Big turnout for info meeting on adding Highly Capable program to Alki Elementary, with one question left unanswered

By Torin Record-Sand
Reporting for West Seattle Blog

“Wow, looks like we’re West Seattle’s hottest ticket tonight!” That’s how Alki Elementary principal Mason Skeffington kicked off Wednesday night’s open house that drew a crowd of almost two hundred people. The subject of the open house was the plan for Seattle Public Schools to expand the Highly Capable program to Alki and Rainier View elementaries for the 2026 to 2027 academic year. Many of those gathered were families who already had students at Alki or are interested in going there when the program is implemented.

The HC program, which seeks to offer advanced instruction in language arts and mathematics, is currently only available for elementary students at 3 schools in the district – Cascadia, Decatur, and Thurgood Marshall. Of these, Thurgood Marshall is the closest to West Seattle, meaning many families that want to seek the program have to commit to long bus rides. And, notably, West Seattle has a higher percentage of students interested in the program: “15% of kids in our city are being served by the Highly Capable program, of those, 20% are in West Seattle,” said Dr. Paula Montgomery, director of the HC program, who delivered part of the night’s presentation.

The main question remaining even after the presentation seemed to be how exactly this will be implemented at Alki. The Highly Capable program revolves around providing two types of advanced instruction, one track with giving students a year’s advanced learning in language-arts instruction, and another track giving students up to two years advanced learning in mathematics; both requiring separate instruction. To make matters more challenging, students may qualify for one and not the other. So the question is whether to create self-contained HC cohort classes, or to attempt to integrate the advanced curriculum in other ways. There’s no definitive answer yet. Principal Skeffington said, however, that they would announce their official plans on March 31st. “We want the data in hand, and we want to be respectful of the Alki community.” he said. One of his notes throughout the night was that no matter the size of the influx of students for the new program, or the ways it might change the school, he is dedicated to giving a personal feel to instruction at Alki. “Each and every one of your children is important to me, whether they have [Highly Capable] designation or not. They matter, and are important. And I hope they are seen every day for the brilliance that they bring – that is what I try to live through.”

The open house also marked a chance for the community to get a preview of the nearly finished new building for the school. Principal Skeffington placed an emphasis on how the new, more open building would provide many opportunities for the Highly Capable program to thrive. These included elements of the building such as new non-traditional, open floor classrooms (in addition to traditional closed door ones), and even using the building as a site for ecological learning. (The new building will feature three forms of eco-friendly energy in addition to standard ones – energy-efficient ventilation, geothermal energy, and solar energy. These, he said, could all be used to help instruct students.)

The night closed with a brief Q&A – including these:

Q: Are siblings of Highly Capable students welcome?

A: They are, said school officials, but the family needs to do an open enrollment form. However, the school has been working fast, they said, to get families enrolled.

Q: Is there on-site after-school care?

A: Yes, which will be available through the Alki Community Center once it reopens concurrently with the school.

Q: If we apply for the new Alki site, is it guaranteed, or still a lottery?

A: If you are living in West Seattle and your child has a Highly Capable qualification, they are guaranteed a spot. Siblings, if they don’t have that qualification, are not guaranteed. They said they will allow families with siblings to go back to their original school if they do not get in.

If you have further questions for Alki Elementary about the program, the organizers of the event have a web form available here. They said they are working to get back to people as fast as possible. They also noted that further information about the program will be posted in the form of an FAQ on the Alki Elementary website soon.

lucy March 19, 2026 (1:44 pm)

Is this the new PC phrase for what used to be honors programs?

WSB March 19, 2026 (2:10 pm)

No, it’s not new. But once upon a time the term was “gifted.”
Frog March 19, 2026 (8:35 pm)

The phrase “highly capable” comes from state law, which requires services for such students. Though the state is lax in enforcement, and school districts can get away with very minimal services if they want. “Honors” in SPS is usually opt-in, available to any student, whereas HC services tend to be available only to students who have the HC label after screening and evaluation by the school district.
Kyle March 19, 2026 (10:05 pm)

It’s different. At the high school level honors classes exist and anyone can sign up if you’re ready for the more rigorous coursework and possibly lower grades. At the lower levels this is for kids who meet a testing threshold relative to their peers and likely sets them up to be more ready to take those rigorous courses at the high school level.

jissy March 19, 2026 (9:22 pm)

When I was in middle and high school it was called the Horizon Program.

Frog March 20, 2026 (10:50 am)

It will be interesting to see how Alki adapts, since Principal Skeffington has historically been an opponent of academic acceleration. The previous principal had a “walk-to math” program which enabled around 10-15% of students to graduate having already completed 6th grade math and ready to enter Madison a full year ahead. Skeffington stopped that, so more recently it seems that no Alki students are allowed to accelerate in math. The HC program in SPS is currently based on acceleration — working above grade level, not as a “tier 2 intervention” but as a starting point. Alki’s “continuous school improvement plan” explicitly forbids acceleration of that sort. It’s a thicket of ed-jargon and hard to decode, but essentially says that all students are required to do “tier one” content at grade-level, and anything beyond that is up to the teacher. One wonders if they will continue to impose this restriction on neighborhood students when HC students are doing an accelerated curriculum in the same building.

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