Hamilton County Schools has choices and options for parents and children to fit the interests and career aspirations of any child in the Tennessee Valley, officials said. The school choice application window is now open for parents to apply for their children to attend a choice option school in Hamilton County Schools for the fall of 2021. The application is available on the School Choice web page at www.hcde.org/choosehamilton. You can choose from nine magnet schools in the district, 11 open enrollment schools, five early college option programs, or 30 Future Ready Institutes in Hamilton County high schools. The online application is available in English and Spanish.
There is only one application for all choice options.
The admissions timeline is also uniform for all choice options to make the process easy for parents. Schools with more applicants than space available will participate in a lottery to select students for the open slots. The district will run the lottery on Feb. 8, 2021. Applicants are not required to apply for more than one choice option.
This year, the district will run a balanced lottery for STEM School (ninth grade), CSAS (kindergarten), CSLA (kindergarten), and Normal Park (kindergarten). The balanced lottery will assign each applicant to their school board district and fill seats at each school based on the percentage of students living in each district. This type of lottery will pull to fill slots in the schools in a population of student reflective of Hamilton County Schools as a whole. STEM School has participated in this type of lottery since their first year as a school in 2012.
The choice lottery has added four new options to the application for the 2021-22 school year: Hamilton County Virtual School, Loftis Middle School, Ooltewah Middle School, and the Institute of Social Media, Marketing, and Sports Management at Red Bank High School.
Parents of current students enrolled in Hamilton County Schools interested in applying for a school choice option can apply through the PowerSchool Parent Portal. Applying in this manner will reduce the amount of information a parent will need to complete because much of it is already in the system. Parents using the PowerSchool Portal can use their regular login. Once in the portal, parents will find the option for the school choice application on the left side menu bar.
Parents of students not currently enrolled in Hamilton County Schools can submit a choice application by visiting www.hcde.org/choosehamilton. Families new to the district can create a PowerSchool enrollment account and complete the choice application.
Notification of acceptance into a choice school will be sent to parents by Feb. 15, 2021.