MoCo Elementary School Choice

[Anonymous]

Please pop my bubble (which is slowly leaking already). With the exception of the language immersion programs, there is no type of 'school choice' for montgomery county elementary schools right? The kindergarten you're zoned for is the one you're stuck with?

[Anonymous]

Basically, you have the few language immersion programs (some are only for in-boundary and where there is space they do lottery slots for out of boundary) and a few are lottery open to all. Other than that, it is your home neighborhood school for elementary. Takoma Park Magnet program starts in first grade so if you are interested and apply your kindergarten child is tested in the late spring. The competition is fierce of out of boundary slots. The Highly Gifted Centers starts in 4th grade.

Where I went to school in NC there was a lot of school choice in the elementary schools in the form of magnet programs. Currently, there is something like 19 magnet elementary school with all types of themes including Engineering, Arts, Montessori, Creative Arts and Science and recently a Musueum magnet to name a few. On top of that there are year-round and traditional calendar schools. I loved that my school district offered those type of choices that could address the different learning styles and interests and basically it was all by lottery with some weight given to applicants within the draw area. In my mind at least there wasn't a whole lot of reason to go the private school route unless you were going for a religious education because most of what you could think of was already there and was open to all. The closest to that type of setup in this area is in the Arlington school district (with the diversity of magnet options and lottery style process). I also think Alexandria City schools have some type of choice process for K.

Anyway, the closest that we may get in MCPS to having more choices is if one or both of the two charter school applications get approved this summer by the Board of Education. There is an IB, k-8, year round charter school application (Global Garden) and a Montessori Charter school (Crossway Montessori) . There was an article describing the effort - http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/local/Two-charter-schools-proposed-for-MontCo-89809537.html Because the charter school concept is foreign in MCPS, and you don't typically think of it for suburban schools, I think the best existing example of what the Global Garden school wants to accomplish is the St. Mary's County charter school - Chesapeake Public Charter School - http://schools.smcps.org/cpcs/philosophy-and-goals