Beginning Monday, all students who are new to Seymour Community Schools will start the enrollment process by completing the online registration and visiting the Seymour Central Service Center at 1420 Corporate Way to complete the in-person portion of enrollment.

“One of the things I notice when I travel around to our buildings in the mornings is our offices would be very full and lined up with students ready for their first day of school at Seymour Community Schools,” said Diane Altemeyer, director of federal and state programs. “So our front offices were spending much of their time in the morning helping students get enrolled and helping families that needed assistance with our online enrollment process and collecting the required paperwork that we need.”

To help with that, the corporation has hired an enrollment specialist, Dinorah Jaime, who will assist families with the enrollment process at the service center and will serve families from all of the schools.

As the enrollment specialist, Jaime also will help cover the reception desk at the service when needed.

Jaime has served students in Seymour Community Schools since 2004. She provided translation services at Seymour-Jackson Elementary and served several years as one of the corporation’s front office administrative assistants. She also served Seymour High School in the custodial department before transitioning to the enrollment specialist position.

“Dinorah Jaime has filled that roll for us and has been a consistent figure for many of our families across this corporation for many years and I worked with her when I was teaching at Jackson Elementary so we’re lucky to have her as our enrollment specialist,” Altemeyer said.

The first stop when students enroll will be at the service center where Jaime will collect all of their information and get families get enrolled in the online system.

Altemeyer said when those steps are complete, the students will be able to visit their school and actually spend some time walking through and then getting scheduled for their classes.

“We’re hoping through this transition process we’ll be providing a large service to our students,” she said. “We are also alleviating some of the burden of that work off of our front office secretaries, and we’ll be able to streamline the information we’re gathering, which will also help us with our state reporting and accountability.”

The reason for the change is the fact that Seymour Community Schools continues to grow.

“We have a high rate of mobility and many of our front offices spend a large part of their day enrolling students,” Altemeyer said. “The goal of moving to a central point of enrollment is to assist families, take some of the hustle and bustle out of the front office and bring consistency across what our community can expect when enrolling in SCSC.”

Most of the teachers will not notice a change in how students are ultimately placed in their classroom.