Elizabeth A. Walkup's Public Documents About Seattle Schools

Current Documents

Please note that the "How to Rank..." document below does not apply to the current school year choice process. I am unable to provide an up-to-date version for this year.

Instead, here is the simplest statement of how you should rank schools:

• list only those schools you prefer to your default, attendance area school, and
• make your first choice count.

The phrase "make your first choice count" is not well defined. Here are a couple examples:

• If your attendance area school is not your first choice, but is "good enough", then list schools you like better in your true order of preference.
• If your attendance area school is not "good enough", then list schools you think are good enough, ranked from easiest to get into to hardest.

This ranking strategy is based on the fact that all first choice requests are processed first, which means the most popular schools will fill in the first round.

A good way to decide if a school "good enough" is to ask "if I lived in a small town and this were the only school, would I move (or go private)?" If you'd stay, the school is "good enough".

Unfortunately, there is no good way to know which schools are going to be the easiest to get into. You will have to make an assessment of that yourself.

Historical Documents

The ranking information in these documents is out of date. Do not refer to them for the current enrollment process.

• -- 09 March, 2010 -- How to Rank Schools for the Seattle Public Schools Choice Process for 2010-2011 -- Minor updates of document dated 03 March, 2010 -- Prepared for the Option Schools Fair to be held Saturday, March 13 from 10am until noon at the John Stanford Center.
  
  A PDF version is also available.
• -- 19 June, 2009 -- Seattle Public Schools' Proposed Student Assignment Plan: the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly -- Prepared in advance of a School Board vote on the plan. The plan is now approved and your best source for information is the Seattle Public Schools website for the New Student Assignment Plan.