Best Private Elementary Schools on the Eastside
The Eastside's private elementary cohort is much smaller and more specialized than Seattle's. Only Open Window School (Bellevue) earns S-tier here, the secular gifted K-8 that pairs with The Evergreen School as Washington's named gifted dyad. Open Window's HiCAP-style admissions and explicitly gifted-only enrollment make it the singular Eastside option for families seeking a programmatic match to a tested intellectually-gifted profile.
Eleven A-tier schools fill out the strong middle. The senior Eastside indie at this grade band is Saint Thomas School in Medina (founded 1951), the K-8 originally affiliated with St. Thomas Episcopal Church and now nonsectarian, and the only A-tier Eastside K-8 with founding roots predating the Microsoft-era growth that produced the rest of the cohort. The remainder splits across category lines: Bellevue Christian's main Clyde Hill campus and its Three Points Elementary program in Medina anchor the evangelical Christian K-12 network; The Bear Creek School (Redmond) is the classical-Christian National Blue Ribbon school; Sacred Heart School (Clyde Hill) is the long-established Catholic K-8; BASIS Independent Bellevue is the AP-heavy for-profit campus opened in 2017; Bellevue Children's Academy and Chestnut Hill Academy represent the post-2000 secular-academic K-8 growth; Eton School is the largest Eastside Montessori PK-8; and French American School of Puget Sound (Mercer Island) and French Immersion School of Washington (Bellevue) anchor the language-immersion options. The category mix is wider than Seattle's — gifted, classical-Christian, evangelical, Catholic parish, secular accelerated, Montessori, and language immersion — reflecting the Eastside's larger geographic spread and more decentralized parent-school culture.
Below A-tier, eleven B-tier and four C-tier schools cover the parish K-8s and smaller religious schools across Bellevue, Redmond, Kirkland, and Sammamish. Eastside families typically weigh the pedagogical category — gifted, accelerated, classical, Montessori, immersion, or religious — at least as heavily as the school's published ranking.
S Tier · 1 school
- 001OPEN WINDOW SCHOOL(PRIVATE SCHOOL — INDEPENDENT) · KING359 students
A Tier · 10 schools
- 002BELLEVUE CHRISTIAN SCHOOL(PRIVATE SCHOOL — INDEPENDENT) · KING918 students
- 003THE BEAR CREEK SCHOOL(PRIVATE SCHOOL — INDEPENDENT) · KING673 students
- 004SACRED HEART SCHOOL(PRIVATE SCHOOL — INDEPENDENT) · KING408 students
- 005CHESTNUT HILL ACADEMY(PRIVATE SCHOOL — INDEPENDENT) · KING329 students
- 006FRENCH AMERICAN SCHOOL OF PUGET SOUND(PRIVATE SCHOOL — INDEPENDENT) · KING312 students
- 007THREE POINTS ELEMENTARY SCHOOL CAMPUS(PRIVATE SCHOOL — INDEPENDENT) · KING269 students
- 008SAINT THOMAS SCHOOL(PRIVATE SCHOOL — INDEPENDENT) · KING250 students
- 009BASIS INDEPENDENT BELLEVUE(PRIVATE SCHOOL — INDEPENDENT) · KING231 students
- 010ETON SCHOOL(PRIVATE SCHOOL — INDEPENDENT) · KING227 students
- 011FRENCH IMMERSION SCHOOL OF WASHINGTON(PRIVATE SCHOOL — INDEPENDENT) · KING149 students
B Tier · 10 schools
- 012PROVIDENCE CLASSICAL CHRISTIAN SCHOOL(PRIVATE SCHOOL — INDEPENDENT) · KING350 students
- 013WOODINVILLE MONTESSORI SCHOOL(PRIVATE SCHOOL — INDEPENDENT) · KING312 students
- 014EASTSIDE CHRISTIAN SCHOOL(PRIVATE SCHOOL — INDEPENDENT) · KING239 students
- 015UNITED SEATTLE&BELLEVUE KOREAN SCH BELLEVUE CAMPUS(PRIVATE SCHOOL — INDEPENDENT) · KING345 students
- 016TZU CHI ACADEMY SEATTLE(PRIVATE SCHOOL — INDEPENDENT) · KING282 students
- 017HOLY FAMILY PARISH SCHOOL(PRIVATE SCHOOL — INDEPENDENT) · KING260 students
- 018HERITAGE CHRISTIAN ACADEMY(PRIVATE SCHOOL — INDEPENDENT) · KING253 students
- 019ST MONICA SCHOOL(PRIVATE SCHOOL — INDEPENDENT) · KING222 students
- 020ST BRENDAN'S CATHOLIC CHURCH(PRIVATE SCHOOL — INDEPENDENT) · KING217 students
- 021JEWISH DAY SCHOOL OF METROPOLITAN SEATTLE(PRIVATE SCHOOL — INDEPENDENT) · KING77 students
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