Prince George's County Public Schools - List of Schools - High Schools

High Schools

All high schools in Prince George's County operate with a "comprehensive" model as their base, with the exception of the new Academy of Health Sciences at Prince George's Community College, which is a middle college program. All students are assigned to a high school based on an "attendance area." Magnet Programs operate as a "School-Within-A-School" model, where the magnet serves as an alternative program---in addition to the main comprehensive program---and students from outside the regular attendance area of the high school are enrolled and accepted into the magnet, either through continuity (automatic continuation from a middle school magnet program to the high school level equivalent) or more commonly, through a "Magnet Lottery", where students apply for a magnet program and are granted acceptance through a random drawing. Enrollment into the Center for the Visual and Performing Arts is through audition only. Some high schools have also implemented a "Smaller Learning Community" model, where they offer anywhere from two or more Academy Programs, which effectively breaks a school down into several smaller schools within the school, by allowing students to essentially declare a major (such as a student attending a college or university) through career academies such as "Arts, Media, and Communication" or the "National Academy of Finance," for example. Larger high schools have more academy program offerings. All high schools in the PGCPS operate on a staggered school day schedule, where some high schools start as early as 7:45am and end as early as 2:25pm, and other high schools start as late as 9:30am and end as late as 4:10pm. All high schools operate on an alternating A/B-day block scheduling system, where one group of classes are taken on "A-Days" and a different group of classes are taken on "B-Days," and the cycle repeats. Most high schools have between three and four lunch shifts, depending on enrollment and eating accommodations. The only exceptions are Eleanor Roosevelt High School, which has adopted a modified hybrid block schedule in which both traditional single period courses and double period (block schedule) courses are integrated, and the Academy of Health Science at Prince George's Community College.