Seattle Schools Bows to Parent Demand and Lifts Waitlists

 From KUOW (bold mine):

“We heard our community, and we’re supporting their wants,” said Faauu Manu, the district’s director of enrollment planning and services. “At the same time, we’re trying to really balance the rest of the schools and making sure that they have the resources they need.”

In an interview last week, Marni Campbell, who oversees school operations, enrollment, and admissions, acknowledged the district has “more work to do” in finding the right balance between stability and choice in its enrollment processes.

For now, as a short-term solution, enrollment officials are focused on moving as many students as possible off the waitlists at 10 of the district’s highest-demand option and neighborhood schools. Those include Asa Mercer International Middle, Hazel Wolf K-8, Salmon Bay K-8, and Roosevelt and Cleveland high schools, among others.

So far, Campbell says the district has offered more than 2,500 students seats in the school of their choice this year, through the choice program. The district will continue to offer some families spots at option schools through Aug. 31, but Campbell noted most waitlist movement will have occurred by the end of June.

 

How we got here

As part of the district’s school choice program, every student is guaranteed a spot at their neighborhood school. But families can apply to switch schools — to a different neighborhood school or a school with specialized learning programs.

If families don't get their choice school, they can join a waitlist.

But parents say those waitlists have not moved in recent years, even though there was physical space in many schools. That’s the basis of a formal complaint filed to the district ombudsperson in December by the Seattle Student Options Coalition, a group of parents and caregivers from 11 option schools.

The group accused district leaders of intentionally starving enrollment — which dictates how SPS allocates teachers, staff, programming, and other resources — leading to staff reductions that undermine the district’s goal of “advancing the academic success of students furthest from educational justice.”

New data shared with the school board at that meeting found that, of the more than 2,700 students who didn’t make it into their first-choice school for the 2024-25 year, about or 20% of them (450 total) either left or never enrolled in the district afterward.

In an op-ed in The Urbanist last month, Seattle School Board members Joe Mizrahi and Sarah Clark said the enrollment decline resulted in the loss of $12 million for the district.

“Each closure was estimated to save about $1.5 million per year,” Mizrahi and Clark wrote in the op-ed. “Why were we ever discussing closures when the district knew it was leaving eight times that amount on the table by ignoring families’ choices?” 

 

The Upshot

“We need to start driving and motivating and really improving the health of our district,” Manu said, adding the study “really opened our eyes to resetting and rethinking the way we do our business in general.”

Manu said she sees this moment as an “opportunity” for the district to look at high-demand choice schools and consider how they can bring those qualities to all neighborhood schools.

District enrollment officials use many factors to determine whether they can move students into the school of their choice, including whether there’s space available in the school, as well as the impact it would have on the school the student would be leaving.

Campbell warned families that all this movement will lead to more staff churn than usual this year.

 

Possible Changes

1. Going forward, Campbell said the district will consider bigger policy changes, such as revising the timeline of when families apply to switch schools. The district could start the application process in the fall, rather than in February. But, Campbell said, that has downsides: Some families may not know where they want their child to attend school so early.

2. Another change the district is considering, Campbell said, is its process for assigning staff to schools. The district currently estimates fall enrollment in February every year, then allocates staff based on that — before the choice process ends.

3. Campbell said she’d also like to improve the district’s transportation offerings for students attending option schools.

“We cannot say we’re offering choice if we’re not also committed to say that we’re going to limit barriers — like if families did want to choose a different school, but didn’t have the capacity to get there,” she said. “We need to make sure that it’s an authentic choice for everyone.”

 

Kudos to all parents who advocated and illuminated these problems with Seattle Schools' enrollment. But again, I point out that parents having been talking about these issues for years. 

SPS knew that there were students who wanted a choice school but had no transportation to get there which was a huge inequity. 

The district knew that Option Schools were very popular and yet, did nothing but sit on waitlists. 

I find it interesting that the district said nothing about space at schools which leads me to believe it never was about room for more students. 

This moving of waitlists will definitely show the district which schools are not succeeding in enrollment so it is likely some will make a closure list. Will it be schools that are near the mega-schools that they have built? Will they flail around, offering excuses as to why they would close a relatively okay school near a mega-school rather than a school that has had a steadily declining enrollment?

Boy, does this new superintendent have a lot on their plate.