Most families moving to Des Moines, WA find out quickly that the school district question is more complicated than a single rating suggests. Des Moines is served by Highline Public Schools — a large, diverse K–12 district headquartered in Burien — and the district's C+ overall rating tends to be the first thing parents encounter. What that rating doesn't tell you is that individual schools within the district vary considerably, that the district holds a genuinely unusual distinction in teacher credentialing, and that one magnet high school sitting right in Des Moines has built something close to a national model for career-focused secondary education.
Highline Public Schools spans Burien, Des Moines, Normandy Park, SeaTac, and White Center — 43 schools serving roughly 17,823 students across south King County. The district is one of Washington's most diverse: 40.6% of students identify as Hispanic or Latino, 14.6% as Asian or Asian/Pacific Islander, 14.2% as Black, and 17.1% as white. About 47.4% of students are economically disadvantaged. These demographics aren't background color — they shape everything from program design to how the district allocates support resources, and they're a reason many families who value multicultural environments actively choose to stay.
Outside the classroom, Des Moines offers a youth sports infrastructure that punches above its city size. The city's Parks and Recreation department runs recreational leagues for children from pre-K through seventh grade, and Mount Rainier High School fields a full varsity program across more than a dozen sports under Washington Interscholastic Activities Association (WIAA) rules. For families coming from larger metro areas, the combination of competitive school-based athletics and accessible city-run recreational leagues can be a genuine draw — especially with Des Moines Marina and the city's waterfront parks providing year-round outdoor space alongside organized programs.
Whether you're choosing between school zones, weighing a magnet program application, or just trying to understand what youth sports look like here before signing a lease, the sections below cover the Highline district in depth — its overall picture, its standout schools, who it fits well, who it doesn't, and what organized athletics for kids in Des Moines actually looks like.
Highline Public Schools: The District-Level Picture
Highline Public Schools earns a C+ overall rating — an honest middle-of-the-road score that reflects genuine challenges alongside real strengths. The district ranks 201 out of 247 Washington districts on one widely used ranking platform, so families who walk in expecting a top-tier suburban district will be disappointed. That disappointment is worth confronting early rather than after you've signed a lease.
The counterweight to that ranking is something most families don't know: Highline ranks in the top 12 out of 295 Washington districts by the number of National Board Certified Teachers. That's not a marketing claim — National Board Certification is a rigorous, multi-year process. A district that consistently attracts and retains that many credentialed teachers is doing something right at the staffing level, even if aggregate test scores don't fully reflect it yet.
Who the District Serves
The 43-school district is large enough that your child's experience depends enormously on which school they attend and which programs they access — not just on the district-level C+. Roughly 17,823 students were enrolled in the 2023–2024 school year, with enrollment finally stabilizing in 2024–25 after years of decline. The district projects approximately 16,806 full-time-equivalent students for 2025–26, with growth expected as around 5,500 new housing units come online across the service area over the next decade.
The district is actively running a Secondary Redesign initiative across all middle and high schools — a structured effort to make instruction more relevant, more rigorous, and more connected to what students actually care about. It's a real initiative with listening sessions and pilot programs, not just language in a strategic plan. Whether it produces measurable results over the next two to three years is the question parents moving here now should keep watching.
What the C+ Rating Means in Practice
A C+ at the district level masks meaningful school-to-school variance. Some elementary schools in Des Moines perform significantly above state averages; others trail them. The practical takeaway: before you settle on a neighborhood in Des Moines, look up the specific elementary school that serves that address — school boundaries here are not intuitive, and two houses on the same street can feed to schools with noticeably different profiles.
| Metric | Highline Public Schools |
|---|---|
| Overall rating | C+ |
| Total schools | 43 |
| Total enrollment (2023–24) | ~17,823 students |
| Minority enrollment | 80% |
| Economically disadvantaged | 47.4% |
| National Board Certified Teachers rank | Top 12 of 295 WA districts |
| WA district ranking (SchoolDigger) | 201 of 247 |
Three Schools Worth Knowing in Des Moines
Naming every school in a 43-school district serves no one. What matters for families considering Des Moines specifically are the three schools that genuinely stand out — for different reasons and for different kinds of students.
North Hill Elementary
North Hill Elementary is the district's clearest elementary-level success story within Des Moines city limits. It earns a 4-star rating from SchoolDigger and ranks among the top 30% of elementary schools statewide — with test scores that run significantly higher than both the district average and the Washington state average. For families with young children who are anxious about the C+ district rating, North Hill is the school that most directly challenges the assumption that the district-level score tells the whole story.
The practical caveat: you need to live within North Hill's attendance boundary to enroll your child there. If you're specifically targeting this school, verify the boundary before you commit to a neighborhood — not every address in Des Moines feeds to North Hill.
Maritime High School
Maritime High School, located at 615 S 200th St in Des Moines, is the most distinctive school in the entire Highline district. It opened in September 2021 as a magnet school built around STEM education and maritime careers — project-based learning, industry partnerships, and a curriculum designed to prepare students for work in one of the Pacific Northwest's most economically significant sectors.
In 2024–25, the school added a Marine Construction pathway in which 11th-graders can earn a maritime shipyard welding certificate. Enrollment in that pathway grew 650% in its first year — a signal that students are responding to something real, not a checkbox elective. The school currently ranks better than 55% of Washington high schools. It's not a top-percentile academic school by traditional metrics, but its value proposition is career readiness in a high-demand field, not AP scores.
One important detail: Maritime uses a lottery system when applications exceed capacity. You cannot simply move to Des Moines and count on your child attending. Apply early and have a backup plan.
Mount Rainier High School
Mount Rainier High School is the traditional comprehensive high school serving most Des Moines families. With approximately 1,889 students in 2023–24, it's a large school with a full academic and athletic program. Pacific Middle School on 24th Ave S is the primary feeder middle school for most families in the Mount Rainier service area — so the pipeline from elementary through high school is relatively predictable if you understand the attendance boundaries.
Mount Rainier isn't a marquee academic school, but it offers a full range of programs, competes in the North Puget Sound League's Cascade Division under Washington Interscholastic Activities Association rules, and gives students access to the kinds of extracurricular and athletics programs that matter for the high school experience in ways that a small specialty school sometimes can't.
Youth Sports and Kids Activities in Des Moines
Youth sports in Des Moines run on two parallel tracks: the city's own recreational leagues and the school-based competitive programs at Mount Rainier High School. Both are accessible, and the two tracks serve different needs without much overlap.
City Recreation Leagues
The City of Des Moines Parks and Recreation Department runs youth and PeeWee sports leagues for children from pre-K through seventh grade. The sports offered include soccer, basketball, baseball, volleyball, and football — enough variety that most kids can find a sport before they hit middle school. These are recreational leagues designed for participation and skill development, not elite competition.
One program detail worth knowing: the city runs an Every Kid Gets a Ball initiative, which provides sport-specific balls free to all participants in select leagues. It's a small thing on paper, but it removes a real barrier for families stretching a budget — and it signals that the parks department is thinking about access, not just enrollment numbers.
High School Athletics at Mount Rainier
At the high school level, Mount Rainier competes under Washington Interscholastic Activities Association rules in the North Puget Sound League's Cascade Division. The athletic program covers a wide range of sports:
- Baseball and softball
- Basketball (boys and girls)
- Football
- Soccer (boys and girls)
- Swimming and diving
- Tennis
- Track and field
- Volleyball
- Wrestling
These aren't small-school programs — Mount Rainier fields competitive varsity teams with real postseason pathways that matter to college recruiters. If your son or daughter has aspirations toward varsity sports in high school, Mount Rainier fields real teams in real competition.
Club and Travel Sports
Des Moines sits within easy reach of the broader south King County club sports infrastructure. Families looking for club soccer, competitive swimming, or travel baseball will find those programs operating out of nearby Burien, Kent, and Federal Way — a short drive from anywhere in Des Moines. The city itself doesn't host large club facilities, but proximity to the broader metro means access isn't an issue for families willing to drive 15 to 20 minutes for a practice or game.
One thing that surprises families after settling in: Des Moines Beach Park and the waterfront area around the marina become informal gathering points for youth athletic groups, particularly in spring and summer. The combination of open lawn, picnic space, and proximity to organized sports fields means weekends here feel more active than the city's population size might suggest.
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How the District Is Changing: Secondary Redesign and Enrollment Trends
Highline's trajectory matters as much as its current rating — especially if you're moving here with young children who'll spend the next decade in these schools.
The most significant structural shift underway is the Secondary Redesign initiative. This is a district-wide effort spanning all middle and high schools, focused on making coursework more relevant to students' lives and futures, increasing instructional rigor, and piloting new program models based on what students and families say they actually need. It's not a single program — it's a philosophy being implemented school by school through listening sessions, teacher development, and curriculum revision.
Enrollment Stability After Years of Decline
Enrollment across the district stabilized in 2024–25 — the first year without a decline since 2018. That matters for program sustainability: districts with declining enrollment cut electives, consolidate schools, and lose the budget flexibility to run specialty programs. Stabilization, driven partly by new affordable family housing completions in the service area, gives the district breathing room to invest rather than just manage contraction.
The district projects roughly 16,806 full-time-equivalent students for 2025–26, with growth expected over the following decade as approximately 5,500 new housing units come online across the communities Highline serves. That growth will pressure facilities and programs — but it also signals that the district's long-term trajectory is expansion, not further shrinkage.
What to Watch
Three things are worth tracking if you move here: how the Secondary Redesign initiative translates into measurable outcomes over the next two to three years; whether Maritime High School's enrollment lottery becomes more or less competitive as the school's reputation grows; and how the influx of new housing units affects the balance of services across the district's five communities. None of those questions have settled answers today, which is honest context for any family making a long-term school decision.
Who This District Is — and Isn't — Right For
Highline Public Schools is genuinely a good fit for some families and a genuine mismatch for others. Both are worth saying plainly.
Who Fits Well Here
Families who value diversity in the classroom — not as an abstract principle but as a daily reality — will find Highline unlike almost any other district in the Seattle metro. A student body that is 80% students of color, speaking dozens of languages, from a wide range of economic backgrounds: that environment shapes graduates in ways a homogeneous suburban district doesn't. For parents who want their children to move through the world with that kind of fluency, Highline delivers it.
Families with a high schooler interested in maritime trades, marine engineering, or STEM-focused career pathways will find Maritime High School genuinely rare — a magnet school with real industry partnerships and a credential that has value in a specific, well-paying labor market. That's not available in most suburban districts at any rating level.
Parents who buy in the North Hill Elementary attendance zone and can stay engaged in their child's school get a meaningfully above-average elementary experience within the same district that scores C+ overall. The variance within Highline is wide enough that address selection matters enormously at the elementary level.
Who Will Likely Be Frustrated
Families relocating from high-performing suburban districts — Bellevue, Issaquah, Northshore — and expecting a comparable academic baseline will feel the gap. It's real. If your frame of reference is a district where most elementary schools score near the top of the state, the Highline average will disappoint.
Families counting on Maritime High School as a sure thing for their child will hit a wall if applications exceed capacity and the lottery doesn't go their way. It's a small school with a specialized curriculum — you cannot plan around it without a fallback option.
Parents who want a traditional, academically rigorous comprehensive high school experience with a deep AP catalog and high standardized test scores should research Mount Rainier's specific course offerings carefully before assuming it matches what they left behind. It's a full-service high school — but its profile is different from a top-quartile Washington state high school.
| Family Type | Fit with Highline | Key Consideration |
|---|---|---|
| Families valuing diversity | Strong fit | One of WA's most diverse districts |
| Career/STEM-focused students | Strong fit (Maritime HS) | Lottery admission — apply early |
| North Hill attendance zone buyers | Good elementary fit | Verify boundary before purchasing |
| Top-academic-district relocators | Likely mismatch | Noticeable gap vs. Eastside districts |
| Families relying on Maritime HS | Risky without backup plan | Lottery; no guarantee of placement |
| First-time WA public school parents | Depends on zone | Research your specific attendance school first |
Practical School Navigation for Families Moving to Des Moines
Moving to Des Moines without understanding a few ground-level facts about how Highline operates leads to real surprises — the kind that feel minor on a moving checklist and significant once school starts.
Attendance Boundaries Are Not Intuitive
Highline serves five communities across a large geography. The elementary school assigned to your address is not predictable from the neighborhood name alone. Two adjacent streets in the same area can feed to different schools with meaningfully different performance profiles. Before you finalize any address, run it through the Highline Public Schools boundary lookup tool — treat it as a required step in the moving process, not an afterthought.
The Maritime High School Application Timeline
Maritime High School admissions open in winter for the following fall. If your child is entering 9th grade and you're moving to Des Moines the summer before, you may have already missed the application window. Families who know they want Maritime need to plan a year ahead — which usually means deciding on Des Moines 12 to 18 months before the intended enrollment date. The lottery is real; applying does not guarantee placement.
Middle School Is the Connective Tissue
Pacific Middle School at 22705 24th Ave S is the primary feeder for Mount Rainier High School. Most Des Moines families will pass through Pacific on the way to Mount Rainier, so understanding that school's programs and culture matters as much as understanding the high school itself. The Secondary Redesign initiative is actively being implemented at the middle school level — which means what Pacific looks like in 2025 may look meaningfully different from what it looks like in 2027.
Get Involved in the First Semester
One pattern that repeats across families who moved to Des Moines and stayed: the ones who felt best about the district at the three-year mark were the ones who showed up to school events, joined the PTA or school council, and built relationships with teachers in the first semester. That's true of most districts, but it's especially true in a district where the gap between engaged and disengaged families plays out visibly in student outcomes. Highline is a district where parental engagement measurably shapes the experience — not a system where outcomes are so uniformly high that engagement is optional.
Local Expert Takeaway: The Highline district's C+ rating is real — don't talk yourself out of it. But the rating masks genuine school-level variance that makes address selection in Des Moines one of the most consequential decisions you'll make. North Hill Elementary outperforms the district average by a wide margin. Maritime High School at 615 S 200th St is doing something genuinely unusual in maritime career education, with a lottery admission process that rewards families who plan ahead. And the city's own Parks and Recreation youth leagues — running soccer, basketball, baseball, volleyball, and football from pre-K through grade 7, with free equipment for participants in select leagues — give families a structured, accessible on-ramp to youth sports well before competitive school-based athletics begin. Know your specific attendance school before you sign anything.
Quick Takeaways & FAQs
✅ Highline Public Schools ranks in the top 12 of 295 Washington districts by number of National Board Certified Teachers — a meaningful staffing strength that the C+ overall rating doesn't reflect.
⚠️ The district's C+ rating reflects real aggregate performance gaps; families expecting an Eastside-district equivalent will find a noticeable difference, and Maritime High School's lottery admission means you can't plan on it as a guaranteed option.
📍 North Hill Elementary, within Des Moines city limits, earns a 4-star SchoolDigger rating and scores significantly above both the district and state averages — but only families in its specific attendance boundary can enroll without a transfer request.
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