Admissions

Sibling Preference

Siblings of enrolled students. 

 

Staff Children Preference

Children of employees of Navigator Schools (limited to 10% of total enrollment). 

 

Residents of the Pajaro Valley Unified School District Preference

Applicants who reside within the city boundaries of Watsonville and Pajaro Valley Unified School District

 

Other Residents of the Pajaro Valley Unified School District

Residents of Pajaro Valley Unified School District 

 

All Other Applicants Preference

All other applicants.

1. Click on the SchoolMint logo located on the Resources tab under the Admissions tab of www.watsonvilleprep.org or go directly to https://navigator.schoolmint.net  
1. SchoolMint is a self-serve website that manages the Enrollment Lottery and the Waiting List that is created post- lottery. Registered SchoolMint users can log into their account  24 hours a day, 7 days a week to check their student's status.

• ALREADY HAVE A SchoolMInt  ACCOUNT?

1. If you already have a SchoolMInt account from any school, you DO NOT need to create a new account. Just log into your account, click on your viewing information on the top left-hand side of the screen, select “Add School Organization” select state, and Navigator Schools then select  ADD.
2. Then skip to #3) 
3. i) below.

• NEW to SCHOOLMINT REGISTRATION:

1. To register an account for the first time in SchoolMint, go to  https://navigator.schoolmint.net, then click the signup button, then select LET’S DO THIS.
2. Create a SchoolMint Parent/Guardian Account by entering your parent/guardian contact information on this screen – DO NOT ENTER YOUR STUDENT’S INFORMATION. The information you enter on this screen is the only information we have to contact the parent/guardian if your student is selected, please double check for accuracy and keep it up to date throughout the entire school year. Select SUBMIT.
3. Select START AN APPLICATION, then enter the appropriate lottery information for the school year you are interested in:
   1. Proof of Residency Requirements for Watsonville Prep Schools; verification of parent/legal guardian address by two of the following documents at the time of enrollment:
   1. property tax receipt or proof of homestead exemption (Primary source of verification);
   2. current electric bill;
   3. contract for purchase of home;
   4. warranty deed; or
   5. lease agreement
1. School Name: Select Gilroy Prep School K-8 (please note multiple schools use the SchoolMint system), then select SUBMIT.
2. Lottery Name: Select the appropriate grade & school year lottery. (Note: OUT OF DISTRICT RESIDENTS  you must reside in the Watsonville and Pajaro Valley Unified School District Boundary and the Pajaro Valley Unified District the day of the lottery, April 2023, to apply for the In District lottery – proof of residency will be required if you are offered a spot). Then select SUBMIT.

• VERY IMPORTANT INFORMATION WITH REGARDS TO STUDENT ADDRESS OF RESIDENCY AND GRADE LEVEL – see screenshot below:

1. 1. If you select the wrong grade or In District vs. Out of the District lottery and do not correct it, your student will be processed in the grade level/county lottery you selected incorrectly. If you are subsequently offered a spot in an incorrect lottery your spot will be forfeited, and your student will then be moved to the bottom of the waiting list of the correct lottery that your student should have applied for. Watsonville Prep School is not responsible for parent/guardian errors in the application process. Please double-check your applications for accuracy by viewing the applications in SchoolMint. Proof of residency and/or preference documentation will be required for enrollment of all students
   2. If you have multiple children, please continue to add them using the ADD ANOTHER STUDENT  button located on the right-hand side of the screen. Please note, only siblings should be linked on SchoolMInt accounts. Do not add any other relatives (grandchildren, cousins, friends, etc.) to your SchoolMint account, only Parents/Guardians can represent their child in the lottery process. (See FAQ below for any questions).
   3. You will be sent an automated email directly from the SchoolMint system with a confirmation of what lottery or waitlist you have applied for. If you do not receive an automated confirmation email within a few minutes of adding your student to a lottery, please check your SPAM folder and see step #6 below.

1. Once you have created a ShoolMint Parent Account you will be able to:
1. Monitor your student’s application or waitlist status 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
2. Edit your account (update e-mail address and/or phone number, etc.) – It is the parent/guardian’s responsibility to keep this information up to date, this is the only way we have to contact you if your child is offered a spot.
3. Add your student to additional waiting lists or lotteries
4. Remove your student from the lottery if you change your mind
5. Accept or decline if your student is selected
2. Please remember to update your e-mail address and phone number in SchoolMint if it changes at any time during the entire year of the applicant process. 
3. Please enter [email protected] to your Contacts to ensure that all e-mails from Schoolmint are not marked as spam.

When the Lottery is run on April 2023, at 9:00 AM, the lottery is run by grade level starting with 8th grade and finishing with Kinder. Applicants are randomly sorted in each grade level, in order of preference, starting with sibling preference, staff children, free and reduced lunch, in-district, and all other preferences. All preferences are validated via proof of documentation by the Lottery Coordinator.

Example: If there are 200 applicants for Kindergarten and there are only 60 available slots, Schoolmint will randomly sort all 200 student names and the first 60 by preference will be offered a seat. The remaining 140 students will make up the waiting list, in the order in which they were randomly sorted by preference.

1. Siblings of students currently attending Watsonville prep (TK-5th grade)
2. Children of all staff 
3. Children currently on the waitlist (Everyone needs to re-apply each year)
4. Anyone that would like their child to attend Watsonville Prep School

Students who reside in the boundary area of the city of Watsonville and Pajaro Valley Unified school district. The student address is in the city of Watsonville.

Please enter the address that you reside in, as our preferences are based on address. We will be checking the address and if we come across a PO box, we will contact you to get your home address.

For 1st through 5th grade openings, the number of available seats is determined by current K through 5th grade families who have completed an Intent to Re-Enroll Form to Watsonville Prep for the 2022-2023 school year. This commitment occurs in September and normally all parents notify us that their student will return in the upcoming year.
The number of applicants and available openings in each grade that will be offered on the day of the 23-24 lottery.

1. Due to our low attrition rate of current students, there are normally none or very few spots the day of the lottery for 1st – 4th grades.
2. For Kindergarten, our enrollment capacity is two homeroom classes with 30 students per class – allowing approximately 60 openings for Kindergarten each year.

The lottery will still be held; however, the applicant names that are randomly sorted in each grade will create the waiting list, based on preference. PLEASE NOTE: The summer months can be extremely active with all grades waiting lists, so please do not be discouraged if there are only a few or no openings at the time of the lottery in grades 1st – 5th. You can monitor your student’s progression on the waiting list via the SchoolMint website 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Yes, your student can still attend Watsonville Prep School.

Yes, you must apply EVERY SCHOOL YEAR for the specific grade that your student will be in. The school year is notated in the title of each lottery. Every lottery/waiting list only is applicable to the specific school year you applied for.

 

For example, if you applied for the 1st Grade 2019-20 School Year Lottery, you would need to log into your SchoolMint account and apply for the 2nd Grade 2020-21 School Year Lottery for your child.

You can check your student’s status 24 hours a day, 7 days a week by logging into your SchoolMint parent account. Login to your SchoolMint account by the link on the Enrollment tab of www.watsonvilleprep.org or go directly to https://navigator.schoolmint.net .Once logged on, go to your STUDENT DASHBOARD your student’s name will be on the screen, you will be able to see your student name, the school which you applied to, grade, the school year you applied for, Last updated, status, action.

No, it makes no difference when you apply during the application period. The day of the lottery, SchoolMint randomly sorts all applicants from August 17, 2021, through March 31, 2023 (before the lottery is run) in each grade the list of applicants pre-lottery are listed in timestamp order, but that list is sorted randomly by the system when the lottery is run.

No, all children attached to the Parent/Guardian account in SchoolMint must be the child of the Parent/Guardian who created the account. All children attached to the Parent/Guardian SchoolMint account must be siblings. If you have relatives or friends who are interested in Watsonville Prep School, their parent/guardian must be the one representing their child in the lottery process. If a non-sibling is offered and accepts a spot due to sibling misrepresentation in the SchoolMint account, it will be discovered during the school registration paperwork processes when the parents/guardians do not match. The spot offered to the non-sibling will be forfeited and offered to the next student on the waiting list. 

1. The SchoolMint system sends each applicant an official e-mail notification with lottery results, this automated email should be delivered to your inbox within a few hours of the lottery being run. This system generated an email from the SchoolMint system and can take several hours due to the fact that we normally have several hundred applicants across the K-8 school.
2. You can log into your SchoolMint account 24 hours a day 7 days a week to monitor your current status. You may also log in to your Schoolmint account shortly after the lottery process is complete on Saturday, April 2023.

1. When you receive your official notice from SchoolMint, please open the e-mail and follow the instructions to confirm or decline the official offer. We strongly recommend that you enter [email protected] into your Contacts to prevent the e-mail from being filed as spam. It is the responsibility of the parent/guardian to check your junk/spam folders for notifications from SchoolMint and your SchoolMint Parent account for the current status of your student on a regular basis.
2. You can log into your SchoolMint account and view the status of any offers and confirm or decline the official offer.
3. The office will be making phone calls the Monday after the lottery to everyone who got offered a spot. At this point, you can also accept or decline.

1. After the initial lottery has been run, you will have 5 days in which to “confirm” (accept) or “decline.” These 5 days do not include weekends and holidays.
2. For spots offered the day of the lottery, parents will have until 4 pm on Friday after the lottery, to accept the open position.
3. If you do nothing by the deadline, the offer is rescinded and your student’s name will be automatically removed from the waiting list.
4. If you accept the offer, you will get a confirmation of your acceptance from the Schoolmint system. Information regarding registration paperwork deadlines and any documentation needed to officially enroll at Watsonville Prep School will come in the email. Please contact the office if you have any questions
5. If you decline the offer, the next student on the waiting list will immediately be offered the spot via the SchoolMint system.

You have 24 hours from when a spot is offered from the waiting list to accept, this time frame does not include weekends and holidays.

We work very hard to afford families opportunities to learn about Navigator Schools. We have had a very long waitlist every year, and we feel that it is respectful to the families on the waitlist for us to ask families to decide whether they want to accept the seat or no. We give families up to 24 hours from being contacted via phone or voice message to accept the seat and up to 5 business days from accepting the seat to turn in all required information.

The applicants (enrollment preferred and all others) are randomly ordered in the lottery, with the enrollment preferred students randomly sorted at the top of the list. If there are not enough openings in specific grades, the waiting list will be made up of applicants (preferred and all others) in the order of their random selection in the lottery.

At this time we are not offering tours.

Watsonville Prep uses Schoolmint, a web-based system, and the running of the lottery is completed within a few minutes per grade. Your attendance at the lottery has no impact on the results.

The lottery will take place via Zoom. We will be sending out Zoom information at the beginning of April.

Unfortunately, once you decline the offer, the next student on the waiting list is immediately offered the spot via the SchoolMint system. You can re-apply again for Watsonville Prep, but your student’s name will be added to the end of the waiting list, based on their preference.

You forfeit your slot if you do not respond within the time frame outlined in your email. There are no exceptions to the deadline. Once the defined timeframe has passed, the slot is offered to the next student on the waitlist via the SchoolMint process.

Waitlists for each school year are used up through the end of each school year. For example, I ended up in waitlist position #1 on the day of the 2019-20 enrollment lottery. This means that the specific grade is at full enrollment and I am waiting for a student to withdraw from that grade at some point in the 19-20 school year. As soon as a student withdraws (whether it is the summer, first day of school or midway through the 19-20 school year up through the last day of school) the vacancy will be filled by the 19-20 waitlist for that grade.

You may apply for the waitlist for the current school year after the lottery, your student will be placed on the waitlist on a first-come, first-serve basis. 

If one of your children gets a spot at WPS, your other children will not move up on the waitlist based on their new preference. They will stay at the same place for the current school year. When you apply for the next year’s lottery you would select sibling preference and your child will have their sibling preference for the next school year lottery.

SchoolMint will automatically generate an e-mail to notify you of an offer of an open position at the school. Parents have a set window outlined in the email in which to confirm or decline attendance. Watsonville Prep office staff will also call to let you know there is an opening for your child.

Please log in to your SchoolMint account and make any updates (canceling account, removing a student from the lottery, etc.) before March 31st.

You may also contact our staff at [email protected] to request removal (requests must be sent in writing and not via phone calls).

You must update your e-mail address and phone number by logging into your SchoolMint account and making the change(s).

No. If it is discovered that a parent/guardian has entered a child’s name multiple times using different e-mail addresses, reversed the child’s first and last names, or any other misrepresentation in an attempt to get multiple spots in the lottery, the application will be considered null and void, and the child will be removed from the lottery. There are quality checks in place prior to the lottery that will discover multiple entries.

You can place your child in the lottery for all of our schools. However, if you get accepted to one of our schools you will not be able to transfer to another one of our schools. You will need to apply for the school's waitlist.

 You will need to apply for the lottery or the waitlist. Your child will not be automatically transferred to our school.