In 1944, Washington state passed a law allowing high schools in Snoqualmie, North Bend and Fall City to consolidate and level the education playing field among students. Initially, the students flocked to the Snoqualmie branch – now school district headquarters – and dubbed it Mount Si High School.
Valley students matriculated from Mount Si High School for nine years before the real Mount Si, the one where today’s school is located, opened in 1953. And it opened in a floodplain.
“Everything was built in a flood plain because the early pioneers were farmers,” said Christy Lake, assistant director of the Snoqualmie Valley Historical Museum.
The Snoqualmie tribe had already cleared the valley floor of trees and the river’s flooding renewed silt, attracting farmers and early construction.
Mount Si has grown since it’s grand opening in the mid-twentieth century. Additional space was added in 1955, 1968, 1977 and it was remodeled in 1991, adding 60,169 square feet to Mount Si High School’s berth.
The most recent additions, a sports complex totaling 13,300 square feet and an all weather track and football field, were completed in 2005.
Small readjustments have taken place ever since, although they don’t make headlines.
The wave of new students has caused the high school to hire 20 new teachers in the past five years. A shortage of classroom space has converted a former special education room into a math class. Room 108, nicknamed the Harry Potter room because of its location under the stairs, houses math students throughout the day.
Lake remembers hearing about high school rivalries when
Snoqualmie, North Bend and Fall City all had their own schools.
Kathryn Lerner, a school board member representing District 3 on
Snoqualmie Ridge who also served on the Facilities Task Force for
the school bond during the 2005-06 school year, agreed that
contemplating a new high school is difficult.
“When you’ve got one high school, you think of yourself as a one schoolhouse town and that’s part of your identity,” Lerner said. “But when you talk with the students – they do sports and band – they identity so many other ways with the community.”
