06/08/2026
King Street History
King Street Cooperative Preschool was organized by a group of parents in the fall of 1998. It evolved from the Seattle Central Community College lab school, Madrona Co-op Preschool, into an independent alternative cooperative preschool.
In 1962, Madrona Cooperative Preschool was started in Seattle by a group of Madrona neighborhood families. For the next 36 years, Madrona Co-op operated as a “parent-lab” branch of Seattle Central Community College’s Parent-Child Center. In the mid 1970s, Madrona Co-op moved from a church in the Brighton neighborhood to St. Peter’s Parish, where a Head Start program was operating concurrently in the basement. Shortly after the move, parents and teachers began to introduce an anti-bias, culturally inclusive curriculum (one of the first in Seattle). In 1998, King Street Cooperative Preschool separated from Seattle Central Community College and became a private, independently operated, non-profit preschool.
King Street children and families have transitioned into public and private schools throughout the city, and even internationally. Alumni families move on from King Street and share with their new communities all the skills they have practiced in community building, problem-solving, child-development, volunteerism, advocacy, anti-bias, and more!
