The French American School of Puget Sound (FASPS) is the only fully bilingual French-English school in Washington State, an independent day school on Mercer Island serving more than 440 students from age 18 months through grade 8. The Mercer Island campus on East Mercer Way is anchored by a Capitol Hill preschool campus opened in 2024. FASPS was founded in 1995 by Patricia Blaise-Caves and Véronique Dussud with 13 students in a church basement, and celebrated its 30th anniversary in 2025.
The bilingual immersion model is the differentiating fact. Early grades are conducted approximately 95 percent in French, with English progressively increasing so that middle-school students reach roughly equal use of both languages; Spanish and Mandarin enter the curriculum in sixth grade. The peer set is small because the model is unusual — there is no second fully bilingual French-English program in WA, so families weighing FASPS typically compare it against single-language immersion programs (Mandarin at Bellevue Children's Academy, for instance) or conventional independent K-8 schools where language is a single subject rather than the medium of instruction.
The student body represents more than 60 countries, anchoring an internationally diverse community at PreK-8 scale. Curriculum is recognized by the French Ministry of Education and accredited by the Northwest Association of Independent Schools and NAIS. Graduates often continue at French-track upper schools globally or transition into American independent and public high schools across the Seattle metro area.
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