DC public charter schools

Washington, DC, offers a wealth of school choice options for families.  In addition to neighborhood public (DCPS) and independent (private) schools, there are also public charter schools (DCPCS). 

• Roughly 44% of DC public school students attend public charter schools. 
• DC offers universal, full-day preschool and prekindergarten to 3 and 4 year olds throughout the city regardless of income or Ward.

New this year is a single application for public and charter schools through MySchoolDC.org.  This single application is intended to streamline and simplify the application process for families.  This application is for:

1. Children to attend a charter school at any grade level (PK3 – 12^th grade)
2. Children to attend an Out of Boundary (OOB) neighborhood DCPS
3. Children to attend any PK3 or PK4 program in the city

Families will be asked to rank their school choices based on their personal preferences in one online application.  The lottery will assign each child a spot in the highest school ranked where space is available, and waitlist each child at any schools ranked higher than the school assigned.
Preference in the lottery will be given to those with siblings in the school and to those who live within the school-zone boundaries for neighborhood schools.  Preference doesn’t guarantee acceptance.
Families who wish to stay in their current school, neighborhood or charter, or who want to attend an In Boundary (IB) neighborhood public school for K – 12 do not need to submit an application through the lottery.  In these two cases, their space at the school is guaranteed.

Find your assigned neighborhood school by entering your address in the DCPS School Boundary Information System.

The online application will open on December 16^th, 2013, and the deadline to complete an application for PK3 – 8^th grade is March 3^rd, 2014.  The high school (grades 9 – 12) deadline is one month earlier, February 3rd, 2014.

Only a handful of the popular public charter schools have opted out of the common lottery, including Washington Yu Ying PCS (Chinese language immersion), LAMB PCS (Latin American Montessori Bilingual), EW Stokes PCS (Spanish and French immersion), and Creative Minds PCS (International Primary Curriculum). Each of these schools will run its lottery independently.

Parents should consider a number of factors in ranking the schools on the common application:

1. Desire for language immersion (Spanish, Chinese, French, Hebrew)
2. School curriculum focus (Montessori, Reggio Emilia, Tools of the Mind, Expeditionary Learning, college-prep)
3. School location and commute
4. Test scores
5. Open Houses (each school holds Open Houses throughout the winter to introduce families to their leadership, teachers, and program)
6. School grades (until what grade would you like your child to attend this school?)
7. Feeder patterns (if your child attends this school, where does it feed to for Middle and High schools?  Please note that DC government is reviewing school boundaries and feeder patterns in the coming year.)

The DC Charter School Expo sponsored by FOCUS DC will be held January 11^th, 2014 at the Washington Convention Center.  This is a great opportunity to talk to representatives of the city’s public charter schools and get a feel for the school’s approach to learning.

Research neighborhood DCPS schools through the School Profiles.  The DCPS Critical Response Team can field questions from applicants for DCPS throughout the process.

You can find information on all DC schools, neighborhood and charter, at GreatSchools.org.

The final steps to enrolling in a DC school are to complete a number of forms and to prove local residency.