Best Private Schools in the Tri-Cities
The Tri-Cities — Richland, Kennewick, and Pasco — have the smallest private-school sector of any WA metro of comparable size. The field bifurcates between large evangelical Christian K-12 schools and a tight cluster of Catholic parish elementaries plus one Catholic high school. The evangelical leaders trace partly to the postwar Hanford and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory growth that built Richland's professional class; the Catholic schools trace to the much older Hispanic-Catholic and railroad-era parish geography of Pasco and east Kennewick.
Liberty Christian School in Richland, founded in 1980 by parents led by Pastor Don McMillan of First Baptist Church, is the largest private school in the region at roughly 500 K-12 students drawn from approximately fifty local congregations. After fire damaged its temporary facilities, Liberty acquired its current 19-acre Richland campus in 1997 and consolidated the full PreK-12 program by 2003 with the help of a Battelle Laboratories grant for its science lab — an unusual private-Christian-school connection to the regional research economy.
Tri-Cities Prep in Pasco, founded 1994 and opened with twenty students in 1998, is the only Catholic high school in the Tri-Cities and one of the few Catholic high schools in eastern Washington outside Spokane and Yakima. Uniquely, it was approved jointly by the bishops of both the Spokane and Yakima dioceses, reflecting the Tri-Cities' position on the diocesan boundary. At roughly 200 students it remains small, but the school has built a notable WIAA athletic program with eleven state titles across football, basketball, cross-country, and baseball over the last fifteen years.
Christ the King in Richland and St. Joseph's in Kennewick are the two largest Catholic parish elementaries; St. Patrick's in Pasco serves the historically Hispanic east Pasco parish. Bethlehem Lutheran in Kennewick is one of the longest-running LCMS schools in the region. Kingspoint Christian, Tri-City Adventist, Riverview Baptist, and Children's Garden Montessori each serve under two hundred students; in several cases under one hundred. The smaller end of the field is genuinely small — Benton and Franklin Counties have very limited private-school options outside the Liberty / Catholic / Adventist tracks.
Ranked schools
- 001LIBERTY CHRISTIAN SCHOOL(PRIVATE SCHOOL — INDEPENDENT) · BENTON—
- 002CHRIST THE KING SCHOOL(PRIVATE SCHOOL — INDEPENDENT) · BENTON—
- 003ST JOSEPH'S CATHOLIC SCHOOL(PRIVATE SCHOOL — INDEPENDENT) · BENTON—
- 004TRI-CITIES PREP(PRIVATE SCHOOL — INDEPENDENT) · FRANKLIN—
- 005BETHLEHEM LUTHERAN SCHOOL(PRIVATE SCHOOL — INDEPENDENT) · BENTON—
- 006ST PATRICK'S CATHOLIC SCHOOL(PRIVATE SCHOOL — INDEPENDENT) · FRANKLIN—
- 007KINGSPOINT CHRISTIAN SCHOOL(PRIVATE SCHOOL — INDEPENDENT) · FRANKLIN—
- 008TRI-CITY ADVENTIST SCHOOL(PRIVATE SCHOOL — INDEPENDENT) · FRANKLIN—
- 009RIVERVIEW BAPTIST CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS(PRIVATE SCHOOL — INDEPENDENT) · FRANKLIN—
- 010CHILDREN'S GARDEN MONTESSORI(PRIVATE SCHOOL — INDEPENDENT) · BENTON—
- 011SAGEBRUSH ELEMENTARY SCHOOL(PRIVATE SCHOOL — INDEPENDENT) · BENTON—
- 012SAGEBRUSH MONTESSORI SCHOOL(PRIVATE SCHOOL — INDEPENDENT) · BENTON—
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