Round 1 of SchoolChoice for the 2023-24 school year has been extended to 4 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 21, 2023. To participate in SchoolChoice, families submit one SchoolChoice application per student, on which they rank their top schools in order of preference, up to a limit of 12.

For families looking to enroll for the current school year, please click here. 

Play this video for a quick rundown on DPS Enrollment process: 
Play the SchoolChoice video »

Round1 is the most important time of year for SchoolChoice. It is when the majority of transition-grade students (typically ECE-4, fifth and eighth graders) receive their school assignments for the following academic year. Families submit one SchoolChoice form per student, on which they rank their students’ top twelve school preferences. DPS then runs all of the applications submitted through a lottery and matches students to schools based on those preferences, as well as school admission priorities and available space.

How the lottery process works:

At the end of Round1, when all applications have been submitted, the Choice algorithm will be run. This algorithm will randomly assign all participating students a lottery number between 1 and 1,000,000. Students are also assigned a priority level for each of the schools they selected based on pre-determined priority categories published by each school.

The algorithm will then rank and stack students within each priority category based on their randomly assigned lottery number. This produces an ordered (ranked and stacked) list of students for every grade at every school. The system then allocates seats to students based on the order in which they fall on this list; the system then assigns waitlist numbers to all students who do not obtain a seat in order of how they were ranked and stacked.