IDEA’s Student Lottery is held annually to ensure equal access for all student applicants to IDEA Public Schools. Any student, regardless of where s/he lives, academic standing, learning ability or income, has an equal opportunity to be accepted into an IDEA school. Lotteries are held to randomly select students to fill spots for the 2021-2022 school year.
This is one of IDEA’s most important events of the year! Read below for what you should know about the lottery.
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 2021-2022 school year, each IDEA region will be hosting different lotteries on different dates. You can see the full lottery schedule by region here.
Keep in mind – applications for IDEA Oscar Dunn in New Orleans close on Friday, January 29! IDEA Southern Louisiana will have two different lottery schedules for the 2021-22 school year – one for Baton Rouge and UP Academy through STREAM and one for New Orleans through enrollnola.org. Baton Rouge will conduct its lottery on Tuesday, February 2, 2021.
IDEA’s largest lottery day is on Saturday, February 20, and will include all Texas regions (excluding IDEA Travis in the Permian Basin) and IDEA Tampa Bay. The deadline to submit an application for the 2021-2022 school year for this lottery is 11:59 p.m. CST on Friday, February 19, 2021. To submit an application or to view your current applications, please use our enrollment platform, STREAM.
What is the Lottery Process?
Each region will conduct their lottery schedule, linked above. 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).
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 deactivated.
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.
Wait List – 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 of 2021! 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.
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!
