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Please check the links below as you may still be able to access the resources you need.
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Comments
Eyeroll
User
just fyi
I am at the JSCEE; I’ll try to find out what happened.
Ballard (Gr9) 57
Ballard (Gr10) 33
Beacon Hill (K) 28
Cleveland STEM (Gr9) 124
Cleveland STEM (Gr10) 24
Franklin (Gr9) 34
Garfield (Gr9) 68
Hazel Wolf (K) 128
Hazel Wolf (Gr1) 34
Hazel Wolf (Gr2) 36
Hazel Wolf (Gr3) 27
Hazel Wolf (Gr5) 23
Hazel Wolf (Gr6) 51
Ingraham (Gr9) 32
JSIS (K) 65
Lincoln (Gr9) 53
McDonald (K) 97
Mercer (Gr6) 27
Pathfinder (K) 71
Roosevelt (Gr9) 87
Roosevelt (Gr10) 30
Salmon Bay (K) 43
Salmon Bay (Gr6) 37
STEM (K) 42
TOPS (Gr6) 35
Cleveland and Hazel Wolf have some of the highest single grade waitlists. Many of the K-8s have high waitlists for K and 6th. No surprise that RHS and BHS have waitlists for 9th and 10th. How is it that Lincoln and IHS have 9th grade waitlists?
just fyi
(full waitlist report is linked on bottom of Assignment Lookup Tool page)
interesting
https://www.seattleschools.org/UserFiles/Servers/Server_543/File/District/Departments/Admissions/School%20Choice/2019-20_Waitlist-Report/WaitlistSummary201920_0416.pdf
Pretty sad to see how many sped students across the district are parked on waitlists.
-Curiouser
just fyi
-Curiouser
History
Do we need an external audit of the assignment/waitlist process? It seems broken.
unclear
unclear
-huh?
data watcher
The problem is that if the first person on the waitlist for Lincoln is assigned to Rainier Beach, that student will not be offered a seat at Lincoln. Because the first person on the list can’t get it, no one can.
Fairmount Parent
They would probably also want to start off with looking at the highest waitlist-ranked students who want OUT of an overcrowded school. Say #s 1-9 are at high schools that have room, but #10 is assigned to Ballard but wants Lincoln. Move them to the "hold" spot for Lincoln, freeing up room for 1-9 at Ballard if they, in order, wanted it. They may not end up as 1st on the Lincoln hold list (if any of the 1-9 above them also wanted Lincoln), but they'd be in position to get in if some of the other Lincolnites with lower numbers were ultimately able to move elsewhere.
After going through everyone re: their first choices, you could restart the process with those who were at least hoping for their 2nd choice. (Although I'm not sure how the waitlist is supposed to work. If you're in the #1 slot, are you supposed to get priority access to any of your choices, or just #1? If it's any, if would be much harder.
It sounds like a fun puzzle to me, but maybe I'm just strange that way.
unclear
Enrollment watcher
The SPS's current practice of halting wait list movement, based on the presence of students from Rainier Beach is abhorrent and inequitable. That practice was championed by former SPS staff members Michael Tolley and Flip Herndon. The practice was advertised as "protecting Rainier Beach's enrollment" by not allowing students in this attendance area access to the choice system.
IMHO, this practice is indefensible. Rainier Beach families do have choice and they exercise this choice by enrolling in public charter schools and other districts. This practice is direct cause of lower total enrollment in SPS.
That said, the approach you are suggesting is direct violation of students assignment rules. Students are placed on the wait list in a specific order based on the assignment rules and tie breakers outlined in the Student Assignment Plan. The order of the wait list needs to be respected.
There are few jobs that the school board needs to do every year and one of them is approve the Student Assignment Plan. The Student Assignment Plan can be anything but it must be public and approved by the school board. This is the because the SAP is the way that that tax payer funded services are delivered to the public and as such public oversight is required.
The bottom line is that this practice of artificial enrollment caps, artificial staffing capacity and stilted wait list movements needs to be brought into the daylight and re-examined.
But that's not how enrollment rolls. Waitlists don't move because the system doesn't let waitlists move. I would like to believe that's accidental, but it's getting harder with each passing year of the same problems. With a little flexibility, dozens to hundreds of students could get their preferred choice of school. The last time I looked (spring 2017), you could move 250 to 300 students to their preferred school and every school was still above its budgeted headcount.
I have just requested the data to repeat that analysis for this year. Should be fun.
Thank you for requesting that data. The last analysis you did was brilliant.
Fairmount Parent
I still think much more could be done, though, still within the policy/procedural constraints. For example, if none of the #1s can move, you can still LOOK at what happens if you move some #2s. Maybe that will de-gum the works and allow the #1s to move. The key is to make sure the end result doesn't result in any line-jumping, but if both #1 and #2 make it in during the same shuffle exercise, it does't really matter the order, right?
The current approach is not student- or family-centered. At all.
unclear
The current approach is not student- or family-centered. At all.
Yes, and that is the point that so many families keep raising to the board.
There is this notion downtown that the best way to create "staffing and hiring stability" is to hold the line on the choice system. That is what created this mysterious staffing capacity. Other districts get to set building budgets early in the year and do targeting hiring.
But the simple truth is that enrollment in Seattle is just plain challenging. Seattle will have 110 schools next year. That is 110 places where students can show up. It is virtually impossible to perfectly match students and teachers.
Most districts have less than a dozen places for students and teacher to land. Therefore it is pretty straightforward for other districts to do strategic hiring much earlier in the year.
Seattle has a lot of challenges, in large part because the state funding model is just not designed to support a district with "110 places.' Because of this, Seattle really does need to embrace more flexibility in the process and leverage the choice system.
The changes that have been made in the last few years to reduce flexibility and increase rigidity have made the system adversarial to families, without actually creating the hoped for staffing stability. IMHO, these polices are the direct cause of system wide enrollment decreases.
One hard to miss data point. The first year of the NSAP, there was a serious challenges with split siblings district wide. Right after open enrollment there were hundreds of split siblings in every corner of the district . But the district worked proactively with families and community volunteers and by the end of September there were only 7 split siblings. Two years ago, there was once again over 200 split siblings and there was no serious effort to reunite these families. How can anyone be surprised that split siblings lead to enrollment decreases???
The unfortunate result is that when families leave the district, teachers get displaced. Enrollment needs to be family friendly in order to create staffing stability. It is not an either / or situation.
WSParent