At DC's Only Public Montessori School, Parents Say the Program They Chose Is Slipping Away

It started, one parent says, with glue sticks. Anita Thurakal's son was looking forward to another year at Capitol Hill Montessori at Logan — the only dedicated Montessori school run by DC Public Schools — when an unusually long back-to-school list, filled with the crayons and pencils of a conventional classroom, made her take notice, The Washington Sun reported Monday. Months later, she and a growing group of parents describe a sudden shift in curriculum away from the Montessori model and toward a traditional public school. "We built our community here," Thurakal told the Sun. "It makes me really sad that we potentially have to leave this because they've just destroyed it."

Much of the frustration centers on Shelly Gray, hired as principal over the summer, whose DCPS biography page does not list experience with a Montessori curriculum; Gray declined the Sun's request for comment. At a virtual September meeting with more than 90 attendees, instructional superintendent Gwendolyn Payton addressed the changes directly. "I want everyone to hear this as I speak for the team from the Office of Schools: There is no effort to dismantle, eliminate, reduce or diminish Montessori programming at Capitol Hill," Payton said, while describing an approach that marries DCPS's traditional curriculum with Montessori philosophies and citing assessment scores lower than the city average — a comparison parents pushed back against, given the different structure of Montessori classrooms. "We do not lower the rigor," she said. "We increase the independence."

The dispute has since moved beyond the school. Parents organizing as Montessori Advocates of CHML wrote to interim chancellor Dr. Kim Jackson on October 1, arguing that AMI accreditation — the school holds AMI certifications and employs AMI-trained teachers — is a demanding standard, "not a label DCPS can preserve informally while the conditions that earned it erode underneath." Jackson later told parents that Gray and Payton were engaging directly with AMI on accreditation requirements. A DCPS spokesperson told the Sun that "CHML and DCPS remain dedicated to the school continuing as an accredited Montessori program," and that at the primary level, for students ages 3 to 6, there remains a robust daily period of self-directed learning in uninterrupted work cycles of one to two hours. Ward 6 Councilmember Charles Allen has also written to Jackson, saying he is concerned the actions are "significantly harming the ability to deliver the educational method embedded in the name and identity of the school itself."

The stakes are concrete for families. The Banks family placed the school at the top of its lottery list after touring Montessori schools, joining nearly 700 pre-K 3 applications for the 2026-27 school year at a building DCPS renovated for $61 million five years ago with large, well-lit rooms and outdoor garden space designed for Montessori education. Now some parents say they are entering the midyear lottery to move their children before the year is out — applications for next school year open in mid-December — while others say they will stay only if the school's leadership or direction changes.