Thank you to the Jet City Maven for the story about our middle school dilemma in Northeast Seattle. I have also enjoyed reading the articles in the Times regarding the Seattle School District's new high schools and I applaud the district for their efforts.

 Unfortunately, for five-six years, parents in Northeast Seattle are having a major middle school problem that is not being addressed.

 Eckstein (located at 3003 NE 75th St.) is our neighborhood middle school and is the most popular middle school in Seattle. It was built for 850 (students) and current enrollment is 1,280. It has the longest waiting list of any middle school in the city. Because of its popularity and the School District's assignment plan children living north of NE 115th Street have to go to Hamilton, a one-hour bus ride away.

 It appears obvious that a simple solution is to open an additional middle school in our neighborhood. Staff and resources could simply relocate from Eckstein and additional staff could be added at the new site. A perfect location for this is the former Jane Addams Middle School (located at 11051 34th Ave. NE). Summit Alternative K-12 School currently uses the building as well as Pinehurst Day Care and Civic Light Opera. If middle school size really is important, this is a perfect solution. Middle schoolers from Summit would likely stay at the new school, 300 students from Eckstein could move to this new location and 100 from Whitman (Middle School in Crown Hill), which also has over 1,140 students could enroll at Jane Addams.

 This new middle school would have 550-600 kids immediately. Coincidentally, it has been determined that this is an ideal middle school size.

 We already have two other alternative schools, Pinehurst and Decatur in North Seattle. Some of the students could relocate to these schools. The district is also vacating Wilson Pacific in 2003. Since this is a more central location and the alternative schools are open to all city kids, this is a better location anyway.

 Again unfortunately, the School District has not heard our concerns. It is our hope that by making the local media and public aware of this issue, that the district will begin to act on our requests. With over 400 recently opened apartments and 600 more scheduled to open in Lake City in the near future, we must address this problem now before it becomes worse.

 - Doug Boyd (of Parents for Smaller Middle Schools), Cedar Park