1 in 6 Seattle kids go to private school. Is that a factor in public school struggles?

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n a recent blustery afternoon, Kadie Bell Sata walked down to Green Lake Elementary, hand-in-hand with her 4-year-old son, to pick up her daughter.

It's a rare occurrence. Their house is so close, the second grader can easily get home by herself.

Asked how long it takes her to get to school, the 8-year-old thinks for a second, smiles, and says, "A minute? A minute or two."

Before and after school, she likes to play on the tree swing in her front yard, where she can watch the comings and goings outside her school. She says she likes her teacher and school, except when kids get rowdy in class.

"People shout out, they get out of their seat, they talk to their other friends, they fight," she said, listing the many, frequent distractions in her classroom.

The proximity to their neighborhood public school was one of the main reasons Bell Sata and her husband bought the house four years ago.

"Since we have three kids, there's a good stretch of time — like 10 years, I think we calculated — where we’ll have at least one student at that school," she said. "So it made it really convenient for them to walk to school and walk home and just be really close.”

But it didn't turn out like they'd hoped.

Their oldest son had a few rough years in school. Bell Sata had increasing concerns with what she saw as a lack of academic rigor and classroom resources. But the final straw was when he started getting bullied. They were disappointed with how the school handled it.

"Eventually we had to decide, you know, are we going to let our son continue to have these depressive episodes and not feel safe going to school? Every night before school, he would be in tears thinking about having to go to school the next day," Bell Sata said. "It was pretty miserable."

Bell Sata and her husband decided to enroll him in a private school about a 10-minute drive from their house.

Next year, their daughter will join him there. And eventually, their youngest son will go there, too.

Bell Sata never expected to make that choice. Even before having kids, she says they'd decided to send them to public schools — because they believe in their mission so wholeheartedly. Not to mention, it's a huge, unexpected financial burden for three kids.

"It's a difficult exercise to go through — to examine your values and decide that you're going to pivot and change course," she said. "But then, when it came down to safety issues, our child's safety is going to trump anything. We will do anything to keep our kids safe."

Other parents say they've left Seattle Public Schools for similar reasons, or because they were unsatisfied with programs for students with disabilities or advanced learners.

Across the nation and state, enrollment in public schools is plummeting. Part of the reason is that birth rates are hitting record lows in many areas.

But also, parents are continuing to rethink school options in the aftermath of the pandemic.

"The COVID-19 pandemic caused an historically unprecedented exodus of students from public schools," said Thomas Dee, an economist and professor at Stanford University.

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His research, in collaboration with the Associated Press and Big Local News, looked at private school enrollment across Washington, and found a spike of 17,000 students over the last four years.

That's a 26% increase — the third-highest rate in the nation, behind only Tennessee and Rhode Island. Homeschooling also jumped by about 9,000 students.

"These shifts to non-public schools, both private schools and homeschooling, were not only large, they sustained — even as school returned to some semblance of normal operations," Dee said.

So, how much are those shifts contributing to Seattle Public Schools' declining enrollment — and the budget crisis that comes with it?

The answer is not so cut and dry. Private school enrollment is notoriously difficult to track, because schools in many states, including Washington, aren't required to share that data with the state. Dee's analysis included only 34 states and Washington, D.C. — places that had self-reported school data available.

"I think part of the story of the pandemic is how it's exposed the inadequacies of the data systems we have to ask fundamental questions like those," Dee said.

In Seattle, public schools have lost nearly 5,000 students — or just over 9% — over the last five years.

It's hard to say what exactly is driving that trend. But Marni Campbell, the district's director of operations, said Seattle's lack of affordable housing and high cost of living appears to have pushed some families out, either before or after having children.

"Families have discovered that, you know, it's very expensive to live in the city or maybe people don't like living in the city and many people can live and work in more remote places," Campbell said. "Especially post-pandemic, for a lot of people, that just changed a lot of mindsets and ideas about how we want to live and what's possible."

Some families have also shifted to home or private schooling.

Seattle has always had a higher share of students attending private schools compared to other cities. Although there was a private school bump during the pandemic, enrollment has stayed relatively steady over the years.

As of 2022, U.S. Census data shows that about one in six Seattle kids attend private schools.

Now, SPS is trying to get a better idea of why students leave the district. This spring, they added an exit survey to the form families fill out when they're withdrawing from a local school.

It's an optional, imperfect measure. But Campbell says the district is hopeful the new data will provide them with new insights into enrollment.

In the meantime, district officials continue to adjust to an ongoing drop in enrollment and revenue, and are looking to close up to 20 elementary schools.

RELATED: Tensions flare at Seattle school closure meeting

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It's a deeply controversial move. But Campbell says having a smaller number of schools will allow them to more effectively — and equitably — distribute resources.

"You'll see some more beautiful new buildings. They're safer, they're cleaner, they're healthier, they're built to modern standards," she said. "They have multiple teachers per grade level, so that they're collaborating and they're able to provide support to each other professionally."

District leaders have also long pointed to underfunding from the state as another reason they need to make changes like these.

At her home in Green Lake, Bell Sata said she hopes SPS can figure out a good way forward that meets students' needs.

But for her family, it's too late.

Bell Sata's son is doing a lot better this year at his new school, and her daughter is excited to start there in the fall. She's already been charmed by the school's unofficial mascot.

"It has this dog," she says through giggles, "that is the principal's dog and he wanders around the school all the time and his name is Ollie."

It's hard to close this chapter on public school for her kids, Bell Sata said. She was on the parent-teacher association, and they all made friends there. They feel invested in their community, and that won't change just because they switched schools.