Schools

New Redmond STEM School to Serve Grades 9-12 With Full-Day Classes

The choice school will serve only freshmen and sophomores when it first opens next fall.

Redmond's will open next fall to freshman and sophomore students and eventually serve all high-school levels with full-day classes, the announced Friday.

The school will focus on Science, Technology, Engineering and Math—also known as STEM subjects—and will be open to all high-school students in the district on a lottery basis. When the school first opens in the fall of 2012, it will enroll 150 freshmen and 150 sophomores.

As these students matriculate, the STEM school will continue to accept ninth-graders and will have students in every grade level by the fall of 2014. Nearly all students will attend the school full-time, but a small number of juniors and seniors will be allowed to enroll in elective lab classes at the STEM school while remaining at their home high school for most of the day, district spokeswoman Kathryn Reith said.

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At one point the district had considered the possibility of allowing younger students to attend the STEM school. Reith said the decision to focus on high-school students was made in part because of overcrowding at and other district high schools.

“That’s where we need the most space, and that’s where it makes the most sense for the academic program that’s being developed,” she said.

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The STEM school's curriculum and graduation requirements will be the same as those at the other district high schools, but an emphasis on science and math will be integrated into all subjects, Reith said. In their junior and senior years, the STEM students will choose a lab concentration such as environmental engineering or computer science and take several classes in that subject area.

The seven-acre building site is located in Redmond on property next to that has been owned by the district since 1989. Reith said the project is still in the permitting stage and it's not known when construction will begin.

More information on the STEM school will be released to district families this December, Reith said. The lottery for the new school will take place at the same time as all the other choice schools in the district, which Reith said typically happens in February.

The planned opening of the new high school is set to coincide with the district's switch to a new grade configuration in the fall of 2012. All the district high schools will begin enrolling ninth-graders at that time.


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