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TURNERS FALLS — To adhere to new state regulations for vocational schools, Franklin County Technical School has updated its admissions policy to comply with the required lottery system.
The policy was unanimously approved by the School Committee on Wednesday, less than a month after the Policy Subcommittee also approved it. Principal Brian Spadafino explained the language comes from a template the state provided to vocational schools.
“We’re going toward a lottery system, so the policy needs to be updated to reflect that,” Spadafino said.
As reported by State House News Service, the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education voted 8-2 in May to advance new regulations from Gov. Maura Healey’s administration, requiring the 29 career technical education districts in the state to use a lottery system starting in the 2026-2027 school year. The lottery system aims to provide equitable access to vocational programs for protected classes of students, such as students of color or those from low-income families.
This new policy eliminates the previous admissions process at Franklin Tech, which included five standards: grades, attendance, school discipline, letter of recommendation and student interview.
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In the lottery system adopted by Franklin Tech, the lottery is not weighted, meaning students won’t be given “tickets” to count toward their odds of being admitted. This decision not to use a weighted lottery is compliant with the DESE changes and is most appropriate for Franklin Tech’s applicant pool, Superintendent Richard Martin clarified.
Other vocational districts in the state can still use a weighted lottery that takes into account severe disciplinary violations or poor attendance if they so choose.
To illustrate how the lottery system would work at Franklin Tech, Spadafino explained that if the 165 seats for the incoming freshman class only have 150 applicants, they would all get a spot. If 150 seats are filled in the first wave and then 25 more students apply, the lottery would be used for the remaining 15 seats, and the 10 remaining applicants would be waitlisted.
“If we’re above that, and we closed with 200 applicants, we would have 165 slots that would be given admission, and then we’d have the other 35 that would be in our slotted waitlist,” Spadafino added.
Per the new policy, the application process opens on Wednesday, Oct. 15, and runs through Jan. 15, 2026. The lottery will take place on Thursday, Feb. 5, and acceptance letters will be sent starting Tuesday, Feb. 10. The deadline to accept an offer is Friday, Feb. 27.
Before the application deadline, outreach will be done at the local school districts for the eighth graders. The evening open house, usually held in January, is now scheduled for Thursday, Nov. 13, from 6 to 8 p.m., and the daytime open house will be Saturday, Dec. 6, from 9:30 to 11:30 a.m.
For the lottery itself, a third-party software system, GoCTE.org, will be used for applicants across the state, Martin said.
“If you’re going to do a transparent lottery and go by this, it’s really wise to have a third party do this for you, so that it doesn’t look like it’s an internal situation,” Martin said of the state decision to use this software.
Although this policy was approved for the entire state, Martin expressed concern over the decision to create a lottery system. The School Committee voted in April to send a letter opposing the policy change to Acting Commissioner of the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) Russell Johnston.
Martin shared a concern with the committee in the spring that students with poor attendance and poor behavior that does not constitute a violation of disciplinary regulations would be eligible for admission, potentially raising safety concerns for other students and staff if an admitted student isn’t able to regulate their behavior.
In a letter Martin sent to state education officials, he wrote that while increasing access to school admission is always “a worthy goal,” he asked them to consider keeping interviews or interest assessments a part of the process; use a student discipline criteria related to safety and attendance; use a lottery for students demonstrating interest in high-demand industries; and create outreach programs for “awareness and interest in the skills gaps for specific industries and job employment opportunities.”
While Wednesday’s discussion was largely to present and vote on the updated policy, Chair Richard Kuklewicz shared he’s “not a fan,” but the changes were “being pushed upon” Franklin Tech by the state. He said he hopes as this policy goes into effect that the state will return some of the previous qualifications that had a level of rigor behind them.
Erin-Leigh Hoffman is the Montague, Gill, and Erving beat reporter. She joined the Recorder in June 2024 after graduating from Marist College. She can be reached at ehoffman@recorder.com, or 413-930-4231. More by Erin-Leigh Hoffman
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