Enrollment: Helping Schools Compete and Win

Written By Ayanna Williams

🔍 Enrollment Competitive Analysis & Playbooks: Helping Schools Compete—and Win

In today’s competitive enrollment landscape, even the most high-performing schools need more than a strong academic reputation to attract and retain the right students—they need data-driven strategy and community-specific insights. That’s where our Enrollment Competitive Analysis & Playbooks come in. This service is helping district networks like Cesar Chavez Public Charter Schools for Public Policy, Mastery Schools, and KIPP Philadelphia stay ahead of the curve.

💡 Our Approach: Grounded in Data, Designed for Action

We go beyond surface-level numbers to deliver clear, strategic insights. For each client, we begin by mapping their competitive landscape: Who are their top competitors by zip code, academic offerings, and brand visibility? What patterns do we see in lottery results, school choice behavior, or registration lags? And we round it out by getting input and feedback directly from the most important stakeholders: families and students.

From there, we build a customized Enrollment Playbook with:

  • Heat maps and feeder school trends to target future outreach.

  • Audits that pinpoint unique opportunities or advantages.

  • Week-by-week campaign calendars tied to lottery deadlines and seasonal behaviors.

  • Staff-friendly re-enrollment dashboards to track retention in real time.

  • Play by play processes to implement each strategy presented.

We also facilitate cross-team working sessions to make sure leaders—from operations to academics—can act on the insights.

📈 Results: Smart Strategy, Real Enrollment Gains

At Cesar Chavez, our competitive analysis revealed that 6th and 9th grade enrollment was declining due to stronger early outreach from competitor schools. In response, we developed a targeted strategy centered on building relationships with identified feeder schools and engaging directly with 5th and 8th grade students. Using our recruitment playbook, the school tailored messaging to highlight its signature Policy & Debate programs, prioritized outreach events at feeder schools in January, and created focused engagement opportunities for rising middle and high schoolers.

For KIPP Philadelphia, we increased enrollment by analyzing the exact phase in the registration process that families were dropping-off and identifying post-lottery registration risks. Our insights informed a family follow-up campaign that helped recover over 100 students who had accepted offers but hadn’t completed registration.

At Mastery Schools, we created individualized analysis for principals that compared enrollment threats for Gratz and Lenfest campuses. This empowered school leaders to sharpen program offerings and set targeted student recruitment goals by neighborhood.

🧠 How Are You Competing for Students?

Every school is competing—whether they realize it or not. The question is: Do you have the right tools to be competitive?

At Sustainable Schooling, we bring the tools, analysis, and hands-on partnership to help schools compete strategically and achieve lasting enrollment success.

Ayanna Williams