LAFAYETTE, La.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Today, Firefly Digital announced the release of two new solutions that expand its Smart Choice K-12 Advanced Admissions and School Choice platform: its School Finder solution and its Unified Enrollment Matching and Assignment Engine solution.
Both solutions enhance the Smart Choice platform by providing new tools to help K-12 schools and districts improve their ability to design and administer fair and equitable school choice programs. They also provide parents with tools to help make the best possible choices for their children in selecting schools that align with their needs and interests.
“As the school choice movement gains momentum, the complexity is also increasing, making it more challenging than ever for parents to understand choice processes and find the best options for their children. Fairness and equal access to a quality education matters, especially in underserved communities where school quality is a concern,” explained Mike Spears, Firefly Digital CEO.
“These two solutions work together within our platform to effectively address these challenges by simplifying the process for both parents and school choice administrators, and giving schools and districts new tools to ensure fairness and equity in the school choice process.”
School Finder Solution
The Smart Choice School Finder solution is a guided school search tool that assists parents as they explore school options based on their child’s interests, needs and school proximity to their home address. It allows parents to browse, find and compare schools they are interested in. As they explore, they can create a “favorites” list to add schools they like. Parents can also select schools individually or use their “favorites” list to apply to or enroll in their list of schools once their search is complete.
“The School Finder gives schools and districts the ability to effectively promote their schools and programs while giving parents powerful tools to explore and find the best schools for their children. The tool is integral with our advanced admissions and school choice platform and it further simplifies the application and enrollment processes for parents and district administrators,” said Spears.
Unified Enrollment Solution
The Unified Enrollment (UE) engine expands the capabilities of the platform’s school choice lottery and waitlist solution, which is the most advanced school choice matching and placement solution on the market. The UE matching and assignment engine incorporates the latest matching science to accommodate emerging unified enrollment models, including the Deferred Acceptance - Single Best Offer model and its variations.
“It’s the first UE matching solution fully integrated into a student administration platform. Currently, UE solutions outsource the complex matching and assignment to a 3rd party standalone engine and import the results into a student administration system. Our UE solution is a significant advancement because the integration enables greater control and reliability in the match and assignment algorithm, and it provides for the many variations on the traditional UE match model when necessary,” said Spears.
The UE engine is fully integrated into the Smart Choice platform and incorporates its many advanced features and capabilities, including a single-application parent process, parent dashboard and communications, advanced application and enrollment administration and reporting. Additionally, the UE engine integrates with the platform’s powerful lottery features such as the administration of priorities, weighting and many other school and district requirements that may be incorporated into the UE match design.
Spears says the UE engine and School Finder solutions are complementary as they work together to simplify the application and enrollment processes for parents. It also simplifies and streamlines administration of the varied and highly complex school choice implementations schools and districts require to succeed.
About Firefly Digital and the Smart Choice Platform
Firefly Digital provides the Smart Choice admissions and school choice platform, one of the nation’s largest and most advanced online SaaS registration, enrollment and school choice administration software platforms for public, charter and private PreK-12 schools and school districts. The Smart Choice platform provides a complete suite of tools to accommodate end-to-end workflows for comprehensive and integrated admissions solutions, including enrollment (registration, re-enrollment and transfers), school choice, unified enrollment and early childhood education solutions. The platform serves more than four and a half million students, deployed across more than 6,700 schools in over 2,400 cities across 26 U.S.
Learn more about the Smart Choice platform here.
Learn more about the School Finder solution here.
Learn more about the Unified Enrollment solution here.
Learn more about Firefly Digital here.
