60,000 by 2020? Seattle Public Schools out with enrollment projections; we break out West Seattle, school-by-school

Seattle Public Schools is out with enrollment projections for next school year, and the district continues to grow, one reason they’re adding facilities including the expanded Fairmount Park Elementary (above), closed in 2007, reopening this fall. The district expects 52,400 students this fall, 1,300 more than the current school year, and says:

This continues the five-year trend of enrollment growth that began in 2009, after a decade of declining enrollment. During the last five years, enrollment grew by more than 5,000 students – from 46,000 in 2009 to 51,000 this year. Next year’s expected enrollment growth of 1,300 students means the district will be serving 6,400 more students next year than in 2009.

Here’s a chart of district-wide enrollment over the past decade:

The district says a continuation of this trend could mean enrollment past 60,000 by the year 2020.

Meantime, here are West Seattle’s school-by-school enrollment projections for next year, taken from this district-wide list:

Alki Elementary – 390
Arbor Heights Elementary – 341
Chief Sealth International HS – 1,235
Concord International Elementary – 420
Denny International MS – 948
Fairmount Park Elementary – 290
Gatewood Elementary – 429
Highland Park Elementary – 396
K-5 STEM – 361
Lafayette Elementary – 546
Madison MS – 799
Pathfinder K-8 – 486
Roxhill Elementary – 372
Sanislo Elementary – 275
Schmitz Park Elementary – 608
West Seattle Elementary – 443
West Seattle HS – 1,008

(We’ll add a comparison to this year, once we’ve verified with the district that we’re looking at the most recent set of 2013-2014 numbers. So far the most notable change appears to be a drop of ~70 students for Gatewood, but keep in mind, Fairmount Park will be brand new and many of those students are coming from somewhere else.)

Monosyllabic_Girl May 27, 2014 (1:20 pm)

Interesting since the US birth rate has been declining consistently since 2008. Guess everyone just wants to come live here.

shihtzu May 27, 2014 (1:32 pm)

Aren’t they building the new Schmitz Park for 600? So it too is already going to be crowded.

WSB May 27, 2014 (1:33 pm)

650 is the potential capacity for both the “new Schmitz Park” and the new Arbor Heights.

anonyme May 27, 2014 (3:40 pm)

Just one more consideration when allowing virtually unlimited/dense housing development. This places a tremendous burden not only on transportation, streets, and parking, but on schools – none of which developers help pay to improve.

Just say no to uncontrolled development (and uncontrolled breeding).

WOW May 27, 2014 (3:42 pm)

WSH is only 252 per grade level what a waste of a nice big building. I can’t image the overhead costs per student for such a big building. Seattle School District needs to figure out why so many don’t to go there.

skeeter May 27, 2014 (4:30 pm)

Increasing population in the city is part of it. I suspect another part is private schools have gotten very expensive so more are choosing public schools for economic reasons.

JanS May 27, 2014 (5:01 pm)

interesting about the “crowded” schools here. I went to high school on the east coast in the early to mid 60’s. I had 964 kids in MY GRADUATING class (only 1 high school in the city, besides the Catholic high school). Caps for emphasis. That wasn’t the whole school. There were just as many in 10th and 11th grades. And 2 of our 4 junior highs (now middle school) went to the high school for 9th grade (the other 2 joined in 10th grade.And we stayed on campus all day…no leaving the premises for lunch. And we considered all of that normal…my, how things have changed.

Bonnie May 27, 2014 (5:19 pm)

When do the new boundaries take effect? I know some are starting earlier than others. WSH may have less kids because of the boundary lines that are so screwed up.

WSB May 27, 2014 (5:22 pm)

No high-school boundary changes.
.
http://www.seattleschools.org/modules/cms/pages.phtml?pageid=294923&sessionid=2a6c32520602fdaf59d53cf0761ea457

West Seattle Hipster May 27, 2014 (6:13 pm)

Any updates on starting / ending times for the 2014-15 school year?

Lynn May 27, 2014 (9:02 pm)

A couple of comments:

Last year 75% of the freshman living in the attendance area chose to enroll at West Seattle High School. That’s not far behind the most popular schools – Garfield, Nathan Hale and Roosevelt each enrolled 85% of the students in their attendance areas.

Next year’s freshman class of 282 is quite a bit larger than the senior class (230.) As the larger classes in the middle schools roll up, we’ll fill up WSHS.

You have to look at building capacity too – WSHS’s capacity is 1,215. I’m thinking Jan’s school building was quite a bit larger.

Here’s a link to last year’s official enrollment data.

Finally, here are the 2014-15 start times.

WSB May 27, 2014 (9:07 pm)

Thank you, Lynn. That’s the 2013-14 enrollment data I was looking at, so I guess I found the right one. It did not have a date (while the current version, helpfully stamped “updated Spring 2014,” did) so I wasn’t sure.

Bonnie May 28, 2014 (7:32 am)

I thought that the middle schools were supposed to feed into the high schools?? They changed the middle school boundaries, why not the high schools?

Sammy Billworth May 28, 2014 (7:37 am)

They should have planned higher capacities for the new Schmitz Park and Arbor Heights schools. How silly and short sighted. They have very little room to grow.

StringCheese May 28, 2014 (9:00 am)

Lots of new seats are opening up here in WS over the next several years. Not only do you get the extra seats at AH (600) and SP (650), Fairmount Park will have 500 seats and K-8 STEM @ Boren will have capacity for 450 K-5 students and 300-400 middle school seats (17-21% of total projected MS enrollment) when the co-housing is over. Add to that EC Hughes which can also come back online in 2015 if needed.