Creekside Charter is funded by the state of California. We are a free, public, charter school.

In California, there are different funding models for charter schools. Non-classroom based charters allow schools to receive funding based on student growth. Daily attendance is determined by work production rather than on seat time. At Creekside, this gives our students great flexibility to pursue outside passions, travel with their families, and create experience outside of the classroom. While many non-classroom based charters focus primarily on home study, at Creekside we offer four full days of classroom a week.

Per California charter law, we admit students based on a lottery system. When a family applies on our Admissions page, we issue them a family lottery number. Our lottery is held on March 10 for the following school year. During the school year, students are admitted based on available space.

We are located at the base of Olympic Valley at the base of Tram Face at Palisades Tahoe. Our address is 1916 Chamonix Place, Olympic Valley, California 96146.

We cap our Transitional Kindergarten class size at 14, our Kindergarten at 20 and our 1st through 8th grades at 22.

Creekside students still have academic responsibilities on Fridays. We refer to this work as Independent Study. In addition, the PTO offers Enrichment Programs on Fridays.

We call it home practice! Home practice times are subject to the individual. Students at Creekside do work hard, but our expectations are reasonable. Because of the Independent Study day on Friday, students do have more home practice throughout the week. Overall, our students have more non-academic activities than most students. We know that if kids have time to pursue outside passions they will be more likely to engage academically.

Our PTO offers robust Enrichment Programs based on age, subsidised by PTO fundraising. Please visit our Creekside PTO enrichment page for more information: http://creeksidepto.org/enrichment/.

As a charter school, we rely heavily on our volunteers. We ask families to volunteer 10 hours throughout the course of the year. While this helps our school, the biggest gift is modeling a volunteer spirit for our students. Parents are a big part of our community!

While we do not offer a standard school bus service, there are some options to consider. Many of our students take TART (Tahoe Area Regional Transit). They offer daily service from Truckee and Tahoe City. Additionally, our active PTO members have helped many families arrange carpools.

Students in 6th through 8th grade are able to participate in middle school athletics at North Tahoe or Alder Creek Middle School. Visit the respective school’s websites to learn more about their athletic offerings. While not officially connected with Creekside, our close proximity to Palisades Tahoe affords our snow sport atheletes convenient access to thier teams and competitions.

Independent study provides excellent opportunities for students and families to engage in other non-classroom based experiential learning experiences. There is nothing more rewarding than direct learning about Roman civilization than a family trip to Rome. Students are encouraged to do so with the simple submission of an Independent Study Notice to the child’s teacher 10 school days in advance. This gives the teacher time to prepare assignments and support students in their overall success of time management. Students will then provide evidence of academic engagement when returning back to class for credit.