A lot of Magnolia and Queen Anne parents are fed up with having their children bussed to distant public high schools. But now there's a call to set up a new high school in or near the two neighborhoods so that local kids could stay in the area.
The idea of providing neighborhood kids with a residence-based high school is only in its preliminary stages, but Seattle School Board member Dick Lilly thinks the change is doable with the help of a grass-roots effort on the part of parents.
Speaking in the gym at the Magnolia Community Center last week at a meeting sponsored by the Queen Anne Parents Forum, Lilly said one option would be to convert the K-8 Catharine Blaine School into one that would serve 6th- through 12th-graders.
That wasn't the only idea discussed at the meeting, which drew around 100 parents, and Lilly was clearly sympathetic to concerns about the hot-button issue of school assignments in Seattle.
"I think the Queen Anne and Magnolia neighborhoods have suffered egregiously under the (current) system," he said. There's simply not good or fair access to comprehensive high schools for Queen Anne and Magnolia students, Lilly added.
Students are currently assigned to high schools of choice based on - in descending order of importance - having a sibling in the school, the distance from home to school and on a lottery, he noted. The racial tiebreaker that was formally used as a determining factor is still tied up in the court system.
Turning to specifics, Lilly said that students living on Upper Queen Anne Hill and the lower part of Magnolia are farther away from comprehensive high schools than anyone else in the city. "There should be some way of equaling this out."
Getting into an elementary school of choice is nearly a sure shot for Magnolia and Queen Anne students, and the same is largely true of middle schools, according to Lilly.
"And here it must be McClure or Whitman," he said "The middle-school system is actually as close to a residence-based system as there is. We run the middle schools without an enrollment cap for all intents and purposes."
Lilly noted that the same can't be said of the city's high schools, a factor that led some at the meeting to wonder about adding seats to preferred schools such as Ballard High School or the Center School.
However, the Center School with a current enrollment of 300 is a college-preparatory school and not a comprehensive facility because it lacks - among other programs - shop classes and athletic facilities, he noted.
Beyond that, "we do cap school assignments based on their educational capacity," Lilly said. That's not necessarily a bad thing. "I'm big fan of small schools," he said.
Former school board member and Magnolian Don Nielson suggested at the meeting that the closed Magnolia Elementary School on 28th Avenue West could be converted into a high school, and there was also a suggestion that the school district buy back the Queen Anne High School building and convert it into a new high school.
The Queen Anne High School was closed down years ago and later converted into high-end apartments because of declining enrollment. Furthermore, school district demographers concluded that there wouldn't be a need for a new high school in Magnolia or Queen Anne because the neighborhoods are too expensive for families with kids, Lilly said. The demographers were wrong, he added. "There are kids all over the place."
It is unclear whether the former Queen Anne High School could be purchased. And building a new comprehensive school in Magnolia or Queen Anne would be something that could be done - if at all - only in the distant future, he said.
School board members are more or less evenly split on whether there should be residence-based high schools in Seattle, according to Lilly. "Some board members think kids in well-off neighborhoods should be able to take care of themselves," he said, adding that he disagrees with the belief.
The school district is currently working on its five-year plan, and Lilly said he thinks district staff members will come up with a proposal for some kind of a residence-based plan for high school assignments for the 2006-07 school year.
For his part, Lilly said he was leaning heavily toward the idea of converting Blaine into a high school. "To me, that is the most practical," he said. "I think it would work. I think it could be done very quickly."
The key to that change is community involvement, Lilly stressed. "It will take a bunch of you working with me for a year," he said of a committee made up of local parents.
In fact, three committees were formed after the meeting, said Julie Whitehorn, who founded the Queen Anne Parents Forum (www.qaforum.org). One will work on short-term issues, the second will work on medium-term ideas and the third will consider long-term solutions to school assignments, she said.
Staff reporter Russ Zabel can be reached at 461-1309.[[In-content Ad]]
