Seattle Schools and 2021-2022 Enrollment

 Earlier this week, I put up the link and info about Enrollment/Budget per the Work Session this week on that topic. Here’s the link and what I had seen in the documentation at that time. I listened into the Enrollment portion of the Work Session yesterday. (I will say that the budget looks pretty bad and they are going to use ESSER money to mitigate.)

( Just to note, I try very hard to get information right. However, for whatever reason, I couldn’t sign onto Teams so I called in. Some of the connections to Board members were not good plus some of them need to remember to ALWAYS be speaking directly into the phone and to speak more slowly. I’m looking at you Directors Harris, Rankin and Rivera Smith.) 

In the PowerPoint, at the end of the Enrollment portion, there are enrollment stats for all schools in the district. It is eye-opening. Some stats:

- The schools with the largest waitlists? Option schools. Salmon Bay K-8 leads the way with 178 on its list. For high schools, Cleveland has 160 on its list. For Option elementary, it’s McDonald with 126.

- For regular schools, the elementary with the largest waitlist is Beacon Hill with 60 followed by 42 at Greenwood. (Historically, Greenwood has not had this kind of waitlist so I find that interesting.) 

- Nearly all the high schools have a waitlist. The regular high school with the most is Roosevelt with 99 students on its waitlist. 

- You can see the numbers dropping or remaining static in several elementaries like Daniel Bagley (which has a new building), Coe, Dunlap, Decatur, Sand Point and Stevens. As was pointed out by staff, the district is now operating a couple of schools under 200 students. While that is not good, I find the dropping enrollments at traditionally solid elementaries to be troubling.

One example came up in the discussion and that was Queen Anne Elementary. That school got created and had a terrific principal who had led the work to its creation. After just a few years, he left (and unhappily so, I had heard). And apparently, QAE never got its numbers back up. That is the power of a great principal to get parents in the door of a school. 

All the Board members were present at the Work Session and Enrollment head Ashley Davies was lead on explaining the PowerPoint. Davies first said that the enrollment for school year 2020-2021 was down “significantly.” She went through the PowerPoint and then asked for questions.

Director Lisa Rivera Smith asked about the district’s projections and where the data came from. Davies cited several sources and then said something curiously blunt (and Davies is a very straightforward person). She said there were more people moving into the city plus the birthrate had gone up. She then said that when these babies grow to five-year olds, “some of them don’t show up” in SPS.

Well, there’s a rather large problem, COVID or no COVID. Why are new parents not enrolling in SPS?

Director Leslie Harris asked if the district had asked other regional districts about their enrollment and it seems many of them have the same drop for the school year. 

Harris also asked - as did Rivera Smith and Director Liza Rankin later - about why there are waitlists at schools that clearly have room. Davies mumbled something but I’m with these directors - it’s pretty weird.

Director Chandra Hampson asked about using the John Marshall building to try to alleviate the overcrowding at Green Lake Elementary and B.F. Day Elementary. The Facilities person said that building was THE interim building for schools being renovated and that it was a size to accommodate a middle school popular and it’s in the near middle of the city. 

Hampson also asked about moving an Option School somewhere else to get to buildings where nearby schools are overflowing. Staff didn’t seem to care for that idea. 

Davies also mentioned that there was this large bulge of middle school students now going into high school and most high schools will remain quite crowded.

She also stated that, with the HCC changes, it could mean changes everywhere as far as enrollment and boundaries.

She said engagement on the HCC changes would start this fall and that they have two years until the changes are fully rolled out but “earlier decisions make for easier implementations.”  The Board thinks that HCC is the reason for all the ills in the district so I’d bet the engagement will be slight and rushed.

Harris mentioned something about some schools are protected from some of the Weighted Student Staffing formula. I don’t know a lot about this issue.