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PSCS is committed to centering intentionally excluded perspectives in curriculum and programming. With Critical Race Theory, intersectionality, and collaboration framing our approach, community-centered education also prioritizes the lived experience of our global majority students, staff, and families, while offering students opportunities to take increasing responsibility for their own education.
Tuition Access: PSCS awards over $100,000 in aid each year to current and incoming families. All admissions decisions are made independently of tuition aid offers. To the extent that our funds permit, aid is available to qualifying students whose parents are able to establish financial need through the aid application process. If you have questions regarding the aid process, please call or email us.Program Access: PSCS works hard to include fees and expenses in tuition costs and not nickel and dime families as we go along in a school year. Added fees depend on individual student activities and the needs of certain courses. However, we want students to be able to do things that may have associated fees, regardless of their economic status. As such, we offer program aid to families for whom added costs might stand in the way of a student doing activities or taking courses they are interested in.
Community-centered education for collective liberation.
Core Commitments
Practice Integrity. Engage the Community. Act with
Courage.
Philosophy
Puget Sound Community School (PSCS) is an independent middle
and high school, located in the heart of the
Chinatown-International District in Downtown, Seattle, WA. At PSCS
we begin with Critical Race Theory as the foundation of our
approach to teaching and learning. We strive to frame all
curriculum and programs in abolitionist teaching, as defined by Dr.
Bettina Love, "teaching with the goal of intersectional social
justice for equitable classrooms that love and affirm Black and
brown children." Every one of us is adapting to a fast moving,
post-pandemic reality that more fully destroyed the thin facade of
equity in this country. Young people have more access than ever
before to global insights, unselfconscious verbiage, and both
checked and unchecked data. PSCS staff do not pretend to have all
the answers for reaching true equity and harnessing the power of
such access. But we do commit to collaborating on behalf of all
students, and to trusting deeply in the experience and expertise of
the people in the building who are most qualified to frame our
goals around what we know and understand of the students and staff
in this community.Academically, PSCS prioritizes offering
students opportunities and guidance, responsibility and feedback.
Opportunities arise as courses, activities, Schedule Mapping,
conflict resolution, Seminars, Community Time, Advising,
leadership, Intensives and Independent Study. Guidance from staff
and Advisors is meant to help hold you accountable to your choices
and to assume, regardless of skill and neurodivergence, we can all
do hard things. Guidance and accountability are not one size fits
all. They are collaboratively tailored to individual student needs,
and the needs of the community, as we grow to understand them in
our space.In most schools, academic rigor is determined by
the pace each student sets over time, in competition with their
peers, often based on heavily biased standards. Because we
intentionally work to explore bias, and to consider jobs and paths
that haven't even been imagined yet, traditional STEM academics are
only part of the PSCS student experience.At PSCS we hear, we
respond, we offer, we have fun, we try everything. And we do it
together. We are committed to challenging each other and our
students to be collaborative and expansive in our pursuit of deeper
learning, intersectional social justice, and ending systemic racial
violence.
Collaborative Leadership
Collaborative Leadership may not be as easily recognizable as
the more traditional hierarchical system most of us are used to,
PSCS staff are truly working together to engage students in our
current community and to sustain us into the future-you deserve a
school invested in helping you discover all you are capable of now,
and our alumni deserve to have a community to come home to.To do
this, we collaborate all day. We connect each other to resources,
propose plans and initiatives, co-plan agendae, rotate
facilitation, bring in consultants, and update each other on what's
needed to meet your needs and address family challenges. We
regularly share approaches and perspectives to know each person in
the building. We see this diversity of perspective as a gift, as it
more closely resembles the real world jobs and communities students
will engage in after middle and high school.PSCS staff meet
every moment as it comes. This may not always work for a particular
student at a particular moment. We agree that is ok.While
staff here have always engaged in regular, expansive, and
intersectional professional development, the pandemic did offer
more equitable access to even more. In addition to offering an
incredible array of classes and activities every term, each PSCS
staff member is reading, listening, writing, talking, seeking
counsel, taking courses, and connecting with outside resources,
while also building and sharing access with our Community Partners.
Yes, we analyze data, but we also use relationship, experience, and
close-consensus to decide on any social, emotional, or academic
process on behalf of a student or the community.Collaborative
Leadership is both slower and more urgent at the same time. The
process of educating young people is also both slow and urgent.
Sometimes these ideas are so at odds it's difficult to see them as
the opportunity they really are: an opportunity for systemic
change.
Students at PSCS
Because our school is small and relational, everyone interacts
with everyone, every day. While most of us are not actually
related, we are a type of family or team. Each one of us has a
purpose in the community and each one of us hasn't discovered all
of the us that we can be.The PSCS experience for students
depends on how you choose to engage. Opportunities for engagement,
projects, and leadership are consistently offered. Staff offer
individualized, distinct, responsive classes to the same 30-40
students in a school year. What works in one class-or in Community
Time or Affinity Groups-for any single student may not work as well
in another. Each student has their own synapses, neuro-divergence,
identity, trauma, and narrative of every daily interaction, and
each staff member or volunteer or speaker has theirs.We have
intentionally filled this school with adults who hold a lot of
experience, credentials, passions, and skills with a range of
neuro-abilities. We really like working together. At any given
moment, PSCS Staff are each intelligent, genuine, funny, creative
human beings, all of whom, in many ways, consider this community a
calling.The staff hold discussions, process, imagine, and
work together to support the daily life and education of each
student, at their own level. This collaboration is possible in a
real life work environment and it's playing out for students every
day. The various styles of leadership and collaboration are modeled
every day here, and students are paying attention. The future is
collaboration and we are quickly becoming experts.
Puget Sound Community School's tuition is approximately $26,515 for private students.
What is the acceptance rate of Puget Sound Community School?
The acceptance rate of Puget Sound Community School is 90%, which is higher than the national average of 85%.
When is the application deadline for Puget Sound Community School?
The application deadline for Puget Sound Community School is rolling (applications are reviewed as they are received year-round).
In what neighborhood is Puget Sound Community School located?
Puget Sound Community School is located in the Downtown Seattle neighborhood of Seattle, WA. There are 5 other private schools located in Downtown Seattle.
Grades: K-12 | 735 students2.5 miles 3400 E Harrison Street Seattle, WA 98112 (206) 326-7736
2.5
K-12
735
School Reviews
5.00 out of 5(3 reviews)
51/24/2025
Our family's time at PSCS was nothing short of a gift鈥攐ne we continue to be profoundly grateful for. The impact of this incredible school on my son's life has been lasting and transformative. Since graduating, he has traveled across the world, performed music on stages both big and small, taken on a leadership role at a local semi-professional soccer club, and excelled in his first year of college. But more than his accomplishments, it's how he moves through the world that stands out鈥攁 reflection of the values he cultivated at PSCS. Wherever my son goes, he builds community. He leads with integrity, acts with courage, and fosters meaningful connections. These aren't just skills he picked up鈥攖hey're values he internalized during his time at PSCS. I cannot overstate how deeply this school influenced the way he chooses to engage with his life, take responsibility for his choices, and connect with others.As a parent, I always knew my son was surrounded by a caring, supportive community of adults who genuinely saw him for who he was and who he could become. His teachers held an image of his best self and gently but firmly guided him toward that potential. PSCS gave him the freedom to explore, the courage to take risks, and the safety to grapple with tough questions. He experienced joy, had brave conversations, and learned what it means to live authentically.The maturity and leadership I see in my son鈥攁nd in every PSCS graduate鈥攃ome from the trust, responsibility, and respect this school extends to its students. Adolescence is such a critical time for young people as they shape their identities and discover how they want to impact the world. At PSCS, this process is nurtured with care, intention, and a commitment to creating empowered, compassionate individuals鈥攖he kind of people our world desperately needs more of.
- Posted by Parent - Parent
52/11/2020
We absolutely love this school. Our daughter is very happy here after years of struggling to feel comfortable in a traditional school. She has found her peer group, is invited to pursue her passions (digital art), and is learning the key components to social justice, empathy, and kindness. The staff is fully committed to wholeness-based academics. The community is very engaging and active. The advisors work with each student individually to achieve their goals. Most of their graduates over the past 25 years have gone on to further education/university. They have a relatively new head of school who has brought in strategies and improvements that needed to be made heading into this next quarter of a century. I love their social justice focus and approve of their intentionality surrounding more focused academic goals. The student body is comprised of a variety of binary and non-binary genders and sexualities. The staff is the same and is also comprised of 50% teachers of color. I highly recommend this school to students who know the importance of social justice and environmental responsibility and whose learning goals root in their own passions.
- Posted by Parent - Middle School Mom
58/2/2013
A small community school based on being kind and learning to love school--not just hoping to get through it.
- Posted by Administrator - getlo
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