Private school tuition in Seattle is approaching $52,000 a year, and the gap between families who can afford it and those who cannot is growing wider with each passing year.
Lakeside School, one of the city’s most prestigious institutions, now charges $49,350 annually for grades 5 through 12. Eastside Preparatory School in Kirkland sits at $46,600. Both schools maintain selective admissions processes, small class sizes, and teaching philosophies built around independent and inquiry-led learning. The quality of that experience comes at a cost passed directly to families.
The numbers become starker when measured against the broader economic reality of the region. The median household income in Washington state is approximately $95,000. A single year of tuition at either institution would consume roughly half of what a typical Washington family earns in twelve months, placing these schools well beyond the reach of the vast majority of Seattle residents.
Financial aid programmes exist at some schools. Lakeside awarded $10 million in need-based assistance during the current school year, a meaningful sum that has allowed some lower-income students to attend. But the structural question that aid cannot fully answer is whether Seattle’s most prestigious private schools are drifting away from their stated missions of opportunity and becoming instead a reflection of the city’s widening wealth divide. As tuition continues to climb and the distance between private and public schooling grows, that question is becoming harder for these institutions to avoid.
