We’ve heard that the John Stanford International School applicants have gotten their letters, and it’s an ever shrinking needle eye to fit through.
The award-winning JSIS (4057 5th Ave. NE), for those who don’t know (and we can only imagine that set of people are entirely without children), is the K – 5 elementary school sitting next to I-5 as you cross the ship canal bridge. It’s also one of top-rated schools in the city (and the state), partially because it’s a language immersion school: children enroll in kindergarten and immediately start taking classes in both English and either Japanese or Spanish.
JSIS is a magnet-school, bussing in lottery-winning kids from around the city, but you’re guaranteed entrance if you’ve got an older sibling who attends (a growing population, given the school only opened in 2001) or if you live within a certain radius of the school itself…and it sounds like that radius is shrinking.
We were told that last year, the cut-off for guaranteed entrance extended to one side of Bagley Ave N below 45th, but not the other (roughly 1/2 mile). This year, it seems it may have shrunk further, perhaps due to the growing number of siblings (~25 out of a student population of roughly 375).
It may also be the high number of kindergarten age children living within 5 – 6 blocks of the school, either born here or moved here. We know that a few years ago, there was a dust-up when it was discovered that some families had agreed to pay the utility bills of Wallingford residents so the families could show “proof of residency” and skip the lottery. It seems insane, until you consider that annual tuition for a kindergartener entering the Evergreen School is $16,600! As a public school, the JSIS is free. Figure saving 16 big annually, and even Wallingford property costs start to seem reasonable.
Hey, we’ve got an idea. Let’s raise the quality of all the schools in Seattle so parents don’t have to claw their chidlren’s way into one of the few good ones.
And no, you can’t rent our basement as your “second residence”.
It’s a K-5.
Corrected, thanks.
So what are the new boundaries? We are up near 45th and Latona with a newborn and are very interested in sending kids there. It is nice to hear that more children are populating the area near the school.
Here, here! I am all for stepping in and raising the quality of SPS, which is one of the reasons why my son goes to B.F. Day and NOT JSIS. B.F. Day is ALSO a neighborhood school…for those of us living on the WEST side of Wallingford Avenue (in our case ON Wallingford Avenue). B.F. Day has received a bum rap in the past, overshadowed by the almighty JSIS, but it’s a perfectly fine school, minus the total immersion language component. My husband and I are active board members of the PTSA and there are many wonderful Wallingford parents who pitch-in to bring about programs that help enrich our childrens’ education.
With the SPS budget shortfall, you can bet all of our schools will feel the impact in one way or another. That’s why it’s critical as parents to do what we can to help.
AND it is a bummer that it is my reference school (we live .4 mi away). I wanted my kids to go to the neighborhood school with the other neighborhood kids, but Stanford is SO specialized and a bad fit for my son that we opted for Greenlake – just got our letter this week.
But damn, if I could have sold my rights to the space – we would have been shoo-ins this year – I could have made BANK!
Stanford should be an Alternative school like TOPS – give Wallingford a REGULAR good school, already!
Note that John Stanford parents voluntarily pay for the additional staff (instructional assistants) that are necessary to make the Japanese and Spanish immersion classrooms effective, and keep the student to teacher ratio low. So this public school is not exactly “free.” The school district does not fund those additional teachers.
I think the hope for many parents who do believe in foreign language immersion education is that some day it will not be seen as “alternative” but as a normal and necessary part of a basic education for children in the U.S. As in other countries where the choice is not whether you learn a foreign language, but which one(s)?
JSIS is NOT a magnet school. The spots are being taken up by siblings first, then neighborhood kids by distance second.
In the new assignment plan, the earlier draft had an English-only option to be added at JSIS, but now it says , “John Stanford International School (JSIS) will be an attendance area school offering language immersion in Spanish and Japanese. This will be a whole school program (all students participating in the language immersion program). Because there will not be an “English” path, JSIS will be linked with another attendance area school. If a family does not want the language immersion program, or if the language immersion program is not appropriate for a student, the linked school would serve as the attendance area school.”
Though JSIS started up as such in 2001, it was considered a continuation of the Latona School, so those of us lucky enough to have kids already there got to continue.
My third son was in kindergarten for the last year of Latona. The first immersion class was scheduled to be the class after his, but 100% of the families in his class supported starting immersion with his first-grade class. It was a great decision!
He and his sister (just finishing 5th grade) have got a great education there. The international education continues at Hamilton, but it peters out after that; there’s no international nor immersion program in any SPS high school.
Partly due to the popularity of JSIS, SPS has opened up a couple of other international schools: Beacon Hill (with Spanish and Mandarin immersion), and Concord (with Spanish immersion).