Beacon Hill Would Lose the Most Walk Zones of Any Seattle Neighborhood

With Seattle Public Schools' new boundary proposal, Beacon Hill would lose the most grade school walk zones of any Seattle neighborhood.

--Out of the 11 schools citywide that are losing walk zone areas, 4 are on Beacon Hill.

--All 4 (Kimball, Beacon Hill International, Maple, Dearborn Park) of the neighborhood grade schools in North and Mid Beacon Hill would lose walk zone areas.

--Including the entire Beacon Hill area, 4 out of our 6 neighborhood schools (67%) are losing walk zones, compared to 13% for the rest of the city.

--Currently, 100% (2 out of 2) of Beacon Hill's freeway onramp feeder arterials serve as natural boundaries between neighborhood grade school zones. The district now wants our grade school zones to overlap the freeway onramp arterials of Spokane and Graham.

Instead of moving forward with the current boundary proposal, the District should:

(1) increase children's fitness levels, save transportation dollars, and limit diesel pollutants by retaining their own established Beacon Hill walk zones, and

(2) retain the busy I-5 arterials of Graham and Spokane as natural boundaries between school zones to keep our children safe.

Besides Dearborn Park (which loses its entire zone if it becomes an option school), here are maps of the lost walk zones at Maple, Kimball, and Beacon Hill International.

This Maple walk zone needs to stay at Maple, not cross the I-5 arterial of Graham to go to Van Asselt over 2 miles away:

This Kimball walk zone needs to stay at Kimball, not cross the I-5 arterial of Spokane to go to Maple and replace Maple walk zone kids' seats:

This Beacon Hill International walk zone needs to stay at Beacon Hill International, not cross under I-90 to go to Thurgood Marshall: