Amid DPS after-school care scarcity, false start to signup sparks confusion
On Monday, a lapse in clear communication from Durham Public Schools led to many parents believing a signup portal for after-school care for the 2023-24 school year had been opened early.
As Katherine Goldstein was traveling through town Monday evening, she received a perplexing but stirring text message from a friend: the portal to signup for after-school care services next year from Durham Public Schools was open and accepting registrations. Stirred by what sounded like an opportunity to secure one of the coveted registration seats, Ms. Goldstein immediately pulled over and began navigating to the website. “I was on my way to a social event when I heard via text message registration was open, and pulled over the car to frantically register,” she recounts. As the mother of a second grader at Morehead Montessori Elementary and a set of younger twins who will enter kindergarten in 2024-25, the opportunity to participate in on-site after-school care is immensely valuable to her and many other DPS families who rely on and have pressed the district to prioritize district-led after-school programming. The perplexing part to this relayed news was that DPS had sent an email out to parents just four days prior, directly stating: “Registration for the 2023-24 school year will begin at the end of April. The exact date will be emailed to families and placed on our website.” So how was April 10 now considered the “end of April” and was there somehow a missed announcement from DPS about this signup opportunity?
Those questions were not explicitly answered as Ms. Goldstein clicked through the links to arrive at the portal: nothing on the DPS Community Education website or within the direct portal link indicated that signup had opened, but at the same time there were no statements about any restrictions for signup. And sure enough, the reports were true: after logging into the portal, she—like many other parents who found out on Monday—had full access to signup and pay for what has been a highly sought-after, first-come-first-served enrollment.
Scarcity of after-school resources
Back in February 2022, the DPS School Board voted unanimously to change the district bell schedule so that all elementary schools across the district would uniformly start at 7:45am. The change meant that 15 of the district’s 31 elementary schools would see their official starting times move earlier by as many as 90 minutes. Before making their votes, then-District 3 Board member Matt Sears and current Consolidated District A Board member Jovonia Lewis both expressed concerns with capacity for after-school programming and requested DPS Administration to bring forward an after-school care plan that accounts for the projected increased need for after-school care with the bell schedule changes. On April 21, 2022, the Directors of Community Education and Professional Learning presented an outline of the after-school program and told the School Board that 638 families at that time were already on the waitlist for after-school care. Signup for the 2022-23 school year would not open until May that year, so the waitlist figure presented in the meeting represented families who had been denied access to DPS after-school care during the 2021-22 school year, the first full year back in session following the pandemic. Staff testified in that April meeting that the 638-family after-school care waitlist was due exclusively to staff shortages coming out of the pandemic. (There are some instances where common space limitations at certain schools reduce the maximum capacity of students those schools can host in an after-school program, as long as the DPS practice of not using classroom space for after-school care persists, but DPS reported to be running at only 25% of after-school capacity across the district at that time.)
After registration for DPS after-school programs was opened in May 2022, it wasn’t until mid-June that parents found out if they had secured enrollment for after-school care or been placed on a waiting list. Local journalist Sarah Krueger of WRAL broke the news in July that 686 students were on the waitlist for after-school care for the upcoming 2022-23 school year. Parents pressured the district for answers, and by the time DPS organized two emergency meetings on July 25, 2022, the Herald Sun reported that 721 students were on waitlists for before- or after-school care while 985 students had been successfully enrolled in the programs, meaning that less than 58% of students who were signed up for before- or after-school care were confirmed enrolled by the district just one month before school was to start.
It is within this fresh memory of the scarcity of after-school care enrollment space that parents have approached the signup period for the 2023-24 school year.
Initial rounds of DPS communication for 2023-24
To announce the 2023-24 after-school care signup period, DPS sent multiple messages to parents about the upcoming signup period, most recently an April 6, 2023 email through their software vendor that stated signup would “begin at the end of April” after another email was to arrive to share the “exact date” for signups.
Unbeknownst to parents, messages had also been sent to DPS employees that announced an early registration period of April 10-14 for before- and after-school care signups. DPS employees were required to signup using the same online portal but were asked also complete an additional form to verify employment status that needed to be submitted separately by email to the DPS Community Education.
DPS Community Education is using an online portal from a new software vendor this year for before- and after-school care signups, and it is the same portal also used to allow for DPS summer camp registrations, which have been open for several weeks. According to Tracey Super-Edwards, the DPS Director of Community Education, the online signup portal for before- and after-school care services does not allow DPS to restrict access during the designated “early registration” period for DPS employees. The result has been that parents stumbled upon the open after-school care online portal and began to notify their own networks that after-school care signup, including fees payment, was being accepted online with no posted notices of restriction. It was only sometime between Monday evening (after Bull City Public Investigators sent the DPS Office of Public Affairs an email with questions about the signup) and Tuesday early morning that DPS Community Education changed the text on the after-school programming homepage to mention the DPS employee early registration period from April 10-14, 2023 and added specification that the “late April” registration period will be for the general public. As of late Tuesday afternoon, parents opening the signup portal directly were reporting that there was still no indication within the portal that the registration was restricted to DPS employees.
An “opaque process” within an “incomprehensible” year
Given the scarcity memories around past after-school resource shortages, informal parent networks were buzzing Monday and Tuesday with news of and links to the open signup portal. According to DPS officials, 62 registrations for before- or after-school care were recorded on Monday alone. As of Tuesday evening, DPS officials were unable to state how many DPS employees signed up for before- or after-school care last year (but, for perspective, we do know 1,706 total registrations were made between May and July last year). One parent with students at E.K. Powe Elementary noted, “This feels a bit like the Tickle-Me-Elmo stampedes of the 90s.”
Kate Wood, parent of a Club Blvd Elementary student, struck a similar sentiment and said she “would not have immediately registered if last year hadn’t been so terrible.”
Other parents, such as Ms. Goldstein who promptly stopped her vehicle to signup her Morehead Montessori Elementary student, had an even harsher critique on Monday evening: “I can’t believe after last year’s complete aftercare debacle which resulted in stress and crisis for hundreds of DPS families, and was featured as a negative example in national news outlets, the district continues with its mixed messages and gross incompetence.”
Another Club Blvd Elementary parent sent BCPI a text message about the after-school signup confusion to say, “This is not the first time. Each year there’s an opaque process sprinkled with a year of incomprehensible communication around scheduling and activities. It’s total insanity and feels like it needs a complete reboot of leadership and design.”
In an effort to measure how expansive the news (and vexation) had spread, BCPI reached out Tuesday morning to a George Watts Montessori Elementary parent to find out if parents at that school had been registering for after-school care. The parent let BCPI know, “If after school registration is open this early, that is news to me. I doubt that many [Watts] parents know, especially because ever since lockdown, our PTA listserve has been highly moderated. So the only way folks may know about this is friend-to-friend or neighbor-to-neighbor.”
BCPI reached out to the DPS Office of Public Affairs and Community Education to ask if these early registrations would be honored. Ms. Super-Edwards at Community Education said in a Tuesday morning phone call with BCPI that anyone who is not a DPS employee and signed up during the intended period of DPS employee signup will have that registration voided: “they will be notified before the portal opens for the general public and be refunded any payments they had made.” Later on Tuesday afternoon, an additional email was sent to parents at 2:57pm to clarify that “if you have registered prematurely as a non-DPS employee, you will be refunded your registration fee and deposit. You will need to register on the general public registration date that will be announced next week.”
Could this confusion have been avoided?
There was a tremendous amount of energy already extended and wasted by parents who had signed up on Monday for after-school care with no possible way of knowing that the portal had opened specifically for DPS employees to submit priority registrations. And now, Community Education is tasked with sifting through registrations to mark erroneous and issuing monetary refunds of all deposits made towards the soon-to-be nullified registrants.
Though this is the first signup period that Community Education is utilizing the new Procare Software portal, could this situation have been avoided? BCPI asked DPS Community Education via email Tuesday morning if there was a way to use the new software system for a single signup period or any other approach to give DPS employees priority assignment but to avoid the confusion and extra work sparked by this week’s events? Community Education responded to the question via the DPS Office of Public Affairs at 8:20pm Tuesday evening by stating in whole: “It is important to demonstrate to our employees that we are making this opportunity available to them so that we can continue to attract and retain the best teachers and staff to support our children. It is important to give them that opportunity to sign up.”
Parents simply are not accepting this answer or this level of service.
The parent from E.K. Powe said, “What happened Monday was completely avoidable. I commend the district for giving DPS employees the opportunity to register for aftercare first. I assume this [is] one of many offerings to retain teaching and support staff. That being said, the fact that platform was available to the general public registration for an extended period of time is completely unacceptable. DPS Central Office errors at this level and with their track record are simply not allowed. It’s the dysfunction that drives people away!”
Ms. Wood from Club Blvd added, “The expectation is that systemic problems are to be addressed, not simply acknowledged and ignored.”
Ms. Goldstein from Morehead summed up her experience and the volleys of communication from DPS on the matter by saying, “I’m so exhausted by their excuses and incompetence. By not managing their communication and software efficiently and having clear language on their website, it’s completely inevitable that they've sent off an anxious word-of-mouth frenzy. Again and again they live up to their reputation of mismanagement. Trust between parents and after-school is already non-existent, and this only further damages the relationship and alienates the community. The Office of Community Education seems completely oblivious to how crucial aftercare is to parents’ ability to work and how much stress they cause by their constant mistakes.”
Ms. Wood summarized her sentiments with a final exasperated but eloquent capstone: “DPS cannot continue to operate in a manner that treats aftercare as an afterthought.”
The DPS School Board can be contacted at boe@dpsnc.net
The next DPS School Board meeting is Thursday April 20, 2023; expected to be at the Fuller Building; 511 Cleveland Street in downtown Durham.