Seattle High Schools Article

A reporter at Seattle Metropolitan magazine is looking for parents who might want to contribute to a story. He's looking for parents who
  • successfully managed to get their student into a high school outside of their assignment area
  • whose child went to a private middle school but decided to go public for high school
If you are such a parent and are interested in relating your experience, please contact Matt Halverson (mhalverson@seattlemet.com or 206-957-2234 x133).

Comments

Charlie Mas said…
Let's remember that the vast majority of families simply accepted their assignment to their attendance area school.

Let's also remember that there may be as few as three attendance area high schools that were over-subscribed - Garfield, Roosevelt, and Ballard. So if you wanted to go to any of the other nine attendance area high schools - Sealth, West Seattle, Rainier Beach, Franklin, Hale, or Ingraham - you gained entry upon request.

So how hard is it for most folks to get their school of choice? Not hard at all. Most of them chose to accept assignment to their attendance area school or easily gained access to one of nine other schools (or The Center School or STEM or The NOVA Project).

How hard is it to negotiate the bureaucracy? Well, if you're involved enough to know that you don't want your child to attend their default assignment attendance area school, then you're already in a self-selected group.

Imagine this. You go to lunch with a bunch of friends to a place that is famous for their hamburgers. Everybody looks at the menu and then the waiter goes around the table taking orders. "Hamburger" "Hamburger" "Hamburger" "Hamburger" your friends say. You, however, don't want the hamburger; you want teriyaki chicken. "Sorry," the waiter says, "we're out of the teriyaki chicken." "Okay, then," you reply, "I'll have the reuben".

Was that so hard? I don't think so.
10/6/10, 12:21 PM
dan dempsey said…
Does this count? Child moved from SPS North Beach to Private Middle School intending to return to SPS for High School.

SPS adopts "Discovering" 6/5/09 loses Appeal of the crappy math selection 2/4/10 .... but appeals to WA Appeals court on 3/3/10 ...

Discovering enters second year of use and "the child" mentioned above enters private high school.
10/6/10, 1:31 PM
wsnorth said…
Whatever happened to the "10% choice" seats? That should have allowed approx 1500 high schoolers to switch schools, plus APP who get a "free pass" to Garfield and option/alt high schools, so that is several hundred more. The vast majority probably are going to their attendance area, but there is still some choice. Do we have any actual facts on how many high schoolers applied but did not get in to their first choice?
10/6/10, 7:38 PM
h2o_girl said…
Hmm, my neighbor went to a private K-8 school and now is a freshman at a public high school, which is not our attendance area school. I'll send this to them.
10/6/10, 7:58 PM
Maureen said…
Can anyone clarify the open choice seats procedure? My memory (I'm thinking, perhaps incorrectly, that Dorothy posted here about a PTSA meeting report at RHS in the late spring) is that open choice seats were defined to be 10% of the neighborhood assignments. So, in result, for every ten kids who showed up with a guaranteed neighborhood assignment a school would have to admit another kid from outside the neighborhood. I remember thinking that this was nuts, since it meant that the overcrowded school would be increasingly overcrowded.

I didn't want to believe this could be true, but yesterday a friend told me about a kid who had been assigned to Ballard just getting into RHS off the wait list. That would be consistent with the above system (ten extra kids showed up with RHS area addresses, so the Ballard neighborhood kid had to be admitted as well.) Can anyone out there confirm this scenario?
10/6/10, 8:06 PM
SE Mom said…
I am very curious to know if any students got into Garfield on a choice seat but without the sibling tiebreaker. Don't think there could be many if any of those students there.
10/6/10, 10:12 PM
Charlie Mas said…
It was reported at the Board meeting tonight that Roosevelt cleared their waitlist.
10/6/10, 11:22 PM
Anonymous said…
Well, I know someone who started as a freshman at Ballard this year who lives in the BHS assignment area ... and has now moved to Roosevelt after being on the waitlist. No idea if there is more than one kid who meets this description.
10/7/10, 12:30 AM
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