Old Town Alexandria is split between two elementary schools and two middle schools, and the two dividing lines run along different streets. Here is where they fall, and how to confirm any address yourself.
Which public schools serve an Old Town Alexandria address is a question listing sheets answer badly and often wrongly. Old Town sits inside the independent City of Alexandria, so Alexandria City Public Schools assigns every address here, not Fairfax County. And Old Town is not served by one set of schools. The elementary boundary and the middle school boundary both run straight through the historic district, along different streets, and they do not line up with each other. This page names the schools and the streets as of August 2026, and points you at the district's own locator, which is the only thing that is authoritative on the day you write an offer.
Attendance boundaries change. The district's own locator is the authority — not a listing, and not this page.
ACPS Attendance Zone Locator (2026/27) →ACPS gives each address one elementary school for grades K-5, one middle school for grades 6-8, and one high school. The high school is the simple part. Alexandria City High School, grades 9-12 at 3801 West Braddock Road, is the city's only comprehensive high school, and every Old Town address I checked in the district's locator returns it. It operates across two main campuses, King Street and Minnie Howard; ACPS has been moving away from housing ninth grade separately at Minnie Howard toward distributing grades 9-12 across both buildings, so confirm the current arrangement with the school. Elementary and middle are where Old Town divides. The two elementary schools in play are Lyles-Crouch Traditional Academy, K-5 at 530 South Saint Asaph Street, and Jefferson-Houston PreK-8 IB School at 1501 Cameron Street. The two middle assignments are George Washington Middle School, grades 6-8 at 1005 Mount Vernon Avenue, and the grades 6-8 program that Jefferson-Houston runs in its own Cameron Street building. Francis C. Hammond Middle School at 4646 Seminary Road is the city's other middle school and serves other parts of Alexandria.
The middle school line is King Street. Checked block by block in the ACPS locator at Lee, Royal, Union, Fairfax, Washington, Columbus and Alfred, the 100 blocks south of King return George Washington Middle School and the 100 blocks north of King return Jefferson-Houston for grades 6-8. That holds out to the waterfront: the unit block of Prince and the unit block of Duke are George Washington, the unit block of Cameron and the unit block of Queen are Jefferson-Houston. The elementary picture takes two lines. Everything south of King Street is Lyles-Crouch, from the unit blocks by the river west to the 1400 block of Duke and south through Ford's Landing. North of King, North Washington Street splits the district: west of Washington is Jefferson-Houston, and east of Washington is Lyles-Crouch as far north as Pendleton Street, with Jefferson-Houston from Pendleton north through Old Town North. In practice that means the 500 blocks of North Pitt, North Royal, North Fairfax and North Saint Asaph are Lyles-Crouch and the 600 blocks are Jefferson-Houston.
This is the part that catches people, and no listing sheet will tell you. Because the elementary line sits at Pendleton Street and the middle line sits at King Street, the strip between them belongs to different schools at different ages. An address north of King and east of Washington, up to Pendleton, is zoned to Lyles-Crouch for K-5 and to Jefferson-Houston for grades 6-8. Captain's Row and the blocks around Queen, Princess and Oronoco east of Washington all sit in that strip. A child there walks south to Lyles-Crouch through fifth grade, then goes west to Cameron Street for sixth. South of King the pattern is the more familiar one: Lyles-Crouch, then George Washington. West of Washington and north of King, an address is Jefferson-Houston for both, and children zoned there stay in one building from PreK through eighth grade, which is the point of a PreK-8 school.
ACPS assigns by street address, not by neighborhood, subdivision or ZIP code, and there is no feeder-pyramid rule that keeps an elementary cohort together through middle school. A few things move the default. Kindergarteners zoned to Lyles-Crouch or to Jefferson-Houston may apply to transfer into the Spanish-English dual language program at Mount Vernon Community School, 2601 Commonwealth Avenue; placement depends on capacity at that school. Families zoned to Jefferson-Houston for grades 6-8 may file an opt-out transfer request, and ACPS also handles administrative, sibling and health or safety transfers through its program transfers office. Jefferson-Houston runs the International Baccalaureate programme; Lyles-Crouch is designated a Traditional Academy. Transportation is a separate calculation from assignment: ACPS designates K-8 students living within one mile of their assigned school as walkers, and high school students within 1.5 miles. Walk zones were redrawn in 2026 to match the new attendance boundaries, so some addresses that had a bus no longer do. The locator reports transportation eligibility alongside the school assignment.
The School Board approved new attendance boundaries on June 12, 2025, adopting the elementary plan known as Triangle Plan 3 and the middle school plan known as Option E after a redistricting process that began in June 2023. They took effect July 1, 2026, with the 2026-27 school year, and ACPS put the number of enrolled students affected division-wide at roughly 1,400. In Old Town the change was specific and worth knowing: the blocks north of King Street and east of Washington Street, up to Pendleton, moved from Jefferson-Houston to Lyles-Crouch for elementary. The locator lets you toggle between 2025-26 and 2026-27 results, so you can see the switch on any given address. Implementation is phased. Students in kindergarten through fourth grade and students new to ACPS moved to their newly zoned schools in 2026-27; fifth graders could apply to defer for one year and sixth and seventh graders could finish at their current school, with a deferral deadline of January 15, 2026. All students are on the new boundaries in 2027-28. One consequence for buyers: the household selling you the house may still be attending a school the address is no longer zoned to.
Check the exact address in the ACPS Attendance Zone Locator, not the neighborhood, and save the result with the date on it. Treat the school field on a listing as unverified. It is typed in by the listing agent, it is not corrected when boundaries move, and after a boundary change it is wrong on a predictable set of blocks. Confirm the assignment before your contingency period ends, and call the school directly about registration. Then understand the standing caveat: boundaries change, this description is current as of August 2026, and the locator rather than this page is the authority. One thing this page deliberately does not do is rate, rank or compare any of these schools, and it does not link to sites that do. School ratings track neighborhood demographics closely, and steering buyers by school quality is among the most documented fair-housing violations there is. Naming which school serves an address is a fact, and a useful one. Judging it is not a broker's call to make. Visit the buildings, meet the principals, and get the school's own reporting from ACPS.
More on the area in the Old Town Alexandria 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.
