  Public school districts across the United States have implemented school
choice systems that have the potential to improve underserved students' access
to educational opportunities. However, research has shown that learning about
and applying for schools can be extremely time-consuming and expensive, making
it difficult for these systems to create more equitable access to resources in
practice. A common factor surfaced in prior work is unequal access to
information about the schools and enrollment process. In response, governments
and non-profits have invested in providing more information about schools to
parents, for instance, through detailed online dashboards. However, we know
little about what information is actually useful for historically marginalized
and underserved families. We conducted interviews with 10 low-income families
and families of color to learn about the challenges they faced navigating an
online school choice and enrollment system. We complement this data with four
interviews with people who have supported families through the enrollment
process in a wide range of roles, from school principal to non-profit staff
("parent advocates"). Our findings highlight the value of personalized support
and trusting relationships to delivering relevant and helpful information. We
contrast this against online information resources and dashboards, which tend
to be impersonal, target a broad audience, and make strong assumptions about
what parents should look for in a school without sensitivity to families'
varying circumstances. We advocate for an assets-based design approach to
information support in public school enrollment, which would ask how we can
support the local, one-on-one support that community members already provide.

Human-Computer Interaction