St. Monica Catholic School is a Catholic PK-8 on Mercer Island, established in 1958 and part of the Archdiocese of Seattle. It is the only Catholic school on Mercer Island and the closest Catholic K-8 for Eastside families on the southern end of Lake Washington.
In the Archdiocese of Seattle K-8 network, St. Monica's peer set is the Eastside Catholic cluster: St. Louise (Bellevue), St. Madeleine Sophie (Bellevue), Sacred Heart (Bellevue), and Holy Family (Kirkland). Compared to peers, St. Monica's distinguishing feature is its STEM + the Arts Project-Based Learning model with foreign language across all grade levels — a more programmatic curriculum than the standard archdiocesan parish-school approach. The school is also unusually small (around 215-260 students) with a low 8:1 student-teacher ratio, well below archdiocesan parish norms.
For Mercer Island families, the deliberation typically involves weighing St. Monica against Mercer Island School District's strong public elementaries (West Mercer, Island Park, Lakeridge) and the secular K-8 / K-12 independents on the Eastside (French American School of Puget Sound, Eton School, the lower division of Bear Creek). Graduates typically route into Eastside Catholic for high school, Mercer Island High School, or the Seattle Catholic high schools (Holy Names, O'Dea, Seattle Prep, Bishop Blanchet) depending on family preference.
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