Sylvester Middle School

As a mid-sized junior high in Burien, Washington, Sylvester Middle School enrolls 582 students from grades 6 through 8, overseen by Highline School District.

Highline School District comprises 36 schools with combined enrollment of 18,072 students; Sylvester Middle School is among them.

On the student-mix side, Sylvester Middle School logs that 37% of students identify as White, with the remaining enrollment distributed across several groups. The remainder comes out to 32% Hispanic, 10% multiracial, 8% Black, 8% Asian. That is visibly less White than the county at large, where the share is closer to 55%.

On the resource side, On paper, Sylvester Middle School has 30 full-time-equivalent teachers, translating to a class-load average of around 19.3:1. That tracks the state average closely. Roughly 49% of students at Sylvester Middle School qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, a number frequently used as a low-income enrollment indicator. By comparison, King County runs at roughly 38%, so the school's eligibility rate is higher than the surrounding baseline.

After controlling for student poverty, Sylvester Middle School is in the bottom 10% of Washington public schools. The BeatsExpectations model predicts schools with this FRL share to land around 47.0%; Sylvester Middle School posts 35.2%, -11.8 points below that line.

Around the school, King County reports that median household earnings sit near $124,746, 57% of adults hold a bachelor's degree or higher, and the poverty rate sits near 5%. Across King County's 544 public schools (combined enrollment of about 278,492 students), Sylvester Middle School is one campus in the mix.

The closest other public school is Gregory Heights Elementary, roughly 0.7 miles away. Counting just inside five miles, 8 other public schools cluster around Sylvester Middle School. On composite proficiency, Sylvester Middle School comes 2nd of 5 in the immediate cluster, above the nearby-schools average of 29.5%.

Geographically, the school is in a commuter-belt area.

Five-year trend. Looking back 7 years, enrollment at Sylvester Middle School has decreased 12%, going from 660 students in 2018 to 582 in 2025. White enrollment moved from 23% to 37% across the same window. Class-load math has grew: from 16.3:1 in 2018 to 19.3:1 in 2025.

On allk12, members of the Sylvester Middle School community share and discuss fundraisers, lost-and-found posts, and report-card season. Anyone with firsthand experience at this school can post or comment.