With a Handlebars.js template like this...
I found a lot of over complicated solutions and decided to write my own using a Handlebars helper.
With this partial (using Jquery) ...
window.Handlebars.registerHelper('select', function( value, options ){
var $el = $('').html( options.fn(this) );
$el.find('[value="' + value + '"]').attr({'selected':'selected'});
return $el.html();
});
You can wrap selects in your Handlebars template with {{#select status}}...
and end up with this...
Presto!