One Third of Bainbridge Island High School Grads National Honor Society Members

Sakai Intermediate School (5th-6th grade), 2009 Washington Achievement Award Winner

The Bainbridge High School Class of 2010 graduated on June 12th, one of the few sunny days so far this June.  The bright day was fitting for the high achieving class that is now entering the “real world.”  If you read my blog regularly, you’ve heard me say more than once that one of the reasons we moved here was because of the high quality schools. This year’s graduating class illustrates that very well:

Class size: 315

Number of National Honor Society Members: 104

Average GPA: 3.268

Principal’s Scholars: 10

Washington Scholar: 1

National Merit Semi-Finalists: 1

National Merit Commended Students: 18

Washington State Honor Awards: 145

Valedictorians: 10 (tied for highest GPA)

The Bainbridge Island School District also got a nod from one of my favorite school research sites, Greatschools. They profiled Bainbridge Island in their article Best Cities to Live and Learn 2010. The fact that one-third of the district’s teachers have Master’s Degrees is cited as one major contributing factor.  Test scores and small class sizes also play a major role in how Bainbridge stacks up. I taught in large inner-city and suburban schools for ten years before becoming a Realtor.  What I saw and experienced was that many of the problems in those schools were born from too large of schools.  Too many kids, too many cracks to fall into.  I love the small schools here on Bainbridge and the district strives to keep them even smaller by breaking the schools up by K-4, 5-6, 7-8 and 9-12. Small schools, smaller classes.  I like that the school staff knows my kids’ names.

More Bang for Your Buck

Another big factor for our family personally choosing Bainbridge was the ‘more bang for your buck’ aspect that Greatschools also points out in their article.  We knew we could find a good school system in a San Francisco suburb, but that came at a price, a very high cost of living.  On the flip, we knew we could live in or around Sacramento and have a lower cost of living, but that meant so-so schools, which meant private schools, which meant a higher cost of living for our family. Greatschools ranked Bainbridge Island as the 6th best school system for cities with median home prices between $400K- $600K (Bainbridge Island’s median home price is currently $526K). Another reason the school system rises to the top is due to community support for passing bond and levies.  The community, even those without school aged children, see the perpetual value of quality education.

For us, the numbers added up – and padding those numbers where factors you can not really quantify on a chart like, the small friendly neighborhoods, no bumper to bumper traffic, and countless community-centered events like this weekend’s annual Rotary Auction.

Bainbridge may be a small town, but it is surely not small-minded.  Here’s to the class of 2010 . . . and here’s to the class of 2020, I am hopeful they too can achieve the same high merits.

Explore Bainbridge Island Schools further on Greatschools.