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Its most famous alumni are Bill Gates and Paul Allen, founders of Microsoft, who got their start programming tic-tac-toe on a computer purchased by the Lakeside Mothers' Association. Other famous alumni include the McCaw brothers, who built a family business into a cellular telephone empire which they eventually sold to AT&T Wireless; Adam West (Batman), and Governor Booth Gardner.
The school's network of friends and alumni found itself at the center of a cover-up controversy in 1988 after the Seattle Post-Intelligencer newspaper revealed the extent to which Lakeside conections in the law, business, and press arenas had protected King County Superior Court Judge Gary Little, who, as a teacher at Lakeside in the late 1960s, coerced young boys into sex in exchange for membership in an exclusive group that promised them mentoring on such subjects as getting into Harvard. Little taught a popular pre-law seminar at Lakeside between 1968 and 1971. When P-I reporter Duff Wilson called the judge to say an exposé on Little's out-of-court relations with juvenile defendants, as well as his history of molesting boys at the private school, was to be published the next day, the judge committed suicide.
Facts and figures (as of September 2002):
Enrollment: 724 (370 boys, 354 girls)
Faculty: 89
Tuition: Grades 5-8: $16,825; Grades 9-12: $17,525