Castle Pines Schools: DCSD, Charters and How to Enroll

Douglas County School District runs 45 elementary schools, 9 middle schools, 9 high schools, 6 alternative schools and 20 charter schools across the county, for about 61,000 students. Your address puts you in an attendance zone, and the school for that zone is what DCSD calls your neighborhood or address-assigned school, the school you are assigned to based on your residence address, where no application is needed. Plug the address into the district's School Locator Map and you have your answer before the moving truck is booked; the district notes that boundaries can shift to accommodate growth and balance enrollment.

Then there is open enrollment. You can request a different DCSD school, including one in another town, on a space-available basis; the district calls that your school of choice, and placement there is not guaranteed. For the 2027-28 school year, Round 1 runs from 8am on Monday, November 2, 2026 to 4pm on Tuesday, December 1, 2026; offers appear at 8am on December 8 in the parent portal and you accept by 4pm on December 15. Round 2 runs from 8am on Friday, January 22, 2027 to 4pm on Monday, August 2, 2027 and is first come, first served. Round 1 applicants who are not placed go on an annual prioritized list that carries priority over Round 2.

Buffalo Ridge Elementary on Shoreham Drive is a K-5 whose own site sums up its values as "A HERD": academic excellence, honesty, empathy, respect and dedication, with art, music, physical education and library on top of the classroom. Timber Trail Elementary on Castle Pines Parkway is a K-5 built around project based learning, where students apply what they are learning to real-world problems, with a gifted and talented program and clubs from choir and robotics to chess; the district's page for The Canyons names it as that neighborhood's elementary. Both schools print a Castle Rock mailing address with the 80108 ZIP on their own sites, which is a post office quirk the City is working on, not a sign they are somewhere else.

One district page settles the question most people ask. DCSD's real-estate page for The Canyons says the neighborhood is served by Timber Trail Elementary, Rocky Heights Middle School and Rock Canyon High School, and The Canyons' own site says the same. Rocky Heights is a grade 6 to 8 comprehensive middle school on Monarch Boulevard; Rock Canyon's own site lists more than 30 AP courses, concurrent enrollment for college credit, career and technical education, more than 100 clubs and a 20-hour community service requirement to graduate. Both print Littleton on the district's lists and Highlands Ranch on their own, which is the same ZIP quirk in the other direction.

Where a page does not print a grade span, we have not guessed one; the school's own site has it, along with its lottery dates. The district's charter list runs 20 schools countywide, and every charter runs its own application, separate from the district's open enrollment rounds. The City's community information page names the district, American Academy and DCS Montessori as the schools serving Castle Pines.

DCSD bus service is for students at their assigned neighborhood school; the district's FAQ says transportation is not available to students who are open enrolled. Rides are $1 each way per student under board policy, with fees waived for students who have transportation in their IEP and for families on the Free and Reduced program. For 2026-27 the district says the annual bus pass is not available because of rolling route cancellations, so plan on the per-ride charge.