As of 2025, school review website Niche gives SAAS an A+ Overall Niche Grade, with strengths in Academics, College Prep, and Diversity. Niche ranks SAAS as #2 Best High School for the Arts in Washington, #12 Best Private High School in Washington, and #12 Best College Prep Private High School in Washington.
As of the 2025-26 school year, there are 1,308 students at SAAS, and the student-teacher ratio is 7:1. [1]
The current Co-Heads of School are Rob Phillips and Giselle Furlonge. The school has a 29-member board, which includes current parents, alumni parents and alumni of the school. The board chair is Martinique Grigg.
History
Seattle Academy was founded by Jean Orvis in 1983, who served as Head of School until the 2008-2009 school year. From 2009 to June 2018, the Head of School was Joe Puggelli, who previously had a long and varied career, including in the US Army service, publishing, education, and coaching. In July 2018, long-tenured faculty, staff, and coach Rob Phillips became Seattle Academy's Head of School. In July 2025, Giselle Furlonge joined him as Co-Head of School.
SAAS has grown over time and, as of 2025, consists of seven main buildings, located on one block of Capitol Hill. In 2017, the institution broke ground on a $48 million, five-story Middle School building located at the intersection of 13th Avenue and Union Street. In 2025, it opened the five-story Upper School building, which features a central courtyard and maker spaces like wood and metal shops. The campus also includes the Arts Center (which houses the Jean Orvis Theatre), the Middle School Gym and Rooftop Playfield, the Main Gym (one of the largest school-owned gyms in the Seattle area), the STREAM Building (which includes the Robotics Lab), and the Vanderbilt building (which has varied classrooms and common spaces).
Student life
As of the 2025-26 school year, Seattle Academy has 64 Upper School clubs and 20 Middle School clubs. The school also has many affinity groups and academic teams facilitated by faculty members.
Notable teams and their accomplishments (from the 2024-25 school year) include:
Youth Legislature: 2 members of the Youth Legislature team successfully passed bills during the statewide Youth Legislature Session in Olympia.
Speech and Debate: 4 students qualified for the State Competition in Speech & Debate and 2 qualified for Nationals.
Mock Trial: 10 members of the Model UN team received awards.
Ethics Bowl: 3 students on the Ethics Bowl team won the Civil Dialogue Award at the State competition.
Facilities
SAAS has seven main buildings, located on one block of Capitol Hill.
Upper School building
The 5-story, 105,000-square foot Upper School building houses classrooms, seminar rooms, and common areas for grades 9-12. It also includes spaces used by all students—including the Innovations Center, which has a woodshop, metalworking studio, and other maker spaces, the Music Production studio, a central courtyard, and a large cafeteria.
Middle School building
Above the main floor, the Middle School building has three floors, with one dedicated to each grade level: 6, 7, and 8. Each floor features classrooms and common areas.
STREAM building
The STREAM building emphasizes SAAS’s science curriculum and project-based integration of Science, Technology, Robotics, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics. It includes science labs, classrooms, and the Robotics Lab.
Arts Center
The Arts Center houses the 250-seat Orvis Theater, which is equipped with advanced sound and lighting technology and where SAAS productions happen throughout the year. It also includes a smaller, black box theater, dressing rooms, a green room, a darkroom for photography, visual arts studios, and music classrooms.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
