School Tour Dates and Open Enrollment Info

Seattle Public School tours begin as early as today, depending on the school you choose. Enrollment choice forms must be submitted between 2/17 and 3/1. Regardless of the level of school you are entering, you have choices.

For Elementary, Wallingford has two language immersion option schools (McDonald and JSIS) and then two “neighborhood” schools that are outside the neighborhood- BF Day and Green Lake. There’s also K-8 option schools (Hazel Wolf, Salmon Bay, Licton Springs), and APP (at Lincoln) to choose from. Here’s the K-1 registration process.

For middle school you can choose your neighborhood school (Hamilton) or K-8 schools like Salmon Bay and Hazel Wolf. For High Schools you get choice again, and since your kid will take a city bus to get to school, transportation reach is not a problem. Want your kid to go to Rainier Beach instead of Roosevelt? Here’s the open enrollment process.

Probably the worst mistake I’ve seen parents make is choosing a school with a philosophy that appeals to them personally but is a bad fit for their kid. Some children need structure and a traditional learning environment focused on fundamentals, others will feel stifled. Some kids thrive in an environment of language immersion or unstructured learning, others will be overwhelmed and fall behind on the basics.

Trung Hua from Green Lake writes:

I have learned a lot having all our three children attending Green Lake Elementary School from Day 1 in kindergarten, with our oldest now in fifth grade. I’ve also served as a member of our school PTA Board. Yes, it’s important for parents to look at test scores and teacher’s reports and education styles as the schools offer a wide range of learning services. In the end, you’ll find most elementaries in the North end are quite good.

What’s striking is the role of the parental community and the effectiveness of its PTA partnerships. Here, at GLES, we have families vacationing together! We have a very vibrant parent community—we cleaned the school grounds, we share our expertise, we hang out together. These amazing relationships have allowed us to help raise some $150,000 each year to support our kids while they’re in class as well as after school and beyond. Our PTA funds have helped pay for school equipment, staff, art, music, swimming, lots of after school enrichment programs, and teacher scholarships, as we believe every child deserves a well-rounded education. Whatever school you end up in, be involved! We’re all busy parents but try to take 30 minutes out of your week to say hello to them. Drop in to help sharpen pencils, take your kid for lunch, help with field trips, be a guest speaker, read a book to their class, sew book bags!—all great ways to bond with your child and to see them in action and meet their friends. And if you can do more, that’s really great!

Here’s a local school tour calendar. Some dates are for morning tours, some evening, some both, some for special programs, so be sure to click the links to the school if you haven’t chosen a date yet:

And for middle / high schools:

Any recommendations you want to share?