The Legacy of Segregation in Seattle Public SchoolsAn essay by Bea Editor’s note: This piece was created during the 2025 session of History Lab, a summer intensive for high school students interested in local history and storytelling. Over the course of two weeks, participants explore creative ways to interpret and share history, conduct research, and produce a work of historical interpretation in a digital medium on a topic of their choosing. The 2025 cohort explored the theme of “Power & History” - including the question: what drives social and political change? In 2015, I was five years old and afraid of change. My whole life had been turned upside down in less than a year, and I had to move from my quiet home in Wedgewood to a small apartment in the Central District. While I was able to finish my kindergarten year, full of tardies due to the commute from my new home in the Central District to my old house so I could catch the school bus, I had to start first grade at Leschi Elementary. The school, only a short walk away from my house, was the most terrifying place in the world to me. I knew no one who would be attending, as my sister was enrolled in the Highly Capable program at a school farther from our house. The first day of school was marked by many tears, but I eventually made it into the building, with lots of persuading. Within weeks, I grew used to my new school. I quickly fell in love with my teachers and even made friends with someone just as weird as me. Throughout elementary school, my best friend Nathaniel and I got up to all sorts of things. We shared love for reading, the environment, Hamilton, and so much more. That friendship was only possible because of the diversity Leschi fostered, and allowed not only ours, but so many other friendships that might have been impossible if Leschi were segregated, to bloom. This was not always the case for most schools across the city, including Leschi. Leschi had just ended a program that effectively segregated the school until 2015, and the legacy of segregation was, and still is, present throughout the school district.  Supporters of school integration picketing outside Seattle Public School offices, May 12, 1965. MOHAI, Seattle Post-Intelligencer Collection, 2000.107.141.13.03, photo by Tom Brownell  Rev. Ralph Mero and students at Mount Zion Freedom School during the school boycott, March 31, 1966. MOHAI, Seattle Post-Intelligencer Collection, 1986.5.11603.8, photo by John Vallentyne. Segregation in schools was not due to a singular law, but rather the result of years of legal discrimination. The main culprit is redlining, the then-legal discriminatory practice of selling houses to people of color in certain, often ‘undesirable’ areas of the city. Throughout the first half of the 20th century, the Black community became concentrated in the Central District, as it was the only area where they could buy property. The result was 81% of the Black students in the district being in the same nine out of one hundred and twelve schools in 1957.[1] Segregation in schools became illegal in 1954 after the landmark Supreme Court case Brown v. Board, but Seattle took no immediate action. School segregation was never written into law, so finding the solution was more difficult than opening the schools, and many people refused to acknowledge the issue at all. Black parents and civil rights leaders weren't quiet about the issue, and advocated for change throughout the 50s and 60s. The school board finally began to take action and passed the Voluntary Racial Transfer Program in 1963. It was an early busing program that let Black students choose to transfer from their predominantly Black school to one with predominantly white students. Only 238 Black students and 7 white students took part in the program, making it less effective than the district had hoped, while also putting the burden of transferring on mainly Black students.[2] Outside of the district's efforts, activists in Seattle were pushing for equality in schools. There were divisions within the Black community, however, with disagreements on how to deal with integration. Some people advocated for more funding to predominantly Black schools, while others pushed for more Black students to be sent to the northern, predominantly white schools. The differences in schools weren't just who attended; they had “less funding, less parent involvement, less experienced teachers, lower test scores, and lower graduation rates.”[3] In 1965, the Triad Plan was conceived by Black activist groups, and it grouped schools of predominantly Black students and predominantly white students together, with each of the three schools serving two grades. The school board, however, did not approve of this plan and didn’t implement it. Following the board's response and unwillingness to move forward with the Triad Plan, the Seattle NAACP and CORE chapters began threatening more direct action, such as protests. This eventually culminated in the Seattle School Boycott in 1966. The two-day boycott involved students being absent from school, and instead attending freedom schools, set up by the Boycott Committee. Freedom schools taught students about civil rights and African American history, and were used in the South during school boycotts earlier. About 3,000 students attended, with an estimated 30% being white.[4] While the boycott didn’t directly lead to desegregation in Seattle schools, its impact was still significant. The struggle to integrate schools continued throughout the 60s and into the 70s and was easily ignored by white people in the north. Some groups, such as Save Our Schools and later Citizens Against Mandatory Busing, explicitly tried to push back against integration efforts, claiming neighborhood schools were always the best option. From then until 1977, small programs were put into action, such as magnet programs that offered more rigorous curricula, which hoped to attract more white families to schools with predominantly minority populations. Often, these programs ended up creating segregation within schools, with white kids being in the magnet programs, whose parents could usually afford to donate more to the program, and the regular curriculum became mostly kids of color.[5] By 1977, the city had not made enough progress in desegregation, and the NAACP threatened to sue the district if a program wasn’t put into action. From there, the Seattle Plan was created, and Seattle became the first large city to implement busing without a court order.  Black Students Arriving by Bus at Wilson Middle School, 1972. MOHAI, Seattle Post-Intelligencer Collection, 2000.107.185.38.02, Photo by Tom Barlet. The Seattle Plan aimed to mix students of different races in schools across the city by putting students on school buses to schools all across the city. By 1981, nearly 40% of the district's students were being bused.[6] While in theory, busing was a program that provided equality, it often did not deliver. It led to a steady decrease in enrollment of white students, dropping 10% in the first year of mandatory busing, due to parents either moving kids to private schools or moving entirely, and often ended up putting the burden of riding the buses on students of color.[7] Busing also did not account for any cultural differences that students and teachers might have faced. One white parent said, ‘I thought kids were kids, [but] there were differences between the poor kids and ours.”[8] Busing did have its benefits, however. In 1971, there was a 40-point gap between the achievements of Black students and white students in America, and by 1988 it was down to 18.[9] The cultural exchange was also invaluable. Sean Riley, a white Seattleite who was bused for most of his school years, describes how he “had front-row seats at the intersection of race and class for all of my formative years, and I am a better person for it”.[10] Despite its pros, a couple groups strongly opposed busing and protested against it the whole time. Just six weeks after the vote was made to start busing, an initiative to end it was signed by 60% of Seattle voters.[11] The initiative was later deemed unconstitutional in the U.S Supreme Court, but groups continued to protest. Initially, these were led by white families, but by the 80s, busing was being scrutinized by all races. Busing was still failing low-income students, and eventually the district phased it out in 1988 by introducing ‘controlled choice’. This allowed families to choose between schools while still aiming for racially diverse student bodies. This continued to be a controversial solution, and in 1997 the district created the ‘racial tiebreaker’ which let students attend anywhere in the district, but gave priority to students who would improve the diversity of the school.[12] This plan was no less controversial than its successors, and made its way to the Supreme Court, where it was eventually deemed unconstitutional to base enrollment on race.[13] In 2007, the school board switched back to neighborhood schools, back where the whole problem began, and what its policy remains today.  Leschi Class Picture, 1973-1974. Seattle Public Schools Archives. The neighborhood school policy meant that when I moved from Wedgewood to the Central District in the middle of kindergarten, my school assignment shifted for the following year to Leschi Elementary. On the first day of school, I wore my galaxy leggings and a large frown on my face. What I didn’t realize is that the Leschi I was attending was a different Leschi than what existed even two years before. Leschi is located by Lake Washington, in the historically Black central district area. During the initial efforts to desegregate schools, Leschi was cited as one elementary school with a predominantly Black student body, and some urged for it to be shut down and the students to be sent to elementary schools throughout the city.[14] The photo shows Leschi’s kindergarten class of 1974, a class of mostly Black students with only two white faces peering through. Throughout busing, students were bused between Leschi, Wedgewood Elementary, and Decatur Elementary. The ending of these programs meant Leschi began to revert back to being majority kids of color. The school still wanted to retain some of the diversity it had, and began a second program, a fully Montessori curriculum that families could opt into. The Montessori style of learning is a hands-on way of teaching that allows students to have more freedom and independence when learning, and a popular alternative to the traditional style of teaching. The program succeeded in its goal of bringing more white students to the school, going from 8% white students to 20% in three years.[15] The program worked, but it worked too well. Leschi became a segregated school, with low-income kids of color making up the ‘contemporary’ classes that followed the district's curriculum, and wealthier, white children the majority in the Montessori classes.[16] Just taking a look at the demographics would show a diverse school in income levels and race, but the inside told a different story. The Seattle Times describes how “in one, eager parents donated money for fancy classroom equipment. In the other, many parents picked up provisions at the school food bank.”[17] This sort of divide was not and is not unique to Leschi, with programs such as Highly Capable, IB, AP, and other magnet programs creating divide between races within schools.[18] In 2015, Leschi decided it was time for a change, pushed forward by many community members and staff. Danielle Woods and Valerie Chin (Ms. Woods and Ms. Chin to me) took the first step and blended their K-1 classes. By the time I attended in 2016, the whole school was blended, doing Montessori math and contemporary reading and writing programs. The result was a diverse community of 32% white students and 68% students of color far more united than before.[19] By 2017, standardized test scores had gone up in the school, more evidence that the blending was a positive change.[20] By the time I arrived, I was able to meet not only peers who shaped me, but also teachers like Ms. Woods and Ms. Chin, whose compassion showed up in their teaching every day. Unfortunately, I am lucky. Racism and segregation are everyday problems for many kids of color in Seattle Public Schools. Programs in schools are still in place that inadvertently uphold the segregation schools have faced for decades. Even as Black people are moving out of the central district, schools in the south are still home to more low-income and minority students.[21] The result is schools that can fundraise hundreds of thousands of dollars to put towards supplies, programs, and even full-time staff members.[22] The story of desegregation isn’t over, however, and people continue to speak out against the disadvantages children of color face in the school system. One specific organization with the goal of providing more opportunities to low-income kids of color that affected me is Rainier Scholars. While that meant summer homework and waking up early on Saturdays, Rainier Scholars helps pave the way to high school and college graduation, goals many students of color would not have had the support to achieve. Individuals and groups continue to speak up, and certain legislative changes, like House Bill 1541, which aimed to lessen the cultural gap between teachers and students and recruit more teachers of color, have been made.[23] As the city grows and changes, the schools will continue to reflect those changes, so it's important to understand the past first, before moving forward into a hopefully better and brighter future. Footnotes: [1] Douglas Judge, "Housing, Race and Schooling in Seattle: Context for the Supreme Court Decision," Journal of Educational Controversy 2 (2007): 2, PDF. [2] Quintard Taylor, The Forging of a Black Community (University of Washington Press, 1994), 211. [3] Brooke Clark, "The Seattle School Boycott of 1966," The Seattle Civil Rights and Labor History Project, University of Washington, last modified 2005, accessed July 29, 2025, https://depts.washington.edu/civilr/school_boycott.htm. [4] Clark, "The Seattle," The Seattle Civil Rights and Labor History Project. [5] Cassandra Tate, "Busing in Seattle: A Well-Intentioned Failure," History Link, last modified September 7, 2002, accessed July 28, 2025, https://www.historylink.org/file/3939. [6] Tate, "Busing in Seattle," History Link. [7] Tate, "Busing in Seattle," History Link. [8] Jerry Large, "Integration Memories Hit Home," Seattle Times, the (WA), June 14, 2012, https://infoweb.newsbank.com/apps/news/document-view?p=AWNB&docref=news/13F80591C4ED8920. [9] Sean Riley, "How Seattle Gave Up on Busing and Allowed Its Public Schools to Become Alarmingly Resegregated," The Stranger, April 13, 2016, accessed July 30, 2025, https://www.thestranger.com/features/2016/04/13/23945368/how-seattle-gave-up-on-busing-and-allowed-its-public-schools-to-become-alarmingly-resegregated. [10] Riley, "How Seattle," 2016. [11] Riley, "How Seattle,". [12] Cassandra Tate, "District-wide Busing of Students for Racial Balance Begins in Seattle on September 29, 1978.," History Link, last modified June 10, 2010, https://www.historylink.org/File/3351. [13] Hailey Karcher, Choosing to Desegregate: The Role of School Choice in Seattle's Desegregation Efforts from Voluntary Desegregation to Parents Involved in Community Schools, 4, accessed July 28, 2025, https://digital.lib.washington.edu/server/api/core/bitstreams/feaf2e65-b229-4732-bb7e-3f6c230772ec/content. [14] Clark, "The Seattle School Boycott of 1966," The Seattle Civil Rights and Labor History Project. [15] "Annual Enrollment Report 2010‐11 Data," Seattle Schools, last modified 2011, https://www.seattleschools.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Enrollment-Book-Final-2010-11.pdf. [16] Ben Stocking, "How a Diverse Yet Divided School Blended 'Segregated' Classes," The Seattle Times (Seattle), October 19, 2015, https://www.seattletimes.com/education-lab/how-a-diverse-yet-divided-school-blended-segregated-classes/. [17] Stocking, "How a Diverse,". [18] Azure Savage, You Failed Us (2019), 20. [19] "Leschi Elementary Racial Equity Team Memo," University of Washington, accessed July 24, 2025, https://www.education.uw.edu/pre/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Leschi_RET_Data-Packet_2018_v5_FINAL_Public.pdf. [20] Paige Cornwell, "At Leschi Elementary, Equity Conversations Are Common — among Teachers, Parents, and Increasingly, Students," The Seattle Times, July 7, 2017, https://www.seattletimes.com/education-lab/at-leschi-elementary-equity-conversations-are-common-among-teachers-parents-and-increasingly-students/. [21] Marguerite Roza et al., "How Within-District Spending Inequities Help Some Schools to Fail," Brookings Papers on Education Policy, 2004, PDF. [22] Brian M. Rosenthal, "As Parents Raise Cash, Schools Confront Big Gap" Seattle Times, the (WA), January 29, 2012, https://infoweb.newsbank.com/apps/news/document-view?p=AWNB&docref=news/13CA8F826DC95428. [23] John Stang, "Parents Tell Lawmakers How School Cultural Gap Can Hurt Kids," Seattle Globalist, the (WA), February 2, 2016, https://infoweb.newsbank.com/apps/news/document-view?p=AWNB&docref=news/15AC8A4EE697DE18. Bibliography
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