Open Enrollment for choosing a school in Seattle Public Schools closes on March 6th, and school tours wrapped up last week. My family is choosing a middle school for our daughter. We toured Hamilton, where my son went, Hazel Wolf K-8 (formely Jane Addams), Licton Springs K-8 (formerly Pinehurst), and Lake Washington Girls’ Middle School (private).
Lake Washington Girls’ Middle School had the best presentation- they had all the girls in the school either give tours or get up during the presentation and do show and tell for the range of stuff they do in the school. The public school presentations were joyless in comparison and sounded more like they were pitching to the Gates Foundation instead of to neighbors with 11 year olds.
All the schools offer variations on the trendy STEM / STEAM / E-STEM project based learning scheme. I’ll leave Lake Washington Girls Middle School out of the rest of this article as it’s in Capitol Hill and not part of the open enrollment decision, but the presentation alone helped justify the big private school $$$.
In terms of location, Hamilton is smack in the middle of Wallingford and is everybody’s default school. Salmon Bay is the K-8 alternative in our transportation zone so you get bus service, even though it is located in Ballard. Hazel Wolf and Licton springs are in our area for now because their buildings are being renovated, but Hazel Wolf relocates from Green Lake to the Northgate area after next year and Licton Springs relocates from Lincoln to north of Green Lake the year after that. Here’s a link to transportation zones:
http://www.seattleschools.org/modules/cms/pages.phtml?pageid=197023
Here’s the striking differences in terms of size and makeup of the student body in each school:
| Demographics | Licton Springs | Hazel Wolf | Salmon Bay | Hamilton |
| Students in grades 6, 7, 8 | 66 | 193 | 374 | 974 |
| Average class size | 21 | 24 | 27 | 30 |
| Demographics- White | 52% | 55% | 78% | 71% |
| Demographics- Free / Reduced Lunch | 53% | 36% | 11% | 11% |
| Exceeding typical growth- Reading | 58% | 57% | 52% | 55% |
| Exceeding typical growth- Math | 70% | 63% | 45% | 61% |
And for those that like data, here some interesting numbers from the teacher, parent, and student surveys (if you follow the link, Hazel Wolf is listed as Jane Addams, and Licton Springs is listed as Pinehurst):
| 2013 to 2014 staff survey results | Licton Springs | Hazel Wolf | Salmon Bay | Hamilton |
| Teachers- Healthy community | 97.10% | 92.70% | 87.90% | 85.00% |
| Teachers- School Safety | 88.30% | 91.40% | 86.50% | 74.30% |
| Teachers- Learning environment | 89.20% | 89.20% | 92.60% | 85.60% |
| Teachers- School Professional Community | 81.90% | 77.10% | 48.90% | 53.90% |
| Teachers- Helping kids that struggle (MTSS) | 79.60% | 74.00% | 48.20% | 55.10% |
| Teacher Survey Average | 87.22% | 84.88% | 72.82% | 70.78% |
| Family- Healthy community | 91.40% | 86.90% | 88.00% | 76.70% |
| Family- School Effectiveness | 87.50% | 77.30% | 64.70% | 72.50% |
| Family- School-Family Leadership Opportunities | 71.90% | 68.90% | 65.50% | 48.80% |
| Family- School-Family Partnerships | 82.10% | 73.60% | 62.40% | 64.50% |
| Family- Welcoming/Culturally Responsive | 81.00% | 72.10% | 71.20% | 58.20% |
| Family Survey Average | 82.78% | 75.76% | 70.36% | 64.14% |
| Students- Healthy community | 67.30% | 75.90% | 69.80% | |
| Students- Belonging and Identity | 72.70% | 73.90% | 75.80% | |
| Students- Learning Environment | 45.80% | 49.50% | 58.50% | |
| Student Survey Average | 61.93% | 66.43% | 68.03% | |
| Net Average | 85.00% | 80.32% | 71.59% | 67.46% |
Hamilton is huge and offers a great diversity of curriculum, particularly in music and language (Spanish and Japanese). We know it from our son’s experience, and it’s a good place for a kid to be if they are able to manage their time and pursue all the opportunities the school offers. It’s a bad place to be if your child is struggling or might get lost in the shuffle, as the school has undergone a ton of changes in curriculum and administration over the last few years and at this point it’s really just a collection of some great teachers and some bad teachers, not a cohesive operation.
In terms of the K-8 Schools, Hazel Wolf looked best to us. They have a very good and stable administration, diversity, and seem to have great results from their students. While smaller and alternative, Hazel Wolf is still traditional in the sense that they focus on fundamentals and science in particular. All the survey data for their school is also solid.
Salmon Bay was well written up here in Wallyhood a couple years back and focuses on hands on learning. It’s a very desirable school in terms of everyone wanting to be there, but has had administrative turnover and seems to struggle with math and community satisfaction. Licton Springs is just too small for us and doesn’t offer curriculum choices like a foreign language.
Anyhow, that’s our wrap up. Our likely sort given our child is Hazel Wolf, then Salmon Bay, then Hamilton. Anyone else going through the same choices and have something to share?
This is awesome! I wish I’d read a review like this before our son went to Hamilton (which turned out to be a poor fit). Now we have gone down the private school route, but good to be reminded of the public school options. Any parents with kids at Hazel Wolf, Salmon Bay, or Lichton Springs, who can share their experience?
My 8th grader spent a year at Hamilton before we switched to Hazel Wolf. It was a wonderful decision. The K-8 is a great way to weather the storm of middle school, there is such a calming presence with having younger students around. And the small classes and committed faculty have made it feel like a private school environment. The school’s diversity is also a huge plus. The interim location is nice and convenient to Wallingford. If there is a way to make the transition to the Pinehurst location work for you, I’d strongly recommend it.
Thanks for the great post! We are still a couple years away from having to make this decision, so we haven’t done our homework yet. We will be watching this post though.
Great breakdown. Thanks for sharing!
Does anybody have any first-hand knowledge of the experience or curriculum at John Stanford or Greenlake? This article about local middle schools was great. I would like to see a similar article about local elementary schools.
I am a huge fan of the K-8 model and attended over 12 years of school district meetings trying to get the Hamilton program into the Lincoln site and turn the smaller Hamilton site into a K-8, similar to TOPS in size. Both my kids went to a K-8 and the mentoring of younger students by the older middle school students was an excellent growth opportunity that fostered responsibility and reduced some of the bullying that can occur in a large population consisting only of 6, 7, and 8 graders.
There is still opportunity to turn Lincoln into a K-8, for which it is perfect size after Lichton Springs is finished using the site in 2017 rather the misguided plan to return it to use permanently as a high school for Queen Anne and Magnolia, which seems like only a short term patch, with no room for an athletic field. Active parents should encourage their School District representatives to make it so.
@5, I can only speak to kindergarten at John Stanford: the teachers are very kind and interested, and there’s good parent involvement. That said, the entire experience is constrained by the fact that there is a 1:26 teacher:student ratio. The curriculum is aimed at the middle of the band and there is no differentiation that we can detect. Classwork and homework seems to consist of a lot of worksheets and coloring pages. The focus seems to be on getting all the kids to behave and function in an orderly way (sit still in a square on the rug, complete the assignment in way expected, etc).
That’s not what we’re looking for.
Our son is in 1st grade at JSIS and we have been very happy there. I can say that his 1st grade Spanish teacher is much harder than his kindergarten teacher was but I guess in kindergarten they are just trying to teach them what is expected now that they are in elementary school. I feel that the parent/teacher/student involvement is great and to me it feels more like private school then public. We have been very happy there. They also get the older kids involved with the younger ones in their reading buddy program which our son has loved! It’s great to see these older kids taking such an active/protective role with their younger buddy.
Our daughter got into JSIS through the lottery (Kindergarten) and waiting to hear if we’d won a lottery for a school that’s three blocks from our house (that we moved to in part to be in the catchment zone) was one of the most stressful logistical things I’ve ever done. So parents who’re in the same boat this year, you have my sympathy.
I have had two children at Licton Springs, a daughter who is now in High-School and a son who is now in 6th grade. I can’t say enough about what a wonderful experience it was for both of them. The small size means that the community is much more like a family than most schools – the kids know all of the teachers and vice-versa, and there are strong relationships among the different grades.
The middle-school is academically very strong, particularly in humanities and social-science, and my daughter felt very prepared when she got to high-school. They use a project-based approach where students do several 2-3 month long research, writing, and presentation projects that end up being the equivalent of a high-school research paper (I have shown one of my daughters presentation boards to high-school teachers who said the one project involved more writing than 9-10th graders did in a year).
Also the Discover Dance program with the Pacific Northwest Ballet is amazing – the students choreograph their own dance performance based on their work, with teachers from PNB, and perform it on-stage at MaCaw Hall. And the Rites of Passage backpacking trip was a really incredible experience for my daughter.
Licton Springs might not be right for all students, but for my creative, compassionate, and independent-thinking kids it has been great.
I would also add that Licton Springs is working on trying to bring in some sort of language program, hopefully starting next year, that would focus on Lushootseed (the language of the Duwamish and other Coast Salish people), and possibly other Native languages (eg. Tlingit or Lakota). It is still in the planning stages though.
Thanks so much for posting. Comparative information is so much harder to find on the SPS site than it was six years ago when my child was starting kindergarten. It would be nice if you could provide source links to where you found the data. I could only find school reports for 2012-13, and Hazel Wolf is a relatively new school going through a lot of location changes, so I expect the data is changing quite a bit from year to year and current data is really helpful. Also, I wanted to find wait list data for 2014, but the most current I could find was 2013. Please let us know if you know where to find that information.
Sorry, I do see the link to the current report from your link above. I see it is a slightly different format and doesn’t seem to be linked on the individual school pages yet. Still trying to find wait list info. Thanks again for posting.