The following letter was sent today to families of students who applied for Specialty Programs for the 2025-26 school year. Families are encouraged to review our frequently asked questions for additional information.

March 7, 2025

Dear PWCS Families,

We are writing concerning the application process for the PWCS Specialty Programs. As leaders dedicated to the success and well-being of our students, we believe in maintaining transparency and open communication with our community. We understand the importance of trust within our school division, and we are committed to earning and maintaining that trust through our actions.

On Saturday, families notified us they were experiencing anomalies with the ParentVUE Specialty Program software. Following an extensive investigation, we found errors that resulted in an overallocation of seats in a small number of programs.

We recognize that such an error undermines trust and sincerely apologize for the undue stress this causes our students and families. We remain steadfast in our commitment to transparency and the continuous enhancement of our processes and programs. We are working as rapidly as possible to rectify the error.

Although most applicants will not be impacted by this error, we want to ensure all data is accurate moving forward. Therefore, we are verifying each of the more than 5,000 student applicant’s data. This is a time-consuming process, and we appreciate your patience as we are carefully working through this review. As soon as data verification is complete, we will notify all families of the final outcomes. We are working with our external vendor and anticipate the closure of the review process within the next 7 to 10 business days.

We want to note that this issue did not affect the admissions processes for Charles J. Colgan Sr. High School or the Governor's School @ Innovation Park. Their selection process is not lottery-based and therefore remains unaffected.

Questions on this process can be submitted online. Please note that individual student applicant status for all programs will be released once the entire verification process has been completed.

Again, we offer our sincere apologies and thank you for your patience.

Sincerely,
Dr. McDade signature
LaTanya D. McDade, Ed.D.
Superintendent

Dr. Soliven signature
Stephanie Soliven, Ed.D.
Associate Superintendent of Teaching and Learning