The Liverpool Central School District is moving its district-wide kindergarten registration night from May to March 13.

District administrators said the move was made because the previous date was just too late.

“If you look around Central New York, there’s not a school district that would wait until May to register,” said Scott Krell, the district’s coordinator of data management. “Even in March, we’re one of the later ones.”

It was necessary to shift registration to an earlier date to make things easier on the district staff so that they could enter student and parent data, plan bus routes, communicate information to parents and coordinate class sections.

“With registration at the beginning of May, given our size, we have 500 or so families registering for kindergarten,” Krell said. “So my office has to look through all of that paperwork after that night. We have to look through, say, all of the custody papers and make sure they’re correct and up to date and that the parent who’s registering the child has the right to even register the child. We have to make sure the residency for those 500 folks is actually correct, that they actually live in Liverpool. Then we have to actually enter it into our student management system. The secretaries enter all of the parental information, the addresses. Obviously, that takes a lot of man hours.”

That information then gets passed on to the district’s transportation department, which uses it to ensure the existing bus routes coincide with the populations attending each school and adjust accordingly.

““We’ve found that it creates a real crunch for our transportation department to be able to pull out of our student management system to then look and see, do we have the right bus runs going to the right places for the students we have?” Krell said. “It’s a crunch for them to get those runs in order and to be able to get the information out to parents by Aug. 1.”

Moving the date up will also help administrators plan out class sections, according to Steve Garraffo, executive director for elementary education.

“It allows us to get at it sooner. There are so many pieces from my end,” Garraffo said. “We really believe this is going to help us determine the number of sections we need earlier, the number of teachers we need earlier. It’s going to allow us to get back into that game and really secure for the district the best teachers and the resources that we need throughout the district.”

Registration packets will be sent out during the first week of February to families who have indicated that they have a child entering kindergarten, whether they have older children in the district or they’ve already called their home school. If your first child is preparing to enter kindergarten in the 2014-15 school year, Garraffo recommended calling your home school to ensure that your child is on the list so that you will receive a packet. To determine your child’s home school, download the LCSD Street Code Book by visiting liverpool.k12.ny.us/schoolboundaries.

Families who do not receive an information packet by Feb. 14 are encouraged to call their home school or the Office of Elementary Education at 622-7177.

Each elementary school will hold kindergarten registration on Thursday, March 13. Registration must be done in person by the resident parent or legal guardian, at the elementary school of their residence (the student’s home school). In addition to the registration packet, the following documents must be presented at registration:

Birth certificate (original);

Immunization record from doctor (not transcribed in a record book);

Proof of residency: current telephone, cable or electric bill, signed lease or purchase offer;

Parent photo identification.

Certain cases may require additional documentation. These include residency affidavits, court-issued custody documents, Individual Education Plan (IEP) or Foster Parent Form (DSS-2999).

Children who will attend a private, parochial or charter school need to be registered at the district office during normal business hours (7:30 a.m. to 3 p.m.).

Questions regarding kindergarten registration procedures should be directed to the Office of Elementary Education at 622-7177.