619 E 32nd Ave
Spokane, WA 99203

I can't say enough good things about Jefferson. My kids have flourished here--GREAT teachers. When we found out we were moving to Spokane, I worried that we should limit our house search to the schools on the South Hill with the highest Great Schools scores. Fortunately, I talked with a Spokane native who said, "I don't think you can go wrong with any of the schools on the upper South Hill," (Jefferson, Adams, Mullen Road, Moran Prairie, Wilson, Hutton). Of those schools, Jefferson has the lowest "rating", yet it's a fantastic school with amazing, committed teachers who will spend their whole careers there. It is a beautiful new building with a great surrounding playground (beautiful tall pines) in a great neighborhood. One of my favorite parts about the school is that it brings in kids from both the ritzy neighborhood to the west AND from the more normal neighborhoods to the east and south.

Lewis and Clark High School is one of thee worst schools I have ever attended. They are failing their students with lack of support, lack of community, and lack of what we are all here to do: learn. It is ridiculous how littler teachers teach, and how administrators are not any good at applying what truly matters in a school setting. From a student point of view it demonstrates how deficient they are in leadership as well as sympathy. The teachers there do not truly teach. They tell you what to read, give you papers to fill out, and for a 55 minute period sit down at their desk and wait for you to turn in your work. I have been given so many packets, and hand outs, and i still have yet to learn anything from most of my teachers. Out of six classes I have only had one teacher where I truly learned a concepts in her class. This is because she engages with her students, when she hands something out it is relevant to the lesson, and when answering questions she does not make the student feel stupid. It is the bare minimum as your job as an educator to be open to questions and truly teach the class. Handing out packets and reading paragraphs off of slide shows word for word is not teaching. I am a student and I want to learn, and yet concerns are regularly over looked when students attempt to voice their struggles in classes, with teachers, with leadership itself, the students are not kept in mind whatsoever. The Special Education teachers are no better. I am not a special needs student, but observing how the teachers treat the students that are is saddening. I have interacted with a few students in that class myself, and the teachers treat them like dogs, scolding and yelling at them to do a certain thing. If the student messes up, instead of making it a learning moment, they chose to shame the student. How does this create a safe and inclusive environment? They do not have the patience, nor the sympathy to be dealing with students, especially students who require more support as a result of their conditions. This is only the tip of the iceberg in how LC is a horrendous school. Their leadership is uncoordinated on multiple levels, and instead of focusing why students feel the need to skip, to be on their phones, or any reason as to why a student is not reaching their potential, they push policies that make it look as if they are truly doing something. I would never recommend Lewis and Clark to anyone who is looking for a high school to attend in Spokane.

administration is the worst! wont help kids at all if they need any help and picks on the poor kids, these adults need to get a life and find a job that doesn’t involve children, because all they do is belittle them