Two high schools deny transfers

Spokane Public Schools student enrollment continues to drop a few hundred each year, but two high schools are turning away pupils.

Lewis and Clark High School and Shadle Park are no longer accepting transfers from students who live outside the assigned-school zone.

“We have what may be viewed as an overcrowded condition at Lewis and Clark,” said Emmett Arndt, executive director of teaching and learning. The projected fall enrollment of freshmen is 606. That’s 173 more than the freshman class at North Central High School.

Shadle Park’s building could handle more students, but the district would have to reassign teachers from other schools, Arndt said.

In the past two years, Spokane Public Schools has allowed students to enroll in their high school of choice. At first the numbers of students moving among schools balanced out, but then the population began to shift too heavily to some schools, officials said.

Now there’s a waiting list at both Shadle Park and Lewis and Clark in case slots open up from students moving away.

“They can remain on the waiting list, but it does not look hopeful,” Arndt said.

Students are guaranteed a place in their assigned school.

Superintendent Brian Benzel said the transfer policy was adopted by the district’s board of directors in 2003 after much consideration.

At the time, some officials believed it was more difficult for students to transfer among schools in the district than it was to transfer in from outside the district. With the old policy, a student had to cite a good reason for the transfer and have an administrator accept that explanation.

Transfers are still accepted into Rogers, North Central and Ferris high schools.

A shift of 30 students is enough to impact the teaching duties of five teachers, Arndt said.

He and his staff have fielded about 46 appeal requests from families who reside outside the school district and were told no new out-of-district transfers were being accepted at either Shadle Park or Lewis and Clark this year.

“I have talked to families who have seriously considered relocating their children to a relative or a friend’s home in the attendance area of their school of choice. By law, it’s where the student resides that determines their eligibility,” Arndt said.

Some students did choose to attend one of the other high schools, like Ferris, Rogers or North Central.

Letters went out this year telling families whether their transfers were denied.

One mother and daughter who live in a district south of Spokane brought their case to the school board, asking for an exception to enter Lewis and Clark. Like others who asked, they were denied.

At Shadle Park, 12 new freshman in-district transfers were accepted because the students had older siblings who had previously been admitted from an out-of-zone transfer. At Lewis and Clark, nine freshmen were transferred in for the sibling policy.

“Our highest priority is not to split up families,” Arndt said.

The reasons for the imbalance of students are myriad and complex.

One of the issues was the way the district map divides the zones assigned to each school, Benzel said. Some students actually drive past Shadle Park High on their way to North Central High, which caused some confusion.

A school’s reputation also plays a role.

Kim Bingle, a West Valley graduate, sent three sons to Rogers High School, and her daughter will be a freshman this fall. She swears by the northeast Spokane school to anyone who asks.

She’s also well aware there’s a lingering – and unfair, she says – stigma against the school, which she thinks makes a big impact. She has met parents who chose to move so they could attend other schools.

“I feel a sense of responsibility that I have placed on myself to really encourage people to have a different perspective on Rogers. Our son scored very high on his SATs. Our other son received his admission letter to WSU,” Bingle said. “Our kids got an excellent education there, and the staff is fabulous. We found a lot of things being said about Rogers weren’t true. … People really have this radar for Rogers that it’s a bad school.”