The

Spokane Public Library The Spokane Public Library is a public library system serving the city of Spokane, Washington, US. It has six branches and a central library in downtown Spokane, along with a bookmobile and online services. The library system was acquired by th ...

and Spokane County Library District system provide the Spokane area with access to information and study space. Secondary education is provided by

Spokane Public Schools Spokane Public Schools (District No. 81) is a public school district in Spokane County, Washington, and serves the city of Spokane. The district includes oversight and administration of seven high schools, six middle schools, and 34 elementary ...

with its six high schools, six middle schools, and thirty-four elementary schools. Public charter, private, and parochial schools offer more choices of study. Higher education in Spokane is served by the

Community Colleges of Spokane Community Colleges of Spokane is a community college district based in Spokane, Washington. Established in 1963, CCS serves over 28,000 students a year, spread across a service district in Eastern Washington. It comprises Spokane Community Coll ...

system (

Spokane Community College Spokane Community College is a Public college, public community college in Spokane, Washington. It is part of the Community Colleges of Spokane and was established in 1963. Academics SCC offers associate degree, bachelor's degrees, and certif ...

and

Spokane Falls Community College Spokane Falls Community College (SFCC) is a Public college, public community college in Spokane, Washington. Established in 1967, it is a part of the Community Colleges of Spokane. SFCC enrolls approximately 3,805 students and has an open admis ...

) and two private universities,

Gonzaga University Gonzaga University (GU) ( ) is a Private university, private Society of Jesus, Jesuit university in Spokane, Washington, United States. It is Higher education accreditation in the United States, accredited by the Northwest Commission on Colleges ...

and

Whitworth University Whitworth University is a private Christian university that is affiliated with the Presbyterian Church and located in Spokane, Washington, United States. Founded in 1890, Whitworth enrolls nearly 2,600 students and offers more than 100 gradua ...

as well as various trade and technical schools. The University District in

Downtown Spokane Downtown Spokane or Riverside is the central business district of Spokane, Washington. The Riverside neighborhood is roughly bounded by I-90 to the south, Division Street to the east, Monroe Street to the west and Boone Avenue to the north. The ...

is also host to branch locations of regional universities such as

Washington State University Spokane Washington State University Spokane (WSU Spokane), branded as WSU Health Sciences Spokane, is a campus of Washington State University located in Spokane, Washington. It was established in 1989 and, as of 2010, is designated as the university's ...

and its medical school, the

Elson S. Floyd College of Medicine The Elson S. Floyd College of Medicine is a public medical school headquartered in Spokane, Washington. Founded in 2015, it is part of Washington State University, and is the second public medical school in the state of Washington. It welcomed i ...

. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the total school enrollment in Spokane was 54,830 in 2011. Nursery school and kindergarten enrollment was 5,484 and elementary or high school enrollment was 30,548 children. College or graduate school enrollment was 18,798. As of 2011, 91.6 percent of people 25 years and over had at least graduated from high school and 29.2 percent had a bachelor's degree or higher.

Libraries

Serving the general educational needs of the local population are two public library districts, the

(within city limits) and the Spokane County Library District. Founded in 1904 with funding from philanthropist

Andrew Carnegie Andrew Carnegie ( , ; November 25, 1835August 11, 1919) was a Scottish-American industrialist and philanthropist. Carnegie led the expansion of the History of the iron and steel industry in the United States, American steel industry in the late ...

, the Spokane Public Library system comprises a downtown library overlooking the

Spokane Falls Spokane Falls is the name of a waterfall and dam on the Spokane River, located in the central business district in downtown Spokane, Washington. The city of Spokane was also initially named "Spokane Falls". History The Native American name ...

and five branch libraries. Special collections focus on Inland Pacific Northwest history and include reference books, periodicals, maps, photographs, and other archival materials and government documents. The downtown Spokane Public Library branch located at 906 West Main has a collection size of 435,902 volumes and an annual circulation of 2,060,220 items per year. The first downtown library building, ''The Carnegie Building'', still stands 5 blocks from the current Downtown library. The libraries for the colleges and universities in Spokane include the Spokane Community College Library, Spokane Falls Community College Library, Gonzaga's Foley Center Library which has a collection size of 427,262 volumes and annual circulation of 48,889 items per year as well as their School of Law's Chastek Library and Whitworth's Harriet Cheney Cowles Memorial Library which has a collection size of 220,568 and an annual circulation of 19,672.

Elementary and secondary education

Public school system

Spokane Public Schools (District No. 81) was organized in 1889, and is the largest public school system in Spokane, and the second-largest in the state, as of 2014, serving roughly 30,000 students in six high schools, six middle schools, and thirty-four elementary schools. Within Spokane Public Schools, there are two Washington State Charter School commission approved independent

charter school A charter school is a school that receives government funding but operates independently of the established state school system in which it is located. It is independent in the sense that it operates according to the basic principle of autono ...

s to provide alternative choices to traditional high schools, these are Innovation High School in the independent PRIDE Schools district and the Spokane International Academy. In north Spokane, there is the Mead School District No. 354 which has two traditional high schools,

Mead High School Mead High School (also Mead Senior High School, MHS) is a four-year public secondary school in Fairwood, Washington, United States, on the north side of the Spokane urban area. MHS is one of two traditional high schools in the Mead School Di ...

and Mt. Spokane High School. Other major public school districts in the Spokane area include the Central Valley School District (which contains Central Valley High School,

University High School University High School may refer to: Australia * University High School, Melbourne, Victoria Canada * University Hill Secondary School, Vancouver, British Columbia United States Arizona * University High School (Tolleson) * University High Sc ...

, and Ridgeline High School), West Valley School District ( West Valley High School), and East Valley School District ( East Valley High School) in Spokane Valley. Smaller districts in the surrounding area include the

Cheney School District Cheney School District No. 360 is a public school district in Spokane County, Washington and serves the towns of Cheney, Airway Heights, and the surrounding area. The district offers classes from Kindergarten to Grade 12. As of 2018, the dis ...

(Cheney High School), Deer Park School District (Deer Park High School),

Freeman School District Freeman, free men, Freeman's or Freemans may refer to: Places United States * Freeman, Georgia, an unincorporated community * Freeman, Illinois, an unincorporated community * Freeman, Indiana, an unincorporated community * Freeman, South Dakot ...

( Freeman High School), Liberty School District (Liberty High School),

Medical Lake School District Medicine is the science and practice of caring for patients, managing the diagnosis, prognosis, prevention, treatment, palliation of their injury or disease, and promoting their health. Medicine encompasses a variety of health care practic ...

( Medical Lake High School),

Nine Mile Falls School District Nine Mile Falls School District No. 325/179 is a public school district in the counties of Spokane and Stevens, Washington, USA The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primaril ...

(Lakeside High School), Orchard Prairie School District, and Riverside School District (Riverside High School).

Spokane area public high schools

Note: *This is not an exhaustive list. This is a selective list that is intended to focus on public high schools in school districts that have a presence in the city of Spokane and may include other major districts or high schools in the Spokane metropolitan area (Spokane County). *Enrollment figures as of April 2021.

Private education

A variety of

private Private or privates may refer to: Music * "In Private", by Dusty Springfield from the 1990 album ''Reputation'' * Private (band), a Denmark-based band * "Private" (Ryōko Hirosue song), from the 1999 album ''Private'', written and also recorded ...

and

parochial Parochial is an adjective which may refer to: * Parish A parish is a territorial entity in many Christianity, Christian denominations, constituting a division within a diocese. A parish is under the pastoral care and clerical jurisdiction of a ...

elementary and

secondary school A secondary school, high school, or senior school, is an institution that provides secondary education. Some secondary schools provide both ''lower secondary education'' (ages 11 to 14) and ''upper secondary education'' (ages 14 to 18), i.e., b ...

s augment the public school system. Among the parochial schools, the

Roman Catholic Diocese of Spokane The Diocese of Spokane () is a Latin Church ecclesiastical territory or diocese of the Catholic Church in Washington State in the United States. It is a suffragan diocese in the ecclesiastical province of the metropolitan Archdiocese of Seattle. ...

manages ten such schools in and around the area, among them being

Gonzaga Preparatory School Gonzaga Preparatory School in Spokane, Washington, is a Private school, private, Catholic Church, Catholic high school in the Inland Northwest. Colloquially nicknamed "G-Prep", the Jesuits, Jesuit school has been recognized for its college prepa ...

. Other parochial schools in the Spokane metro area include

Upper Columbia Academy Upper Columbia Academy (UCA) is a 9-12 boarding high school located in Spangle, Washington, about 20 miles (32 km) south of Spokane. It is owned and operated by the Seventh-day Adventist Church The Seventh-day Adventist Church (SD ...

, a

boarding Boarding may refer to: *Boarding, used in the sense of "room and board", i.e. lodging and meals as in a: **Boarding house **Boarding school *Boarding (horses) (also known as a livery yard, livery stable, or boarding stable), is a stable where hor ...

high school offering a

Seventh-day Adventist education The Seventh-day Adventist educational system, part of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, is overseen by the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists located in Silver Spring, Maryland. It is considered as the largest Protestant educational ...

, located to the south in Spangle, and the Northwest Christian School, a non-denominational Kindergarten-12th grade school, to the north in Colbert. The Saint George's School in north Spokane is one of the only K-12 independent

secular Secularity, also the secular or secularness (from Latin , or or ), is the state of being unrelated or neutral in regards to religion. The origins of secularity can be traced to the Bible itself. The concept was fleshed out through Christian hi ...

private preparatory schools in Spokane and offers an

International Baccalaureate The International Baccalaureate Organization (IBO), more commonly known as the International Baccalaureate (IB), is a nonprofit foundation headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, and founded in 1968. It offers four educational programmes: the I ...

program of study. There are schools that exist to meet special needs and those that offer specialist education, such as

Montessori schools The Montessori method of education is a type of educational method that involves children's natural interests and activities rather than formal teaching methods. A Montessori classroom places an emphasis on hands-on learning and developing ...

, or an emphasis on a particular part of the curriculum. Private schools are subject to a state approval process. Examples include the Lilac Blind Foundation, Spokane Guild's School and Neuromuscular Center, and the Spokane Art School. The Salish School of Spokane is a

language preservation Language preservation is the preservation of endangered or dead languages. With language death, studies in linguistics, anthropology, prehistory and psychology lose diversity. As history is remembered with the help of historic preservation, languag ...

school that serves the Native American community of various tribal backgrounds and ancestry with language and cultural immersion experiences to increase intergenerational transmission of the endangered

Salish language The Salishan languages ( ), also known as the Salish languages ( ), are a family of languages found in the Pacific Northwest in North America, namely the Canadian province of British Columbia and the American states of Washington, Oregon, Ida ...

family in addition to traditional mentoring and academic support. The school offers a K-6 grade curriculum and plans to offer a secondary education.

Spokane area private secondary schools

Note: *This is not an exhaustive list. This is a selective list that intends to include private schools that provide instruction in part or fully for the high school grade levels 9-12 that are in the Spokane metropolitan area (Spokane County). *Enrollment figures as of April 2021.

Colleges and universities

Higher education institutions in Spokane include the private universities

Gonzaga Gonzaga may refer to: Places *Gonzaga, Lombardy, commune in the province of Mantua, Italy *Gonzaga, Cagayan, municipality in the Philippines *Gonzaga, Minas Gerais, town in Brazil *Forte Gonzaga, fort in Messina, Sicily Surname *House of Gonza ...

and Whitworth, and the public

system (

and

) as well as a variety of local branch campuses and technical institutes. The Community Colleges of Spokane operate Spokane Community College (SCC), Spokane Falls Community College (SFCC), and the Institute for Extended Learning, which coordinates rural outreach, business and community training, adult literacy services, and Spokane County Head Start/ECEAP/Early Head Start. Spokane Community College began operations on September 16, 1963, on the site of the Spokane Technical and Vocational School (established in 1953) at Mission and Greene. During a period of growth, Spokane Community College built a second campus on Fort George Wright Drive (now Spokane Falls Community College), which the board of trustees decided to separate in 1970, creating two distinct entities. Both SCC and SFCC offer four-year bachelor of applied science degrees, SFCC in applied management and cybersecurity and SCC in respiratory therapy. As of 2020, the Community Colleges of Spokane serves approximately 20,000 students a year and offers over 120 degree programs. Gonzaga University and

Law School A law school (also known as a law centre/center, college of law, or faculty of law) is an institution, professional school, or department of a college or university specializing in legal education, usually involved as part of a process for b ...

were founded by the Italian-born priest Joseph Cataldo and the

Jesuits The Society of Jesus (; abbreviation: S.J. or SJ), also known as the Jesuit Order or the Jesuits ( ; ), is a religious order (Catholic), religious order of clerics regular of pontifical right for men in the Catholic Church headquartered in Rom ...

in 1887. Gonzaga offers 43 undergraduate degree programs, 26 master's degree programs, a doctoral program in educational leadership, and a

Juris Doctor A Juris Doctor, Doctor of Jurisprudence, or Doctor of Law (JD) is a graduate-entry professional degree that primarily prepares individuals to practice law. In the United States and the Philippines, it is the only qualifying law degree. Other j ...

(law degree). Gonzaga is one of three schools that offer a law degree in the state of Washington. The school has a total enrollment of about 7,700. Whitworth was founded in

Tacoma, Washington Tacoma ( ) is the county seat of Pierce County, Washington, United States. A port city, it is situated along Washington's Puget Sound, southwest of Seattle, southwest of Bellevue, Washington, Bellevue, northeast of the state capital, Olympia ...

in 1890 and moved to its present location in 1914 following a generous land donation by railroad magnate Jay P. Graves and $100,000 in support from the community. The move alleviated persistent financial difficulties owing to competition with the

College of Puget Sound The University of Puget Sound is a private liberal arts college in Tacoma, Washington, United States. It was founded in 1888. The institution offers a variety of undergraduate degrees as well as five graduate programs in counseling, education, oc ...

and Pacific Lutheran Academy which were also located in Tacoma. It is affiliated with the

Presbyterian Church Presbyterianism is a historically Reformed Christianity, Reformed Protestantism, Protestant tradition named for its form of ecclesiastical polity, church government by representative assemblies of Presbyterian polity#Elder, elders, known as ...

and had 2,500 students studying in 53 different undergraduate and degree programs as of 2011. A variety of regional universities located elsewhere in the Inland Northwest have operations in Spokane's University District. The University District is the site of

(formerly the

Riverpoint Campus The WSU Health Sciences Spokane campus, (formerly the Riverpoint Campus, and originally, the Riverpoint Higher Education Park) is an urban , multi-institutional higher education campus in Spokane, Washington. The campus was established in 1990 by ...

); WSU Spokane is WSU's health sciences campus and houses the school's

College of Nursing A college of nursing is an educational institution that provides nursing education, often part of a university. College of Nursing may also refer to: *Australian College of Nursing, a professional body for nurses in Australia, created by merging t ...

College of Pharmacy The basic requirement for pharmacists to be considered for registration is often an undergraduate or postgraduate pharmacy degree from a recognized university. In many countries, this involves a four- or five-year course to attain a bachelor o ...

, and

. Washington State University is Washington's

land grant university A land-grant university (also called land-grant college or land-grant institution) is an institution of higher education in the United States designated by a state to receive the benefits of the Morrill Acts of 1862 and 1890, or a beneficiary ...

with its flagship campus located south in Pullman. WSU Spokane shares the University District on the east end of downtown Spokane with some programs of

Eastern Washington University Eastern Washington University (EWU) is a public university in Cheney, Washington, United States. It shares its satellite campus in Spokane, Washington with Washington State University. Founded in 1882, the university is academically divided in ...

(EWU), a regional comprehensive university with its main campus located southwest of Spokane in nearby Cheney. WSU Health Sciences Spokane campus 2015

The University District serves as WSU Spokane's center for advanced graduate and professional studies and research in the health sciences and health professions. WSU Spokane programs focus on the health sciences, educational administration, and criminal justice. Among its research centers is the WSU Sleep and Performance Research Center, that does controlled laboratory studies of sleep, wake, and work and the consequences of fatigue. A consortium of organizations and WSU operate the Spokane Teaching Health Center, a clinic where the

medical residents Residency or postgraduate training is a stage of graduate medical education. It refers to a qualified physician (one who holds the degree of MD, DO, MBBS/MBChB), veterinarian ( DVM/VMD, BVSc/BVMS), dentist ( DDS or DMD), podiatrist ( DPM), o ...

and WSU students work in collaborative teams to serve low-income community members in need. The campus also has a Veterinary Specialty Teaching Clinic. The

University of Washington The University of Washington (UW and informally U-Dub or U Dub) is a public research university in Seattle, Washington, United States. Founded in 1861, the University of Washington is one of the oldest universities on the West Coast of the Uni ...

's Schools of Medicine and Dentistry had first-year and second-year medical students and first-year dental students at the Riverpoint Campus in partnership with both WSU and EWU as part of their WWAMI (medical) and RIDE (dental) programs, however the WWAMI relationship with WSU ended after WSU College of Medicine was created following the repeal of a law that disallowed a second public medical school in the state. The University of Washington has continued its medical education in Spokane by developing a relationship with Gonzaga. The University District is also home to Innovate Washington (formerly Sirti), a Washington state economic development agency that accelerates the development and growth of innovative technology companies. Other schools in Spokane include the Inland Northwest Culinary Academy, Spokane Art School, and Great Northern University. The Inland Northwest Culinary Academy at Spokane Community College is an

American Culinary Federation The American Culinary Federation (ACF) is a professional chef's organization established in 1929 in New York City. It was formed as a merge of three chefs' associations in New York City, the Société Culinaire Philanthropique, the Vatel Club and ...

accredited program for training professional chefs. Great Northern University is a Christian school established in 2018 on the site of a vacated

Moody Bible Institute Moody Bible Institute (MBI) is a private evangelical Christian Bible college in Chicago, Illinois. It was founded by evangelist and businessman Dwight Lyman Moody in 1886. Historically, MBI has maintained positions that have identified it as ...

branch campus which offers seven bachelor's degree programs which include: biblical and theological studies, communication, leadership studies, youth and family ministry, intercultural studies, linguistics and TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages).

Spokane area colleges and universities

Note: Enrollment figures include full-time and part-time undergraduate students and graduate students; the

Niche Niche may refer to: Science *Developmental niche, a concept for understanding the cultural context of child development and growth *Ecological niche, a term describing the relational position of an organism's species *Niche differentiation, in ec ...

website shows undergraduate and graduate enrollment numbers on different tabs on the institution's profile. Enrollment figures as of April 2021.

Defunct institutions

Defunct institutions that were located in or near Spokane include Spokane University, Spokane Art Center, Spokane College, Spokane Junior College, and a campus of the

University of Phoenix University of Phoenix (UoPX) is a Private university, private For-profit higher education in the United States, for-profit university headquartered in Phoenix, Arizona. Founded in 1976, the university confers certificates and degrees at the Ac ...

and

ITT Tech ITT Technical Institute (ITT Tech) was a private for-profit technical institute with its headquarters in Carmel, Indiana and many campuses throughout the United States. Founded in 1969 and growing to 130 campuses in 38 states of the United States ...

, the

People to People Student Ambassador Program The People to People Student Ambassador Program was a travel service based in Spokane, Washington, offering domestic and international travel opportunities to middle and high school students. The group was founded in 1956, during the Eisenhower ...

, and MEAD Alternative High School.

References

External links

National Center for Education Statistics: Spokane School DistrictNiche profile: Spokane School DistrictSpokane County Private Schools
{{Schools in Spokane, Washington