Seattle Academy: A Big, Creative Urban School Where Choice Comes With Complexity

Grade 6 and the Middle School

Grade 6 offers a common beginning with an unusually large peer pool

The Grade 6 appeal is breadth without waiting for high school. Students encounter core academics alongside Leadership, Design Thinking 6, Computational Thinking 6, arts, language, physical education, and activity choices.

All incoming Middle School students take an on-campus math placement test after enrollment. That is a course-placement step, not the same as the standardized result submitted during admission.

The school does not publish the placement rubric or pathway-change rates.

Middle School students meet in advisory frequently each week. Groups have roughly 12 same-grade students and a faculty advisor.

Longer sessions cover social-emotional topics, while shorter check-ins handle organization, announcements, and community building.

The scale is the key question. A 461-student Middle School can provide many classmates and activities.

A family should still ask for the exact Grade 6 cohort size, teaching-team structure, hallway transition support, and how quickly an advisor notices a quiet student who is not connecting.

Grade 9 and the Upper School

Ninth grade begins broad requirements before later specialization

A ninth grader enters a trimester system and usually carries close to eight classes. The school recommends 23 credits in Grade 9.

Students need more than the bare annual minimum over four years to reach the 84 credits required for graduation.

The program requires four arts distribution areas, three more arts electives, six Innovations credits, and substantial humanities and STEM work. Ninth graders take Environmental Science and a required health course, alongside their other grade-level and placement-based subjects.

SAAS has never offered an AP curriculum. Honors work appears later in selected fields, while advanced arts and technical electives have prerequisites, auditions, portfolios, or instructor approval.

A ninth grader gets breadth, not an immediate menu of every advanced course.

Upper School advisory begins in Grade 9 with one faculty advisor and roughly 12 same-grade peers. The group stays together through graduation and meets once each week.

Ask how new ninth graders are mixed with returning SAAS students in classes, teams, productions, and lunch.

Ordinary day and workload

Four long classes can feel focused, but the evening load is still unknown

The 2026–27 day runs from 8:15 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. Students attend four 75-minute classes on a rotating eight-block schedule. Both divisions also have a 30-minute Community Time for advisory, assemblies, enrichment, or support.

Middle School lunch and recess runs from 12:25 to 1:10, with separate snack and break periods. Upper School lunch runs from 11:00 to 11:40.

Upper School students may leave campus for lunch, while sixth and seventh graders remain on campus.

The long blocks suit seminars, labs, projects, rehearsals, and critique. They also make a missed class consequential.

A rotating schedule can reduce daily transitions while increasing the need to track deadlines across multiple days.

Public materials do not report median nightly homework, the range by course, how often major assignments collide, or how much weekend work students carry. Ask for a real Grade 6 and Grade 9 week rather than accepting a single schoolwide estimate.

Activities can change the day sharply. Upper School varsity teams may practice or compete five or six days each week.

Winter Upper School robotics can require three weekday practices plus encouraged Saturday work. A serious arts production can create a similar scheduling puzzle.

Learning support and counseling

Support is visible, but some of the most intensive help costs extra

The base support structure includes advisors, grade-level deans, learning specialists, accommodation managers, tutoring programs, and a six-person counseling staff. The school reports an eight-to-one student-to-faculty ratio, though that is not a support caseload.

Formal accommodations require current documentation from a qualified professional. Public examples include extended test time, audiobooks, a notetaker group, testing breaks, and standardized-test accommodations.

Peer tutoring and lunch-time math tutoring are available. The school also maintains referrals for private, family-paid tutors.

Its own Study Skills class does not provide basic-skill remediation, and its teachers are not necessarily content specialists across subjects.

Study Skills is a small-group elective focused on executive function and academic strategies. It replaces an elective block in Middle School and carries elective credit in Upper School.

For 2026–27 it costs $10,692 for the year, or $3,564 per Upper School trimester. Aid is available.

The separate Options Program serves small Upper School cohorts with flexible curriculum and graduation requirements. It leads to a diploma that identifies the Options pathway.

Families should ask about admission, fit, staffing, and postsecondary implications rather than treating it as ordinary accommodations.

The public counseling page promises a safe, confidential space but does not publish caseloads, appointment waits, session limits, emergency coverage, outside-treatment thresholds, or parent-notice rules. Families should ask directly how confidentiality and notice work in routine and urgent situations.

Arts, innovation, and athletics

Creative breadth is a requirement, not a side program

Every Upper School student must earn at least one credit in dance, music, theater, and visual arts, plus three additional arts credits. Beginning courses feed into more focused audition or portfolio tracks in performance and studio fields.

The breadth is useful even for a student who does not arrive with a declared art. It also means a reluctant performer cannot simply avoid dance or theater.

Ask how beginner classes handle discomfort, skill differences, and public presentation.

Innovations begins in Grade 6 with leadership, design, and computational thinking. Upper School students complete foundations in computational thinking, financial literacy, and entrepreneurship and design, then add three elective credits.

Robotics can move from beginner skills into serious competition. The program publishes no participation fee, but its Upper School winter schedule can demand at least six hours a week plus encouraged Saturdays.

Students cannot miss robotics practice for another activity with a conflicting schedule.

Athletics changed for 2026–27. Middle School still emphasizes broad participation.

Upper School is no longer universally no-cut. Only cross country, girls swim, wrestling, boys swim, and track and field are currently listed as no-cut.

Capitol Hill and transportation

The city is part of the education and part of the family logistics

Middle School is based at 1137 13th Avenue and Upper School at 1201 East Union. The campus sits in Capitol Hill rather than behind a suburban gate.

Students move through a dense neighborhood and Upper School students can leave campus at lunch.

For 2026–27, SAAS lists eight morning and afternoon routes. They reach the Eastside, West and South Seattle, the northwest and northeast, Magnolia, Queen Anne, and north Capitol Hill.

Stops, timing, and even route operation depend on demand.

Regular afternoon buses leave at 3:15, only 15 minutes after dismissal. Students in rehearsal, robotics, clubs, or sports need a later plan.

A free 5:45 shuttle runs to Third and University for Metro and light rail connections.

The 2026–27 bus fee is $610 per trimester in each direction. One-way service therefore costs $1,830 for three trimesters, and round-trip service costs $3,660.

Tuition-aid recipients automatically qualify for bus aid.

The school points families to RapidRide G and Metro Route 2, while youth under 18 ride transit free. Test the actual door-to-door trip at 7:30 a.m. and after 5:45 p.m. A route on a map does not prove a safe, reliable, or age-appropriate trip for your child.

Tuition, full cost, and aid

The posted tuition is only the first useful number

Tuition and fees for 2026–27 are $52,940 in every grade. Fall 2027 tuition is not yet public.

The school does not publish a single complete cost sheet showing what the quoted fees include.

Round-trip bus brings the visible baseline to $56,600. Full-year Study Skills brings it to $63,632 without a bus, or $67,292 with round-trip service.

Those figures still exclude purchased lunch, optional travel, and any unpublished device or activity charges.

On-campus lunch currently runs about $12 to $14 per day. A 170-day estimate would add roughly $2,040 to $2,380, though actual use and the school calendar will vary.

Students may bring lunch, and Upper School students can buy food off campus.

Optional travel can add thousands. The school publishes separate aid and says its goal is to make at least one trip accessible to each student.

Recent posted offerings are examples, not a Fall 2027 price list.

More than 25% of students receive need-based aid in 2026–27. The school says the average award covers 70% of tuition and grants can reach full tuition.

It also publishes award ranges by income band, but those are not promises for a specific family.

Aid may also cover transportation, lunch, the Upper School laptop program, trips, Study Skills, and social participation. Community Chest can help with additional school-life costs.

Both parent households submit financial information, and every family reapplies annually.

K, Grade 6, and Grade 9

Kindergarten is not offered, while Grade 6 and Grade 9 are different starts

Start with the easy answer: there is no Kindergarten entry. Seattle Academy serves Grades 6 through 12.

Families seeking elementary continuity need another school for K–5 and a deliberate transition plan for middle school.

Grade 6 is the school's first grade. Every sixth grader is new to SAAS, even though some classmates already know one another from elementary school.

The curriculum begins with shared foundations, then adds choices in language, arts, activities, and Study Skills.

Grade 9 is a new Upper School start inside an established Grades 6–12 community. Incoming ninth graders join students who have already spent three years at SAAS.

They also enter a much larger division, with 897 students reported for 2026–27.

The school publishes early sibling and employee procedures specifically for Grades 6 and 9. It does not publish how many standard-round places remain, how many applicants each grade receives, or how many offers and wait-pool moves follow.

Admissions process and calendar

The student visit and parent conversation are both real parts of the file

Applications for 2027–28 open in early September 2026 through Aryval. The standard application and financial-assistance deadline is January 14, 2027 for both divisions.

Upper School decisions arrive February 5, with replies due February 25. Middle School decisions arrive March 5, with replies due March 25.

Families applying to both divisions may request a combined February 5 family decision and use the Upper School reply deadline.

Every applicant spends a half day on campus in classes, small groups, and larger settings. The visit includes a writing activity.

Each family also has a 30-minute one-on-one parent or guardian interview with an admissions representative.

The file also includes teacher evaluations, progress reports or transcripts, and standardized results. SAAS says testing is one data point and not prominent.

It accepts existing SBA, MAP, CTP, STAR, Iowa, WIAT-IV, ISEE, or SSAT results, with no preferred format and possible alternatives by arrangement.

The current public page does not explain the Visit Day exercises beyond writing, how observations are scored, which adult conducts the parent conversation, or how committee members weigh each component. Treat the half day as a genuine mutual fit check, not a casual shadow visit.