Mount Si High School

According to the Seattle Times, Mount Si High School was founded as early as 1944, during World War II.^[3] The war affected the school, as six students died fighting in this war; then principal Miller B Stewart, who was also their Boy Scout scoutmaster, said "They were all good boys."^[3] Students in the school were praised for working to raise money for the war effort.^[4] Later graduates also served as leaders in the military in the 1990s.^[5] The Mount Si High School class of 1966 built a memorial for their classmates killed in action.^[6]

In the 1940s, Mount Si High School had between fifty-five and sixty-five students graduate every year.^[7][8] In 1952, the Snoqualmie School District allocated money to construct a new building for Mount Si High School.^[9]

Mount Si High School was used as a filming location in the television series Twin Peaks.^[10] After the filming of Twin Peaks, Mount Si High School completed the building of a new campus and demolished the old one, starting in 2015.^[11] The new campus opened on September 7, 2019.^[12][13][14] The new campus has seven buildings, some three stories, with greenhouses on top.^[14] It now houses up to 2,300 students, has a 400-car garage, and includes many security features (including few entry points and a secure check procedure before visitors are allowed in).^[14] Several food spaces exist, with some run by students in training.^[14] The new gym has two levels and bleachers for up to 2,400 people.^[15][16] As the school is on a flood plain, the school is "raised off of the ground on a platform above the 100-year flood level" and on 4,800 stone columns beneath the surface to stabilize the soil; this provides additional space for parking below the building.^[17] Two Rivers High School combined with Mount Si in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic.^[18] Some aspects of the school were completed later, including the baseball/softball fields in February 2020 and the new Performing Arts Center (PAC) in January 2021. A parking/bus loop area was completed in April 2021.^[13]

In 2005, a task force recommended the construction of new school buildings.^[19] 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."^[19] 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."^[19] 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.^[19] “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.^[19]

From 2012 to 2013, Mount Si High School opened a freshmen-only campus to solve overcrowding, adding an estimated $750,000 annually to future SVSD budgets while utilizing current district buildings. This was the result of an SVSD school board re-examination of the high school that had taken over 6 months.^[20] 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.^[19]

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

• appearing on US News & World Report's “Best High Schools” list.^[21][22][23] The magazine awarded a Silver Medal to the school in 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, and 2018, based on reading, math and college readiness data. Mount Si was ranked 18 out of over 500 high schools in Washington state, and 1,243 of more than 20,500 high schools in the United States in 2018.^[24]
• being named to the College Board AP District Honor Roll in 2011,^[25] 2012,^[26] 2013,^[27] 2014,^[28] 2015,^[29] and 2023.^[30][31] The awards recognize increased student participation in college-level courses and increased performance on Advanced Placement (AP) exams over a three-year span. The school has an AP participation rate of 49 percent.^[32][33]
• Staff alumni and 2024 Varsity Cross Country team received endorsement by Senators Mark Mullet and Brad Hawkins, Representative Lisa Callan, and mayor Mary Miller through Resolution 8650, receiving encouragement that they “Really embody the best of student-athletes and what they have to offer.”^[34]
• Mount Si High School Cheerleading team placed third in the national cheerleading championship in 2018.^[35] It won the state championship in 2014 and 2016.^[36]
• being rated 17 out of the top 50 best high schools in Washington State^[37][38]
• being on Newsweek's 2016 America's Top 500 High Schools list ^[39]

• Earl Biss, Crow oil painter^[40]
• Joe Waskom, professional middle-distance runner.^[41]

In the 2024 Basketball season, the Mt. Si Boys team, led by Blake Forrest and Weber State commit Trevor Hennig, won the 4A Boys state championship. Mt. Si and coach Jason Griffith went 25-0 in state competition (27-2 overall). They defeated Richland 72-58 to capture the title for the second time in school history, and the second in five years. [60]

Research on Mount Si High School has been conducted by education scholars since the 1960s, including research on its "innovative uses of social media,"^[42] Competition and state-validated student films,^[43] the "identification of employability skills,"^[44] and the identification of CTE employable skills within the student body,^[45] the teaching of American history,^[46] and the teaching of journalism.^[47]