Lake Washington School District offers two options to parents who are looking for alternatives to the assigned neighborhood school. One option is to investigate choice schools, which are open to residents from all over the district. Each choice school has its own application process. The choice school section has more information on applying to choice schools as well as information on each school. Parents must provide transportation to their student who attends a choice school.

Variance within Lake Washington School District
The other option is to get a variance to another Lake Washington School District school. You can apply for a variance to any school within the district. Whether the variance is accepted depends primarily on whether there is room at the other school to accommodate your child. See the "Closed Schools" charts below to determine whether a school you may be interested in does not have room.

Open Enrollment
You can apply at any time but variance applications during the open enrollment period will ensure you learn earlier whether the variance is granted. The open enrollment period for the 2012-13 school year will be from February 1 to 29, 2012. Parents must provide transportation for their student who goes to a school within the district that is different from their assigned neighborhood school.

Closed means: To all new In-District Variance Requests and Inter-District Transfers. Building principals with Closed Schools will be given the choice to retain their students' "Existing" Inter-District Transfer Agreements. If retained, parents will still need to go to their resident school district and get their 2012-2013 Release Form.

How to apply for an In-District variance:
Transferring to or from LWSD? See Between District Transfers

• Go to any school office to get the four-part In-District Variance Application.
• Fill out the application completely and turn it in to the neighborhood school to which the student is assigned.
• The principal or his/her designee will sign the form and forward it to the requested school, one school request per form.
• The requested school will notify you whether or not the variance has been granted.

When to apply:

• The next open enrollment takes place from February 1 to 29, 2012. Apply any time during that period: no priority is given based on the date of application so long as it falls within those dates.
• Applications made during the open enrollment period will be given first consideration. Decisions will be made on a school-by-school basis, depending on space availability. 
• Applications made after the open enrollment period will still be considered. However, due to space and staffing availability, parents may not find out if their variance has been approved until just before the new school year begins.

When to re-apply:

• Once a student has been granted an in-district variance between two LWSD schools, they do not need to reapply. They can continue to go to that school.
• Students going into 6th grade or 9th grade must file for new variances since they will be going to a new school, in a junior high or high school. That new in-district variance may be granted if space is available.

Schools with no space available are closed
Before the open enrollment period, the district determines which schools will have room to accommodate variances and which will be closed to variances. A school may be open only for specific grades. Check this website or ask any school for a copy of the list.