Could anyone say anything about Finn Hill/kirkland public schools? (ratings, recent)
Seattle areaSeattle and King County Suburbs
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Yep, was just there for a walk yesterday and was surprised by how many addict-looking homeless there were hanging around the little park across from the library. Not sure why in Issaquah of all places.
I think Liberty was the one I was thinking of, but Issaquah High is also supposed to be below Eastlake and Skyline.
HA, Liberty is rough...okay when you pull in kids from the city of Newcastle, south Issaquah and east renton. Real rough.
We have kids in Juanita, Finn Hill, and Sandburg right now. I agree strongly with some of the other posters that schools in this area are so strong that ranking between the best and the worst is splitting hairs when it comes to the academics of most kids.
Sandburg we love. Our youngest is on an IEP, and for an IEP kid or a kid who needs some extra help but would not necessarily qualify for an IEP, I think they are a truly fantastic school. Truly a school where no kid is left behind. For the very strongest kids academically it may not be the best choice, but for the average kid who excels in some subjects and is alright in others they will do well here. Parent involvement is high. For the most part the teachers are good (and you'll figure out from other parents who isn't and request not to get them). And parents are listened to. We live in a pretty middle of the road house. But another poster implied that the folks in the nicer houses in this area send their kids to private school, and while that may be true for some I can attest from the houses that my kids have been invited to that plenty of kids in the big lakefront homes attend Sandburg too.
Finn Hill I feel the same. The top most academically advanced kids (I'm talking the top 2% which statistically 98% of our kids aren't) might not be best served here (though applying for a choice school like International is certainly a choice). But my kids have done fine here taking advanced math and honors LA/SS (english/history). I feel they are academically strong and well prepared for the future. I really like the Principal here. We had exactly one bullying issue and were immediately taken very seriously and it was dealt with and put an end to, and the bullies schedule was switched so my child doesn't have to interact with them at all. We have liked a majority of the teachers. Many of them are available every day before and after school for kids who want extra help or for kids who want to explore deeper into the subject, and seem to really care about helping kids who want to learn more. There is still a high level of parent involvement. I am aware of some instances of middle school kids getting caught smoking in the bathrooms. This is dealt with harshly (cops called to school). I am also aware of similar problems at "better" schools.
We are new to Juanita this year and still learning the whole high school parent thing and I haven't had much teacher or admin interaction aside from the back to school type things. So far it's been decent. Really I think Juanita always comes out badly in the rankings just because facilities is part of the rankings and the infrastructure is so old. I think it's perception has more to do with appearances than actual academics which seem strong. They have the IB program, and I know people who transferred into Juanita from higher ranked schools to take advantage of that. Student wise if your kid is in honors classes and not burn out classes it's good (again true of most area high schools).
My teen happens to be active in an after school activity that involves lots of kids from schools all around the Greater Seatttle area from as far north as Edmonds and Mukilteo to Mercer Island, Woodinville, Issaquah, Bellevue, Issaquah, and Redmond. So over the past few years I have become friends with parents in most of the school districts around. I have yet to meet a parent who was 100% pleased with their kids school and I have met many whose complaints are far bigger than mine even though their schools are considered better. Again for most of our kids it's splitting hairs. If your kid is highly academically gifted or needs some extra help or an IEP then you are going to need to be pickier. For most kids, all of these schools are very strong and I think having a parent who is involved and is aware of what is happening at school is by far a bigger predictor of academic and future success then whether our schools rank an 8 or 10 or score 3% points higher on the state testing. The most important thing would be finding an area that suits your family, is relatively close to work and not such a financial stretch so that you are able to be involved. If Finn Hill is already all those things for the OP, I wouldn't move. I know people who choose a half hour longer commute each way and took a huge financial stretch to get their kids in very slightly higher ranked schools and have to wonder if the higher ranked school really benefits their kids more than the extra hour they are away from their kids each day would.
Last edited by ThatsWhat; 12-28-2014 at 04:01 AM..
I actually agree in that Sandburg is a nice school. Definitely the facilities are nice since it is new and the principal, office staff, and teachers in general seem fine.
My only minor gripe was with some of the kids and their background. There are a lot of apartment buildings and condos near the Juanita Beach area. Possibly just sampling error and yes, it was bound to happen but my son came from a more sheltered school and neighborhood in California when I sent him to Sandburg. He immediately went and the other kids taught him a bunch of bad language and poor behavior that he had never been exposed to in the past. 2 instances come to mind. The first was when they taught him all the bad language and he didn't believe them so he started saying bad words for awhile and didn't even know that there was such as a thing as bad language. The second incident was when a few kids started touching my son's private parts. He got mad and told them to stop but they didn't so he got into a fight and beat them up. Of course they all got in trouble because fighting is bad, etc.
I lived in a gated community off NE Juanita Drive and the homes in the community range from very nice ($3m+ lakefront) to kind of crappy (~$1.5m). We were in one of the crappier ones and when talking to other residents, they are the ones that said that most of the other residents send their kids to private school because they didn't like the local public schools that much.
When my son took the school bus, he was also the only child getting on/off from the main gate.
$1.5m = million? or per month rental? just wondering.... if this is million, and a 1.5 million dollar home is crappy, then wow, we have very, very different lives. can't even imagine.
What about trying to get your child into one of the Lake Washington choice schools for Middle School? Is anyone familiar with any of them?
The choice offerings seem awesome! Does anyone have any experience with them? It seems like a huge benefit of being part of the Lake Washington School District, imo.
$1.5m = million? or per month rental? just wondering.... if this is million, and a 1.5 million dollar home is crappy, then wow, we have very, very different lives. can't even imagine.
Erm yea, especially for a NON-lakefront home in Juanita?? I could understand Medina or Clyde Hill, but this seems strange...there's a gated golf course community in Sammamish where we looked at homes and there were plenty of nice ones for under a mil, with 10-rated schools...
the gated community was nice and all homes were pretty nice but i lived in probably the worst one in the entire community since our home that we were renting was worth around $1.5m to buy while the rest of the homes were in the $2m-$3m range. we were paying around $4k/month. the house was nice but just crappy compared to the others. woodland cove was the community.
since the school district was sandburg we sent our kid there. nobody else in the community sent their kids there.
I actually agree in that Sandburg is a nice school. Definitely the facilities are nice since it is new and the principal, office staff, and teachers in general seem fine.
My only minor gripe was with some of the kids and their background. There are a lot of apartment buildings and condos near the Juanita Beach area. Possibly just sampling error and yes, it was bound to happen but my son came from a more sheltered school and neighborhood in California when I sent him to Sandburg. He immediately went and the other kids taught him a bunch of bad language and poor behavior that he had never been exposed to in the past. 2 instances come to mind. The first was when they taught him all the bad language and he didn't believe them so he started saying bad words for awhile and didn't even know that there was such as a thing as bad language. The second incident was when a few kids started touching my son's private parts. He got mad and told them to stop but they didn't so he got into a fight and beat them up. Of course they all got in trouble because fighting is bad, etc.
I lived in a gated community off NE Juanita Drive and the homes in the community range from very nice ($3m+ lakefront) to kind of crappy (~$1.5m). We were in one of the crappier ones and when talking to other residents, they are the ones that said that most of the other residents send their kids to private school because they didn't like the local public schools that much.
When my son took the school bus, he was also the only child getting on/off from the main gate.
RVD.
Yeah, our kids have been to birthdays parties in homes of Sandburg kids that have living rooms that seem larger than my 2400 square foot house with huge amounts of lakefront and guest homes and out buildings (plural) on the property. When we hosted my sons birthday parents his school friends were dropped off in Teslas and Porsches. So I understand anecdotally your experience was wealthier families don't send kids to Sandburg. But anecdotally my experience is the opposite. We, as a family making lower six figures with a house in the $600k range, feel on the lower income scale of the vast majority of our kids school friends families.
Also, I would say that we haven't found any difference in behavior of apartment kids and lakefront home kids. I honestly think it may have just been more an issue with the specific kids your son ran into than the fact they they had apartments versus homes. Our kids have friends in both (though this year in our sons whole class only 1 kid in the directory has an apartment address). Most of the parents we know in the apartments moved here specifically to take advantage of LWSD schools and have a high level of involvement. Many of them made sacrifices in not buying a nice home to be able to work less or have one spouse home to spend more time at the schools and with their kids after school. FWIW, Sandburg has a lower percentage of kids eligible for reduced and free lunches than the LWSD at large and at between 7-9% (depending where you find the statistics) or 35-50 kids total for the whole school. Which is right in line with a lot of other schools in very nice neighborhoods and only about 3% higher than schools in the nicest neighbors. So Sandburg might have 10-20 more "apartment kids" (I'm assuming that is code for low income) than a school in Bellevue or Mercer Island.
We also moved here from CA where our kids attended a very small very high involvement charter school in an upscale suburb. They didn't pick up any bad behavior at Sandburg. My youngest (the one on the IEP) did get a much better education though, because the resource program at Sandburg is so great. So again our anecdotal experience varies from yours. We had one kid on the bus who was using bad language (he lived in 1m+ home not an apartment). My son and several other kids told the bus driver and the kid was giving a warning and then banned from the bus when he continued. As far as the touching of privates I would have raised hell about that, and am curious to know what the response was. You say it was one incident so I imagine it was dealt with satisfactorily so it wouldn't happen to any other kids again (not that it ever should have happened at all). I know parents in other schools without the "apartment element" who've had major issues with things like that and the school hasn't done anything.
Growing up in a similar type of environment myself where there was both the wealthy and... not (again I was smack in the middle), I find that as the kids age I am much more concerned about the influence of the kids with more money (not all of them mind you, our kids have a lot of very lovely friends with very involved parents who live in very large homes... but there are definitely some whose parents work 24/7 and have very little supervision and frankly really need it). More money as a teen = more access to lots of things (ie drugs and alcohol cost money). And as mentioned above it can also correlate with less supervision (very busy working parents away from home, traveling frequently). When I was in high school it was the most clean cut kids with the biggest bankrolls who were causing the most trouble (and usually getting away with it, while the poorer kids were going through locker checks that found nothing). With a kid in high school now and lots of friends who have teens, I don't think much has changed from the stories I hear. I know of sexting scandals, drug scandals, bullying at other schools that don't have the number of apartments feeding into their school that the Sandburg area does and are talked about frequently as better schools. The reality is none of our schools are perfect and we aren't going to find a school where no problems exist. I'm glad that so far all Sandburg and Finn have been very responsive in handling the problems that do come up. And would not trade places with some of my friends who have not gotten such responsiveness at their "better" schools.
Last edited by ThatsWhat; 01-05-2015 at 03:24 PM..
Reason: I'm bad at grammar.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
