Help clear up confusion?

[GrizGuy]

Hi, folks! Noob here, moving to Seattle soon. We haven’t settled on West Seattle yet, but will tour some homes there. I’m hoping you can help clear up a question regardless.

I’m under the impression that Seattle Public Schools has specific geographic areas that determine what public schools your kids will attend. Is that not the case? If it is, why do I read so much here on choosing which public school to send one’s children? I’m basing my home search primarily upon the designation of which schools my now-toddlers will attend. If we aren’t required to attend based on our address (which it does seem to indicate on the SPS web site IS the case), we can open our home search up over a much wider area.

Right now, based on what little I can find out about public schools, we’d be best off if our kids eventually attended Ballard, Garfield, Roosevelt or Nathan Hale.. After that, it appears that the rest of the high schools have lower test scores and higher numbers of free lunch kids, indicating a whole host of potential problems we newcomers would just as soon our kids avoid.

So, can someone clear up for me (via an official link perhaps?) what the truth is?

I’d like to add that while we are believers in public education, we aren’t so naive as to think all public schools, even in the same district, are of equal quality.

Thanks in advance for your comments!

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[hopey]

Seattle Schools used to have more of a lottery process rather than a strict address-based attendance model. That ended two (?) years ago, and SPS is still in the process of phasing it out completely.

There are “option” schools in each elementary school cluster, which you can opt into rather than your neighborhood school. West Seattle’s only option school right now is Pathfinder. There is at least one “option” high school — the only one I can think of right now is The Center School at Seattle Center, but I think there are one or two more. (Not any of the ones you listed.)

From what I understand, although it’s still possible to apply for attendance at a high school outside of your residential area, the waiting lists at the best schools are astronomically long. For example the only way your kid will get into Garfield HS is if you live in the attendance area, or your child qualifies for the APP (highly gifted) program at the middle school level. (Also notice that the attendance area for Garfield is shrinking in the next year or two.)

Hopefully others will help fill in some of the finer details for you…

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[Hydrangea]

Hi GrizGuy,

So your primary concern is the high school your toddlers will eventually be assigned to? There is no guarantee that the SPS will have the same system for assigning children to schools in 12 years, nor that the schools themselves will have the same demographics/programs/etc., so I think you’d be better off looking at the elementary schools they’d be assigned to. The system as it stands now is that kids are assigned to a school based on their home address. You can type in any address here to find out what its assigned schools are: http://district.seattleschools.org/modules/cms/pages.phtml?sessionid=7a9ed1ad11febb6950ac593daf5e698b&pageid=172265&sessionid=7a9ed1ad11febb6950ac593daf5e698b

I think people are discussing choosing a school because some people go private, some are choosing where to live based on the school their kids would go to, and some are interested in alternative programs. The SPS has some schools that no one is assigned to because their programs differ from the norm in some way. Parents have to apply to them.

Hope that helps.

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[hopey]

Oh, I almost forgot — I think some of the “choice” discussions you see come from the fact that if a school has not met the No Child Left Behind standards, parents can opt to send their child to a different school which is meeting the standards. I think those children jump to the top of the waiting lists, ahead of students wanting to attend the same school as an older sibling who was grandfathered in, for example.

Some of these wait list issues will fade in the next 5 years, as the last of the kids to gain admittance through the lottery program graduate from elementary school.

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[add]

Just to be clear, you are definitely assigned to a school based on your address. Elementary schools feed into specific middle schools which feed into high schools. There are the option schools as mentioned above (no one is assigned, you must choose to attend), and you can always apply to any other school you’d like and if there is room your request will be granted (there is preference criteria such as siblings already attending).

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[GenHillOne]

“higher numbers of free lunch kids, indicating a whole host of potential problems we newcomers would just as soon our kids avoid.” I’m sort of hoping that you don’t mean this the way it sounds. You might consider that a diverse economic, social, and cultural student population brings positive lessons to your kids that go well beyond reading, writing, and ‘rithmetic.

FWIW, you mention Garfield, but Chief Sealth is a close second when it comes to longest wait lists in Seattle. If it makes a difference to you, I think Ballard, Garfield, and Roosevelt are all 4A schools too – much larger. As was mentioned though, a lot can change in the next 12 years.

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[WSAC]

Just my .02 but I’d be in no rush to buy a home in Seattle. If your kids are still toddlers, it’s a good time to really scope the neighborhoods, the schools, commutes, etc. So many people move for certain schools and end up regretting it or going to the option or private school. It’s a pretty common thing for children in Seattle to attend a few schools before getting the just-right fit. There are lots of landlords renting out their homes because they are no longer living in the area and can’t afford to keep their homes on the market for many months. These landlords will likely be willing to sell you their rental home if you like it. Good luck!

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[kootchman]

Seattle leads the nation in the number of students who could attend public schools, bot choose not to. Private schools in Seattle are a good option and West Seattle has many good alternatives to public schools. You are also not obligated to stay in the SPS system. Many kids hit the Vashon Island Ferry and attend the PS system there. That allows you to avoid the cost of paying for a private school. Some attend Mercer Island. If you commute to Bellevue or the east side that option is also open. The district you attend receives the state funding, again avoiding private school costs. Middle schools in Seattle are particularly grim…. most of the WS religious schools, Seattle Luthren and Holy Rosary allow for K-8 attendance….kids seem to do better in that structure…middle schools are collections of juvenile angst and seem to be less grounded with more disciplinary issues to contend with. Many of the conversions from public to private schools occur before middle school. You do run the risk though of having to contend with full enrollments. Two of my friends switched to Holy Rosary from grade school, another couldn’t due to full enrollment in that particular class..they did find a place at Hope Luthren though. You have lots of options. SPS is close enough to alternate public school districts to have “choice”…WS is a good mix of good homes with reasonable prices and optional PS districts. Political correctness set aside, I think your instincts are probably right…

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[Bonnie]

If you’re so concerned about the amount of free/reduced lunch kids in the school you might be better off checking out Mercer Island or Bellevue.

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[singularname]

Seattle Public Schools are abysmal, from just a basic education standpoint (not to mention a quality one), to their administrative organization being nonexist (my son when in kindergarten was forced to go to a Wallingford school), to violence and drugs ignored entirely until such time they have no choice but to call Seattle Police (and yes, this happened a few times during that Wallingford year), to teachers and administrators lying straight to your face. I don’t have the energy to go through the saga in writing–and I’m sure no one here would want to see me doing it all again–but assuming you hear similar from two or three other parents, I hope you’ll realize I’m not exaggerating.

My son, to be a senior this coming year, has severe dysgraphia (we conquered his dyslexia via 5 years in private school), and the school’s solution is to give him D-‘s in those classes he should be failing. I don’t even know how to react to that.

You might also want to check into how they handle their funds, specifically: $35M “disappeared” in the 2005 time-frame (interesting, there was a recent report that they’re bemoaning how to cut $36M from their budget), $1.8M mismanaged just last year, leading to the “letting go” of the superindendent (now happily working for Locke in DC–imagine she had to let her immense severance run through before she could take that gig??), and on and on.

If I had it to do all over again, and with the knowledge I have now, I would enthusiastically take on the seemingly impossible task (single full-time working parent) of homeschooling with a small group of similar-minded individuals.

If you have the stomach for it, power to you. I see you’re a freelance journalist–perhaps you could figure out an angle on how to make a living and bring all of this to the fore, with accountability carried out in the end. You’d be my hero.

I wish you sincere luck and perserverance.

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[singularname]

O lord … I still managed to write an essay (a bad one at that). Apologies to the cynics. ;->

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[GrizGuy]

Thanks for those replies. Yes, I poorly worded the comments on problems associated with free lunch kids. Diversity is not what we want to avoid. What tends to come with a free lunch population that is too high, is disengaged parents, which leads to problems from bullying to crime to poorly organized extra curricular activities and a generally poor experience for my kids.

What I’m gathering from my limited experience in Seattle is that people tend to switch schools a lot and even move to get into different schools.

I’m not interested in getting on that merry-go-round.

I taught at an inner-city public high school prior to having kids. I’ve seen nothing in Seattle that comes close to what I witnessed first hand. I would never send my kids to the school where I taught, and in fact, there were only two high schools in that district where I would send my kids. Those two schools are about 60% minority, and roughly the same % free lunch, which is pretty high. They were well-managed and had involved families and were generally just good for the kids who went there. That is the source of my comments regarding the inequality of schools in the same district. Just clarifying.

Yes, a lot can change in ten years, but has Ballard only become a better high school in the last five years or has it pretty much been a good performer for more than a decade? How ’bout Garfield and Roosevelt? My guess — and it’s just a guess — is that these schools have stood above the rest for some time. That seems unlikely to change.

Your comments make me want to go visit Chief Sealth, and I will go visit. Maybe this week. Talk to some people who work there.

And, hey, folks, please don’t banish me to Bellevue! :-) I’d rather not, thanks. Seems like a nice city, but I wanna live in Seattle if I can.

I don’t plan to write about it, don’t worry! I have a web site where I write about running shoes between my kid’s naps and the baby’s diapers. It’s way more fun than the journalism game was, although it pays nothing. :-)

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[kootchman]

Go private… most who can do.

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[goodgraces]

“Go private… most who can do. “

Well I guess I’m in the minority who “can” but “don’t.” Or won’t. But since many of our children’s friends, who also “can,” don’t, I have to take exception to this statement, if only from a small-sample-size statistical point of view.

Of course, I must say as well that one of the main reasons we chose to support our public school system is that we don’t want our children only exposed to kids and families who “can.”

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[kootchman]

Well…given the fact that Seattle is one of the top ten cities in the country whose PS eligible children choose not to attend PS… well, read whatever you want to into that data. “Can” does not imply lack of diversity..most private schools in Seattle do a good job in that regard. Graduation rates, music, foreign languages, etc. Numerical and reading proficiency …. all that kinda stuff. The MIPR Readiness for College is a good guide. What is hard in SPS is getting it all under one roof…

http://www.komonews.com/news/archive/4104936.html

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[DP]

GrizGuy: I liked your post and your follow-up. I also liked the responses you got.

One thing kind of sticks in my craw, though. You said you would never have sent your kids to the school where you taught. Isn’t that kind of like a cook who warns his guests not to eat the food?

goodgraces: Good points. May I ask where your kids go to school and what some of the plusses and minuses of your experience have been?

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[WSAC]

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[GrizGuy]

DP, that’s a fair question. Allow me to clarify.

I worked in an inner-city district in a “new” high school that was “temporarily” placed in an old building. I got hired two weeks before school started (whole staff did, really), and I went into the neglected building to find it in poor repair and at some point apparently used as a shelter by folks who broke in. The district did a good job of cleaning it up, but that’s about all they did. I was killing cockroaches periodically until about Thanksgiving when I treated my room with my own store-bought roach killer. Climate control was a joke. Early that year, temperatures exceeded 105 inside my room according to our part-time janitor, prompting the district to cancel classes for two days until weather cooled. I taught history and English for the new class of 9th graders. I had no texts, sporadic internet access on 30 older desktops donated to the district by a local business, many of which were not fully functioning, and 200 copy clicks for the entire year. I found texts to borrow from another school around Halloween. The district bought texts around May (fat lot of good that did us that year). I stole Internet access via some nearby wireless and used the only piece of equipment I did get, a portable whiteboard, with my personal laptop to show some “materials” to my kids. Eventually, I found a way to cheat the copier so copies of the texts I had were photocopied illegally on a daily basis. I found 30-year-old English texts in a storage room until I could get a few modern textbooks from a relative who is a teacher in another state, then the new ones late in the year. If nothing else, I taught those kids determination and resourcefulness by example! Our kids were generally great kids (60% minority at least, probably 70-80% free lunch eligible), though twice I disrupted drug sales on campus, both students expelled (but not really because the district really just puts all those cases in a central location where they are supposed to do school work, then they were put back in the building). The rest were good kids generally, just got to 9th grade with very few of them having any drive to actually make something of themselves. Their families were almost totally disengaged with one or two notable exceptions. Many parents I did eventually reach were concerned only with their child getting through high school “so they could get a job.” I had a couple who only hung out in 9th grade until they turned 18(!) when they could quit school. I could go on and on. I think you get the point. No way would I send my own kid to that school, even if I were teaching there. I saw no way for it to improve given the level of district support, a prime reason I left the job. It was the stuff we read about in grad school. I never expected to encounter it personally.

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