Mercer Island School District’s clarification | Letter to the editor

Published 1:30 pm Friday, July 18, 2025

Mercer Island School District’s clarification

We appreciate the Mercer Island Reporter and respect the important work you do to keep the community informed. We also appreciate the space given to the Mercer Island School District’s recent “clarification,” but it misrepresents both our methodology and the data.

Parents for Mercer Island’s 34 percent estimate, which found that one in three school-aged children living on Mercer Island do not attend MISD schools, is based on MISD’s own demographic report, enrollment reports, community surveys, and data from the U.S. Census Bureau. In essence, we used the district’s own data, which district spokesperson Ian Henry’s 11.3 percent figure did not. Our methodology is transparent and available here: www.parents4mi.org/misd-news/1-in-3-k-12-children-dont-attend-mi-school-district

We counted only school-aged students between the ages of 5 and 18 who live on Mercer Island. MISD’s claim that we included toddlers or recent graduates is simply not true.

Meanwhile, the district’s 11.3 percent figure relies solely on local private school data and overinflates enrollment by including more than 120 off-island students currently attending Mercer Island schools. The district’s figure also ignores homeschoolers, out-of-district public school transfers, non-local private school attendees, and students in alternative education. It disregards MISD’s own demographic projections, its published enrollment data, and an 800-plus Mercer Island student decline since 2018, despite a 7.67 percent increase in Mercer Island’s population.

It is also worth noting that MISD currently ranks last in math proficiency among Washington’s top 15 school districts, according to OSPI.

The real question is, why are families opting out?

Parents for Mercer Island

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Editor’s note: Below is the clarification that was published in the Mercer Island Reporter’s July 2, 2025, print edition.

In the June 25 edition, a story on the Mercer Island School District quoted a community member as saying that “up to 34%” of students in Mercer Island attend school outside the district. That figure came from the group Parents for Mercer Island, which compiled its own data. According to school district spokesperson Ian Henry, 11.3% of all island students are not enrolled in MISD, based on a 2024-25 enrollment of 4,009 students and 514 Island students in private schools. “I know there is a document and website that has been published recently that says it is 34% of island students not attending MISD. I have heard the methodology used to arrive at this number might have used 2020 census data, which includes 0-5 year-olds, who are not eligible to go to school, and 18-year-olds who might have already graduated,” Henry told the Reporter. “If the census data was used, then that might be how the 34% was figured, which is a very questionable methodology to count students who aren’t eligible to attend school.”