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Instructions
This page contains somewhat detailed instructions about registering for the PTA After School Enrichment Classes. If you want a shorter summary, look at the first page of the catalog.
We use Activity Hero to manage registrations. This requires creating an Activity Hero account, making profiles for any students you want to register, and paying online with a credit card and/or using a scholarship code.
If you cannot register and pay online with a credit card, please email jefferson.ptaclasses@gmail.com ASAP.
In order to increase fairness and help more families get their first choice, registration is being run as an online lottery this session, with 2 steps required to complete registration and enroll in a class. This is different from before, so please read carefully!
If you have questions, see the FAQ.
This is an experiment. It might go smoothly, it might not. Please bear with us if you have any problems, and feel free to give us feedback. If you do experience problems registering, at least you won’t have to be anxiously watching the clock fearful of a class filling up in the middle of trying to fix your problem.
Step 0: Before registration
This isn't strictly necessary to do before registration, but if you do it in advance, you will have less to do during actual registration.
Go to Activity Hero at https://www.activityhero.com/ and create an account.
For every child that you want to register for a PTA class, add them as a family member to your account. Click on your name near the upper right, then from the pulldown choose “My Account Settings” → “Family Members”, which will take you to https://www.activityhero.com/children . From here, click the “Add Family Member” button.
Optionally, go to “My Account Settings” → “Payment Options” (https://www.activityhero.com/account/billing) to save a credit card in your account for easier checkout later.
If you have any Spam filters, you might want to make sure that they are set to treat any email from support@activityhero.com as not spam (junk e-mail).
At any point you can view your current or past registrations via “My Registrations” (https://www.activityhero.com/registrations/my).
Note that if you already have an Activity Hero account for other purposes (or from other sessions), you can continue to use that account. You do not need a separate or new account just to manage Jefferson PTA After School classes.
Step 1: Open Registration lottery: Thurs Jan 16, 9am - Sat Jan 18, 9pm
During this period, all you do is input your choices. You do not actually complete enrollment and pay for classes, that will come later.
Go to the registration page on this site to actually input your registration choices and enter the lottery. Do not attempt to register directly on Activity Hero by searching for Jefferson Elementary. It won't work.
Activity Hero does not actually support a lottery. It will appear that every class is full and the only option is to press the “Waitlist” button. This is expected.
New Questions
There are two new questions that you must answer for each class as part of entering the lottery (getting on the waitlist).
“Please rank this class choice.”
If you are requesting multiple classes, please make sure that you choose a different answer for each class, and that your answers make sense. For example, if you are picking 3 classes, for one (and only one) of your classes should you choose “1st choice”. And for one you should choose “2nd choice”. And for the remaining one you should choose “3rd choice”.
“What is the maximum number of classes you want your child enrolled in?”
Often this will be the total number of classes that you choose, but not necessarily.
For example, if you have a 1st choice class and a 2nd choice class, but only want one of them, choose “1”. If you would take both if available, choose “2”.
Please choose the same answer for this question for every class you select.
The ranking of choices is for the whole session, not per day of the week. You should only have one 1st choice, no more than one 2nd choice, etc. You should not register for any more than 5 choices. The max number of classes is across all days of the week.
It’s okay if you’re listing alternate choices to choose two classes that meet on the same day. We won’t actually put you in more than one class on any given day.
We realize that this way of asking this information is a little confusing and awkward. Sorry, but it's the best we can do to be able to run a lottery, given the limitations of Activity Hero.
General Info
Your chance of getting any particular class is not affected by when you input your choices, as long as you do it sometime during the open period. You do not have to sit in front of the computer waiting for the clock to strike the hour to increase your chance of getting in a popular class. This is one of the reasons we're trying switching to a lottery.
Please talk to your students and make sure that they are genuinely interested in any class that you register them for.
Keep in mind potential conflicts with other after school activities when registering. For more details, see this page.
Step 2: Check your email daily: From end of open lottery period to before start of classes
If you get in a class, you will receive a waitlist invitation from Activity Hero. The mail will look like:
From: Jefferson PTA Enrichment Classes via ActivityHero <support@activityhero.com>
Subject: Waitlist Status: Spot Available at Jefferson PTA Enrichment Classes
Follow the link in the email to pay for the class (or use a scholarship code) and complete registration. You are not enrolled until you have completed this step!
To use a scholarship code, click “Add Discount Code” during checkout, then enter “FULL” for a full scholarship or “HALF” for a half scholarship.
Full scholarships are limited to one class per child per session. Half scholarships are limited to two classes per child.
For more details on scholarships, see the scholarship page.
Please check your email regularly. We can only hold your spot for a day or two.
Double check that Activity Hero mail isn't going into a Spam folder.
If you have extenuating circumstances that will prevent you from checking your email regularly during this time, please let us know ASAP.
If you receive an invitation and know that you do not want to enroll, please let us know via email, rather than just letting time elapse and the invitation expire.
Timeline
I am hesitant to commit to specific dates in advance, because this is something new, and I'm not sure how it will go. But here's my best guess:
You have until the end of Saturday 1/18 to input your registration choices in the lottery.
Hopefully the lottery inputs can be processed and invitations sent out in the next day or two.
If the class is not oversubscribed, I can afford to be a little more lax and give people a wider range of time to respond to the waitlist invitation email and complete enrollment.
But if there are actually more students that want a class than we have spots for, and there is a waitlist, the first batch of waitlist invitations will have a shorter timespan for response. This is necessary because we need to allocate time to make our way through the waitlist if not everyone accepts the invitations to enroll.
I hope that the vast majority of the registrations are processed and fully enrolled by the end of the week after the open lottery (by Saturday 1/25).
This leaves us one final week of buffer before classes start on Monday 2/3, in case things don't go smoothly.
My plan is to send out an email blast via Activity Hero to let you know when I am done processing waitlists, so that you will no longer need to worry as much about checking your email frequently.
While our rules allow you to cancel a class any time before the second class meeting, we appreciate you letting us know about any cancellations ASAP. Late cancellations make it difficult to offer the spot to another student that might be interested.