Del Ray sits inside the City of Alexandria, so it is served by Alexandria City Public Schools rather than Fairfax County. ACPS assigns by street address, and Del Ray is not one school zone. At the elementary level it is split three ways; at the middle level, two. This page names the schools and says where the lines run, verified in the district's own locator on 31 August 2026. It does not rate them, and it is not a substitute for checking the specific address.
Attendance boundaries change. The district's own locator is the authority — not a listing, and not this page.
ACPS Attendance Zone Locator (2026-27 boundaries) →For most of the neighbourhood — the blocks between Monroe Avenue and the north end of the 1894 grid — the assignment is Mount Vernon Community School (K-5) at 2601 Commonwealth Avenue, George Washington Middle School (grades 6-8) at 1005 Mount Vernon Avenue, and Alexandria City High School. Checked in the ACPS Attendance Zone Locator on 31 August 2026, that combination came back for 2400 Mount Vernon Avenue, 2000 and 2500 Commonwealth Avenue, and the 200 blocks of East Del Ray, East Custis, East Oxford, East Windsor, East Mount Ida, East Bellefonte and East Duncan Avenues. High school is the simplest part of the picture: as of August 2026 ACPS operated one comprehensive high school for the whole city, so every Del Ray address returns Alexandria City High School no matter which elementary or middle zone it falls in. ACHS runs across more than one campus, including the King Street Campus at 3330 King Street and the Minnie Howard Campus at 3775 West Braddock Road. Two other ACPS elementary schools take over at Del Ray's edges rather than inside it: addresses on the west side of Russell Road — checked at 2400, 2800 and 3100 Russell Road — return George Mason Elementary, and addresses south of Braddock Road return Naomi L. Brooks Elementary at 600 Russell Road.
The line that surprises people runs along Monroe Avenue. Monroe is the last street on the Mount Vernon side: 100 West Monroe Avenue, 200 and 400 East Monroe Avenue, 1600 Commonwealth Avenue and 1700 Mount Vernon Avenue all returned Mount Vernon Community School and George Washington Middle School. One block south, the assignment changes for both levels at once. From Nelson Avenue south to Braddock Road — including 100 West Nelson Avenue, 200 and 400 East Nelson Avenue, 300 East Alexandria Avenue, 1500 Leslie Avenue, 1400 Commonwealth Avenue and 1300 and 1500 Mount Vernon Avenue — the locator returns Jefferson-Houston PreK-8 IB School at 1501 Cameron Street for elementary and for grades 6-8. A buyer looking at the south end of Del Ray is looking at a different elementary school and a different middle school from a buyer three blocks north, and no listing sheet will say so. The second line is at the north end. North of roughly Hume and Clifford Avenues, on the Commonwealth Avenue side, addresses go to Cora Kelly School for Math, Science and Technology at 3600 Commonwealth Avenue: 3100 and 3200 Commonwealth Avenue and the 300 and 400 blocks of Hume Avenue and the 300 block of Clifford Avenue all returned Cora Kelly, while 3000 and 3200 Mount Vernon Avenue and the 100 blocks of Hume and Clifford returned Mount Vernon. That northern split does not change the middle school — both sides feed George Washington. Neither line follows one continuous street for its whole length; both jog along block and lot lines, which means the two sides of a single street can land in different zones.
Assignment is by street address, and the elementary and middle maps are drawn separately, so an elementary zone does not guarantee a matching middle zone. As of August 2026 ACPS ran two comprehensive middle schools, George Washington and Francis C. Hammond, plus two schools that keep their own zoned students through grade 8 — Jefferson-Houston PreK-8 IB School and Patrick Henry K-8 School. Del Ray touches George Washington and Jefferson-Houston. One programme changes the default for most of the neighbourhood. ACPS runs a Spanish-English Dual Language programme at the K-5 level at Mount Vernon Community School and John Adams Elementary, and as a strand in grades 6-8 at George Washington and Francis C. Hammond. ACPS describes Mount Vernon as its full dual language school, where students who attend are enrolled in the programme automatically; John Adams and the two middle schools run it as a strand within a wider school. So for the large middle band of Del Ray, the zoned elementary school is a dual language school by default and the zoned middle school offers a continuation strand. Families outside a programme's zone apply through the ACPS programme transfer process; in-zone applicants have priority, and when applications exceed available seats after 1 July, ACPS uses a random lottery. The locator also reports transportation: ACPS provides bus service beyond one mile for elementary and middle school and beyond 1.5 miles for high school, and many central Del Ray addresses come back as walkers to Mount Vernon and George Washington with transportation provided to Alexandria City High School.
ACPS publishes an Attendance Zone Locator that takes a street address and returns the assigned elementary, middle and high school along with bus eligibility. It carries both boundary sets and lets you toggle between the 2025-26 and 2026-27 results, which is useful if you are comparing what a household has now with what the address is assigned going forward. ACPS links it from its School Boundaries page at acps.k12.va.us/families/school-boundaries. That tool, not this page, is the thing to rely on. Boundaries move — Alexandria redrew its elementary and middle maps for 2026-27 and has capital plans that will force another look before 2032 — and the locator is updated when they do, while a real estate page, an MLS field or a school-district map saved to someone's phone is a snapshot of the day it was made. Everything stated here was confirmed in the locator on 31 August 2026 and should be re-checked, not assumed.
On 12 June 2025 the Alexandria City School Board adopted Elementary School Triangle Map Plan 3 and Middle School Option E. Those boundaries, and a new set of walk-zone maps, took effect 1 July 2026 for the 2026-27 school year, affecting roughly 1,400 already-enrolled students across the division. Del Ray came through it almost untouched. Comparing the locator's own 2025-26 and 2026-27 boundary layers across the neighbourhood on 31 August 2026, the only shift inside Del Ray is a pocket at the north end, around the 100 block of Hume Avenue and Clifford Avenue, which moved from Cora Kelly to Mount Vernon. The Monroe Avenue line and the Jefferson-Houston area south of it were identical in both years. Two things are worth watching. The Board approved one- and two-year deferrals for certain grades during the transition, with a 15 January 2026 application deadline, so children currently living in a house may attend a school other than the one the address is assigned — a deferral belongs to the student, not the property. And on 19 December 2024 the Board adopted a ten-year capital programme that converts Jefferson-Houston to a middle school and Patrick Henry to an elementary school, with construction funding programmed for FY2031 and FY2032. If that proceeds, the elementary assignment for southern Del Ray has to be redrawn. Nothing has been redrawn yet. Separately, George Mason Elementary is under reconstruction and its students are in swing space at 1703 North Beauregard Street until 2027, which matters west of Russell Road rather than inside Del Ray.
Check the exact address, not the neighbourhood. Del Ray is small enough that people speak about it as one place, and it is not one school zone; a three-block difference changes both the elementary and the middle assignment at the south end. Run the address through the ACPS locator yourself, look at both boundary years, and save the result with the date on it. Treat the school fields on a listing as unverified: they are typed in by the listing agent, they are not maintained by the district, and they do not update when a boundary moves. If a particular assignment is material to your decision, confirm it with ACPS registration in writing before you go under contract, and talk with your agent about whether the contract should account for it. One thing this page deliberately does not do is judge any of these schools. We name which school serves an address and stop there — no ratings, rankings, scores or comparisons, and no linking to sites that publish them. School ratings track neighbourhood demographics closely, and using them to point buyers toward or away from an area is among the most well-documented fair-housing violations in the business. Which school serves your address is a fact you are entitled to and one we will help you pin down precisely. What you make of that school is properly your call, made with the district and with the school itself.
More on the area in the Del Ray guide.
School assignment turns on the address, not the neighbourhood, and a listing's school field is unverified. Artur can confirm it against the district record before you write.
