Introduction

The RocketScan team would like to welcome you to the StrataApps and RocketScan family! Our goal is to provide the best solution and support for your district for your applications and surveys. This guide will go over some popular features for our forms as well as the pros and cons of including some of them on your form design. 

If you would like to see any of these features on your form, you may use our customer portal to interact with our design team directly. We may be able to show you a design draft with the feature included.

Form design considerations

Special Circumstances Checkboxes:

Do you want 1 all-encompassing check box for Homeless/Migrant/Runaway? Please note that RocketScan/Strata Apps will only be able to produce a report that references “Homeless” as the special circumstance.  Or you can have 3 separate check boxes: 1 each for designation Homeless, Migrant, and Runaway. Having all 3 may require more space on the paper application. Do want this option per child or per application?  (POS considerations: does your POS support this option?)

                          

Example 1: Single Checkbox

Benefit Number Type Checkboxes and format

Do you want checkboxes to differentiate the benefit number types (SNAP, TANF, FDPIR)? State options also available for ex California -CalFresh, CALWorks. What is the size and format limit? 7-10 alphanumeric? Does it always begin with certain characters? (POS considerations: does your POS support mapping of these benefit type fields?)

Example 2:

NSLP Benefit Types

Example 3:

State Specific Benefit Types

Impact of a Benefit Number on my Alternate Income Form

Decline Participation Checkbox

Do you want to the option to track families that “Decline” to participate? This option would allow the tracking of the students/families who do not want to submit the required information for an eligibility determination. This is useful for the Alternate Income form so the families that “Decline” are no longer on the “Follow Up” list.

Examples for Not Participating:

   

Is a student checkbox

Do you want the parent/guardian to confirm that the child listed is a student in your district? Pro: latest USDA prototype has this option, allows the parents/guardians to better identify students in your district and helps capture larger households on paper forms.

Cons: takes up space on paper form

                            

Number of students

How many students do you want to accept on a single application? There is more flexibility for space considerations on the online application. (POS considerations: what is the POS limit for number of students accepted on a single application) 

How many HHM do you want to accept on a single application? There is more flexibility for space considerations on the online application. (POS considerations: what is the POS limit for number of household members accepted on a single application)

Number of Income Boxes and Frequencies for Household Members

How many Income Boxes are required? The NSLP prototype has three; 1-Earnings from Work, 2-Public Assistance/Child Support/Alimony and 3-Pensions/Retirement/All Other Income. Some states require 4 which uses the “All Other Income” as a separate income box. How many income frequency options are required? We recommend using the 4 standard frequencies; W=Weekly, 2W=Every 2 Weeks, M=Monthly, 2M=Twice a Month.  Our software works best in recognizing the information on a  paper application when there is a limited number of frequency options, any more than 4 may require additional key-strokes for validation.

Examples of Income and Frequencies:

                                                 

 

   

   3 Income Fields with 4 Frequencies-Quad

          

 

 3 Income Fields with 5 Frequencies (tends to require more validation keystrokes)

  4 Income Fields with 4 Frequencies-Quad

Additional Programs

Do you want to offer check boxes for additional programs? For Example: share the information with other school departments or government entities. Because NSLP requires the information to be kept confidential you will need ask if the parent/guardian wants their information shared to qualify for other programs

Examples of options to share information to apply for other programs:

Race/Ethnicity Checkboxes

Required to be on the NSLP form. However whether that information gets validated is up to the customer. By enabling validation for this task we can then produce a custom export report.

Example for Race-Ethnicity checkboxes:

Support for Additional Languages

Which languages would you like to accept? (POS considerations: can the POS accept the language and code?)

List of supported languages for form design include: Arabic, Cambodian, Chinese, Creole, Farsi, Hmong, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, Samoan, Spanish, Tagalog, Ukrainian, Vietnamese

Color Considerations

Although our data fields must be in a red color that can be removed at scan time, we often can include a colored bar at the top or around the form to distinguish it from other forms or previous years. For more information, contact your sales representative for updated pricing for additional colors on your form.

More Questions?

Do you have an idea that we didn’t include here? No Problem! Let us know and we can create a sample for you to look over. The best way is to request it in the Portal messaging system, so we can draw something up and get it to you as a sample. Our support team is also available for any questions.