Mount Si High School

History

According to the Seattle Times, Mount Si High School was founded as early as 1944, during World War II. The war had an impact on the school, as six students died fighting in this war; then principal Miller B Stewart, who was also their boy scout master said, "They were all good boys." Students in the school were praised for working to raise money for the war effort. Later graduates also served as leaders in the military in the 1990s. The Mount Si High School class of 1966 built a memorial for their classmates killed in action.

In the 1940s, Mount Si High School had between fifty-five and sixty-five students graduate every year.

In 1952, the Snoqualmie School District allocated money to construct a new building for Mount Si High School.

Mount Si High School is building a new campus, started in 2015 and due to be completed in 2019.

In 2013, Mount Si High School opened a freshmen-only campus to solve overcrowding. The population of the Snoqualmie school has been increasing, leaping 14% in 2005 and 2006, and growing about 3% per year after from 2006 to 2016 due to families moving to technology hubs in Seattle, Bellevue, and Redmond. Therefore, in 2005, a task force recommended the construction of new school buildings. However, voters defeated all the bond referendums. As a result, administrators asked voters for less, $30 million "to purchase modular classrooms and address some maintenance issues." That bond passed and modular classrooms did help, but Superintendent Joel Aune still advocated for a new building, claiming that the high school, built in the 1950s, had a “cobbled-together appearance, atrocious traffic flow, and was not education-friendly." The middle school was not as crowded, so administrators decided to use $3 million the district had set aside for infrastructure improvements to convert it into a freshman-only campus. “But we weren’t going to simply move 500 freshman and 25 teachers across the street and basically do things the same way we had always done them,” Aune said. “We took advantage of the opportunity to shift the way instruction is delivered. We wanted to make it much more personal and student centered, so we invested heavily in tech and have created learning communities, where smaller groups of teachers and students work together collaboratively.” He said the school had a “unique design that was a wonderful fit for what we’re trying to do philosophically with the freshmen.” The program is now being emulated elsewhere in the district.

School Awards and Student Achievements

Mount Si High School has received honors for overall and academic achievement:

Its students have received honors:

Other awards include

Studies of School

Research on Mount Si High School has been conducted by education scholars since the 1960s, including research on its "innovative uses of social media," "identification of employability skills," teaching of American history, and teaching of journalism.

Controversies

In 2008, Mount Si High School was involved in a controversy over a visit by Reverend Ken Hutcherson, who was invited to speak about his experience growing up with racism. Some called into question his dedication to equality for all people in light of his opposition to same-sex relationships. Hutcherson then used money from his nonprofit "to fight against a $56 million bond measure that would have helped repair Mount Si High School's decaying floors, installed wheelchair accessible ramps in the school's portables, and fixed other buildings in the district (while also paying for construction of a new middle school)."

In November, 2009, a freshman attending Mount Si High School was beaten after allegedly defending another student against anti-gay slurs.