Medical Lake High School is a four-year

public In public relations and communication science, publics are groups of individual people, and the public (a.k.a. the general public) is the totality of such groupings. This is a different concept to the sociology, sociological concept of the ''Öf ...

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 ...

in Medical Lake,

Washington Washington most commonly refers to: * George Washington (1732–1799), the first president of the United States * Washington (state), a state in the Pacific Northwest of the United States * Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States ** A ...

, the sole traditional

high 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., ...

in the Medical Lake School District (#326) in western

Spokane County Spokane County is a county located in the U.S. state of Washington. As of the 2020 census, its population was 539,339, making it the fourth-most populous county in Washington. The largest city and county seat is Spokane, the second largest c ...

. West of the city of

Spokane Spokane ( ) is the most populous city in eastern Washington and the county seat of Spokane County, Washington, United States. It lies along the Spokane River, adjacent to the Selkirk Mountains, and west of the Rocky Mountain foothills, south ...

, the school district includes the base housing area of

Fairchild Air Force Base Fairchild Air Force Base (AFB) is a United States Air Force base, located in the northwest United States in eastern Washington, approximately southwest of Spokane. The host unit at Fairchild is the 92nd Air Refueling Wing (92 ARW) assigned ...

to the north.

History and enrollment

Medical Lake High School was founded in 1905, in

Medical Lake, Washington Medical Lake is a small city in Spokane County, eastern Washington, United States. At the 2020 census, the population was 4,874. The city is the site of a psychiatric hospital, Eastern State Hospital, and of Fairchild Air Force Base, two major ...

. In 1958, the high school was refounded and moved into a new building, but then was added on to in 1970 to encompass the growing number of students being enrolled. In 2017, a Medical Lake High school student was investigated for a

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filled with sexually explicit pictures of other students with the youngest victim being 14. In February 2018, a threat was made against the school by a student and was investigated by the Spokane County Sheriff's Office. A few months later in April 2018, a Medical Lake student was killed while three other students were injured in a car crash when headed to a track meet. This started the #MedicalLakeStrong movement in Spokane, with schools such as Freeman High School and Shadle Park High School offering their support and solidarity. That June, the district announced that they had received a one million dollar

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grant and that the high school students would be receiving their own personal

Chromebook Chromebook (sometimes stylized in lowercase as chromebook) is a line of laptops, desktops, tablets and all-in-one computers that run ChromeOS, a proprietary operating system developed by Google. Chromebooks are optimised for web access. They al ...

s that September. In November 2021, a bombing threat against Medical Lake High School was exposed. Enrollment has declined within the Medical Lake School District and is expected to continue. A contributing factor has been the privatization of base housing at

; an increasing number of military families have chosen to live off-base and outside the M.L. school district. A building moratorium by the city of Medical Lake and a sluggish economy have also contributed. MLHS grew in the 1970s from 487 in 1970 to 650 in 1978, but declined in the early 1980s to below 500 in 1983 and athletics dropped from the 'AA' Frontier League and returned to the 'A' NEA in 1984. Enrollment was 675 in October 2007, but fell to 512 in four grades in May 2012. As of 2021, the current enrollment number is 517.

School administration

*Principal: Chris Spring *Vice Principal: Justin Blayne *Vice Principal: Lyra McGirk *Athletic Director: Dawn Eliassen

Notable alumni

* Paul Butorac (2003), basketball player who played overseas * Cedric Jackson (2004 - transferred), former

NBA The National Basketball Association (NBA) is a professional basketball league in North America composed of 30 teams (29 in the United States and 1 in Canada). The NBA is one of the major professional sports leagues in the United States and Ca ...

player

Sports and activities

Sports

Medical Lake athletic teams compete in WIAA Class 1A in District 7. MLHS was a member of the Great Northern League (GNL) in class 2A since its inception in 1998, but dropped out of the GNL for football in 2010. The school dropped to class 1A in the summer of 2012; and returned to the Northeast 'A' League (NEA).

Fall sports

* Cross Country *Girls

Soccer Association football, more commonly known as football or soccer, is a team sport played between two teams of 11 Football player, players who almost exclusively use their feet to propel a Ball (association football), ball around a rectangular f ...

*Girls

Volleyball Volleyball is a team sport in which two teams of six players are separated by a net. Each team tries to score points by grounding a ball on the other team's court under organized rules. It has been a part of the official program of the Summ ...

Football Football is a family of team sports that involve, to varying degrees, kick (football), kicking a football (ball), ball to score a goal (sports), goal. Unqualified, football (word), the word ''football'' generally means the form of football t ...

Winter sports

*Boys

Basketball Basketball is a team sport in which two teams, most commonly of five players each, opposing one another on a rectangular Basketball court, court, compete with the primary objective of #Shooting, shooting a basketball (ball), basketball (appro ...

* Girls Basketball *

Wrestling Wrestling is a martial art, combat sport, and form of entertainment that involves grappling with an opponent and striving to obtain a position of advantage through different throws or techniques, within a given ruleset. Wrestling involves di ...

Spring sports

State championships

*1992 "A" Wrestling Team *2004 "2A" Boys Tennis Team *2005 "2A" Boys Basketball *2005 "2A" Boys Tennis Team *2005 "2A" Knowledge Bowl *2013 "1A" Boys Cross Country *2014 "1A" Boys Track & Field *2014 "1A" Boys Cross Country *2017 "1A" Boys Cross Country

Activities

References

External links

*
Medical Lake School District #326NEA League.org
- Medical Lake athletics - schedules {{authority control High schools in Spokane County, Washington Public high schools in Washington (state)