More on Seattle Schools' History of Enrollment

 Kellie LaRue wrote a post about Seattle Schools and Option Schools. In this post, she examines the SPS history of enrollment. It is a long read but it may help parents better understand what is happening today.

"How Many Students Go Into A School?

This is more of a question for philosophy majors than educators. The simple answer is “it depends.”  However, “it depends” is not actionable. So SPS routinely find themselves in a quandary where they make recommendations but never daylight the dependencies.

TL/DR version
The actual answer is long, pedantic and quite bureaucratic. The short answer is over -implified and lacks nuance. Here is the shortest answer that I can give.

The majority of school districts have a handful of elementary schools, 1-2 middle schools and 1-2 high schools and maybe 1-2 unique programs. That’s it. It is a straightforward process to assign students.

Seattle Public Schools is a NETWORK of schools, with more than 100 school buildings and programs and to understand anything about SPS enrollment, you must consider the network effects of any decision.

Most parents have an intuitive sense of the network effect. However, SPS behaves as they are just a jumbo-sized school district and routinely disregard the impact of the network effects.


Onto the longer history, more details and an explanation of why the “staffing capacity” policy causes enrollment decline.


The Pedantic Mechanics

 How many students fit into a school is a function of:

  • The physical facilities 
  • Program placement
  • Enrollment policies 
  • Student-Teacher ratios aka class sizes

The class size is rather obvious. The State of Washington could suddenly decided that a 16:1 funding ratio is a great idea. It would be impossible to put students into buildings without adding hundreds of new facilities. Likewise, if the funding ratio was suddenly 50:1 there would be hundreds of empty buildings.

Likewise, buildings are fairly fixed. They have a certain number of rooms. You can add portables and remodel spaces.  That last process takes time and is fairly transparent as it requires capital dollars to change the facility.


The Old Assignment Plan    

Once upon a time, most families knew exactly what a school building’s “official” capacity was.  

The old assignment plan was a 100% choice plan. This mean that all families needed to fill out an application to be placed at a school. Once the school was full, students were placed on a waitlist and assigned to another school. If none of the schools on your list had “space,” you would be assigned to a school that had space. 
Families were painfully aware of the magic enrollment number. This was long ago so I don’t remember all of the magic numbers, but they were incredibly transparent.

For example, Eckstein Middle School was always the school with the longest waitlist. This was both because it was a “good school” and because it was the closest geographic school for almost 1300 students.

Under the choice plan, general enrollment was set at 1050, so that there were 350 students in each grade level, for a total of 1050.  And student 1051 went on the waitlist.  That made for a very optimal and stable learning environment.

These numbers were so stable that if you are able to find enrollment reports from the early 00’s you will see incredible year-over-year consistency across enrollment for any school with a waitlist. 

The number was the number was the number and downtown would not enroll one student above that number.


The Pesky Network Effect

 The “network of schools” effect is very poorly understood in both Seattle and Washington State. Many large urban schools will routinely use the word network when describing enrollment and schools.

In a 100% choice system with capped enrollment at “full” schools, it is challenging to grow total enrollment.  If you didn’t get into your nearby school because of the enrollment cap, you got assigned another school in the network.  For example, in the last few years of the choice assignment plan, only Rainier Beach High School technically had “space” and any family who moved to Seattle over the summer, would be assigned to Rainier Beach, even if that family lived at the northern most point in Seattle. (There were multiple Seattle Times articles about this in the ‘00s.)

There was a lot frustration when families were unable to access either a nearby school or a choice school. This frustration will generally cause families that are unable to access either a nearby school or their desired school, to “make other choices.” Hence the challenge with growing total enrollment.

This frustration is what led Queen Anne/Magnolia families to sue the district and caused the pressure to adopt the current attendance area-based assignment plan with a guaranteed nearby school and the option of an alternative school within your region.

You could see the beginnings of capacity-related strain in the early 2000’s as overall growth in Seattle exploded.  By the year 2000, there were already a handful of school deserts for elementary schools and every year the board would vote on “exceptions” to the Student Assignment Plan.

For example, families who lived in Portage Bay were “guaranteed” an assignment at Bryant Elementary as there was no closer school.  TOPS was the first option school that set aside seats for families in Lake Union as there was no other nearby schools with space. There were dozens of these small exceptions for areas that covered very small micro-neighborhoods and a handful of families.

The Board abandoned making these exceptions in the process of trying to close schools. By the ’06-07 round of closures, the underlying pressure on enrollment was extreme. This is why closing schools was so much harder in reality, than it was on paper. 
The simple truth is that by the ’06-07 closure rounds, portables were being placed at the multiple elementary schools to handle growth. And yet, downtown administration was still myopically focused on closing schools. By the 08-09 closure round, there were even more portable classrooms and the historic enrollment caps were removed.  

But again, since nobody in administration understood the network effect, school closures were the name of the game and evidence of growth was casually dismissed by staff and the board in favor of “declining enrollment projections.”

(That was exhausting to write and even more exhausting to live through.)


Enter the New Student Assignment Plan (2010)

 If you have slogged through this so far, here is a quick recap:

During a decade of closing schools, Seattle has explosive growth.
Deflected enrollment due to capacity limits.
A decade of enrollment projection that predict nothing by declining enrollment.

So in walks the New Student Assignment Plan. And bam! Explosive growth in schools.

SPS needed to open 5 new schools just to draw boundaries for the NSAP and in year one, dozens of schools are dramatically over-enrolled.

For those following closely, I bet you can easily guess the new approximate enrollment. The new enrollment looked almost exactly like the old enrollment plus the wait list.

For example, Eckstein Middle School had that lovely historic number of 1050, plus a 200-300 student waitlist. The school swiftly had over 1200 students.

Why? Because the waitlist was the real world indicator of the demand for a school. And once there was a “guaranteed” for enrollment and the artificial caps were removed, enrollment exploded. 

Enrollment grew so much that just 4 years later, we had “Growth Boundaries” and multiple brand-new schools opening.


Quick Summary

 Artificial enrollment caps cause enrollment to decline. Removing those caps, causes enrollment to grow. And nobody in enrollment understands the network effect, so the reality that is obvious to the majority of families is lost on those at JSCEE.

Back to the point.


The Mysterious Staffing Capacity Origins

By about 2016, we see multiple years of record growth. Almost everyone downtown who understood the old plan has retired or moved on. Larry Nyland is the new superintendent.

All the enrollment growth has brought a lot of new money with it and downtown headcount and special projects has grown with it. Traci Libros, the long-time head of enrollment, has departed and there are a lot of new people.



The best way I can describe it is that all these folks looked at all the weird and anomalous compromise in the NSAP and said “What???”  These were folks with backgrounds in small districts that really thought Seattle was a just a larger version of what they knew and all these “options” were confusing.

As is the way of things, every time “something” didn’t work, it was blamed on choices and options, rather than inability of anyone on the payroll to project enrollment accurately. So we get this new policy called “staffing capacity”.



Street Level Bureaucracy

It is important to note that all of the big changes I have described were voted on by the Board. The changes were vetted with multiple community meetings. Every one of those changes was made with a lot of daylight. But the change to staffing capacity was done in the dark.

Policies are generally made in a glass house somewhere and those policies need to be enacted by the folks who “do the work”. This term is generally used to describe how nurses will implement hospital policies or how police officers will implement police policies. In education, it generally means how teachers will enact a policy in their classroom.

Street-level bureaucracy can also describe the process where the budget folks implement board policies.

Nobody ever voted on “Staffing Capacity”. This was a decision made entirely by staff.


What is Staffing Capacity?
Staffing Capacity is a word invented by staff to describe the process by which those at JSCEE refuse to assign students to their chosen school, even when there is more than enough physical space for that student to attend. This is implemented by refusing to assign staff to a building and then claiming there is no “capacity” for the student because there is no teacher.

Cleveland High School was the first school to really feel this effect.

When Cleveland High School was converted to an option high school, the intention was to hopefully get the FRL percentage to shift from 90% to 60%. Rainier Beach was 90% FRL and Franklin was 60% FRL. The south end of town is an incredibly diverse community. Many students were going out of district to Mercer Island and Bellevue and the hope was that the STEM-focused option school would encourage more middle class families to give it a try. It was working for quite a while and Cleveland’s enrollment grew.

Someone decided this was not fair and Cleveland was siphoning students from Rainier Beach. So capacity was limited at Cleveland to support Rainier Beach. This was next applied to The Center School. It was decided that The Center School was also siphoning students from Rainier Beach and the waitlist at Center School stopped moving as soon as a student from the Rainier Beach area would have been admitted.

I testified about this practice multiple times in 2018 and staff vigorously asserted that it was necessary to limit enrollment at option schools to protect Rainier Beach. This policy was eventually expanded to cover all option schools.



History Repeats Itself

 
There isn’t anyone on district staff who understand that artificial enrollment caps cause families to make other choices that will eventually see all enrollment to decline.

This problem might have been daylighted years ago, but the pandemic happened, and this policy gained strength.  

So here we are. 

We have a district that artificially caps enrollment at schools that would otherwise be full, by simply refusing to assign either staff or students to that building. This has been going on for a few years. 

So now those option schools have had their enrollment “strangled” and are on the chopping block.

Comments

Unknown said…
I am bothered by the framing of this piece. First, Seattle is a district. I've never heard of a network of schools outside of the charter space, so I'm not sure why you are framing this as a dichotomy between districts and networks. Secondly, I don't know why you scoped this history where you did. Growing up in Seattle in the 1980s, I had to bus across town, and I had friends who had to bus across town. There was no choice there. The district said " you will go to the school because of equality, " and we went.

I am not a fan of the option schools because they support dream hoarding and networks of white families who play little social games to make sure their cliques stay together through k-8.

The old era of Seattle being a "superstar City "is done, and we are broke. It is time for some belt tightening and good old fashioned hard work if we want to get back to the glory days of the 2000s and 2010s.

SP
One, we are - thank goodness - not living in the '80s anymore.

Two, I find your second paragraph pretty funny. Who are you quoting here, Chandra Hampson? Just ridiculous. You do know Option School are indeed open to all? They are.

kellie said…
This piece was already crazy long. I didn’t cover a whole lot of things including the closures of the 80’s or the bussing era. The choice plan started about 1992. I had reviewed all the enrollment materials from the early 90’s and that plan was in place until the NSAP

You don’t have to like my framing. You don’t have to like options or option schools.
Anonymous said…
SP - “dream hoarding?” At SPS? LOL. People are so mad with class envy they are willing to sacrifice communities of medically fragile kids at Greenlake or TOPPs and language programs for MLLs at the alter of “sameness” - this isn’t “equity.” Direct your ire at the families who have disinvested from public schools or the billionaires shooting down progressive tax plans. There’s no fixing “broke” with this super-sized cookie cutter schools plan. Ask Title I schools if they want to go back to busing. They don’t. Schools are communities, and learners are not cogs.

GTHO
Anonymous said…
I see this "dream hoarding" comment and I'm just flabbergasted. People want option schools. Wealthy families (often white) who aren't given options, well, they move to private schools, or other districts, or homeschool or any number of options because they have the resources to do so. Economically disadvantaged families (often the very minorities who are furthest from educational justice) also want options. By eliminating option schools, you don't take away options from the wealthy. You take away options from the disadvantaged who DEPEND on public schools.

If people who use comments like "Dream Hoarding" really wanted to do something, they'd think about things like giving people who qualify for free school launch first choice for Option Schools (Say a 3 month head start, with staff explaining all the opportunities in one on one counseling sessions), and free transportation to any option school the economically disadvantaged chose. You'd have people thinking about Highly Capable programs, and how to get the top X % of economically disadvantaged populations (you can't legally do it on the basis of race, but economic circumstance can be a used as a pretty good proxy) and guaranteeing them in a HC program, with tutoring support. A smart city like Seattle would be awash in volunteers and corporate funds for approaches like that. This is not a poor city. This is not a poor state. We have liberal/progressive government at *every* level of government, and the voters *never* turn down levys for education.
Stop talking about no money. Stop talking about "dream hoarding". Actually do something for the people who depend on public schools.

Finally, when girls are under-represented in things like STEM, what do we do? We come up with Girls in STEM programs. We don't get rid of STEM. If we have option programs where people furthest from educational justice are under-represented, what do we do? Come up with Furthest from Justice in Option Schools expansion programs? No, we get rid of Options. Sorry, but it all sounds absurd, and ironically, more than a bit selfish. Why are the two approaches different? I think we know the answer to that.
Anonymous said…
Kellie

Thanks for your write up. It’s helpful to get historical reference and broad themed approaches to thinking about the district. It is somewhat unique, and for good or for bad, it’s a huge lift to completely upend how a system works with long term implications.

Institutions cast very long shadows on internal workplace culture and users of the services. I heard community grumbling about SPS before I even got pregnant. Even if neighborhood schools (which btw are crazy racially and socioeconomically segregated) are more ideologically “pure,” they function poorly and will deteriorate financially under Jones’ plan - and will take generations to recover, if at all.
Seattle is Lost said…
@SP You are wrong. Seattle IS a superstar city that helped to lead us out of Covid. Seattle's researchers developed a Covid test that discovered the first case of Covid in the United States. Fred Hutch led the massive effort to track Covid's genome sequences, track variants through massive computing power, and predicted Covid rates. Seattle has a lot of talent and the amount of BioMedical research being done in this town is both staggering and inspiring.

It is Seattle Public School's job to educate future scientists to help figure out the world's most challenging problems. Eliminating advanced math opportunities, STEM etc. isn't going to help create the talent that we need.

In regards to "dream hoarding", you might want to consider Option schools that not only serve the deaf and hard of hearing, but Seattle's Option Schools serve troubled youth with addiction issues.
Anonymous said…
From 7:32pm Anonymous, I like your ideas for increasing access to Option schools for those who aren't on Facebook and Next Door, sharing the inside track on how to get into Option Schools like Salmon Bay and Blaine. Unfortunately, that hasn't happened historically.

All of this "but we could do this other thing" is bunk. Our citizens haven't been doing those things, so they aren't going to start now and sustain it.

GTHO, I want to call out your framing that equates TOPS, which is a true, old-school alternative school that also houses specialized programs and is next to the freeway, with Blaine, which exists to keep Magnolia kids out of Whitman. Conflating the two serves the Blaine crowd.

SP
kellie said…
I have been following these topics long enough to have seen lots of shifts in how "equity" is defined. In the 90's equity was defined as "100% choice with door to door bussing." Well, it didn't take long for bussing costs to skyrocket so there was a hug push back on this definition.

And back and forth the battle between the idealists and the pragmatists go. What the idealists and pragmatists have to say does shift over time but the basics are always the same.

There is the current ideal of a school building that is racially, socio-economically, advanced learning and sped diverse, while also being in the walking neighborhood with perfect allocations so that there are just the right balance in every grade level.

And then the pragmatists that say that choice matters because the budget is set by total enrollment and if you piss off enough parents, you could very well endanger the levy funding that makes so much possible.

Both components of this conversation have important points. And when you make something that is a bit balanced, you tend to piss off everyone.

I simply don't believe a lot of the rhetoric.
Anonymous said…
It is interesting that the Lakeside School took over a location in an older building in lower Queen Anne. They call it their Downtown School. It is a small space, used by the Center School before it moved to Seattle Center. These older buildings can certainly be useful for private schools. If SPS had more imagination (and money) it could use their older schools for expanded programs. But option schools do not pass their equity tests. What a waste.
District watcher

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