Checking BPS School Eligibility in Great Starts

Kevin Arias Updated by Kevin Arias

Thank you for your interest in Boston Public Schools!  Our Great Starts website is a school search engine that helps parents understand which schools their child may be eligible to attend based on their city residence.  You can also click into each school’s profile to find out more information about all BPS schools.

As you may know, BPS uses a home-based assignment plan to determine the schools available to your family.  This plan uses your home address to create a personalized list of eligible school options based on distance and our School Quality Framework metric.  Unfortunately, if a school does not appear on your home-based list, it will not be an eligible option for your child.  Click here to learn more about the BPS assignment plan.

The guide below will show you how to find your list of eligible schools in the Great Starts site as well as some other guidance around filtering your list to best suit your needs.

  1. Go to the Great Starts website at https://boston.explore.avela.org/.
  2. Click on the filter button at the top of the page.


  3. Click the Check Eligibility button to find your list of eligible schools.


  4. Complete the pop-up form by filling out the grade you are looking for, your home address, and the language most spoken at home.  Then click Next.


  5. Go to the list of schools.  This will be on the right-hand side of a computer.  Or click on the “List” option on a mobile device.  Any school with a green eligible tag is a school that is on your home-based list and is an eligible option for your child.  All eligible schools will appear at the top of the list, ordered alphabetically.  Other schools will appear underneath schools with the eligible tag; however, if it does not have that tag, it will not be an option for your child.

  6. You can also filter the list of the schools and the map to make it a more usable experience for you and your child.  Click on the filter button at the top of the page.  This will give you all the items you can filter on.  Here are 2 of the most useful filters.
    1. Filter on Provider Type - Click on Boston Public School.  The Great Starts site shows many different child care options in the City of Boston outside of BPS.  Filtering on Boston Public School as the provider type will limit the results to just BPS options.  This will impact both the pins on the map and the schools that appear in the list.

    2. Filter on Age/Grade - Click on the grade that you are looking for to only show schools that offer that grade.  This will impact both the pins on the map and the schools that appear in the list.
      Please note that even if you have already entered the grade by doing the eligibility check, you also need to select the grade as a filter to update the schools shown on the map.
Please note that even if you have already entered the grade by doing the eligibility check, you also need to select the grade as a filter to update the schools shown on the map.
  1. Enter in your address in the address bar at the top.
Entering your address will drop a new pin on the map at that location to make it easier to see which schools are closest to where you live.  It will also allow you to sort the list of schools by distance as well as by name and eligibility flag.

Please note that even if you already entered your address by doing the eligibility check, you will still need to enter an address in the address bar to drop the new pin on the map and sort your school list by distance.

  1. Click into School Profiles - You can click into each school’s profile to learn more about the school and the programs they offer.  You can also find out the dates of their upcoming school information sessions.

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