staff profile
Andy Smallman
PSCS Founder, School Director
Andy's time studying human development at The Evergreen State College was exhilarating. He felt in partnership with the faculty, who supported him as he pursued ideas that he was passionate about—the exact opposite of his high school experience. At the time, he wondered, “Why couldn’t I do this when I was 13?” In 1994, he started Puget Sound Community School. Since then, students have learned in a safe, loving, nurturing environment staffed by teachers who help them pursue their passions. . . .
Our History
Since 1994, PSCS students have learned in a safe, loving, nurturing environment staffed by teachers who help them pursue their passions.
Andy Smallman and Melinda Shaw founded PSCS in 1994 on the belief that young people thrive when they’re supported in pursuing their strengths and following their intrinsic motivation to learn.
Andy studied human development at The Evergreen State College and Pacific Oaks College and set out to build a new kind of school based on the most compelling research in the social sciences. For its first seven years, PSCS was a “nomadic” school that was registered with the state as a homeschooling cooperative. Students and staff would meet in a different city each day of the week, using public places and borrowed spaces to get kids out into the world, experiencing life instead of remaining stuck behind a desk all day.
In 2003, PSCS moved into the University Heights building in Seattle and became a state-approved independent school. To accommodate an ever-increasing need for more space, the school moved into its current International District location in the fall of 2008.
PSCS gained recognition in 2009 with the publication of Daniel H. Pink’s best-selling book Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us. Pink, a former White House speechwriter in the Clinton administration, wrote, “PSCS gives its students a radical dose of autonomy, turning the ‘one size fits all’ approach of conventional schools on its head.”