Cataldo Catholic School at Saint Augustine is a K-8 parish school on Spokane's South Hill, founded September 20, 1915 with 50 students and three Sisters of Saint Francis of Perpetual Adoration. The school takes its name from Father Joseph Cataldo, the Sicilian-born Jesuit missionary widely credited as the founder of Gonzaga University — the lineage matters because Gonzaga remains the dominant cultural reference for Catholic education in the Inland Northwest.
In late 2010 Cataldo became an independent nonprofit with formal permission from then-Bishop Blase Cupich, retaining diocesan affiliation but shifting governance to a lay board — a transition documented at the time by the Spokesman-Review. Within Spokane's Catholic K-8 cohort, Cataldo's nearest peers are All Saints (the merged ministry of St. Peter, St. Ann, and Our Lady of Fatima parishes, ~330 students PK-8) and Saint Aloysius (the Jesuit-affiliated K-12, ~310 students with a smaller 12:1 ratio). Cataldo is the larger of the three at roughly 376 students, with class sizes averaging 18 and a reported 25 percent acceptance rate that runs lower than typical for WA private schools.
Programming combines weekly Mass, daily prayer, and religion classes with a service-learning track focused on social-justice topics, alongside ten interscholastic sports — a notable offering at K-8 scale. Tuition runs around $8,700 and the school is fully accredited at the K-8 level.
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