Seattle's alternative schools still a big draw

By Sanjay Bhatt
Seattle Times staff reporter

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The Seattle School District's alternative schools continue to be a popular first or second choice for parents and students, according to a district report on next fall's school assignments.

Letters informing students of their school assignments were sent to their families in the past few weeks.

Overall, the percentage of Seattle Public Schools students granted their first- or second-choice school this year was 87 percent, down from 90 percent last year and from 92 percent five years ago.

About half the students on middle-school waiting lists want to enroll in an alternative school, and first-choice requests for alternative schools surged among elementary students living in the district's South and Southeast areas.

The percentage of students in the Southeast cluster who chose and were assigned to alternative schools rose from 9.4 percent to 12.9 percent.

One top choice, The New School at South Shore in the Rainier Beach neighborhood, has a waiting list of 127 students for pre-kindergarten, kindergarten and first grade, even though the school's future there is uncertain.

Under Seattle's school-choice policy, children not given their first preference are put on a waiting list for that school, district officials say. Starting June 1, families can ask the district to reassign their child to a different school's waiting list, although a child can be on only one waiting list at a time.

The district plans to keep the waiting lists until Oct. 31, after which students must attend their assigned school.

This year the district processed applications for 11,143 students, mainly those entering kindergarten, sixth and ninth grades, from Jan. 15 to Feb. 28. Sixty-one more students applied than did last year, when the district had two separate enrollment windows, one for elementary students in February and another for secondary students in March.

At the elementary level, mandatory assignments — to schools the applicant didn't request — continue to decrease, from 4.8 percent in 2002 to 3.2 percent this year.
 
The percentage of elementary-school applicants whose parents chose to stay within their geographic "cluster" varies, from 60 percent in the north part of the district to 93 percent in the Queen Anne/Magnolia area.

Fewer than 40 percent of applicants, on average, ranked their neighborhood school as their top choice for kindergarten.

At the middle-school level, alternative schools TOPS and Salmon Bay drew more first-choice requests than last year. More than 80 percent of those on waiting lists for sixth-grade assignments have requested Eckstein, Salmon Bay, Washington and TOPS. Eckstein's waiting list is at 187 students, up from 61 last year.

In each geographic cluster, the most-requested middle schools were Washington (Central), Eckstein (Northeast), Whitman (Northwest) and Madison (Southwest). Demand in the Southeast was split between Aki Kurose and Mercer middle schools.

There were 11 percent more students applying for McClure this year, the highest percentage increase among the middle schools.

At the high-school level, 67 percent of applicants ranked as their first choice one of five schools — Ballard, Franklin, Garfield, Roosevelt or Nathan Hale. Nearly 400 high-school applicants are requesting transfers, which officials say is about the same as last year.

Sanjay Bhatt: 206-464-3103 or sbhatt@seattletimes.com

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