Westford Rethinks Kindergarten Registration During Pandemic

WESTFORD, MA — Westford School District is reimagining its kindergarten registration process during the pandemic to limit crowding and ease the process for parents. Parents will now have the opportunity to pre-register online and fill out the necessary paperwork before in-person registration on designated days where they will hand in forms, ask questions, and have immunizations and birth certificates checked.

Nabnasset Elementary School Principal Susan DuBois presented the plan, along with Donna Pobuck, to the School Committee Tuesday night. She proposed opening online registration on Feb. 22, two weeks earlier than normal. Then, parents would be invited to make an appointment to hand in their paperwork in person on March 8 from 6 to 8 p.m. and on March 9, at a time to be determined. DuBois said in an interview with Patch Wednesday that she's working with the IT department to get a webpage set up for registration.

Typically, parents wouldn’t complete paperwork at home and would spend upwards of 40 minutes waiting at the school to register—a process that would cause some grumbling, DuBois said the interview.

“It took a pandemic, but we’re moving forward,” she said of the registration process.

School Committee member Gloria Miller agrees with that sentiment.

“I think it absolutely makes sense to maintain that in-person connection but also try to frontload the process with the paperwork and some of the questions to try and expedite the process that is in-person, because I know there’s a lot that goes into bringing your child into a school system for the first time,” said Miller. “And this [year], of all years, is going to create a lot of anxieties and a lot of questions.”

DuBois originally proposed that March 9 registration run from 1 to 4 p.m., but committee members Avery Adam and Valery Young suggested adding another evening slot. Adam said that could benefit working parents, and Young said that parents who don’t work or work from home would have to bring their children along if it was in the afternoon when school gets out, which would defeat the effort of limiting the number of people at registration.

DuBois agreed with their points and said she would think of possible alternatives to the afternoon slot.