Seattle School Board turns its attention to middle-class families

Susan Chang is trying to decide where to send her 5-year-old son to kindergarten.

She'd like him to enjoy learning, with what she considers standard elementary-school fare: foreign language, art, music, P.E., maybe a field trip or two.

She'd like to visit some of the public schools in her Capitol Hill neighborhood, but they aren't open for tours until next year. She called the Seattle School District to get a list of elementary schools that teach Mandarin, but they couldn't provide one.

"When I hear all these stories in the media and it's always about how we're going to close the achievement gap, it really worries me that my child is not going to get what he needs out of Seattle Public Schools," she said. "I get the sense it's all, 'Let's do what we can to score high on the WASL,' and that, to me, is scary."

Like many middle-class parents in Seattle, Chang feels like the public-school system doesn't offer enough predictability or consistent quality. Now she's taking private-school tours and planning to put down a deposit while she waits to see which public school her son gets into.

In recent years, the Seattle district has focused on improving underserved students' scores on standardized tests and closing what's known as the academic-achievement gap between whites and ethnic minorities. Now, a newly elected School Board majority appears to be expanding its focus to the city's middle-class families and their concerns: program placement, choice, consistency and predictability.

Each year for nearly two decades, about 20 to 25 percent of Seattle's school-age children have enrolled in private schools.

Each student who does not enroll in public schools costs the district somewhere between $5,000 and $9,000 in state and federal funding. Enrollment in Seattle schools peaked at 99,000 students in 1962, and, despite some fluctuation over the years, has steadily declined. This year's enrollment of 45,276 is 400 students fewer than last year's.

In January, the School Board will resume work on a new student-assignment plan. The board plans to guarantee students a space in a school near their home, which will improve predictability in the district but is certain to spark conflict.

This spring, the district will announce changes based upon external audits of its gifted and special-education programs. Middle- and upper-class parents who have helped build those programs have already begun weighing in.

New board, new focus

Four new School Board members elected by a large margin in November campaigned on promises to make all children a priority — not just children struggling to pass the WASL.

"We're here to serve all children, and so certainly continuing focus on the achievement gap is absolutely appropriate and an imperative," said board member Sherry Carr, who replaced Darlene Flynn in her Green Lake-area district. "But it's also appropriate that we address some of the other issues that have kind of been left unaddressed for a number of years."

The previous School Board majority was intensely focused on disadvantaged students, and members worked especially hard to break down what they called "institutional" barriers to those students' success in school. Concerned that the district's tiniest, most neglected schools didn't have enough resources, they voted to close seven district buildings and put the savings back into classrooms. They passed a strategic plan that pledged to "recognize the impacts of institutional racism on student success" and sought a superintendent who could address those concerns.

The rhetoric changed during this fall's School Board campaigns. Harium Martin-Morris, who won the District 3 seat, and Peter Maier — who won the race for District 1 and raised the most of any School Board candidate in history — said the achievement gap is really about class, not race.

James Kelly, the president of the Urban League of Metropolitan Seattle, calls that "a cop-out."

Kelly said he looks forward to working with the new board, but the record-setting campaign contributions that helped sweep them into office give him pause about where their loyalties lie.

"If you start talking about, 'We want to talk about the middle class,' to me, you just resurrect those polarizing arguments and not focus on high-quality, rigorous, challenging programs that are available to all students," he said. "It's a slap in the face to people of color, because it's like people are saying this previous board was obsessed with the achievement gap, which I don't think was the case at all. I think they were trying to achieve equity."

The district's first priority should be to make sure all schools have a bare minimum of resources, said Martin-Morris. After that, there probably are some "gaps" to fill, he said.

"I understand that people have concerns about the middle getting squashed because we spend so much time on the kids who are underprepared, and the gifted kids. The kids in the middle, you know, no one talks about them," he said. "We need to be making ourselves attractive to people so we don't suffer the consequences of falling enrollment."

All families could benefit from some of the things the board is considering, said School Board member Michael DeBell. For example, the board is looking for ways to add more Montessori programs and replicate foreign-language-immersion programs like the one at John Stanford International School.

"Market-share issue"

At the new board's first meeting at the beginning of December, DeBell said the district needs to try to win back some students who are enrolled in private school.

"I don't think the district has really taken seriously the idea that we need to compete with private schools," he said in an interview. "I would like to think that we can continue to offer music, art, physical exercise and those kind of things at every school and still raise WASL scores."

Superintendent Maria Goodloe-Johnson said improving the quality and rigor at schools may draw more families back, but that's not her focus.

"How about, let's provide the best possible instruction for the kids who are here?" she said. "Part of the market-share issue is about parents not believing that the quality currently exists."

Many of the parents who enrolled their kids in private school did so because the district simply couldn't fulfill their wish lists.

North End parent Melissa Westbrook, whose kids attend public schools, said that while some parents choose private school for religious reasons or for status or prestige, others are seeking smaller class sizes or access to gifted programs.

Years ago, Cassie Fotheringham, a Queen Anne mother of three, enrolled her kids in a private school after seeing a teacher at her local elementary school using a whistle to get kids' attention.

Today, her oldest son is enrolled at Ingraham High School. But her 14-year-old twins chose private high schools because they needed a tighter-knit community and more teacher support than they felt public school offered. She admits she asks a lot, and sometimes she wonders whether she should "back off a little bit" and demand less.

"But I don't know," she said. "It's really hard when it comes to the kids, and education is way up there as one of my top-priority things."

Emily Heffter: 206-464-8246 or eheffter@seattletimes.com