Registration for 2021-2022 School Year Announcement by Kim Langen

This past school year has been one of chaos, unbelievable stress for many, and also, simultaneously a powerful demonstration of an incredible outpouring of humanity, and a wonderful opportunity for discovery and new opportunities for students. On behalf of all the Spirit of Math team we would like to thank you all for supporting your children with their learning amidst the pandemic. We also are incredibly appreciative of all the support you have given us through the tough times. Thank you. This message is about our pre-registration, but before I talk about that, I just want to quickly say that during this past year, our Spirit of Math families, by sending their children to Spirit of Math, have helped to impact communities globally and here in Canada with food donations, school supplies for students who ended up with no schools, Food Banks, a huge UTS donation to Hand Up Toronto, you have also provided support for teachers in Pakistan and Uganda, and a new Partnership with YAAACE, an initiative with the Toronto District School Board and Catholic School Board in partnership with Spirit of Math for 70 students to attend our classes – these students come from one of the most marginalized areas in Toronto. Now to the pre-registration. We have worked hard to bring you a process that we hope you will find easier than last year. It is a little different than the last years, and I will now explain it. For the very busy campuses, we have changed the pre-registration to a 3-step process. 1.    Parents fill in a Microsoft Registration Form to select the classes – no payment is needed yet. 2.    Campuses allocate students to classes based on the Forms that were submitted. 3.    Payment is made to confirm and accept student placements before classes are opened to new students. For many of our campuses, classes fill up very quickly and waiting lists are created within minutes. With our new process, parents in very busy campuses will have an opportunity to quickly pick their first and second choice with a drop-down menu for each of their children on a single form without worrying about how to pay. On the next slide I will show you a calendar with the dates and with some more information – more emails will be sent to you as the dates approach. Here is the overview of the dates. Step 1: you will receive an email that will be sent on April 5th at 8:00 am EST. In the email will be a link to a Microsoft Registration Form for the 2021-22 school year for your campus. You click on the link and it will take you directly to the priority registration Form in which you fill out for the selection of classes. Step 2: On April the 12th, the priority registration form will close. Campuses will look at all the requests made, and during that entire week, until April 16th, campuses will place all students who filled in the Form into classes for next year. Priority into the classes will be according to the timing of the submittance of the Form. Step 3: From April the 19th through to April 30th, parents will be able to go into the parent portal to see which class their child was placed, to accept and confirm the placement. Or you can phone your campus to do it over the phone. You do not have to race to the portal or to the campus as your child has been placed into the class and kept there until April 30th. Parents will be able to confirm and keep the placements by paying the registration fee, and full-year payment with Visa online, or cash at the campus, or choose to pay with Pre-Authorized Debit through their bank. Alternatively, people can drop off cheques, by appointment, or mail cheques to the campus, before the end of April. At this time, parents can see if there is room in any other class, if they choose to change classes, or add their child to a waiting list, if needed. Please note that our current students have the opportunity register on the Parent Portal from April 19th onwards regardless if they filled in the Form during the time between April 5th to 9th. All our current students who register before the end of June will be charged the current 2020-21 school year tuition, rather than the 2021-22, next year’s tuition rate. April 30th is an important date as any student who did not confirm their class requests and placements, with some type of payment, will be taken out of the class placement. This is to provide room to new students who are wanting to pre-register for next year. Once again, our current students may register using the parent portal any time from April 19th onwards, if you aren’t worried about full classes. Current SoM parents are still able to register their children at the current 2020-21 school year tuition rate until the end of June. As of July 1st, the rates will be at the 2021-22, next school year rates. Tuition for all new students is at next year’s rate. To prepare for next week, at the end of this week, you will receive an email with links for next year’s class and payment schedules. Please take your time before the registration form is sent on April 5th, to have a look at the schedule and decide on your first and second choices for your child or children. On Monday, April the 5th, at 8am EST you will receive an email with a link to the Microsoft registration form It is VERY easy to use. All you have to do is click on the link for your campus form, and write your names, telephone numbers, then choose your classes for each of your children. The class options are given as a drop-down for each grade, so that it is easy for you to choose. Here is a sample of part of the form. For many of our campuses, classes fill up very quickly and waiting lists are created within minutes. With our new process, parents will have an opportunity to quickly pick their first and second choice with a drop-down menu for each of their children on a single form without worrying about how to pay. Once the Form is submitted, the time is recorded to the second so that the first people to submit a request will receive the preferred class until the class is filled, then they will hopefully receive the second choice. You just need to fill out the form and submit. Payment for this priority placement will be accepted later in the month, without rushing to the payment portal. Parents have until April 12th, which is a whole week plus an hour to fill out this form. You may certainly choose to pick your classes later, but this first week is to ensure that students who attend very busy campuses will have a chance to get their choice class. We are calling this priority registration requests. We would all also like to thank all our parents who participated in various parent surveys as they have helped us make better decisions to be able to best prepare our students to be our future leaders. We sincerely thank you also for your patience with us as we try to ensure that the safety of all our community is taken care of. We have worked very hard to make this registration process easy for everyone and we are all praying that you will find it fairly easy. We have extra people at our campuses ready to help you out during this registration period if you feel that you would like extra help. We don’t expect you to memorize everything. Please look out for the schedule at the end of this week and the Priority Registration Form on Monday, April 5th. If you do not receive the email on April 5th, please look in your junk mail, or contact your campus right away. Once again, thank you all so much for all your support during this very interesting year.