St. Joseph Catholic School is a Catholic PK-8 in Kennewick, Washington, founded in 1964 and accredited by the Western Catholic Educational Association. It is the larger of the two K-8 Catholic schools in the Tri-Cities, and operates within the Diocese of Yakima rather than the Seattle archdiocese.
The Tri-Cities private-school market is small. St. Joseph's peer set is essentially the cluster of regional Christian schools — Tri-Cities Prep (the Catholic high school in Pasco, the natural feeder destination), Liberty Christian School (Richland, evangelical PK-12), and Bethlehem Lutheran in Kennewick. Compared with the Seattle Catholic-school market, the structural difference is that families here often weigh St. Joseph against strong area public elementaries in Kennewick or Richland rather than against secular private alternatives — the latter category barely exists in eastern Washington at the K-8 level.
Enrollment runs around 295 students with an unusually low 10.6:1 student-teacher ratio for a parish school, and tuition runs around $7,800 — well below archdiocesan Seattle norms and reflecting the regional cost structure. The school offers the standard Catholic curriculum plus four interscholastic sports (basketball, soccer, softball, volleyball). For Tri-Cities families, the deliberation is typically continuity into Tri-Cities Prep for high school versus shifting to the larger Kennewick or Richland public high schools.
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