The Lee County School District had 15,100 students participate in the first round of the student assignment lottery this year.

Student Assignment Director Leila Muvdi said the district received 717 more applications this year than the previous year, which she believes is due to the small amount of growth the county has had than prior years.

The district processed 5,067 applications in the East Zone, which includes Lehigh Acres, 5,050 in the south zone and 4,985 applications for batch one of the student assignment lottery in the west zone. Those numbers break down to 3,816 applications for kindergarten students, 738 for first through fifth grade students, 4,641 for sixth grade, 281 for seventh and eighth grade students, 5,355 for ninth grade students and 270 for tenth through twelfth grade students.

The online application process remained the same this year due to more than 4,000 families choosing the option, Muvdi said.

Preliminary data has indicated in years past that more than 80 percent of families receive their first choice for schools and 96 percent received one of their top three choices.

Muvdi said those who did not receive their first school of choice will automatically be placed on the waiting list for that first choice. She said parents need to be patient with the system because the district has a high mobility rate and in most cases the students will be moved into their first choice school before school starts.

“Wait for the waiting list to work,” Muvdi said. “They (parents) just need to be patient and give us time for the system to work.”

Letters were sent out last week to inform parents if they received their first school choice, along with identifying what school their child will be attending.

The student assignment lottery, which began in 1998 for Lee County, will have its first senior graduating class this year.

Muvdi said these students have gone through choice for their elementary, middle and high school years.

The Student Assignment Office is on Wings Way in Lehigh.