities to the enrollment process that can result in missed learning time and delayed services (as it did, in fact, for nearly all of Ana’s children at one point or another). When those challenges overlap, as they do for so many families, it can become a Herculean effort just to access their children’s basic right: a free and appropriate public education.

It doesn’t have to be this difficult.

When a school district approaches enrollment from a “gatekeeper” mentality, it erects barriers that can be almost impossible for families to break down on their own. But when a district approaches the process instead with a “greeter” mentality, by making enrollment more functional and friendly, caregivers feel welcomed into the community. School leaders fill their seats, secure per-pupil dollars in their buildings, and mitigate the risks of cuts or closures. It’s a win-win. This isn’t necessarily easy work, but it isn’t impossible.

Here are two districts that are on their way:

Oakland Unified School District: “We are not trying to gate-keep our schools from our community.”

Before Kilian Betlach took on the role of Executive Director of Enrollment for Oakland Unified School District, he was a teacher and principal for two decades. As principal of a small middle school with no designated guidance counselor, Betlach helped eighth grade students enroll in high school.

“It was clear to me that, like so many things in education, these [enrollment] systems were built with an end user in mind who was an English-speaking, tech-literate, upper middle class person. The school I was working in was 99.5 percent Title 1 students, and 60 percent of our families spoke a language other than English at home.”

Nonetheless, before joining the enrollment office, Betlach acknowledges that he didn’t view enrollment “as a place of equity. I was just sort of doing the work.” Now, he says, “I’ve come along to the idea that enrollment is really our lifeblood as a district, and serving families is the first thing we need to do. This process needs to be easy for families. I think when you start there, you really do shift some things.”

One major shift in OUSD enrollment over the past three years has been a change of technology. They adopted a new online registration tool that is optimized for mobile use, to accommodate families who don’t have computer access. Betlach says this stemmed from his experience as a principal in the early pandemic days, when his school surveyed families about how they accessed the internet at home. “We found out that for almost 75 percent, the only way they accessed the internet was on their phone, and they didn't have an internet connection in the house.”

The district’s mobile-enhanced online tool also has built-in features to support families through the process. A caregiver can give it access to their photos, for example, so it can locate images of documents like passports or birth certificates that they may have saved in the past.

In addition to being mobile-friendly, the new system also allows families to register their child without uploading any documents. This is a big change from their earlier system—and the system in place in many districts—where families must include certain documents in order to submit their registration to the district. Shifting the order of operations means Betlach’s team can connect with partially registered families to support them to finish the process: “Like, ‘Hey, you said your child has an IEP but you didn’t upload it.’ And the family says, ‘Well, it’s in Vegas and I don’t know how to get it.’ Okay, well, now we’re going to call Vegas. That’s a very significant shift.”

"We are not trying to gate-keep our schools from our community."

Before Kilian Betlach took on the role of Executive Director of Enrollment for Oakland Unified School District, he was a teacher and principal for two decades. As principal of a small middle school with no designated guidance counselor, Betlach helped eighth grade students enroll in high school.

“It was clear to me that, like so many things in education, these [enrollment] systems were built with an end user in mind who was an English-speaking, tech-literate, upper middle class person. The school I was working in was 99.5 percent Title 1 students, and 60 percent of our families spoke a language other than English at home.”

Nonetheless, before joining the enrollment office, Betlach acknowledges that he didn’t view enrollment “as a place of equity. I was just sort of doing the work.” Now, he says, “I’ve come along to the idea that enrollment is really our lifeblood as a district, and serving families is the first thing we need to do. This process needs to be easy for families. I think when you start there, you really do shift some things.”

If this all sounds like a lot of change, Betlach says the reality is the improvements his office made were largely about building on what the district already had in place, while committing more fully to enrollment as a means of achieving equity in their community.

“I don’t want to pretend like I went on some kind of crusade,” he says. OUSD staff as a whole are on board with the fundamental principle that enrollment matters for families. For one thing, it’s the right thing to do.

And then there’s the math, Betlach adds.

“You do the back of the envelope math of what's your per-pupil state reimbursement. How many new kids do we need to bring into our district by virtue of streamlining or improving our practices?”

Easier enrollment is also just good customer service. “This is the front door of the district, so these are people's first impressions. I spent money on beautiful photographs of kids for the office. We painted the walls. We got some plants. We got some new furniture.”

Customer service matters when families have alternative options. For OUSD, the pressure to compete against local charter schools is intense—and Betlach says his team looked at charter enrollment practices too, to get a sense of what the competition was trying as they marketed to families.

But OUSD isn’t just competing against charter schools. In many cases, they’re also competing to get kids in school, period. And that’s what the work of enrollment is about, fundamentally: “It’s not always about going to a competing system,” Betlach says. “Sometimes if we don’t get them into school, it means they're not in school. We know that if we're not proactive with vulnerable populations, particularly those that have immense pressure on them to work instead, that we're going to lose them to education. We definitely encounter families where the student just wasn’t in school last year. I can’t give you an exact number for how many that is, but it’s greater than zero. And it should be zero.”

Chelsea Public Schools: “We understand that the families need support.”

Like OUSD, Chelsea Public Schools in Chelsea, Massachusetts has seen an influx of newcomers recently. Chelsea’s Parent Information Center (PIC) is housed in a first-floor office in the same building as the district’s Early Learning Center. The office itself isn’t much to look at, but it’s staffed with friendly faces who are committed to the mission of getting students into school as quickly as possible.

Daniel Mojica heads the team there. “Parents are here looking for a better life,” he says, reflecting on the district’s new arrivals. “We want to make sure that the children are enrolled so the parent can go and find work, or try to get set up in their life.”

On a sunny Tuesday morning in February, the PIC office is busy with families coming by—no appointments required, although they are encouraged, especially during busy times of year—to ask questions, collect paperwork, and check in with PIC staff. A mother with an elementary schooler and a baby in a stroller, a family of four who had recently arrived in town, and several other parents pop in, with and without children in tow.

A couple from Haiti, who would be moving to Chelsea in a few weeks, stop by to ask about school and daycare options for their two young children, ages 1 and almost 4.

Jhonatan Perea Piedrahita, one of the PIC’s team members, assists the family. Though they came in speaking Spanish, as Piedrahita begins conversing with them, it becomes clear that they are more comfortable in Portuguese, having arrived in the US after a period in Brazil. (Many of Chelsea’s recent arrivals from Haiti speak Spanish or Portuguese in addition to Haitian Creole, because of their migration journeys.) No one in the PIC office is fluent in Portuguese, but team member Kesia Ascencio has learned enough from her work (“and Duolingo!”) to process standard school registrations in Portuguese. Beyond the basics, though, the team calls in interpretation support via their language line.

In this case, the explanation is a bit more complicated than Ascencio can manage in Portuguese, and Piedrahita picks up the phone to get the language line on to help. But the family declines the interpretation support.

Instead, they thank the PIC staff and leave with flyers in hand explaining the lottery process, as well another local option for early learning. But Piedrahita is bothered. He worries that they may not have fully understood that the pre-K lottery deadline is coming up in just a few days. If they miss the window, they’ll miss their best chance of a seat for their older child.

“I feel I’m doing a disservice to the family,” he says, “if I can’t fully communicate in their language.” It’s unusual for a family to decline the phone-based interpretation support, he says, and wonders why this family felt uncomfortable. Maybe they didn’t want to involve someone who wasn’t in the room; perhaps it was connected to anxiety surrounding the new administration’s crackdown on immigrants. Whatever the reason, Piedrahita hopes they understood enough from the interaction to register their child in time for the lottery.

Mojica says it’s a priority to add staff at the PIC in the new languages that have proliferated in the community, and he’s spoken with district leadership about adding a position in his office for a Haitian Creole speaker specifically. But, as Mojica points out, migrant populations fluctuate, and it’s hard to predict what will be most needed next year or the year after.

Beyond ensuring families have language access to the information they need, Mojica says one of the most important factors for efficiently enrolling students who are new to the country has been removing barriers to immunizations. The district is now partnering with the city’s Department of Public Health to offer weekly free vaccine clinics at Chelsea City Hall, so families that don’t yet have healthcare providers or insurance can get their children immunized and ready for school. (He also notes that students protected under McKinney-Vento are legally allowed to start school without the required immunizations.) PIC staff also connect families to the MassHealth office in Chelsea to start the process of acquiring health insurance.

For families experiencing homelessness, Mojica says the biggest hurdle is often reassuring them that housing doesn’t need to be a barrier to enrolling in school. “I think a lot of caregivers are scared to even admit that the landlord doesn't know that they're living there, or that they're doubled up with a family member,” he says. “But what we’ve seen in the past is if they don't tell us their current situation, then we’ll provide a residency form that the landlord needs to sign off on. They take the document, and we never see them again.”

If Mojica’s team knows a family can’t get a landlord signature for any reason, they’ll pull in their McKinney-Vento liaison to enroll the child immediately without documentation. But that clear communication with parents is critical. “We want to emphasize that—does the landlord know that you're living there?” Mojica says. “And then if they say no, I say, okay. Not a problem. Thank you. We'll bypass that part of it.”

The same is true for families seeking special education evaluations for their children. Even if they’re lacking documentation from Early Intervention or their doctor’s office, Mojica says his approach is to start the process, so they can minimize delays. “We go ahead and put the child through the process, and if the child is in need of services or supports, that’s when we’ll request the documentation.”

Minimizing delays is the name of the game in Chelsea. “Our goal is to get the child in school,” Mojica says. Piedrahita estimates that a standard registration takes about 20-40 minutes, and language testing, if needed, can happen within a couple days. They’re able to get most new students into school within a week. “I’m proud of that,” he says. “It’s pretty good.”

And the PIC doesn’t just do registration. The team also manages transportation, and handles transfers of Chelsea students to other districts when families move out. They offer resources related to community programming, food and housing support, and afterschool options, and distribute backpacks, t-shirts, and pocket-size laminated “know your rights” cards in multiple languages. They even serve as occasional sitters for students whose caregivers aren’t at the bus stop to pick them up on time. (“We have some games and coloring stuff. Whatever it takes!” says Piedrahita.)

“The PIC is really the heart of the district,” says Mojica. Ultimately, he hopes families in Chelsea view the PIC as a place to ask for whatever they need. “We want to make sure that families understand that this is a safe space to be truthful and honest, and we'll be happy to help as quickly as possible. We understand that families need support, so we try to do the best that we can to help them with that.”

Nonetheless, Mojica acknowledges that the system in Chelsea isn’t perfect, and he has a wishlist for future updates. Currently, the district does all registration in-person in the PIC. While the office has extended hours, with a staff member available as early as 7AM and until 5:30 in the evenings, there isn’t yet an option for families to start the registration process online, which means they need to come into the PIC for Mojica’s team to begin engaging with them.

A mobile-friendly tool to allow families to begin registration “looks promising,” he says. “I'm a little jealous of the districts that have that. I would say within the next two to three years, that's where we will be.” He’d like to see families at least be able to book appointments online, which he says is currently in-process. His vision is ultimately to have a hybrid online and in-person system, including computers in his office where families can upload their documents if they don’t have internet access at home.

But change takes time, even when district leadership is supportive. “I think the district's a hundred percent on board” with changes to improve the enrollment system, Mojica says. “It’s just a matter of time. It’s a little bit on me, to be honest. I think change, although it'll be good change—we're just not there yet.”

For now, the team is doing their best with what they have.

Minimizing delays is the name of the game in Chelsea. “Our goal is to get the child in school,” Mojica says. Piedrahita estimates that a standard registration takes about 20-40 minutes, and language testing, if needed, can happen within a couple days. They’re able to get most new students into school within a week. “I’m proud of that,” he says. “It’s pretty good.”

And the PIC doesn’t just do registration. The team also manages transportation, and handles transfers of Chelsea students to other districts when families move out. They offer resources related to community programming, food and housing support, and afterschool options, and distribute backpacks, t-shirts, and pocket-size laminated “know your rights” cards in multiple languages. They even serve as occasional sitters for students whose caregivers aren’t at the bus stop to pick them up on time. (“We have some games and coloring stuff. Whatever it takes!” says Piedrahita.)

“The PIC is really the heart of the district,” says Mojica. Ultimately, he hopes families in Chelsea view the PIC as a place to ask for whatever they need. “We want to make sure that families understand that this is a safe space to be truthful and honest, and we'll be happy to help as quickly as possible. We understand that families need support, so we try to do the best that we can to help them with that.”

Nonetheless, Mojica acknowledges that the system in Chelsea isn’t perfect, and he has a wishlist for future updates. Currently, the district does all registration in-person in the PIC. While the office has extended hours, with a staff member available as early as 7AM and until 5:30 in the evenings, there isn’t yet an option for families to start the registration process online, which means they need to come into the PIC for Mojica’s team to begin engaging with them.

A mobile-friendly tool to allow families to begin registration “looks promising,” he says. “I'm a little jealous of the districts that have that. I would say within the next two to three years, that's where we will be.” He’d like to see families at least be able to book appointments online, which he says is currently in-process. His vision is ultimately to have a hybrid online and in-person system, including computers in his office where families can upload their documents if they don’t have internet access at home.

But change takes time, even when district leadership is supportive. “I think the district's a hundred percent on board” with changes to improve the enrollment system, Mojica says. “It’s just a matter of time. It’s a little bit on me, to be honest. I think change, although it'll be good change—we're just not there yet.”

For now, the team is doing their best with what they have.

Changing enrollment systems isn’t easy work. As both Oakland and Chelsea illustrate, it requires an investment of time and money, collaboration and creativity. Most fundamentally, district leadership need to think of the enrollment process as the key to bringing people in, rather than keeping them out.

“Shifting our mindset is really the first step,” says Navigator Isabel Romero. “These are all our children. Can you look at this family and realize that this child, this first or second grader, is sitting there at home without educational access?”

Based on our work with families, we believe strategic updates in seven categories can make a meaningful difference. The first four will improve the enrollment experience for all families. The three others will make the process more accessible and inclusive specifically for families who are particularly at-risk of delays and disruptions in the enrollment process, including newcomers, families seeking special education services, and families experiencing homelessness.

Even though enrollment happens millions of times every year in school districts across the country, it isn’t easy or automatic. Even in districts with dedicated registration staff who view their jobs as bringing families in—not keeping them out—complex protocols, lack of funding and people power, and even just an attachment to doing things a certain way can all contribute to confusion and anxiety for families.

Addressing the pain points of a Gatekeeper approach to school enrollment benefits all families in the community, because it can transform that first touchpoint between families and schools from coldly bureaucratic to warm and welcoming. And adopting a Greeter approach is especially valuable for the most vulnerable families, like Ana’s, who disproportionately experience the toughest barriers.

For district teams that are ready to change, the first step is putting staff in the shoes of families, to identify the most urgent opportunities for improvement. Not everything needs to change at once, but in some cases, even relatively small updates—from posting McKinney-Vento rights on the bulletin board to creating a one-page handout that lays out the registration timeline—can make a meaningful difference for families.

Doing so isn’t just about being kind, helpful, or even legally compliant—although it is all of those things. When enrollment is more functional for families, it is also smarter and more efficient for districts. Easier enrollment means more kids in school, in seats that need to be filled. That’s better for everyone.

Is your school district a Gatekeeper or a Greeter?

Take our free online self-assessment to find out, and learn what types of actions would make the enrollment process better for everyone involved. 

Ready to improve your enrollment system? 

Start by setting up a process for collecting family feedback. Download our short guide to collecting family feedback to get started.