Attendance area boundary changes, new school openings, building remodels, open houses, school tours, levy ballots–it’s dizzying to think of all the changes taking place within Seattle Public Schools–and Wallingford seems to have hit the mother lode.
So while you’ve still got school on the brain, I’m curious to know which schools your children will attend in Fall 2010. This question goes beyond those entering Kindergarten, so, for example, if your third grader attends B.F. Day or John Stanford this year, and will go there again next year, please select that as your answer in the handy poll below.
I’ve added B.F. Day to the mix because up until last Wednesday, any child living on the west side of Wallingford Avenue, to the Wallingford/Fremont boundary, was assigned to B.F. Day and will remain there until they finish fifth grade. B.F. Day will also serve as the “linked” school for our neighborhood.
I’ve also included the choice of “other” public schools, since some neighborhood kids go to Lowell or Salmon Bay, and likewise for private school. If you like, feel free to anonymously list the name of your child’s “other” school in the comments section, as it would be interesting to note how many children attend schools “beyond the boundaries.”
The results of this little neighborhood sample will provide me with a snapshot of our schools’ attendance patterns as I prepare to write profiles of each neighborhood school in the coming weeks.
A lot of kids in West Wallingford attend Green Lake Elementary. There are 10 kids at our bus stop alone.
Thanks! This is good to know.
Adams Elementary and West Woodland (in Ballard) were also in our cluster. There are several kids from both schools who take the bus to Wallingford Boys & Girls Club after school.
All I can say is that SPS blew it with their choice of principal for McDonald. Alot of families moved to this neighborhood to try to get into JS. Many parents have joined a Mcdonald yahoo group and been very active in collecting and delivering info about parents wants to SPS only to be shut down. I know many people want Immersion or international program and even if we don’t all agree on that we do all agree that we do not want a traditional program run by a mediocre principal. I will be doing everything I can to get my kid into a different school!
Seattle Country Day School.
Garfield High School
Interesting to see that almost 25% of Wallingford kids are going to private school!
There are a lot of good private options in or close to our neighborhood… Meridian, UCDS, St. Bens, SCDS. And, right or wrong, a lot of parents I know were not too thrilled about BF Day and Greenlake. So if you didn’t live close enough to JSIS, many people were looking for other public options (West Woodland, TOPS, Salmon Bay) or going private.
You can see the number of first choices for each school by parents during open enrollement for past years here (page 3)http://www.seattleschools.org/area/eso/OntimeAnalysis_2009-10_Short.pdf
I hope the school district listens to parents and puts an international school at McDonald. Otherwise we will likely lose more neighborhood parents to other options.
Our kids are at The Meridian School and it’s been a great fit for our family. We were at a public school for one miserable year (didn’t get in to our first choice SPS, stuck at one with a terrible K teacher) and reluctantly switched to private. Expensive but worth it.
Many families do pick SPS over private schools. We chose to send our child to a public school in the NW cluster and would have sent her to any one of the schools in the NW cluster over the private schools that are in our neighborhood. We did not think it was worth it to pay money for schools such as St. Benedicts or Meridian School when there are so many good schools in the NW cluster (including B.F. Day and Green Lake). While some families like our neighborhood private schools, I have talked to families who have not been happy with them and who went back to SPS.
St. Benedict!
St. Benedict School hands down!
One at Hamilton Middle School, Two at John Stanford Int’l.
Bertschi School.
Lowell is a great fit for our son. Allows him to be a kid while working at higher level academics. He was at TOPS for 2 years and it was great in every way except academically – diversity, excited parents and students, wonderful community, great facilities. If it had offered any advanced learning opportunities or spectrum-type programs we would have stayed.
I’m considering Stanford, but am concerned about math and science in the immersion language – curious to hear how this has worked for others. I was especially concerned to hear that the Everyday Math curriculum, which is already questionable, was translated into Japanese by teachers at the school. Don’t mean anything against the teachers, I’m just not sure if it would be possible to translate the goofy concepts in Everyday Math into a different culture/language – we have trouble translating them from Everyday Math lingo into regular/understandable math concepts (we’ve been through 3 years of Everyday Math with our son). If on the other hand, the Japanese teachers just chucked Everyday Math and taught reasonable regular math that would be great!
St. Benedict School has been the best school for our family; outstanding teachers (more than 70% of them have advanced degrees!) with low teacher turnover, active and involved parents, one of the only public or private schools that still teaches art, PE, music AND language on a weekly basis. The best thing is that my kids are being taught morals, values, ethics through service projects–they get the ‘big picture’ and want to do what they can to make the world a better place. Love, love St. Ben’s school!
We know many people who have left Greenlake Elementary to attend St. Bens.
I think it’s disengenous to say that many people “pick” Seattle Public schools over Private. That’s similar to saying “I choose for the City of Seattle to provide my tap water instead of buying bottled water at Whole Foods.”
It’s the default and everyone pays for it.
Many people send their kids to SPS because they simply can’t afford the private school option. The School District can bank on that fact and they have no incentive to make improvements.
For the person concerned with teaching math/science in a foreign language:
I have two kids in japanese immersion at John Stanford (actually, one is now a 6th grader at Hamilton). Math and Science in the immersion language have not been an issue at all. My kids do quite well. Go take the school tour in March to find out more.
uhm… to follow up on what rosa said, actually, you are right, parents do not necessarily ‘pick’ sps – some like us who could and would pay the $14K tuition applied and got rejected from private schools (somehow, despite the bad economy, there were more K applications than every before – 90 for 17 spots at Seattle Country Day School, for example). so, for all those folks who seem to think getting your child into a private school is no problem, it is not exactly like that… this is just an fyi…