Legal Issues and Small High Schools: Strategies to Support Innovation in Washington State
July 2004
Kelly Warner-King, Mitch Price
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In 2003, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation asked attorneys at the University of Washington’s Center on Reinventing Public Education to explore legal issues affecting the establishment and operation of small high schools in Washington State.*
This turned out to be a fascinating exercise for several reasons. First, Washington law does not define what a “school” is. As a result, tradition and practice influence district and state officials’ attitudes about how to structure and support high schools. Second, these same traditions also color federal and state laws, and regulations implementing those laws. Thus, state and local leaders can easily interpret school law and regulations as prohibiting some of the more innovative features of new small high schools. Third, the state is just beginning to consider schools as educational programs, rather than the buildings in which instruction occurs. As a consequence of all of the above, inherited notions of what a school should look like, how it should operate, and how it should serve its students frequently stand in the way of the vision of a new kind of smaller and more personalized secondary schooling advanced by small school advocates. These notions, moreover, play themselves out differently depending on whether a small high school is created from scratch or several smaller learning communities are created within an existing larger high school.
The interest of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in these issues is directly attributable to the foundation’s major presence in financing and supporting small high schools. The foundation is committed to increasing the number of students who graduate from high school, and ensuring that all students are ready for college. As a means to that end, the foundation supports the creation of new, high-quality, small high schools and the conversion of existing schools into smaller, personalized learning communities. Smaller high schools foster the types of learning environments—characterized by rigorous instruction, a relevant curriculum, and meaningful, supportive relationships—that are proven to help students achieve. Through its Washington State School Grant program, the foundation has invested more than $30 million to design and implement new small high schools in the state, part of a larger national, multimillion dollar effort to support more than 1,400 innovative, personalized, small high schools. As part of this effort, foundation officials realized that small school designers in many communities were encountering roadblocks from public school officials, roadblocks that, accurately or not, were frequently described as statutory or regulatory in nature.
Although this guide will be of interest to small school advocates everywhere, it is intended primarily for people engaged in small high school reform efforts in Washington State. It is our hope that this report will help small high schools design and operate effective programs by providing greater clarity about potential legal and policy impediments, and by providing information on how to work within the current legal and regulatory system. In general, we believe that no pressing legal obstacles stand between small high school advocates and their vision of more effective and personalized small high schools. The system clearly can accommodate that vision. Small school advocates will find that their best chance for success in the near term lies in understanding their options under current law, including seeking waivers and using alternative education provisions.
In a brief guide of this nature, it is impossible to provide all the detail and resources available to guide school leaders. In an effort to provide further guidance, Appendix A points the reader to additional resources (including websites) that provide further information on these topics. An expanded and on-line version of this guide is also available on the Small Schools Project website at www.smallschoolsproject.org.
*note: As used in this guide, the term small schools refers to more than just a school’s size—it is an identifier for schools that share a common set of characteristics: schools that are small, autonomous, personal, distinctive, and focused, among other attributes. Further, the term refers to autonomous, stand-alone small schools as well as large, comprehensive schools that have reorganized into multiple small learning communities. For more information on small schools, see www.smallschoolsproject.org.
