Dr. Hamilton-Mason - 617-521-3911; 617-852-4435, not available until Feb 2018 - : ✅

http://discoverbps.bostonpublicschools.org/

Hey gals, here is the website for bps, and figuring out which schools Rowan is eligible for. Once you look to see which ones are in your area,then you can look up each individual one and see what "tier" it is, meaning what its rating is, and what programs it has. budgets are determined school by school, so you can literally have two schools in walking distance from your house--one has amazing arts programs and offers Phys Ed, the other has no arts and no athletics.

It's better for kids to be in schools that go all the way to 8th grade or through high school--creates more of a community and when kids go through tougher years they already have a community of teachers who knows them. Not surprisingly, these schools have longer wait lists. I can't remember how many schools you put on the list for your lottery, but I believe you rank them in priority.

The charter schools each have their own individual lottery. For those, you'll really want to do research. Some of the charter schools have high rates of getting kids into college, but also have high rates of disciplining kids more than necessary (and have been accused of the school-to-prison pipeline)...kids can get kicked out of class for figeting, or stepping out of line at all. Other charter schools, like the one Scarlett goes to (NHCS) are focused on social and emotional learning and cater to all kinds of learners. Charter schools are not neighborhood schools. Any kid in the city of boston is elligilble to go to any charter school in the city of boston. BPS does the bussing. So that means, If Rowan gets in to NHCS for example, he would be bussed from JP to Dorchester.

My advice is this: Don't go crazy. Find schools that seem in line with what interests you and put him in the lottery. Don't have high expectations. You might get what you want, you might not. In august and september there is a big shuffle, and you might get offered something closer to what you want. Or, you can just opt to do regular daycare if you don't get what you want, and then do the lottery the following year. No matter what grade he is in, you can always participate in any lottery. So, you can always repeat the process. When they are little, it is less about school community, so you have a few years when you can shuffle him around and have other options...and then by the time he is really in elementary school you'll probably want a school community you'll feel good about, but by that time you will have probably had some choices that you feel good about.

And here's where you can start doing Charter School research. The charters I know the most about are NHCS and the conservatory lab charter; those are both the ones that have reputations for being more about emotional health and less about discipline and academics.

https://masscharterschools.org/schools/boston

I hope this helps!