WB accepts 174 Schools of Choice students via lottery

The West Bloomfield School District held a Schools of Choice lottery on Wednesday, May 2 to fill seats kindergarten through second-grade classrooms across the district.

“Our Schools of Choice Lottery awarded positions to 174 applicants out of 265 who applied,” said Pamela Zajac, the school district’s public relations and marketing coordinator. “All elementary buildings had available seats. Each building had a different number available.”

  Zajac added that the state per-pupil allowance for each Schools of Choice student accepted is determined by what districts those applicants are residents of, and each of them are different.

“Therefore, at this time it’s difficult to determine the exact revenue that these students will bring to the district, and we will not know officially until count day on Oct. 3,” she said. “The number of students that actually enroll can be different than those that have been awarded seats.”

Applicants come from across Oakland County and through the Oakland Intermediate School District.

The West Bloomfield district also reported that 226 new students were enrolled through the program during the 2011-12 school year in kindergarten through third-grade.

By accepting 174 Schools of Choice students this year, the program will see a reduction of 22 percent in new choice students.

Committees recommended to the Board of Education that in future years the number of new choice students be reduced by a similar number so that in five years, the overall number of choice students enrolled in the district will be fewer than 20 percent of the overall student population.