Tracking students who MAY be leaving the school

Lauren Henderson
Lauren Henderson
Kudos 5 Fourth Anniversary February 2026 Monthly Challenge bbcon 2025 Attendee Badge
in Blackbaud Enrollment Management System™

Good morning! I am curious to know how other schools are tracking students who may be applying out or leaving the school for other reasons. It looks like there are several potential options in Enrollment Management (official note, comment “sticky”, and contract status for when things are official). I'm interested in the pre-official state- we hear they are applying out or moving away but don't have confirmation. What do y'all do to track this?

Comments

  • Brian LeBlanc
    Brian LeBlanc
    Kudos 5 Fourth Anniversary Name Dropper Participant

    @Lauren Henderson:

    Good morning! I am curious to know how other schools are tracking students who may be applying out or leaving the school for other reasons. It looks like there are several potential options in Enrollment Management (official note, comment “sticky”, and contract status for when things are official). I'm interested in the pre-official state- we hear they are applying out or moving away but don't have confirmation. What do y'all do to track this?

    I think we might do it a little differently than you do, because we don't have the “little bit pregnant” state. When a parent notifies us of an intent to withdraw, we send them a withdrawal form. Unless and until that form is returned, the student is still enrolled, will have attendance taken, tuition charged, etc. If they're withdrawing at the end of a quarter or semester, we just do a pending withdrawal that takes them out at the end of the month where they withdraw.

    For students who are continuing through to the end of the current year but are withdrawing prior to the start of the following year, we put in a pending withdrawal but we also remove the enrollment line from Edit School Enrollment in Core. That way, we can run an advanced list of students who are enrolled for the next year, so that we have accurate information about seats available, how many we need to waitlist, and so on.

    Feel free to reach out if you'd like a crash course in how we do it!

  • Julie Winkeler
    Julie Winkeler
    Third Anniversary Kudos 1 Name Dropper Facilitator 1

    @Lauren Henderson

    Hello Lauren,

    Our school does not use Blackbaud to track this, we use a “google sheet document” that is shared only with our Leadership Team. See example below -

    Final StatusGradeLast NameFirst NameAdvisorDateSpoke WithInformation / NotesNext StepFollow-up Notes

    When we get word that a student is maybe thinking about withdrawing we start this document. We list their name, grade, who the information came from, what we know about the situation and who needs to do follow-up.

    We keep it in alpha/grade order along with date order within the notes field. We look at this monthly to make sure we are on top of all parties listed on the document. Our goal is to hopefully by the end of the school year to have resolved the issue and kept them as a student or know that we tried everything possible to resolve the issue, but the family has decided to move on to a different school and we can mark the google sheet accordingly with the new school info. and then mark Blackbaud. We have good data for each student along with the final status to the situation. It is a great tracking tool for retention purposes. You can see how it started, what we did to try and keep the family along with what is their final status.

    All this is in one place, managed by the admission office, but our necessary school officials can keep alerted and have at their finger tips at all times throughout the school year.

    I hope this helps, sorry it is not within Blackbaud, but this was our solution to not having a place like this within their system.

    Thanks, Julie

    Julie Winkeler

    Enrollment Specialist

    Saint Louis Priory School

    500 South Mason Road

    Saint Louis, MO 63141

    Work - 314.434.3690 x 101

    Fax - 314.576.7088

    jwinkeler@priory.org

    www.priory.org

  • Ravendra Persaud
    Ravendra Persaud
    Ninth Anniversary Kudos 1 Name Dropper Facilitator 1

    @Lauren Henderson
    We created an admin view only field for this status since you can run SKY lists using the information and also create advanced lists for those returning in a particular grade/division for use in push page distribution groups.

  • Karla McNamee
    Karla McNamee
    Eighth Anniversary Kudos 2 Name Dropper Participant

    @Lauren Henderson I created a custom candidate field “Reenrolling” where I can mark yes or no and run a list using it.

Categories