More students don't get their top pick of Seattle school
The Queen Anne family was dismayed to learn recently that she had been assigned, instead, to Cleveland High, a South End school that has been struggling to attract students.
Minehan and about 50 other parents from the affluent Queen Anne and Magnolia areas angrily confronted School Board member Dick Lilly at a Tuesday night forum. They vowed to transfer to neighboring school districts and faulted Seattle Public Schools for not creating more seats for high-school students in their neighborhoods.
Their experience highlights the down side of Seattle's 6-year-old student-choice assignment plan and the uneven quality of schools throughout the district. The demand for a few schools outstrips their capacity, while others have rows of empty seats.
When it comes to having real choices, many are thwarted: This year there are 199 students wait-listed at Garfield and 145 at Ballard. Five high schools, including Cleveland, have no waiting list.
"If you had 10 quality high schools, you would not be in the fix you're in right now," parent Sara Olson told Lilly. Later, she said, "It doesn't feel like a choice to these parents. They feel cheated."
Lilly asked the parents to give Cleveland a chance, saying he expects the academic climate there to improve. The school has smaller, more personal academies; next year they will offer information technology; global studies; and health, environment and life science. But most of the Queen Anne-area parents complained that the school doesn't have any Advanced Placement classes for their college-bound children.
District figures paint a stark contrast in success between Cleveland and Ballard, the Minehan family's preferred choice: The share of Cleveland 10th graders passing state reading and math tests is nearly 75 percent and 90 percent lower, respectively, than at Ballard. Cleveland's long-term suspension rate is four to five times higher and its expulsion rate eight to 12 times higher.
And earlier this year, a group of Cleveland students, demanding action, sent the School Board a lengthy list of problems: poor instruction, harassment of African-American students, staff who dismiss students' concerns.
Cleveland, which enrolls about 735 students in a building that could hold 970, has been working hard to improve, said Andrea Bown, president of Cleveland's PTSA. She said she empathizes with North End parents who don't want their kids to go to school so far from home, but insisted that Cleveland is on an upswing, buoyed by new leadership.
Rick Harwood, who became principal this school year, said students, parents and teachers are working to turn things around. One example: The number of suspensions has fallen by half, he said.
Bown, whose daughter is a sophomore, said the PTSA, founded last year, has about 20 active parents.
"I don't discount what's there now," Bown said, "but there's a lot of energy coming into the school now that wants to see Cleveland succeed.
"You can either be part of the problem or part of the solution," she said. "Our parents, teachers and students are part of the solution, and we're going to make Cleveland High School number one!"
At Tuesday's meeting, Queen Anne parent Minehan said of Cleveland, "The biggest concern I have is my daughter is a straight-A honors student. I don't believe they'd give her the kind of rigorous curriculum she needs. I believe it would be putting her future at risk."
For the upcoming 2004-05 school year, about 340 Seattle students were assigned to a school they didn't choose, nearly 20 percent more than last year.
While the limited choices play out most dramatically in the high schools, which draw students from across the city, the same problem occurs in elementary and middle schools. Among middle schools in the Northeast region, for example, Eckstein drew 588 first choices while Hamilton got only 137; in the Southwest region, 321 ranked Madison first, compared with 75 for Denny.
Among sixth graders entering middle schools and ninth graders entering high school, the percentage getting their first or second choices declined to less than 92 percent — but the Queen Anne/Magnolia parents say that districtwide average hides geographical variations. The percentage of their kids getting their first-choice assignment is only about 30 percent, said Minehan's husband, Marko Tubic.
Parents at Tuesday's forum said they wouldn't be in this situation if the district hadn't closed Lincoln and Queen Anne high schools, due to declining enrollment, in 1981.
After Queen Anne and Lincoln were closed, students in the Queen Anne/Magnolia neighborhoods were first bused to Franklin High, then later to West Seattle and most recently to Ingraham. However, as those schools became popular choices, Queen Anne/Magnolia applicants were less likely to get in because they live too far away.
On June 1, families can apply for a reassignment to a school with open seats or change to a different waiting list.
Travis Colton, the district's enrollment planning manager, says there is never any guarantee that a student will get into a specific school, no matter how close the student lives to it.
Sanjay Bhatt: 206-464-3103 or sbhatt@seattletimes.com