ACPS Puts School Transfer Requests on Hold

School system says capacity issues will also make it difficult to place some children at their home schools.

Approximately 95 requests for students wishing to attend an Alexandria public school outside their home district have been put on hold because of overcapacity, especially at the kindergarten level. In addition to putting the brakes on transfers, the school system says it also will have trouble even placing some new students in the schools they're supposed to go to in the first place. “The capacity issues will make it difficult to place children new to Alexandria in their home schools,” Alexandria City Public Schools announced in a statement released Friday evening.  As parents continue to register students during summer, Superintendent Morton Sherman has put on hold the placement of any additional administrative transfer requests. This …

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Ask the Super

Ask the Super: ACPS Superintendent Sherman Answers Your Questions

This week, the superintendent answers a question about the school system's enrollment projections.

The following question was submitted to Patch by a parent of children attending Alexandria City Public Schools. Question: In the spring, ACPS sent a letter to certain neighborhoods stating that there could be a lottery for kindergarten students at several schools (e.g., Maury) if neighborhood enrollment exceeded spots available. Now that registration is underway, could you provide an update on enrollment numbers for the various elementary schools, whether a lottery will be necessary (and, if so, at which schools), and what kindergarten class sizes will be at each elementary school? If there is going to be a lottery, what schools have capacity to take the overflow? What schools can accept transfer students as well? Sherman: June 1 is the …

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Young LIfe in an Old Town

Young Life in an Old Town: Choosing a Kindergarten Part II

A six-month odyssey of open houses, phone calls, testing, statistical analysis, curriculum review, facilities, interviews and even cocktail parties.

Many times in the last six months, I have wished for a primer or iPhone app to help me navigate the process of researching and applying to schools. In hopes that my experiences will be helpful to someone else, here is what I learned along the way. The Public Schools While many folks form preliminary options about schools based on playground gossip and word of mouth, there are resources for objective data about our neighborhood schools. I began studying the ACPS website last fall, which was my first introduction to the hotly contested MOE policy that many parents only recently discovered. I also found a great deal of data for ACPS schools in the following document. I called the school board to clarify my questions about the MOE policy and …

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ACPS Enrollment Policy Peeves Parents

School system's modified open enrollment policy sparks questions of fairness among community.

Alexandria parents are concerned over a school system policy that could—in a worst-case scenario—prevent their children from attending their neighborhood school and limit their school choices. The Modified Open Enrollment policy is in its third year but a March 9 letter from Alexandria City Public Schools to parents of rising kindergarteners sparked a frenzy of concern. While the letter was intended as informational, notifying parents how to find their “home school” and directing them to produce certain required registration documents, the last paragraph reads, in part: “If a school exceeds capacity for kindergarten prior to June 15, then all kindergarten applicants will enter a lottery for random selection. Every student will be placed in…

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