It’s that time of year again! Families are tasked with making the very important decision of where they would like to send their children to school for the 2023-2024 school year. We realize this decision is crucial to set up your child(ren) for success and our IDEA team is here to help you every step of the way.
Continue reading to learn more about sending your child to an IDEA school and how you can join our schools by submitting an application for our annual lottery on February 18, 2023.
What is the IDEA Student Lottery?
IDEA’s Student Lottery is one of the most important events of the year and is held annually to ensure equal access for all student applicants to IDEA Public Schools. Any student has an equal opportunity to be accepted into an IDEA school. Lotteries are held to randomly select students to fill spots for the 2023-2024 school year.
How is the IDEA Lottery conducted?
During the lottery, names will be selected at random, by grade, with spots offered in the order of names selected. When the capacity for each grade level is reached, the remaining applications will be assigned a position on our waiting list in a randomized order. Only applications completed before the deadline will participate in the lottery. Applications submitted after the lottery deadline are granted seats or added to the wait list in order of the date and time of their application.
What is the Lottery Deadline?
For the 2023-2024 school year, each IDEA region will host its lottery on designated days. You can see the full lottery schedule, by region, below:
IDEA’s largest lottery day is on Saturday, February 18, and will include all Texas regions (excluding IDEA Travis in the Permian Basin), Florida regions, and our newest Ohio region.
The deadline to submit an application for the 2023-2024 school year for this lottery is 11:59 p.m. CST on Friday, February 17, 2023. To submit an application or to view your current applications, please use our enrollment platform, STREAM.
Note: IDEA Travis in our Permian Basin region does not participate in the student lottery. Instead, student applications are available through Midland Independent School District. Access application information by clicking here.
What is the Lottery Process?
Each region will conduct their own lottery schedule. Each lottery will be conducted via STREAM, IDEA’s automated enrollment software system that is fair, transparent, and complies with data privacy regulations.
Random Selection – During the lottery, applicants in each grade level, at each school will be drawn at random and placed on a lottery-ordered applicant roster. Open seats will be offered in the order of names drawn through lottery. When the capacity for each grade level is reached, the remaining applicants will be placed on our wait list in lottery-order.
Notification – Once lottery is completed, parents/guardians will receive a notification at your preferred method of contact (email and/or text message). All families will also be able to see their offer status by logging into STREAM after the lottery has finished running in their region.
Accepting an Offer – In your notification email/text, you will be linked to your STREAM account to accept or decline your offer. When an offer is accepted, all other applications for that student will be deactivated; for example, if you applied to IDEA Eastside and IDEA Carver in San Antonio, when you accept the offer at IDEA Eastside, your IDEA Carver application will be removed from the system.
Declining an Offer – If you choose not to accept your offer, you must decline your offer in STREAM. Declining the offer will deactivate the application at that campus and will award the open seat to the next student on the wait list.
Waitlist – If a student is not initially offered a seat, they will be placed on the wait list in lottery-order. Any seat that becomes available will be offered to the next applicant on the wait list.
Withdrawal – If after applying, you have decided IDEA is not for you, please withdraw your application by logging in to your STREAM account.
We are so excited to welcome our new families to IDEA Public Schools, starting in August 2023! If you accept your offer, you can look forward to receiving details from your campus about upcoming campus events such as orientation, culture camp, and Meet the Teacher Night.
If you have additional questions about the lottery process, please review our Lottery FAQ or contact apply@ideapublicschools.org. After you’ve accepted an offer, all further questions can be directed to your new campus. Thank you for your interest in joining the IDEA Team & Family!
