Private education continues to be a growth industry in Central Seattle. A new campus for Seattle Girls’ School has opened in the Central District, replacing the former campus that was located at 2706 S Jackson.

Seattle Girls’ School is an all-girls and gender nonconforming middle school that educates youth in grades 5 through 8. It will enroll around 130 kids this fall when the school year resumes.

A desire to better control its future and its environment has brought the school to a new home on 24th Ave S next to Jimi Hendrix Park.

Brenda Leaks, head of Seattle Girls’ School, said the former campus was a rented space and that they did not own the land it sat on.

“Our prior space was very traditional — a hallway with classrooms on either side,” said Leaks, who said how when students were asked to collaborate on projects, “they would literally be sitting in the hallways on the floor, in the stairwells.”

The 2001-founded school mounted a $9.5 million “Rise Up” capital campaign to raise funds for the purchase and move. It took years of fundraising to hit the goal.

When they set out to design the building, creating spaces that supported hands-on learning and space for projects was a top priority. According to Leaks, the new design consists of classrooms on one side of the hall, while the other side is open space filled with flexible furniture that students can use outdoors. Additionally, some tables have whiteboard surfaces so students can use them as both tables and presentation boards.

The new campus was purchased from Pioneer Human Services in a $4.5 million deal in 2017 and previously served as a transition site for individuals getting out of prison and rehab, said Leaks, but the campus was originally built as a nursing and hospice home for Japanese Americans.

A major focus when teaching new concepts to students at Seattle Girls’ School is to assist students with learning in a connected way, with a hands-on interdisciplinary approach. Leaks said in seventh grade students conduct “Pay-It-Forward” projects, where they can pick a social justice issue and learn about underlying causes.

One example of hands-on interdisciplinary teaching took place last school year, when the art teacher had students make children’s books showing the impact of the issue of youth incarceration, said Leaks, who said the learning is richer because of the approach and having students choose topics that interest them.

“Our board has done a lot of work to try to think about–with the name Seattle Girls’ School–how we ensure that people know when they step onto campus that this is a space where we understand that gender is not binary,” said Leaks. “Even as a school that is focused and centered on the needs of girls and gender nonconforming students, that the range of gender is broad here.”

On the first day of school and throughout the year, students and staff share their gender pronouns to ensure that every person feels safe and is identified by the accurate pronouns, said Leaks. Seattle Girls’ School also offers affinity groups which explore elements of identity, including gender identity and sexual orientation, and has adults who are inclusive to the community.

“They are in a space with someone who has lived experiences with what they’re living right now, and what they’re exploring right now,” said Leaks.

While creating plans for the new campus, Seattle Girls’ School made certain to include voices of students along the way. An exciting new feature of the campus are nooks, or egg-shaped cutouts in walls of the building.

“The students talked about and gravitated towards this egg because they said collaborating is exhausting,” said Leaks. “They are by far the most popular places in this building–I have not walked by one this week and not seen a student in it.”

Leaks said she would also like the new Seattle Girls’ School campus to act as a resource for communities in the Central District. At the previous location, space limitations forced students to branch out into the Central District neighborhood, where they went to Cappy’s Boxing Gym for P.E. class, for example.

“Because we were so tight on our space, we couldn’t reciprocate,” said Leaks. “As a school, we’re in a position where we don’t need to earn money, we just want to support hard organizations.”

To celebrate the new campus, a ribbon cutting ceremony will take place on August 27th, with an open house and tours of the new building.

Seattle Girls’ School is located at 1700 24th Ave S. Learn more at seattlegirlsschool.org.

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