Granton Interim Administrator and Principal Discuss Open Enrollment Process

Tuesday, April 13th, 2021 -- 8:00 AM

-It’s time for open enrollment in Wisconsin.

In our continuing interview series, I spoke with Granton’s Interim Administrator, James Kuchta as well as Principal Amanda Kraus, and they talked about how that process works.

Mr. Kuchta:  “I have our wonderful Principal, Amanda Kraus, with us here today.  And she’s our PreK-12 Principal this year.  She’s been serving as our principal for a couple of years.”

Amanda:  “Yes, this my third year as the principal here.  My first year as 4K-12.  And we want to explain the open enrollment process.”

Mr.  Kuchta:  “Open enrollment is open statewide and anyone can open enroll to another district.  One of the things that we like to promote with Granton is that we’re a small school district."

"We offer personalized instruction and we’ve got excellent opportunities for our students here.  Just last Friday, we had a family come in and look at the school and meet staff here.”

Amanda:  “We have some great opportunities for students and families to learn about our school district.  If anyone is interested, they call the district office and get a hold of me and schedule a family tour to get some more information."

"We also have summer school coming up, which is a great insight into our program for our Elementary students, 4K-5th.  We’ll be running summer school from June 7th to July 2nd, so we’ll be having two, two week sessions.  And it’s a great introduction to some of our staff and learning the building and facilities and getting into the pool as well.”

Mr. Kuchta:  “We really do have great resources here at Granton with our excellent fieldhouse and pool and all the great things going on.  And, as I mentioned, we’ve got very low student numbers per class."

"For summer school, we’ve got nice, small numbers that our teachers get to work with very good individualized instruction and throughout the school year we have smaller classes, which is what we really like to promote for students here at Granton.”

Question:  “So, how does that process work if parents want to enroll their children into a different district?”

Mr. Kuchta:  “It’s actually fairly easy.  All they have to do is go on to the DPI website.  Many school districts have a link; we have a link right on our website that takes you right to the DPI Open Enrollment, which is called Opal, the Open Enrollment Portal."

"And it used to be that a family could only do an application for open enrollment for up to three schools.  But this year, due to COVID, they opened it up to an unlimited number of schools.  And then the final decision doesn’t have to be made until later in the year.  But there’s an open enrollment window from April 1st to the last full week of April, so this year it closes on April 30th.”

Question:  “So, if there’s someone out there thinking about sending their student to the Granton School, they should just call either of you?”

Mr. Kuchta:  “Yes, we would welcome that.  We would be happy to give tours for families to meet our teachers, see the facility, learn more about Granton, and see the great opportunities that we have.”

Feel free to contact us with questions and/or comments.