By Tracy Record
West Seattle Blog editor

Today is the start of the first full week of classes at Westside School (WSB sponsor) under the leadership of new head of school Kate Mulligan.

In honor of her previous home and school in Hawaii, Mulligan was feted on the last day of the traditionally short first week with an island-themed assembly, featuring Sunshine From Polynesia:

The faculty got into the act too:

By the time Westside’s students walked in last Wednesday, Mulligan already had been on the job for two months. We talked with her before the year began.

Though Westside starts the year with more than 300 students enrolled, for the first time ever, its new leader expressed hope that this will be a somewhat low-key school year. Westside, she pointed out, has gone through plenty of major changes in recent years – moving to and fixing up the former E.C. Hughes Elementary in Sunrise Heights, adding middle school (this is the second year of that transition, with the first seventh-graders there this year), and now, a new head of school. Enough big transitions for now, she smiled. “The biggest focus is for a school year where we can focus on teaching and learning … and relax a little bit, enjoy our children and their ideas.”

One of the year’s bigger projects will be “enhancing after-school enrichment.” Music, arts, enrichment, robotics, and more. The potential, she said, is “endless … depending ont he needs and wants of our families.” To facilitate this program, a new administrative staffer was being hired, with responsibilities including surveying parents.

Technology upgrades are in place, too, including new notebook computers for third- and fourth-graders and “smart boards” for some classrooms, plus sound-system improvements for the multipurpose room.

Mulligan’s own theme has been “getting to know everybody.” Within her first month and a half or so on the job, she already had had one-on=one conversations with teachers and board members, and had been inviting parents and community members to drop in for coffee during open-office hours.

Off-campus, she said, she and her husband enjoyed moving into their home, learning about West Seattle, and figuring out Northwest gardening: “I think we’re really learning what West Seattle has to offer, feeling very comfortable.” They also visited Puget Sound’s own islands, and hiked.

The start of school brings a look ahead to the following year, too; Westside will finish its middle-school addition in 2013-2014, with eighth grade. Even now, since the program is new, it’s “not full to capacity yet,” Mulligan told WSB. They encourage anyone interested in the school “to come look, apply, be put on a waiting list (if applicable).”

(Little-known fact about Westside, by the way, now that it has middle-schoolers, it also has afterschool sports that compete against other schools – including cross-country, volleyball, basketball, and track and field, for the sixth and seventh graders, Mulligan points out.)

Open houses are already scheduled for October, November, and December, and listed on this page of the Westside School website, along with other key dates in the enrollment cycle.

Mulligan says Westside is positioning and preparing itself to eventually be a campus of 400 students. The possibility of that being achieved somewhere other than E.C. Hughes – since Seattle Public Schools has said it may need to reclaim the campus to deal with its own enrollment boom – is being addressed, she said, adding that any independent school would aspire to own its own building, so that would be in the plan regardless of current circumstances. And, she says firmly, whatever the physical location, “Westside School is going to be in West Seattle for a very long time.”

She hopes to be part of it for a long time, too. “I am grateful that Westside School chose me; I also chose this school,’ the 4th independent school she has led, one that has impressed her with attributes including “the warmth of the community in general, the passion of the teachers, the support of the parents.”