In John Burbank’s Sept. 6 column “A good education shouldn’t be a matter of wealth,” Mr. Burbank cites two misleading pieces of information about Lakeside School.
First, in presenting information about the diversity of Lakeside School’s student body, Mr. Burbank did not share the information that in 2017-18, 57 percent of our student body identify as students of color — a total of 485 students. Those students come to Lakeside from 234 different schools around the region; 45 percent of our student body comes to Lakeside from public schools. We also serve students who attend public schools through Lakeside’s summer school camps, academic courses, and the Lakeside Educational Enrichment Program, which has served more than 3,600 students to date.
Mr. Burbank also did not share the information that 31 percent of Lakeside’s student body receives financial aid. For many years, we have been “need blind” — meaning that through financial aid we can make Lakeside’s tuition affordable to every student who is accepted to the school. Lakeside’s extensive need-based financial aid program supports qualifying families with incomes starting at $10,000, and goes beyond tuition to cover additional school-related costs such as books, food and transportation. In this academic year, we have awarded $6.5 million in need-based tuition aid and will award more than $800,000 for non-tuition costs.
I admire Mr. Burbank’s passion and understand and share his frustration about funding for the public school system. But I am disappointed that he is selective with the data he presents about Lakeside School. We invite anyone interested in fully learning about Lakeside School to do so at our website: www.lakesideschool.org.
Amanda Darling, communications director
Lakeside Schools
Seattle
John Burbank responds:
While it is laudable that Lakeside makes an effort to have a diverse student body, boasting that 57 percent are students of color is disingenuous at best. From Lakeside’s own statistics, 92 percent of students are white, Asian American or “other.” Only 6 percent are black, 1.8 percent are Hispanic, and just one student is Native American. In Washington state, whites and Asian Americans have almost twice the median family income of all other race groups. Having a vastly white and Asian American student body does not reflect real economic diversity.
And while it’s great that Lakeside offers financial aid to 31 percent of its students, the average family income of its students is $137,000. That’s twice the median family income for the state, which puts those families in the top 15 percent of all families in Seattle. Is it only a coincidence Lakeside is opening a school next to Amazon’s Seattle campus? I can only imagine what the income brackets for the full-tuition-paying cohort of students must be.
Ms. Darling is proving my point by pushing further into Lakeside’s statistics: The super-rich and the almost super-rich are pulling their kids out of public school instead of improving public schools. She misses the opportunity to promote Lakeside’s small classes as an example for both public and private schools in our state. After all, what’s good for elite kids should be good for all our kids.
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