(WSB photos by Patrick Sand. Above, the start of today’s assembly)
By Tracy Record
West Seattle Blog editor

This morning’s back-to-school celebration/assembly at Westside School (WSB sponsor) was the last one at the former EC Hughes Elementary.

Next year, after five years at the leased Seattle Public Schools-owned campus in Sunrise Heights, Westside is expecting to start the year in a “home of their own” for the very first time – the former Hillcrest Presbyterian Church site that they’ve purchased and are renovating in Arbor Heights.

The project is on schedule, Westside’s head of school Kate Mulligan told us during an end-of-summer conversation about that and other reasons this is an especially exciting year for the independent PreK-8 school.

Here’s one reason: The largest enrollment in Westside history, more than 340 students.

Westside’s David Bergler, also part of our conversation, said the school had an enrollment of about 70 when he started. Now, the faculty alone is almost that size (just under 60).

This is Mulligan’s third year as head of Westside since arriving from Hawaii in 2012. “It’s just been an amazing journey,” she says.

That journey has included presiding over the phased-in completion of Westside’s expansion to add middle school. This past June, the school’s first 8th-grade class graduated – 18 in all. The middle-school phase-in so far has consisted of single classes rising, but starting this year, the middle school is growing to double-class-sized grades, with two 6th grade classes this year, two for 7th next year, and then finally the year after that, double-sized 8th grade, too.

Bergler observes that enrollment grows with Seattle’s renown as a growing city with good jobs – families are moving here, and also moving from elsewhere in the area. “Lots of corporate transfers.”

“People are wanting to live in West Seattle,” adds Mulligan. “It’s more affordable, with a small-town feel even though it’s part of the urban area. It’s a good place for families.”

Westside’s program has continued to evolve, with the middle-school expansion. With middle schoolers come electives – “exploratory choices,” in Westside parlance – “four different choices every semester of courses they want to take.”

That can include performing arts, which at Westside, Mulligan notes, include “full length musicals, technical theater studies, different visual arts courses, dance program, instrumental music, rock band, beginning instrumental, vocal music, glee group – kids are passionate about singing!”

And there’s more: “We also have ‘threads’ in (electives) for kids with interest in tech, robotics, mathematics (Math Counts team), threads for creative writing, journalism, yearbook, middle school blog writing, so it’s really fun for them.”

Middle school at Westside starts at 5th grade (one year earlier than public schools), and that first year includes “foundations” courses as well as background in digital citizenship and rotation through arts and PE classes. “Middle school’s a time when kids develop passions and have to make choices/decisions,” Mulligan notes.

Asked what’s new this year, Mulligan mentions some changes in the math program, now using the “Bridges” curriculum, which she says is “used by a lot of independent schools in Seattle area who strive to educate highly capable learners.” Last year it was implemented in kindergarten, first, and second grades, and this year it’s going through 5th grade. Middle-school math at Westside is designed to prepare students for college-prep high-school studies, so it goes through pre-algebra and Algebra 1.

Also new: Parent conferences before the start of school for pre-K through 4th grade, so “teachers get to know what parents’ hopes and dreams are for the year … waiting until October [for the first parent/teacher conferences] didn’t serve us so well.”

The Westside faculty also has spent time going over this past spring’s annual parent surveys, which were first reviewed by the school management team in spring. “We listen to feedback and adjust as appropriate,” Mulligan explains. “That’s where the change in the math program came from,” for example.

Another program evolving at Westside: Languages. In the elementary grades, all students take Mandarin Chinese and Spanish, and then they choose for middle school which they’ll focus on, and it becomes a fulltime academic class. Their graduating 8th graders, Mulligan says with pride, took high-school placement tests and “placed in levels 2 or 3 in many cases.” Last year, they sponsored two international trips for students to grow in their language skills – one to China, one to Costa Rica.

Bergler mentions other trips taken by students – “purposeful trips” such as kayaking in the San Juans last year, learning how to kayak for “confidence-building and teamwork,” while another group “went to Mount St. Helens and learned about the geology of the area.” Sixth graders climbed, seventh graders backpacked, and Mulligan goes on the eighth-graders’ spring trip.

(That first eighth-grade graduating class last year also organized a “student-driven” graduation ceremony – with performances and speeches.)

Speaking of transitions – our conversation moved on to next year’s move into the permanent home of Westside in Arbor Heights. “Heading Home” is this year’s theme, because of it. “Throughout the year, we’re working on engaging our parents in the move,” Mulligan notes. And the students’ engagement goes back to last April, when they were involved in a unique kind of groundbreaking ceremony (WSB coverage here).

This year, construction-progress reports will be shown on screens in the school hallway and the Westside website is featuring updates, among other things. And students are tending flower seeds they received at the groundbreaking along with a bag of dirt and an invitation to “watch it grow” as their new campus is doing.

After more than 30 years, Mulligan explains, “it’s time to be in control of our own destiny, to have a child-centered learning environment that matches our mission, embraces our value of community. This (EC Hughes) has been a lovely building but it’s old and not warm.” The new building will have connected classrooms and is “designed for collaboration – everyone will walk into the same entrance, there’s grassy spaces to play, plus we’re back in the Arbor Heights neighborhood, where Westside School grew up.” (Before EC Hughes, it was housed in a former Highline Public Schools building near 28th/Roxbury.)

The new campus at 34th/104th will have a 400-seat performing-arts theater, science and tech labs, art rooms, a lunchroom with doors onto the playground, and more. It already has a fullsize gym that Mulligan describes as “beautiful.”

The building/remodeling work is expected to be done by mid-May next year; by August 1st, administrative staff will move in. Summer programs for 2015 will be at EC Hughes, because they want the transition to start with the full 2015-2016 school year – teachers will be first to use the building. They in fact took a hard-hat tour of the site last Friday, shortly after our conversation with Mulligan and Bergler:

When Westside opens there in fall 2015, they’re expecting 360 students.

P.S. As of just before the start of school, they still had a few openings for this year, in kindergarten and 1st grade.