Auburn Career Center has changed its enrollment selection process for full classes from a merit-based system to a random lottery. Only a few classes are routinely filled, and Superintendent Brian Bontempo says the system is more fair.
Auburn Career Center has adopted a new application and placement process: a lottery selection system. ACC used to use a rubric scoring guide, but due to the shifting nature of the vocational education industry, has decided to change.
According to ACC, potential students are randomly selected to be placed in open seats for a class, put on a waitlist, or placed in a second-choice program. The enrollment team will talk with students to help place them.
During a school board meeting reported on by, and through correspondence with, The News-Herald, Auburn Career Center Superintendent Brian Bontempo spoke about the change in enrollment policy. “There appears to be confusion and misinformation as to the ‘random selection’ process, which is not an enrollment criterion,” said Bontempo.
ACC’s enrollment criteria are listed on their website as: high school junior status and on-track for graduation, two English credits, two math credits, two science credits, and two social studies credits. Applicants who do not meet these requirements will “need to enroll in an online course through their associate school or sign up for a summer school course for the course in which they are deficient,” according to the school’s FAQ.
“Given the tremendous educational opportunities provided by Auburn, some programs continue to reach maximum class sizes,” said Superintendent Bontempo. “To ensure that a nondiscriminatory process is in place to select students from the pool of students who already meet the enrollment criteria — while at the same time ensuring that students from each member school district have an equal opportunity to participate in each program — a random process
has been implemented.”
While some of Auburn Career Center’s classes get routinely filled, Bontempo added that of the 23 career tech programs the school offers, generally only six are routinely filled. This means that this change of enrollment policies would not affect most of the programs at all.
For the classes that do get filled, Bontempo noted that the change to a randomized selection process will level the playing field for students who qualify, saying, “This random process will ensure that students are not disproportionately denied access into any program based upon unlawfully subjective enrollment criteria. To the contrary, when a program reaches its maximum class size, all students have the same chance of getting into the program as any other student.”
Addressing criticisms of the randomized selection process, Bontempo said, “Is it perfect? No. Could we modify as we learn something better, yes, but it’s always better than handpicking students.”