When school let out on Friday afternoon, May 24, Calista Phair--a sophomore at Rainier Beach High School--should have started enjoying the three-day Memorial Day weekend. Instead, she spent Friday evening in a school library. She and her mom, Beatrice Clark, had an important meeting to attend at South Lake Alternative High School on Rainier Avenue South and Henderson Street.

Phair--an African American teen in a sparkly purple shirt topped with a long, sophisticated sweater--waited just inside the school's doors for everyone to show up. When I walked in, trailed by a photographer, she demanded to know which news organization we were from.

"Are you from the TV station?" she asked, before directing us to the library. Phair became media savvy this past week as news of the impending South End school walkout trickled through the city. She'll be leading a group of students from Rainier Beach when they leave class on Wednesday, May 29, at 1:35 p.m. to stand on Rainier Avenue with signs, and will also be seating people at that evening's rally.

But there's still a lot to discuss. Two dozen parents, representing four South End schools, spent the evening making a list of speakers, enlisting volunteers to set up food, and organizing a time to meet and make picket-style signs. They say the Seattle School District, led by Superintendent Joseph Olchefske, has left them out of decisions that affect their kids' education. In five days, their students will walk out of class in protest. They hope the dozens of other students and parents they fliered last week at South End schools will join them. At the meeting, some parents said they expect up to half of each school's students and parents to participate.

Phair, her hair pulled back into a neat ponytail, sat by her mom throughout the meeting, sipping a Fruitopia. Periodically, when a new person showed up in the library, she'd jump up and give them a flier outlining the school's individual problems. Phair's cheat sheet tells a sad story.

Rainier Beach High School is lacking books and arts classes. The school district doesn't know what will happen to South Lake High School after another school takes over its building ("This school will be displaced or disintegrated," says Marty Kehl, a math and history teacher at the school). Brighton Elementary students will be bussed to West Seattle next year, leaving most parents unable to participate in school activities ("It's chaos," says PTA President Pam Williams). Dunlap Elementary's parents didn't get to participate in the selection of their new principal, as the district promised ("We were excluded," one mom says).

Though the issues at each school vary, the schools have a lot in common. At all four, students of color make up at least 90 percent of the population (compared to a district average of 60 percent). Almost one-third of the students have limited English proficiency. And two-thirds of the students in these four schools qualify for free or reduced-cost lunches, while district-wide, 40 percent of students do.

But there's a more important similarity between these schools that's become a unifying theme of the parents' group--Save Our South End Schools. The school district has dismissed their input when it comes to decision-making, parents say, and they want that to change.

Superintendent Olchefske would like to talk to the parents, they found out at the meeting. Just a few hours earlier, as school got out on Friday afternoon, Olchefske sent a message to a few parents telling them he'd meet with them on Tuesday night--the night before the walkout. The parents say that's indicative of how the district treats them. The last-minute meeting is too little, too late.

"These issues have been around for a long time," says one mother from Rainier Beach. The parents asked a district representative who attended their meeting to give Olchefske a message: He can come to the community rally if he wants to hear what the parents have to say. The representative said she'd get in touch with Olchefske as soon as she could. The parents advised her to try him at home.

School district representatives did not return our calls by press time. However, Olchefske's public position seems to be that parents should keep their kids in class instead of encouraging a walk-out. He also has said he will continue to meet with parents until their problems are worked out. The district has apparently already started a process to determine South Lake's future, and says that proportionately, more money is spent in South End schools than in their North End counterparts.

Phair would love to let Olchefske know her problems with Rainier Beach: When she transferred from Renton High School last summer, she asked her guidance counselor if she could take a music or drama class. She was in choir at Renton, she says. The answer at Rainier Beach, however, was no. "They said we don't have any art. They have no music here," she says. "What do I do now? At Renton, I could have lettered in drama and choir."

Phair managed to get a 3.3 GPA this year, even though she couldn't take textbooks home to study (students get photocopied packets to study from instead), and two of her sophomore-level teachers are wholly ineffective, and unable to control their class.

"They let students talk over them and cuss at them," Phair says. "A lot [of students] want to walk out because they know these classes are bad." Plus, she jokes, they're enthusiastic about leaving school early.

Phair says Rainier Beach is so bad, she's thinking of transferring back to Renton High School next year.

amy@thestranger.com