Anne Arundel County Public Schools

School District serving Anne Arundel County Maryland

Anne Arundel County Public Schools is the public school district serving Anne Arundel County, Maryland. With over 80,000 students, the AACPS school system is the 4th largest in Maryland and the 39th largest in the United States. The district has over 5,000 teachers

AACPS primarily consists of 79 elementary schools (Pre K or K, through grade 5), 19 middle schools (grades 6–8), and 13 high schools (grades 9–12). These schools are marked below with symbols representing their National level and Maryland level awards.

Chesapeake Science Point Public Charter School (CSP) is a magnet school for math and science. The school was founded in 2003 by the volunteer non profit Chesapeake Lighthouse Foundation (CLF), after the Charter School Law (Bill 75) was put into effect in July 2003, authorizing the establishment of charter schools in the state of Maryland. Admission to CSP is via an application and lottery basis. Monarch Academy Glen Burnie (MAGB) is another charter school in Anne Arundel County. Monarch Academy serves students in Kindergarten through eighth grade. It employs Expeditionary Learning, a project based learning model, and is located in Glen Burnie. Monarch Global Academy (MGA) is a contract school in Anne Arundel County. Monarch Global Academy serves students in Kindergarten through eighth grades. It employs the International Baccalaureate Primary Years Program in K–6 and a project based learning model in grades 6–8. It is located in Laurel, Maryland.

Anne Arundel County Public Schools made headlines in March 2013 when school officials suspended 7 year old Josh Welch for chewing a Pop Tart pastry into a shape they thought resembled a gun and pretending to shoot his classmates. This was not the first time AACPS had dealt with this situation in that way, as 2 years earlier, a similarly aged student by the name of Sean House was suspended for the same reason. The Welch family, represented by attorney Robin Ficker, subsequently appealed to the district to have the two day suspension removed from Josh's record, but the appeal was denied. The Welch family appealed the decision to the county school board, which upheld the suspension after a 2014 hearing. The Maryland State Board of Education also ruled to uphold the suspension. The suspension was again upheld in county circuit court in 2016, with an 11 page ruling that cited "the student’s past history of escalating behavioral issues" and confirmed that "a suspension was appropriately used as a corrective tool". Officials at the school and the county maintained that "the case was never about a pastry or a gun, but rather an ongoing behavioral problem. They said that the boy disrupted the classroom repeatedly and that the suspension was a last resort."