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 completed the building of a new campus, started in 2015 and opening on September 7, 2019.[10][11][12] The new campus has seven buildings, some three stories, with greenhouses on top.[12] 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).[12] Several food spaces exist, with some run by students in training.[12] The new gym has two levels and bleachers for up to 2,400 people.[13][14] 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.[15] Some aspects of the school were completed later, including the baseball/softball fields in February 2020, the new Performing Arts Center (PAC) in January 2021. A parking/bus loop area will be completed by April 2021.[11]

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.[16] Therefore, in 2005, a task force recommended the construction of new school buildings.[16] 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."[16] 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."[16] 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.”[16] 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.[16]

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

• appearing on US News & World Report's “Best High Schools” list.[17][18][19] 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.[20]
• being on Newsweek's 2016 America’s Top 500 High Schools list [21]
• being named to the College Board AP District Honor Roll in 2011,[22] 2012,[23] 2013,[24] 2014,[25] and 2015.[26] The award recognizes 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.[27]
• being rated 17 out of the top 50 best high schools in Washington State[28]
• being rated ten out of ten by GreatSchools.net [29]
• being rated 33rd out of the 315 best schools in Washington State by SchoolDigger.com website in 2018 (based on the latest state assessment results from the 2017-18 school year that includes students’ SBA English Language Arts, SBA Math, and WCAS Science scores)[30]
• being named, as part of the Snoqualmie Valley School District, as one of the Best Communities for Music Education in 2018[31]

Student groups that have received honors:

• Mount Si High School Jazz Band was selected from among 100 of the nation’s top high school jazz bands to perform at New York’s Essentially Ellington High School Jazz Band Competition and Festival in 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017.[32][33] It was also selected to perform at the Midwest Band & Orchestra Clinic in 2017.[34]
• Mount Si High School Band, Orchestra, and Choir received high honors at the Eastshore Solo and Ensemble Festival in 2017.[35]
• Mount Si High School Debate team qualified for the Tournament of Champions, a national high school debate tournament, in 2013, 2014, 2015, and 2016.[36]
• Mount Si High School Baseball team won the state championship in 2011,[37] was ranked nationally in 2012,[38] and sent three players to Major League Baseball in 2015.[39]
• Mount Si High School Cheerleading team placed third in the national cheerleading championship in 2018.[40] It won the state championship in 2014 and 2016.[41]
• Mount Si High School Cross-country boys and girls teams went to the state championship in 2015.[42]
• Mount Si High School’s Si-Borgs robotics team, went to the FIRST Tech Challenge tournament.[43]
• Mount Si High School Siber Defense Club placed fourth in the USA among 23 teams worldwide in 2017.[44]
• Mount Si High School students have been named National Merit Scholars, for their cores in the Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test (PSAT/NMSQT); twelve from the Class of 2017[45]
• Mount Si High School video students won awards at the Northwest High School Film Festival in 2014.[46]
• Mount Si High School photography students placed eighth out of 63 participating high schools in the 2017 Washington State High School Photography Competition[47]

Awards for Mount Si High School individuals include

• Football coach Charlie Kinnune won the Washington Interscholastic Activities Association District 2 Coach of the Year award for the 2013 season.[48]
• Sophomore Drew Warford won the 4A Boys State Golf Championship in 2018[49]
• Junior Joe Waskom won the 4A State Championship in the 3200 meter race in 2018[50]

Research on Mount Si High School has been conducted by education scholars since the 1960s, including research on its "innovative uses of social media,"[51] "identification of employability skills,"[52] teaching of American history,[53] and teaching of journalism.[54]

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.[55][56][57][58] 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)." [59]

In November, 2009, a freshman attending Mount Si High School was attacked by another student in a locker room after defending another student against anti-gay slurs.[60][61][62][63]

• Washington State Report Card