The Seattle Times just reported that 97% of graduating students at Summit Sierra, a charter school in Seattle, has been accepted to a four-year university or college.  That is great news, considering that at some Seattle public high schools the drop-out rate alone approaches 50%.

And Summit Sierra isn’t some elite, privileged public school.  It serves 300 families in Seattle’s Chinatown International District, one of the poorest in the state.  Three-fourths are low-income, African American, Hispanic or Asian.  Traditional public schools were failing many of these students.  Every year local officials send about 54,000 children to state-identified failing schools.  Summit Sierra’s families found another way, one that uses educational choice and hard work to lead out of poverty and into higher education.

The Class of 2019 is Summit Sierra’s first to graduate - the school is only four years old - and one of the first in the state that parents picked voluntarily (most public school assignments are mandatory for families).  But these graduates’ joyful celebration almost didn’t happen.

In September 2015, just as today’s graduates were starting as freshmen, the powerful WEA union got a court ruling shutting down their school, along with all the other charters in Washington.  Students, families, teachers and their supporters rallied at the state capitol and got a bi-partisan bill that saved their schools.  Gov. Inslee didn’t like bill, but he let it become law without his signature.

Now, four years later, this founding class, who as 14- and 15 year-olds faced down the most powerful union in the state, is Summit Sierra’s first graduating class.  They are also the first charter school graduating class in the state, and nearly all of them have been accepted to college.  Against all odds, the long-held dreams of these students, and of their families, are coming true.

Here’s to the brave students and their families who wouldn’t back down before the angry forces in our politics, and to hoping that someday all children in our state get the same chance at a great future.