San Juan, PR (April 8, 2024) - The integrated family services center, Vimenti, and the first public alliance school in Puerto Rico, Vimenti School, conducted their public lottery for new students through the virtual platform SchoolMint. The automated process selected the students according to the spaces that the school had available for each grade and established the order of the waiting list of participants.
Wilfredo Damiani Echevarria, Vimenti's social services area director, explained that “the registration process is carried out automatically, in compliance with the provisions of Law 8-2018 Art. 13.02 (d) and (e) and regulation 9032 applicable to Public Schools Alliances of the Department of Education of Puerto Rico and the Federal Department of Education. The law requires schools to use an automated lottery system, establishing a random selection process when the school has more applicants than available spaces. For the 2024-2025 school year, Vimenti School received a total of 150 applications for its total eight grades that are offered at the school.”
“We received 63 kindergarten applications for 39 available spaces, 19 first-grade applications for one available space, and 13 sixth-grade applications for three available spaces. We also received 12 applications for second grade, 19 applications for third grade, 9 applications for fourth grade, and 9 applications for fifth grade, but currently we do not have any spaces available. All these requests are placed on the waiting list. In August 2024, Vimenti School will begin offering seventh grade, for which it received six applications for two available spaces,” explained Paul Muñoz Gómez, enrollment coordinator.
For more than 20 years, the SchoolMint platform has offered strategic solutions for public schools to manage enrollment and lottery processes. Vimenti also uses the platform for its school enrollment process and to measure the satisfaction of Vimenti School parents.
“At Vimenti, we enroll the entire family – not just the students – we work to achieve the goals of that family unit as a whole, following our Two Generations model,” explained Damiani Echevarria. “Through the synergy between our three pillars – educational, social support, and economic development – we ensure that all our families, and all their members, receive quality services and programming. To all the families who won a space in the lottery, congratulations. I hope to see you soon at Vimenti. To those families who did not find a space on this occasion, cheer up. We invite you to learn more about the other services that Vimenti offers,” concluded Damiani Echevarria.
The integrated family services center Vimenti recently celebrated its fifth anniversary by reporting that it managed to reduce poverty for Vimenti families overall by 11% compared to the reference level in the last five years. Additionally, 64% of Vimenti School families have reported an increase in their monthly income, and 22% of these reported an increase of more than $1,000 per month in the past year.
