Seattle Schools' Enrollment Projections
Update: Here's the district waitlist.
The high school waitlists are long for 9th grade - Franklin, 88, Garfield, 80, Hale, 68, Roosevelt 87.
JSIS, Pathfinder, Queen Anne, Lafayette, McDonald, and K-5 STEM at Boren have a big list for K.
Mercer has 36 for 6th grade (the publicity around their success is getting around) and Salmon Bay has a long waitlist in nearly every grade and yet the projections have their enrollment down. TOPS has a waitlist in every grade.
Again, what's up with South Shore - its building is nowhere near full and yet they have a waitlist in almost every single grade. Something's not right here.
End of update.
Here are the district's enrollment projections for next year.
Highlights:
High School
Most of the high schools are steady-state with a few exceptions. Cleveland will be up by the most - 44 students. And, the closest high school to it, Franklin, may be going down by 35.
Garfield is projected to go down by 40 students and Ingraham up by...39 students. Looks like the APP program at Ingraham is getting firmly established.
Rainier Beach continues to climb, up by 41 to 448.
Roosevelt continues to climb and will go over the 1700 mark (1728).
Middle School
Hamilton is taking it hard with an increase at 127. That will pop them over the 1100 mark.
Eckstein is projected to lose 46 but it is still the largest middle school at 1252. Denny, McClure and Washington will all add about 30+ students.
K-8s
South Shore, despite free Pre-K and a new building, continues to be underenrolled. I'm not sure why but that's sure a big, expensive building that isn't filled.
Jane Addams is adding a whopping 167 students and will go from 581 to 748.
Pinehurst continues to drop and is projected at 133 students.
Madrona is also way under its building size at 286.
Salmon Bay is predicted to drop 11 spaces to 683 which surprises me.
Elementary
K-5 STEM at Boren is continuing to grow with a projected add of 59 students. West Seattle Elementary will be up by another 37 students at 436. Gatewood will go over 500 students with a projected addition of 42 students. Schmitz Park continues its growth, up 38 students.
John Rogers, Olympic Hills and Thornton Creek are all projected to grow with 30+ students. Sand Point continues to grow, adding 46 students.
APP at Lincoln is also growing, adding 70 students. McDonald will be up an astonishing 91 students.
Most of Queen Anne/Magnolia sees modest growth except for Queen Anne Elementary which is booming up with 58 students.
In the Central area, Lowell stays under 200. Thurgood Marshall is going up to near 500 with 34 more students.
Viewlands is the elementary school growing by the most in the district - 69 more students.
The high school waitlists are long for 9th grade - Franklin, 88, Garfield, 80, Hale, 68, Roosevelt 87.
JSIS, Pathfinder, Queen Anne, Lafayette, McDonald, and K-5 STEM at Boren have a big list for K.
Mercer has 36 for 6th grade (the publicity around their success is getting around) and Salmon Bay has a long waitlist in nearly every grade and yet the projections have their enrollment down. TOPS has a waitlist in every grade.
Again, what's up with South Shore - its building is nowhere near full and yet they have a waitlist in almost every single grade. Something's not right here.
End of update.
Here are the district's enrollment projections for next year.
Highlights:
High School
Most of the high schools are steady-state with a few exceptions. Cleveland will be up by the most - 44 students. And, the closest high school to it, Franklin, may be going down by 35.
Garfield is projected to go down by 40 students and Ingraham up by...39 students. Looks like the APP program at Ingraham is getting firmly established.
Rainier Beach continues to climb, up by 41 to 448.
Roosevelt continues to climb and will go over the 1700 mark (1728).
Middle School
Hamilton is taking it hard with an increase at 127. That will pop them over the 1100 mark.
Eckstein is projected to lose 46 but it is still the largest middle school at 1252. Denny, McClure and Washington will all add about 30+ students.
K-8s
South Shore, despite free Pre-K and a new building, continues to be underenrolled. I'm not sure why but that's sure a big, expensive building that isn't filled.
Jane Addams is adding a whopping 167 students and will go from 581 to 748.
Pinehurst continues to drop and is projected at 133 students.
Madrona is also way under its building size at 286.
Salmon Bay is predicted to drop 11 spaces to 683 which surprises me.
Elementary
K-5 STEM at Boren is continuing to grow with a projected add of 59 students. West Seattle Elementary will be up by another 37 students at 436. Gatewood will go over 500 students with a projected addition of 42 students. Schmitz Park continues its growth, up 38 students.
John Rogers, Olympic Hills and Thornton Creek are all projected to grow with 30+ students. Sand Point continues to grow, adding 46 students.
APP at Lincoln is also growing, adding 70 students. McDonald will be up an astonishing 91 students.
Most of Queen Anne/Magnolia sees modest growth except for Queen Anne Elementary which is booming up with 58 students.
In the Central area, Lowell stays under 200. Thurgood Marshall is going up to near 500 with 34 more students.
Viewlands is the elementary school growing by the most in the district - 69 more students.
Comments
-doubtful
Big changes at Ingraham. They have a wait list for the first time -- 65 kids!And they expanded dthe 9th grade class by 40 students. This is a school that had no wait list in the past. Greater appreciation of IB program plus moving APP kids is changing perceptions of this far north end school
4/16/13, 11:43 AM
And with the long waitlist it looks like APP IBx is pushing out students who want the regular IB program.
This is going to be contentious since there are no other IB programs in the northend.
Ben
HP
There's irony there about Hale wanting to control their numbers because they used to limit the number of kids because of their program but that ended when the district just plain needed the room.
I suspect Ingraham is in a better place to try to control numbers because of carrying two programs (IB and APP).
-doubtful
Doubtful as this cohort would probably be mostly reference area students and would get a set before anybody else. My bets are on out of attendance area students who wanted IB.
HP
Curious
Backing out the numbers, it looks like something like 13 new APP qualified students were identified and will enroll at IBX. I'm happy about that. I never understood why the APP golden ticket to GHS wasn't available to newly identified kids.
I'm curious as to how well these spring numbers will reflect actual fall enrollment in neighborhood high schools? I guess as long as kids go from SPS 8th grade to SPS 9th grade (and don't move) they are trackable, but now no one is required to pre-enroll, so it seems like these spring numbers can substantially under-state actual fall enrollment. I expect the impact is worse for some schools than others. IHS had about 90 previously unidentified kids show up last fall. They weren't able to hire new teachers until November. I'm sure kids' learning was negatively impacted.
No APP students would be on the Gen Ed Ingraham waitlist, they would be on a separate one. This means the district decided to allow everyone who applied to IBX, both current and non-current APP to get in. They probably did this because of the APP increase at Garfield to 120 in 9th grade next year. The question seems to be if the IBX option for APP at Ingraham is an option program with a certain number of slots or is now guaranteed for everyone who wants and is eligible to attend. If that's the case and more people continue to choose IBX, in 2014 we could have upwards of 160 APP 9th Graders at Ingraham.
Any Thoughts?
WMS 8th Grade Family
Some odd things.
Cleveland STEM has a gen ed waitlist of 12 at ninth grade with a projected enrollment of 225. The enrollment at Cleveland STEM, per the Board action that created the school and the NTN contract, is supposed to have a maximum of 250 per grade level. Not only should the 12 waitlisted students be enrolled, but there should be room for 13 more besides. Students are waitlisted for grade 10 despite a projected enrollment under 250 in that grade as well.
There are 4 APP students waitlisted for APP at Lincoln. They must be from the Thurgood Marshall attendance area.
Arbor Heights has waitlisted 6 Spectrum students in the third grade. The projected Spectrum head count for the third grade at Arbor Heights is 15. That's not a full class. Why isn't there room for the other six students? I presume they don't reside in the Arbor Heights attendance area, but they have no alternative Spectrum site. Why hasn't the District right-sized the program to meet the demand? Why can the Arbor Heights second grade hold 76 students but the third grade cannot hold 71?
Broadview-Thomson has a gen ed waitlist at nearly every grade level and one student on the Spectrum waitlist for second grade. This is odd because the District projects zero students for B-T Spectrum in the second grade. So the B-T Spectrum program size was set to zero?
There are waitlists for Bagley Montessori. Normally I would call upon the District to create additional Montessori programs to accommodate the demand for the service, but the new Equitable Access Framework excludes equitable access to Montessori.
There are three students on the waitlist for 6th grade Spectrum at Denny. 15 Spectrum students are expected. That's not a full class. Since students are supposed to be assured of access to Spectrum at their attendance area middle school, these three students must be from outside the Denny attendance area.
Of course, they could go to larger classes but that would be up to the SEA.
-sleeper
Re capacity at IHS, I believe I heard the principal say they are set up to run at about 1000, but could squeeze in 1200. They will pass that in three years if the IBx enrollment rolls up at 90 per grade.
John Muir has waitlisted Spectrum students in grades 1, 2, and 3. Since the Spectrum classes at these grades are not full, we can conclude that the students on the waitlist are from outside the Washington service area, or at least from outside the Muir attendance area. The District needs to right-size this program.
Here's a surprise: Lowell has waitlisted general education students at grades K, 1, and 3. This school is disasterously under-enrolled and they are waitlisting students? Someone care to explain that?
McClure, another horribly under-enrolled school has waitlisted 6 students for the sixth grade and one for the eighth grade. How is that allowed?
You will notice that a number of the alternative schools have long waitlists at nearly every grade, yet the District has no duty (or even interest) in duplicating these successful programs or responding to this demand. Of course, the new policy puts alternative schools outside of the requirement for equitable access to programs and services. Also, the Board never requires the superintendent to provide a capacity management report that complies with the policy and reports demand.
South Shore, as Mel has pointed out, is an under-enrolled school with a waitlist. How is that possible?
The Center School is another under-enrolled school with a waitlist.
Watch Thurgood Marshall. It will follow the same path as Lowell. There are 16 students waitlisted at K and a projected enrollment of 489 in a building designed for 425.
Washington has 14 students on the 6th grade Spectrum waitlist. Add this to the five students on the 6th grade Spectrum waitlist at Mercer and you have your answer for why the District expects only 10 6th grade Spectrum students at Aki Kurose.
Wedgwood has waitlisted Spectrum students. Really? They don't even have Spectrum classrooms. Which is funny because they have enough Spectrum students to form them.
Whittier has waitlisted Spectrum students as well. When will the District right-size this program?
Observing
It would be a lot easier to use this report if it were simply general education and then from attendance area and NOT from attendance area columns. Only a handful of schools have spectrum and app. However, lots of schools have something unique that would draw folks from out of the attendance area, especially at high school.
It would also make the wait lists much easier to interpret. Clearly the waitlist are from out of the attendance area but there is no way to really know if a school is taking any students from out of the attendance area already.
However, I suspect that the choice seats may just be gone in the re-boundary process. Roosevelt is now projected to have more students than Garfield so something is going to have to give. I would suspect that since the distance tie breaker is back for elementary and middle schools, that it could soon be back for high schools as a way to assist the families that are willing to leave Roosevelt for Hale and Ingraham.
Remember when all of the candidates for school board said that they supported making language immersion programs option programs with enrollment open to all students? I guess they didn't mean it.
Remember when they said that they support advanced learning? Ha!
Questions...
@WMS 8th Grade Family - Not all Hamilton APP 8th graders are planning on Ingraham. My student has several friends who kept the Garfield assignment.
@Maureen - I agree it's the non-neighborhood/non IBx students who are being waitlisted. I think there would be a separate IBx waitlist, as there was a separate Ingraham IBx enrollment category.
@GreyWatch - if the immersion pathway was in force, it must be done at Enrollment. There wasn't an Ingraham Immersion enrollment category on the enrollment form.
I was surprised when Principal Watters remarked at the 1st Hamilton PTSA meeting that Advanced Learning was 55% (APP was 42% and Spectrum was 13%) of the 2012-13 enrollment. The current projections put AL at 62% of total 2013-14 Hamilton enrollment. That's a lot of growth for the 2 programs - I think it will be hard to balance all the Hamilton programs when the 2 AL programs are the largest part of the school. With the current assignment program and choices, I think it will have implications for Ingraham as well.
TS
HIMS 8th Grade Family
WMS 6th grade = 97
HIMS 6th grade = 225
-Numbers
HP
"I'm impressed -for lack of a better word-- by the difference between APP students in WMS and HIMS:
WMS 6th grade = 97
HIMS 6th grade = 225"
Impressed? There should be no surprise here. There are 2 classes of 5th grade at TM and 4 classes of 5th grade at Lincoln.
@HP "It will be interesting to see if IB helps pull the whole school up."
How could it? Gen ed students have no access to these programs, unlike Garfield, where a critical mass of advanced learners really does result in broader choices of Honors and AP course offerings that any qualified student could take. IB and IBx are great programs, but they are specific tracks rather than a menu from which a motivated student could choose.
open ears
I do think that it would be helpful for Ingraham to figure out a way to emphasize the very good options available to students who might not want to do the IB diploma, but do want to take IB classes.
IBx is an exception to some extent because the APP students take 9th grade core classes as a cohort-but after that they take virtually all of their classes with upperclassmen, some of them are doing the diploma, others are just taking the IB classes that interest them (like IB Business, or Psychology).
It's true that IB draws students from outside the assignment area, in the same way BioTech or drama drtaws kids to BHS and RHS, but IB is less exclusionary than those programs (no application or auditions). I expect that quite a few kids who are drawn to IHS by IB don't end up doing the full diploma-but appreciate all that IHS offers.
All high schools have reputations, whether deserved or not. Hale had a bad reputation as a drug school and has turned that around (Nathan Inhale was the nickname). I think Ingraham is in the middle of the same type of turnaround and that it will continue to attract more and more neighborhood kids.
HP
L-APP = 106
TM = 66
The increase in the APP population is HUGE, particularly for HIMS. The trend is particularly scary as has been pointed out already. Hope the district has their ears and eyes wide open too.
-Numbers
The jump does seem to correlate with the use of MAP scores in AL identification.
observer
TM Parent
HP
HP
The only way I am familiar with having a wait list move sooner is to do some neighborhood networking to find out who is on the wait list at your spot and above for both schools.
It sounds like you were enrolled at Roosevelt and moved into the Hale area or vice-versa.
Just to stick with that example - find out who is #1 on the Hale list, and who is #1 and 2 on the Roosevelt list.
If a swap can be done -- for example both #1 and #2 on the Roosevelt wait list are enrolled at Hale, and #1 and #2 on the Hale list are enrolled at Roosevelt -- then contact Tracy Libros and let her know such a swap can be had and she will do that. They won't jump locations on the list but will do a #1 for a #1 swap if that is how it is. Sometimes, even just knowing the information for the wait list at the school for which you are on the wait list and then sharing the information with Tracy will be enough for her to do a swap analysis. The term, swap, is my term and nothing techinical from enrollment.
You could try the NE Seattle Moms forum on Yahoo as a sleauthing starting point.
I have gone through wait list anxiety with all three of my children so wish you the best.
-StepJ
They don't have a handy dandy program to do analysis for them. So if you can do some of the foot work you can help speed up the process.
Tracy actually is the person that crafts the Enrollment Plans vs. the School Board. She takes input from the Superintendent as to what is desired at the moment and also input from School Board members, and then comes up with a plan that will best work based on the criteria she is given. True - the School Board does vote to approve her plan, but they do not craft the original plan. Also true that once the rules are approved, these are the rules by which Enrollment Services and Planning abide.
The current plan was devised under the rule of MGJ if that sheds any light as to some of the harsh edges that are in place.
-StepJ
-Parent
My daughter got an out-of-area assignment to her school but, if we were to move, she would have to get a new one. That's how crazy the rules are.
HP
Essentially school facilities are not infinite and therefore, the district as a matter of policy needs to have a way to say "enough" for a particular building. Now some buildings are so crowded it doesn't look like it but the attendance area boundaries are the way that capacity is no controlled.
Under the choice system, you got an assignment either based on lottery number or distance to a school and you either got your choice or you didn't and that was the end of the story. 75% of people got their choice but that meant 25% did not get a choice school. Those numbers are just for on-time, choice window applications. If you applied after the window, you could only get what was left over.
Since enrollment could be controlled with a wait list, if students moved they could keep their seats or via the choice process see if you could get a different seat. This was great if you wanted to keep your seat and not so great if you wanted to move to your new neighborhood school. In most cases, it was highly improbable that you would get your new local school because most schools were "full."
Under a geographic assignment system, everyone gets their assignment school. This means that the only way the district can say "enough" is via the attendance area boundaries. So this version is not so great if you want to keep your school. However, it is wonderful if you want to attend new local school.
It is simply not possible to "guarantee" both seats for every student. Geographic assignment plans are based on the concept of "swirl." This concept is that the amount of housing in an attendance area is either fixed or changes relatively slowly. So in theory for every student that leaves an area there is a student that enters the area.
Under the choice plan, families "could" move near a school during the choice window and secure their seat at their preferred school. They could then move anywhere and keep that seat. If that same guarantee were in place, there would be no mechanism in place for "attrition" to be paired with natural in migration to an area.
Using Garfield as an example. Garfield has been a very popular choice school for a long time. Garfield is currently just barely able to keep up with attendance area enrollment. If families could go to Garfield for one month and then move and be guaranteed Garfield, well ... we can all guess what enrollment would look like.
Questions
The number of Open Choice seats for 9th
– 12th grade students from outside of the attendance area is calculated as follows:
Set target enrollments for each grade based on 25% of each school’s program capacity. But, if projected enrollment at any grade is more than 25% of program capacity, reduce targets in all grades accordingly.
If the grade or school’s projected enrollment is:
90% or less of the grade’s target enrollment, the minimum number of Open Choice seats will be 10%. – There will be more Open Choice seats added (above the minimum) if attendance area enrollment is less than 90% of target enrollment.
91% -100% of the grade’s target enrollment, the minimum number of Open Choice seats will be less than 10%.
More than 100% of the grade’s target enrollment, there are no Open Choice seats.
I just happended to open this post and saw your comment about Spectrum. Spectrum at Wedgwood is terrible (outside of 4th and 5th) there is no evidence of cluster grouping or special instruction. We applied and got into self-contained Spectrum at Whitter, but hopefully the advanced learning department sees this problem soon, as "cluster-grouped spectrum" is no more than a ALO which is practically Gen Ed.
Spectrum is almost gone.
Parent
I have said this a lot of different ways but I will try again. APP is not the capacity problem. APP choice is not the capacity problem. In fact, the limited amount of choice there has been at high school has been because of the APP cohort.
Because enough APP students do leave their neighborhood school to be part of the cohorts at either Garfield or Ingraham, that creates the few open spaces that other students do get during open enrollment.
The 10% choice seats don't exist, as such. However, the "swirl" of some students leaving a spot that opens a spot is still happening a bit and mostly because of the APP cohort.
There is an opinion that somehow APP is getting something special regarding choice. However, in my opinion, I think the APP cohort pays a very steep price for that illusion of choice. Every year APP is on the "let's move them here. No, wait. Let's move them there. No, wait." program.
That's not some magic choice option.
There are no groups that are left untouched by the capacity challenges. The High School capacity issues are only now beginning to get on people's radar. 7 of the 9 comprehensive high schools and are effectively full, with Roosevelt and Garfield crazy full. There is truly only space at RB and WSHS. WSHS has space because their boundaries are way too small.
The bottom line is that you can try to send APP back to all of their attendance area schools so that even the illusion of choice is gone and the only thing that will happen is that there is zero flexibility at high school.