Best Private Schools in Yakima
The Yakima Valley's private-school sector is the smallest among Washington's mid-size metros and is shaped almost entirely by the Catholic Diocese of Yakima, with a small Adventist and Lutheran presence at the edges. The valley's Catholic school history runs deeper than most non-residents realize — Mother Joseph of the Sacred Heart, the same Sister of Charity of Providence who built St. Michael in Olympia and Providence Academy in Vancouver, founded the first Catholic school in the Yakima Valley in 1875.
St. Joseph Marquette Catholic School in Yakima is the direct institutional descendant of that 1875 founding. Three Sisters of Charity of Providence opened St. Joseph Academy in what is now Union Gap in 1875, moved to North Yakima in 1887, and the Jesuits opened Marquette High School on the same campus in 1918. The current St. Joseph grade-school building dates to 1947, and the combined St. Joseph / Marquette name has been in use since 1985. Christ the Teacher Catholic School in Yakima is the area's second mid-size Catholic elementary.
La Salle High School in Union Gap is the only Catholic high school in the valley and the most distinctive institution on this list. La Salle opened in 1998 to replace the former Carroll High School, sponsored from the start by the De La Salle Christian Brothers — a Lasallian congregation founded by St. Jean-Baptiste de La Salle in seventeenth-century France that operates schools in more than 80 countries. La Salle is part of the Brothers' District of San Francisco New Orleans, headquartered at Mont La Salle in Napa, California. Three Christian Brothers from that district joined La Salle's faculty and leadership for the 2025-26 school year, returning the school's daily operations to direct Brother sponsorship for the first time in many years.
Yakima Adventist Christian School and Christian Worship Center Academy in Zillah serve smaller Adventist and evangelical populations. Several of the smallest schools in this list — Harrah Community Christian, St. John of Kronstadt Orthodox Christian, Grace Lutheran — report fewer than thirty students and in some cases fewer than ten. These operate as parish-attached micro-schools rather than full enrollment institutions, though they appear in federal survey data. The non-Catholic private layer in the Yakima Valley is genuinely thin.
Ranked schools
- 001ST JOSEPH MARQUETTE CATHOLIC SCHOOL(PRIVATE SCHOOL — INDEPENDENT) · YAKIMA—
- 002LA SALLE HIGH SCHOOL(PRIVATE SCHOOL — INDEPENDENT) · YAKIMA—
- 003CHRIST THE TEACHER CATHOLIC SCHOOL(PRIVATE SCHOOL — INDEPENDENT) · YAKIMA—
- 004WEST CHESTNUT ACADEMY(PRIVATE SCHOOL — INDEPENDENT) · YAKIMA—
- 005YAKIMA ADVENTIST CHRISTIAN SCHOOL(PRIVATE SCHOOL — INDEPENDENT) · YAKIMA—
- 006MONTESSORI SCHOOL OF YAKIMA(PRIVATE SCHOOL — INDEPENDENT) · YAKIMA—
- 007CHRISTIAN WORSHIP CENTER ACADEMY(PRIVATE SCHOOL — INDEPENDENT) · YAKIMA—
- 008HARRAH COMMUNITY CHRISTIAN SCHOOL(PRIVATE SCHOOL — INDEPENDENT) · YAKIMA—
- 009ST JOHN OF KRONSTADT ORTHODOX CHRISTIAN SCHOOL(PRIVATE SCHOOL — INDEPENDENT) · YAKIMA—
- 010GRACE LUTHERAN SCHOOL(PRIVATE SCHOOL — INDEPENDENT) · YAKIMA—
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