This lesson will guide users through using the Illuminate Parent Portal to register a student. Parent initiated online pre-registration can be done in two ways:
- Option 1: Brand new parents with new students to the district can use an online form to begin the pre-registration process for their children.
- Option 2: Parents already with the district that would like to enroll a sibling can use their existing parent portal accounts to pre-registration a new student.
Before You Get Started
Online Registration is tied directly to your District Illuminate Home Connection Portal. For Pre-Registration, type in the URL that you received from the school site into any browser such as Chrome or Firefox.
The url provided by the district will be similar to... _____.illuminatehc.com/preregister.
If you are interested in using parent-initiated online pre-registration please contact our support team so that they can enable the Pre-Registration portal widget. Once this is done you will be able to toggle on parent initiated online pre-registration when setting up pre-registration windows.
How Parents Request to Pre-Register
This is the workflow for parents/students who are completely new to the District, with no existing or current siblings attending. Parents send in an request to preregister their student(s) by submitting basic information which include email, address, and birthdate. Based on these critical pieces of information, their request is sent to the site to be approved to continue the registration process.
Parent Request to Preregister Student(s)
- Fill in the Pre-register student page (pictured above). All information is required and should be filled out completely.
- Click Add a Student, to add student information.
3. Clicking on Add New Student will allow you to fill in info for your student. Once done and IF you are registering multiple students at once, clicking on Add New Student again will let you preregister a new student (repeat as needed).
4. When done entering information for all students, click Submit to submit the whole pre-registration form for ALL students.
The parent will receive a green confirmation message on screen. An email will be sent to the new parent which includes Parent Portal account information, an access code, and a link back to the portal.
This is the workflow for parents/students who have existing parent portal accounts, with at least 1 existing sibling attending. Existing parents will send in an request to preregister their student(s) by submitting basic information which include email, address, and birthdate, from an available module within the portal called Pre-Registration. Based on these critical pieces of information, their request is sent to the site to be approved to continue the registration process.
Parents will log into their exisitng parent portal account as usual.
1. Once you've logged in, select Pre-Registration from the side bar.
2. Then, click Add Pre-Registration.
If the pre-registration window is open, the current address, household, and siblings will be displayed on top.
If any of the above information has to be edited or changed, they are advised to visit the school site directly.
1. Click Add New Student.
1. Enter the student's Legal First Name.
2. Enter the student's Legal Last Name.
3. Enter the student's Birth Date.
4. Select the Enrollment Year.
5. Select the student's School.
6. Select the student's Grade Level.
7. Click Add New Student.
At this point, the parent and site staff will continue the same process as a new parent, completing the required forms for pre-registration and moving through the approval process.
A parent may receive this message if the District/Site has not opened pre-registration yet and they try to Add Pre-Registration.
At this point, the parent is advised to contact the local school or district administrator for more information.
The existing parent will receive a green confirmation message on screen. Since they already have an access code, they can continue to see open registrations within the portal.
Parents are Approved by the Site to Continue Registration
Once the site approves the parent's request for pre-registration, using their parent portal account, they are able to continue completing their child(ren)'s registration forms assigned to them. The email they receive will include the appropriate link to register for portal.
New Student/Parent: Parent's complete the portal registration process as the image shows below. For more guided instructions to register, visit the Parent's Guide to Register for an Account.
New Student/Existing Parent: Parent signs into their existing parent portal account to continue the registration process through the portal.
1. Enter your First and Last Name as well as the email that you used on the Preregister page
2. Enter your Access Code provided in the email sent to you by Illuminate.
3. Create a Password.
4. Click Submit.
5. Existing Parents who have a parent portal account will log in as usual.
The parent will continue to complete the desired forms as made available by the District. To see an Online Pre-Registration Parent Portal Quick Guide, visit Parent Portal Quick Guide: Online Pre-Registration.
The following statuses a parent can receive and/or site staff can assign to a form, are listed below:
If all information has submitted and approved by the Site, the form will be officially approved. This will confirm pre-registration and consider the student as a registered student for the designated academic year.
The portal will be considered a confirmed parent portal account, enabling all existing modules, information, and data as available and appropriate for the student(s).
The forms will no longer be available in the portal once approved.
From this point further, any forms or information to be collected online, is now through Custom Forms.
Until forms are approved, parent's can access their portal account with limited visibility, or only the Pre-Registration module in their portal account.
In the approval process, a parent may receive a Requires Additional Information status. This means that based on the Review Notes submitted by those with permission to approve, the parent needs to provide additional information in person to the school site. This may or may not include:
- Proof of residance
- Confirmation of health needs, special services
- Documents not made accessible online
In the approval process, a parent may receive a Form Incomplete, which will provide optional notes from the Site to the Parent and reopen the form.
For New Parents: Because the parent is still in the approval process to be registered, the portal account will only provide Student Pre-Registration. For each student approved for pregistration, the required forms will be listed.
For Existing Parents: Any pre-registration forms will be available in their existing parent portal account under Pre-Registration>Open Registration.
- In orange, the form status is displayed to help communicate where they are in the process of online pre-registration.
- Note the deadline for filling in the pre-registration information, highlighted in red.
- Click Complete the pre-registration form to complete the form.
Form Completion
Because forms are unique to each District or LEA, the required or provided fields to complete for pre-registration will be different based on form building and data collection goals.
The following tools are available on all forms during the submission process:
- Upon completing the form, the student's name and page of the form is titled and static on top.
- Fields may be read-only only displaying data for reviewing or confirmation purposes, as opposed to entering or editing
- Fields might be marked with an asterik (*) as a required field, which will message in error if not completed.
- Fields might be an open entry text to enter in specific information.
Other fields, not displayed above, that a parent might come across depending on the field on the designated form include:
- Fields might be a radio button where a Yes or No can be selected.
- Fields might be a date from a calendar.
- Fields might be a dropdown of options, as designed by your System Administrator in Code Management.
Depending on the number of pages the form has, the parent will select one of the following:
- Save to save progress thus far without submitting the form.
- Save & Next is required to move onto the next page and save changes made.
When on the last page of the form, buttons will change:
- Save to save progress thus far without submitting the form.
- Save & View Summary/Print allows the parent to save changes made, view a summary view of the entire form in a scrolling screen, which also provides a view to print.
- I'm finished. Submit Now will save changes made to the form and submit the form to the school site.
The forms will be reviewed by the Site/District staff and continue to the approval process.
- A green message will confirm that your registration application was sent for review.
- A yellow message will give further instructions.
- The form status is updated in regards to the approval process.
When a change in status is applied by the Site/District, the parent will receive an email notification to alert them.
If your District is using DecisionInsite as your Enrollment Boundary Verification Tool
DecisionInsite is a free integrated tool that assist in boundary verification during the enrollment process, assisting in placing students by address and birthdate to the appropriate school site and grade level. Contact your Implementation Manager for more information.
Parents will follow the same steps as noted above, however, the process for selecting a child's school is a little different.
Parents will be able to use their home address and child's birthdate to receive their local school(s) automatically based on district attendance boundaries.
1. Enter the student's Legal First Name.
2. Enter the student's Legal Last Name.
3. Enter the student's Birth Date.
4. Select the Enrollment Year.
5. Click Find a School.
Using DecisionInsite will also verify the address!
5. Local Schools(s)- Once you've clicked Find a School, it will be auto filled for you under Local School(s) based on your current address and that is within district attendance boundaries. This is the defaulted school site in the staff approval process.
6. As an optional feature, a parent can submit an Other Preferred site in the event that a second option is needed. This is not a set designated school site for the student unless selected by those with permission to set and approve pre-registration. This is a configuration set by your Implementation Manager if you choose to use this.
7. Based on the student's birthdate, the student's Grade Level is auto-populated.
8. Click Submit.
The parent will receive a green confirmation message on screen. Once they have been approved, a message will be sent to their email inbox with additional steps to continue the registration process.
When a parent initiates Pre-Registration using DecisionInsite, the site will need to verify the school. The form status will show as "Set School" allowing staff to either save or change the registration site.
By clicking "select," the "Designated School" is set. When ready to send out the form, office staff can select the student(s) using the checkboxes to the right then use the Mass Actions tool to "Send Pre-Registration Form.
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Next Steps
Need to review pre-registration records, forms, and attachments? Visit Manage Pre-registered Students.
Now that your new student(s) and parent(s) are part of your community, continue to send forms to their portal account using Custom Forms.