PRESS RELEASE:
Education Tech Innovator Takes Industry Lead, Excelling Among Largest U.S. School Districts & Charter School Systems
LAFAYETTE, La.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–July 19, 2016–
Smart Choice Technologies, one of the nation’s largest providers of online application and enrollment software for public, charter and private PreK-12 school systems, announced today it expects to hit the 3-million-student mark in the fall as students return to class.
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Smart Choice Technologies is on track to hit 3-million student mark this fall and take the industry lead in online application and enrollment software for PreK-12 schools and districts. Serving many of the nations largest school districts the company is pursuing investment capital to fund a steeper growth curve and market expansion. (Photo: Business Wire)
The Smart Choice platform provides schools and districts a highly effective application and enrollment management system that currently serves more than 3,800 schools in small and large districts across the country, including Miami-Dade, Houston ISD and Palm Beach County, which are among the largest.
Lafayette-based Firefly Digital is the exclusive re-seller and implementation partner for Smart Choice, helping the education tech startup launch in late 2012, and has since captured a notable share of the student enrollment market.
“As school choice expands across the U.S. we are becoming the platform of choice, especially with districts that give parents a wide range of program choices and where student placement requirements are complex,” Firefly CEO Mike Spears said. “We can solve selection and placement problems other systems can’t.”
Spears says this is evident when you look at its diverse client base. Smart Choice clients include 13 of the 120 largest public school districts in the country. It also includes Charter Schools USA, BASIS and similar charter school management organizations, and a common enrollment system for Jackson ISD that serves 13 districts in the region.
Currently, Smart Choice platforms are deployed at 3,828 schools in 277 cities across 21 U.S. states, with two international deployments at the International School of Kenya and BASIS China.
According to Smart Choice Founder and CEO Casey Bienvenu, “A notable part of our success is the ability to configure and customize the platform to meet very diverse requirements across regions, districts and even at the school level, where unique requirements related to policy, procedure, program needs, priorities and other factors determine how systems need to work.”
“The Smart Choice lottery component is unrivalled in its ability to meet complex and unusual selection, placement and wait list requirements,” Bienvenu said. “We save school districts a lot of money and time in their workflow processes.”
“With the adoption of the Smart Choice System, each year the School District of Palm Beach County can process the roughly 22,000 applications from students seeking seats in a choice program faster online,” said Palm Beach District Director of Choice and Career Options Pete Licata. “It will save the district $100,000 annually in data-entry labor costs.”
In just over four years the Smart Choice platform has streamlined the application and enrollment process in 3,828 schools, significantly reducing the cost and human resources needed to effectively serve students and parents. Spears believes this demonstrates a solid growth rate for the startup. But according to Spears, they are just getting started. They are preparing for a more significant growth rate over the next 24 months.
“We are currently pursuing investment capital to fund a steeper growth curve and expansion into other segments of this market,” Spears added. “We currently have the best product in the market and now we’re pushing to launch two new products by 2017 to expand market share.”
The Smart Choice platform is a versatile cloud-based SaaS solution that offers schools and districts a comprehensive solution that addresses the needs of school administrators throughout the school enrollment workflow.
More about Smart Choice, Firefly Digital & School Choice
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Smart Choice Technologies
Geoff Daily, 337-704-7299
contact@smartchoicetech.com