Board has tough choices ahead on student assignment plan

As it looks to revise the Seattle School District's student assignment plan, the Seattle School Board faces some difficult decisions -- such as how to keep "school choice" while helping fill chronically under-enrolled schools, and ensuring schools don't become racially segregated.

By this summer, the board intends to make changes to the student assignment plan, with goals of simplifying the enrollment process and giving families more predictability in where their children go to school. Any changes would go into effect in fall of 2009, and will likely be phased in, beginning with high schoolers.

For the past decade, the district has allowed families to apply to send their child to any school in the district, with school assignments based on factors such as how far the student lives from the school or whether the child has a sibling already attending there.

But under that system, many families have opted not to attend their neighborhood schools, skewing enrollment so that some schools are packed while others struggle to attract students -- a trend that shouldn't be allowed to continue unchecked, board Vice President Michael DeBell said.

"If we're going to offer choice to families in this city, we have to be responsible for the consequences," he said. "If a school is unable to attract families in a choice system, then that school has to be examined very closely, and interventions developed to turn it around."

The School Board last summer adopted a "framework" for future changes to the student assignment plan. Students would be assigned to their neighborhood school, with the option of applying to a school elsewhere in the city. High schools would have geographic attendance areas, but popular schools would leave some seats open for students from outside of the neighborhood.

There are still many aspects of the plan yet to hammer out, however, before the board votes on final changes this summer.

Even small changes could have big effects, district staff members told the board. For example, creating geographic boundaries for each school instead of drawing a circle around the school could drastically change that school's enrollment. Another issue will be building capacity -- right now, even if they wanted to, not all students would be able to attend their nearest comprehensive high school.

The board also is considering whether to set aside seats at each school to accommodate families who move to the district after the on-time enrollment deadline -- a common complaint. Superintendent Maria Goodloe-Johnson noted that if she had wanted to enroll her child in school when she moved to Seattle last summer, "I wouldn't have had any choice."

During the work session, the School Board also waded into the discussion of diversity in school -- how to define it, and what "diverse" schools might look like. In past decades, the district has tried voluntary busing, mandatory busing, magnet programs, "controlled choice" and linking geographically distant schools into the same cluster in an attempt to ensure the racial makeup of each school more closely mirrors the district's overall demographics.

Last June, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the district couldn't continue its latest attempt to insure diversity -- considering a student's race as a factor in determining admissions to popular high schools. The district had stopped using the tiebreaker in 2002 while the case worked its way through the courts.

One suggestion board members began discussing Wednesday was whether to look at a student's socioeconomic status, defined by whether they qualified for free or reduced-price lunches, when assigning set-aside seats at popular schools.