Enrollment Trends for Seattle Schools 2025-2026

This report is embedded in the Board agenda for Wednesday's Board meeting. I decided to pull it out as a separate post. It is Item IX on the agenda way at nearly the bottom. 

Enrollment Planning Update. Highlights:

- The district gained 14 students from 2023-2024 and enrollment for this year stands at 49,240 students. That figure is slightly higher than enrollment in 2011-2012. After that year, enrollment climbed steadily to a high of 53,627 in 2019-2020. Of course, we all know what came after that so certainly a drop in enrollment wasn't unexpected. It's just that most of that loss never came back and more people left. 

- From the Choice Application page (5)

-  On average, 10% of SPS families participate in the choice process each year.

 There's a heat map on this page.  Guess where is the most dense for choice? The SE. Nowhere in West Seattle even registers as that dense. Ditto Central and Queen Anne/Magnolia.

 - Over 53% of families choose an Option School, on average during the past five years. 47% of families choose another attendance area school, on average during the past five years. 

That last statement strikes me as very troubling. Nearly half of families don't choose their neighborhood school? Readers, I welcome your thoughts on this one.

As well, page 6 - Summary of School Choice Applications over 10 years (from 2015 on) shows that, over that time, barely 50% of parents get their first choice. That is absolutely different from previous decades. The district used to brag that 90% of parents got their first choice. 

The next page - Small Schools Impact 2025-26 shows that even after waitlist moves, some schools got even smaller. See Sand Point Elementary, McGilvra, Dunlap, Madrona, Sanislo, and Rainier View. 

Page 8 is Current Waitlists. Hazel Wolf K-8 is the most popular, with 148 on their waitlist. It had been projected that enrolled there would be 657; it's going to be 800.

Cleveland STEM High is also getting bigger from 781 projected to 910 enrolled. Ditto Roosevelt.

Hamilton is getting steadily bigger, from project 1052 to 1107. I'd have to check but that's on par with Eckstein. 

Interestingly, Dearborn Park ES makes the list as well.

Page 9 is School Choice and Enrollment Impacts which has several categories in their chart.

- Number of students who do not get choice and do not enroll in SPS. That figure has nearly doubled since 2021. 

- Percentage of students who do not get choice and do not enroll in SPS also climbed this year. 

- Of students who do not enroll, number who were enrolled in prior year.

- Number of option school students who do not receive get in (sic) and do not enroll in SPS. Again nearly double from 2021

- Percent of option school students who do not get choice and do not enroll in SPS.  

The last slide is 2024-2025 Enrollment Analysis Actions. There is nothing there different and it feels stagnant, almost like the district is giving up.


Comments

Anonymous said…
It’s incorrect to say that enrollment will increase with schools with waitlists:

Waitlists are only created when enrollment projections have been filled, and do not move unless someone in the Enrollment Department waves a magic wand and allows them to fill any vacant (previously projected) spots.

As Option Schools will tell you based on first-hand experience for the last several years, waitlist numbers have no bearing on a school’s actual enrollment.
4/22/25, 8:12 PM
Watching said…
What is shocking is that they have 4 steps to improve enrollment, of which half of one is the creation of rigor - the reasons schools exist and the main complaint of parents both inside and outside the district in the enrollment survey. One bullet point involves affordable housing. Sure, but schools can’t control housing. They can control actually teaching children, but that seems like an afterthought.
4/22/25, 9:23 PM
Anonymous said…
My reading was that out of the 10% of families filing a school choice request, 53% want to switch to an option school, 47% want to switch to a different neighborhood school.
4/23/25, 6:42 AM
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