By Chris Eide

What if I told you that there is a public school in the Seattle area, funded by public dollars and overseen by an elected school board that rigorously screens applicants, is as well-appointed as any private school you are likely to find, and is so sought after that young people move from overseas just to have the chance to attend?

Would you expect the anti-charter, McCleary-first crowd to vehemently oppose this school’s very existence?

Well, they don’t. It never even gets mentioned in those types of conversations.

What if I also told you that the school’s population is not representative of the people who live in the area? Would you be surprised that this school has about three times the percentage of white students as the school district it calls home? Or that there are three times fewer black students, four times fewer Latino students, six times fewer students from low-income families, and seven times fewer students with special needs?

These are private school numbers driven by private school selection processes, and yet Raisbeck Aviation High School in the Highline School District has been consistently lauded by (predominantly white) legislators and school board members since its inception — lauded by many of the very people who have objected to charter schools, which hope to serve primarily high-needs students and seek to make their application process as sparse as administratively possible.

Aviation High School has long stood as evidence of how privilege influences public school politics.

Now, however, under the bold leadership that typifies Highline Superintendent Susan Enfield’s work, the school is moving toward a more equitable student selection model, using a lottery to choose its students instead of the highly exclusive process it had been using. From the Seattle Times:

“Though some students and parents have raised concerns about the new system, one thing is certain: The 105 students in next year’s freshman class will better reflect the population the school serves. In the Highline School District as a whole, nearly half the students are female, and three-quarters are racial minorities.

‘Being a public school system, you have to have an equitable and defensible system,’ Superintendent Susan Enfield said. ‘Because we have more students each year than we have seats for, the [school] board and I have to be able to look any parent and student in the eye and say, ‘You have an equal chance of getting into this school.’’

The decision also followed a complaint from the parent of an Asian student, alleging the interview process was discriminatory. Although the student had been in Highline’s highly capable program, her father said she didn’t receive enough points on the application or interview rubrics.

Enfield said district officials already had been thinking about changing the admissions policy before that complaint was filed last July, and she and the Highline School Board determined that no discrimination occurred in that case. But the move to the lottery system ended a state investigation into the matter.

‘The concerns signaled to us that we needed to find a solution, or that solution would be determined for us by an outside entity,’ Enfield said.

Since its beginnings in 2004, Aviation has been a selective school. As one of the few aviation-themed schools in the country, it shares resources with The Museum of Flight and offers mentors and internships in aerospace companies. It’s consistently ranked as one of the top schools in the state. And in recent years, it has received about three applicants for every seat, with its students coming from all over the Puget Sound region.

But under the old application process, the school has long had both a gender and ethnic imbalance. It also was never able to reach a goal of 51 percent of students coming from within the district.

School and district officials said no explicit or implicit bias affected past admissions decisions, but there was no way to be entirely objective when judging each student’s commitment to the school and whether he or she would be a good fit.

Each year, they said, many applicants have been children of people who work in the aviation and aerospace industry, so the demographics mirrored that industry, which long has been ‘a white male world,’ said social-studies teacher Troy Hoehne.

‘But it’s changing, and it’s appropriate that the school change with it,’ he said. ‘I don’t think you would find a staff member who wouldn’t say we need more gender equality, we need to have a diversity plan that is more in tune with the population around us.’

Enfield said a lottery significantly reduces ‘the subjectivity to determine who gets in and who doesn’t.’

Along with changing the policy at Aviation, the district also changed its admissions process for two other schools that had used applications — CHOICE Academy and Big Picture.”

There is no question that Raisbeck Aviation High School is a great school and is working with students to excel in STEM fields. There is also no question that we need to provide high-quality STEM opportunities to students beyond those who already have access to great STEM education. We have brilliant young people all over our city and state, and they deserve the same access to opportunity as their more privileged peers.

Student demographics in Highline Public Schools and Raisbeck Aviation High School (courtesy of OSPI):