Celebrating school districts that lead on open enrollment

• Sutherland is launching the Open Enrollment Excellence Certificate to recognize districts that excel at posting open enrollment information for parents.
• All districts can review the rubric for best practices.
• Districts that receive a perfect score will be notified at the beginning of April 2026.

A key component of Sutherland Institute’s education policy work is to protect and elevate the role of parents in education in various ways. While we do advocate for legislation, we also pursue other efforts to ensure compliance with existing policies and promote practices that improve the parent experience.   

To that end, we are launching the Open Enrollment Excellence Certificate. This new certificate will (1) identify how well districts are doing at sharing open enrollment data in a parent-friendly way, (2) publicly recognize those that are excelling, and (3) increase awareness and build capacity around open enrollment data transparency. 

Sutherland Institute to give public recognition to excelling districts  

Between now and the beginning of April 2026, we will review district websites using a rubric we’ve created (see below) to assess which districts are complying with open-enrollment data transparency law with thoughtful design that is clearly parent-oriented.

Districts that receive a perfect score will receive a certificate and other forms of public recognition.  

If you’ve followed our work on transparency reforms for parents, we launched a similar program last year for districts sharing curriculum information in a parent-friendly way, which increased awareness of the policy.

We hope to do the same with open enrollment.

What’s in our Open Enrollment Excellence Certificate rubric? 

The five-part rubric  measures to what extent districts: (1) are complying with state law by sharing a current, complete open enrollment “capacity report,” (2) designate with simple labels or colors whether schools are “open” or “closed,” (3) host open enrollment applications for school years for which students are eligible, (4) host contact information for the open enrollment staff member that can offer assistance, and (5) dedicate a full webpage to open enrollment or school choices. Essentially, to get public recognition, this rubric requires that a district meet the statutory requirements and go beyond it in a number of ways that create a meaningful, transparent experience for parents. (To read the statutory requirements, we are referencing, please see Utah Code 53G-6-403(5).)

Although the Utah Code already requires this to be posted on district websites, we have noted several times in the past that most districts are not complying. Only 11 out of 41 were doing so at the time of our last review. We hope increased awareness helps increase compliance.

Further, after reviewing open enrollment information on district websites, best practices that improve user experience became obvious, which were outlined in a previous article. The rest of the rubric takes inspiration from those.

Ways to increase compliance 

We recognize the Herculean effort districts must make to comply with an ever-growing list of requirements, and we also recognize the need to carefully consider which of these can be repealed. However, when balancing administrative burden against other interests in education, requirements that increase transparency for parents should get priority.

Furthermore, the annual LEA Checklist should highlight the statutory requirement for the capacity report in its section on Title 53 G, Chapter 6, Part 4. While it highlights other portions, it omits this one.

If the state were to publish an annual report on open-enrollment data or to list a contact person for each LEA that oversees open-enrollment questions, this would add another layer of transparency for parents. It may also generate better awareness among districts and increase compliance.

Aside from these recommendations, we look forward to reviewing all districts and recognizing those that excel at sharing open enrollment information with Utah parents.