Public Charter Schools (PCS)

DC public charter schools are public, tuition-free, open to all students, and do not have selective entrance requirements or geographic attendance zones. Public charter schools are independent from DCPS (the traditional public school system). The DC Public Charter School Board (DC PCSB) provides oversight, but does not manage, the schools.

The District of Columbia International School (DCI) operates in partnership with their founding schools, which include DC Bilingual Public Charter School (PCS), EW Stokes Community Freedom PCS, Latin American Montessori Bilingual PCS, Mundo Verde PCS and Washington Yu Ying PCS. Collectively, these schools are referred to as the “member” schools. Unlike a true feeder pattern where a student has a right to continue to the next school, students attending member schools do not have an automatic right to enroll at DCI following completion of their fifth-grade year. Instead, DCI reserves a specified number of seats in their 6^th grade for each member school per its operating charter and allocates those seats by way of the My School DC lottery. To learn more about this process, please refer to the DCI handbook here.