Jordan Reyes — Enrollment Systems Coordinator

Start by telling me what an Enrollment Systems Coordinator actually does.

The easiest answer is that I coordinate online registration and make sure the enrollment information gets into the student information system. But that makes the job sound much more technical than it really is. Enrollment sits at the intersection of families, school offices, student services, language access, technology, and district policy. When any one of those pieces is unclear, the family experiences the confusion.

A lot of my work is getting people to agree on what should happen before anyone configures a screen. Which documents are truly required? Who decides whether a student is eligible for a program? What happens when a family does not have stable housing or cannot produce a document in the form we expected? The system can enforce a rule very efficiently, but leadership means making sure it is the right rule and that we have a humane way to handle legitimate exceptions.

How has technology increased your ability to lead that work?

Technology gives me evidence that I did not have when enrollment was mostly paper. I can see where families stop, how long applications remain in each queue, which questions generate repeated calls, and whether the same family is being asked for information more than once. That changes my role. I am not limited to passing complaints from one department to another; I can bring people together around an observable problem.

It also helps me make the process visible across departments. A principal may only see the applications waiting at one school, while student services sees program eligibility and IT sees integration errors. A shared workflow view lets us see the whole experience. The technology does not create collaboration by itself, but it gives us a common picture and makes it harder for a problem to disappear between organizational boundaries.

Can you describe a win where that visibility made a real difference?

Our biggest early win came from mobile document uploads. We had a large number of applications marked incomplete, and the initial assumption was that families were not following through. When we reviewed the event data, we saw that many people reached the same upload step and then left. Staff members tried the process on their own phones and immediately understood why: the instructions were written for a desktop computer, the accepted file types were too narrow, and a user could lose progress after taking a photograph.

We rewrote the instructions in plain language, accepted common image formats, added a save-and-return function, and made it clear that families could receive in-person help without starting over. Incomplete applications dropped substantially during the next enrollment period, and calls about lost uploads declined too. The important leadership lesson was that we stopped describing the family as the problem and examined the system. Technology gave us the evidence, but listening to families and school staff told us what to change.

What other improvement are you especially proud of?

We reduced duplicate student records. Previously, school staff sometimes created a new record when they could not confidently find an existing student. They were trying to help the family move forward, but the duplicate would later split attendance, assessment, program, and contact history. Cleaning it up required several departments and sometimes took weeks.

We formed a small identity-resolution group with enrollment, SIS, CALPADS, and school-office staff. We agreed on matching rules, created a review queue for uncertain cases, and gave staff a quick way to request help without creating a placeholder record. We also tracked the reasons matches failed, which exposed inconsistent name and address practices upstream. The number of duplicates went down, but the larger win was shared ownership. It was no longer “an SIS problem” or “a school mistake.” Everyone understood how one hurried decision could affect the student across many systems.

Where do the hardest hurdles remain?

Policy ambiguity is harder than software. People sometimes expect the enrollment system to decide questions that district leaders have not resolved. A screen cannot reconcile two programs that use different residency rules or two departments that define a deadline differently. If we automate before resolving that disagreement, we simply hide it in code.

The other hurdle is capacity at school sites. A well-designed central process can still fail when an office is understaffed during peak enrollment. We have to look at queue volumes, language needs, training, and escalation—not just whether the portal is online. I have learned to ask, “Who will do this work on the busiest day of the year, and what will they need?” That question often reveals more than a technical requirements document.

How do privacy and data governance shape your daily decisions?

Enrollment collects some of the district’s most sensitive information, so minimization matters. We review whether each field and document is necessary, who may view it, where it is stored, and when it should be removed. Just because a portal can collect something does not mean we should ask for it.

We also have to be disciplined about authoritative sources. Staff need to know who may correct a legal name, address, guardian relationship, program status, or school assignment. Without that clarity, people patch the destination system and the correction is overwritten later. Data governance becomes practical when it tells an employee where the truth belongs, who can change it, and how the change reaches every authorized system.

How has this work changed your own leadership style?

I used to arrive at meetings with a solution because I thought leadership meant being prepared with the answer. Now I arrive with a map of the workflow and a set of questions. School secretaries, registrars, family liaisons, and program staff often know exactly where the process breaks, but they may never have been asked to describe the whole sequence.

I have also become more willing to separate urgency from haste. Families deserve a timely answer, but a quick workaround can create a lasting data problem. My job is to help the group find a response that serves the family today without damaging the student’s record tomorrow. That requires technical understanding, but it also requires patience, relationships, and the willingness to make ownership explicit.

What advice would you give someone entering school-data leadership?

Spend time where the work happens. Sit with the people answering enrollment calls. Watch a family complete the process on a phone. Follow one student record from the first application through school assignment, rostering, state reporting, and downstream services. You will understand the district very differently.

Then use technology to remove unnecessary effort and make responsibility visible. Do not automate confusion, and do not measure success only by how many forms were submitted. Ask whether families understood the process, whether staff could resolve exceptions, whether records were accurate, and whether students received services on time. Those are the outcomes that give the system meaning.

Reflective questions

1. Where does your district’s enrollment process create avoidable barriers for families?
2. Which enrollment data elements have clearly assigned authoritative sources and correction owners?
3. How would you distinguish family noncompletion from a poor digital workflow?
4. What information does the district collect during enrollment that may not be necessary?
5. Which measures would show that enrollment technology improved access as well as efficiency?
6. How should school-site flexibility and districtwide consistency be balanced?