Dan Ronnele Santiago

Every enrollment period, the registrar's office promises itself that next year will be different. Then the first morning arrives, the line is already out the door, and the same problems show up in the same order. When a bottleneck returns every year regardless of how many students enroll or how many staff are at the counter, it is not a staffing problem. It is built into the school enrollment process itself. In the Philippines, where many private schools still run enrollment through a mix of...

Most school leaders treat the system questions as a summer problem. The current system strains during enrollment, someone says "we need to look at this," and the conversation picks up again after classes start. By then, it is a year late. If your school is doing its school year 2027-2028 planning now, the date to work from is when enrollment for SY 2027-2028 opens. Anything that needs to be live for that enrollment, including a new school management system, has to be decided well before it....

Report card season. Enrollment week. The three days after a payment deadline. These are the stretches when the registrar's office stops doing its own work and starts answering the same four questions for everyone else. Is my child enrolled? What is the outstanding balance? When is the next payment due? Where can I see the grades? None of them are difficult questions. They are simply questions a guardian could not answer without asking someone. The redesigned guardian portal is now live for...