Original Research by School Decision on Mount Auburn Preparatory Academy
Mount Auburn Preparatory Academy is a tuition-free public charter school serving kindergarten through twelfth grade in Cincinnati, Ohio. It operates as its own district with a small enrollment spread across all grades, making it a genuinely full K-12pathway school rather than one that feeds students elsewhere for high school.
The school's most recent milestone is the graduation of its first class in the spring of 2026, with fifteen students earning diplomas. This matters to families considering enrollment: parents enrolling younger children now can reasonably expect their student to progress through the entire school without transfer. For a charter school, this represents a maturation from a building-out phase into a complete offering.
The school's student body is substantially Black, reflecting the Cincinnati metro's demographics. The enrollment is small across all grade levels, ranging from roughly thirty to fifty students per grade in the elementary and middle span, with the high school grades in the thirty to forty-five range. The smallest cohort is the current fourth grade, which has notably fewer students than adjacent grades. The enrollment overall has grown modestly over recent years to reach its current size.
The school earned the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce's Momentum Award, a public recognition for schools demonstrating improvement in achievement while showing growth. This is a state-level indicator that academic performance has moved in a positive direction, and a parent weighing charter options in Hamilton County can treat it as evidence of recent academic progress.
State testing data for overall proficiency across subjects and grades was not available, so a full academic picture from standardized assessment cannot be drawn here. Similarly, a four-year graduation rate beyond the single Class of 2026 is not yet in the record. These absences reflect the school's recent completion of its high school build-out; as subsequent classes graduate, that data will accrue.
One measure that is reported shows a concern worth noting. The school's chronic absenteeism rate places it in the bottom quartile among Hamilton County's districts. Parents may want to look into this further with the school, asking how attendance is being supported, what the underlying causes are, and whether the school has initiatives underway to improve it.
Per-pupil spending at the school falls in the lower range compared to other districts in the county, a common feature of charter operations. The school's website and district communications emphasize a college-preparatory mission, though detailed curriculum materials, program breadth, and extracurricular offerings were not detailed in available data, so a parent interested in the specific academic pathways, elective options, or support services should request that information directly from the school.
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