Asheville’s two prize-winning public school districts are one of the many reasons families choose to call the area home.

Asheville City Schools has two high schools, one middle school, one alternative school, five elementary magnet schools and one pre-school facility. Its commitment to student success has earned it the reputation as one of the best public school systems in North Carolina.

Buncombe County Schools is the state’s 10th largest school system and the largest district in Western North Carolina. BCS serves more than 25,000 students, and more than 50 different languages are spoken in the district’s 41 schools. Innovative Ideas Both ACS and BCS are taking part in the North Carolina New Schools Project, which is working to reform and improve public high schools and implement more effective means of serving students. Both districts are taking measures to reduce the number of high school dropouts, increase graduation rates and alleviate problems with attendance and discipline.

One of the things Asheville City Schools has done to make the transition to high school easier is create a freshmen orientation called FX, or The Freshman experience. The orientation kicks off a couple days before school starts when freshmen can come meet their teachers, find their classes, eat pizza and enter to win a door prize for a new laptop computer.

Private Education

Parents who prefer private education have plenty of options in Asheville, and several offer a faith-based curriculum. Among them are Asheville Catholic, Carolina Christian, Emmanuel Lutheran, Nazarene Christian and North Asheville Christian schools. There’s also Hanger Hall, an all-girls middle school with an average of 27 students and nine faculty. And Christ School, a boarding school for 175 boys in grades eight through 12, offers 34 honors-level and 18 Advanced Placement courses.

Meanwhile, Carolina Day School has 660 students and 17 Advanced Placement courses, and nearly 100 percent of its graduates enter college. The oldest private school in the region is Asheville School, which was established in 1900.

Asheville School has students from about 30 states and 10 foreign countries, and 80 percent of them live on campus. Classes are held six days a week for approximately 250 co-ed students in grades nine through 12.

College Bound

Academic excellence doesn’t stop with Asheville’s public and private high schools. There are also options for higher education, including the University of North Carolina at Asheville, Warren Wilson College, Asheville-Buncombe Technical Community College and Montreat College. Warren Wilson is perhaps the region’s most unusual college. Founded in 1894 upon a philosophy of sustainability, the four-year private liberal arts college is driven by a threefold “Triad” principle that is made up of academics, work and service-learning. Warren Wilson students are required to work an on-campus job (which pays for part of their tuition), perform 100 hours of community service in four years and complete a requisite course of academic work to graduate.