Original Research by School Decision on Howard Gardner Multiple Intelligence Cs
Howard Gardner Multiple Intelligence CS is a charter school serving kindergarten through eighth grade across a small, single-building campus in the greater Scranton area of Lackawanna County, Pennsylvania. The school operates under a lottery-admission model, with first preference given to families residing in the Scranton and Abington Heights school districts, which jointly authorize the charter. Beyond those two districts, the school draws students from roughly a dozen surrounding districts across the region.
The enrollment is small, with roughly three hundred twenty students distributed across nine grade levels. The student body is predominantly white, though the school serves students across multiple racial and ethnic backgrounds. Data on free-and-reduced-price lunch eligibility and on special populations including students with individualized education plans and English learners are not publicly available for this school.
In August 2022, the school completed a substantial building expansion that materially reshaped its physical capacity and operations. The project added seven new middle-school classrooms, a dedicated science classroom, a new main entrance and office suite, and expanded on-campus parking and vehicle queuing for arrival and dismissal. This expansion was directly tied to growth in enrollment and a commitment to deepening the school's middle-grades program, which parents considering a full K-8 pathway should understand as a freshly built-out offering. The expansion was celebrated at a formal dedication in September 2022.
The school's educational approach centers on the multiple intelligences framework, meaning instruction across subjects is designed to engage different forms of thinking and strength—linguistic, logical-mathematical, spatial, bodily-kinesthetic, musical, interpersonal, intrapersonal, and naturalistic. This philosophy shapes curriculum design and classroom practice from kindergarten onward. No state assessment data or comparison results on academic proficiency are available in the public reporting for this school, so prospective families cannot see how students perform on standardized measures or how the school ranks on test outcomes. This absence is not unusual for schools early in their lifecycle or for some charter programs, but a parent may want to ask the school directly about assessment results and academic outcome data.
On attendance, the school reports a chronic absenteeism rate that falls above the midpoint among the county's districts, meaning a larger share of students miss school regularly than the county median. Per-pupil spending at the school falls in the lower range for Lackawanna County districts, suggesting a leaner budget relative to some neighboring district peers.
Admissions are governed by an annual public lottery, so entry is not based on academic screening, prior achievement, or selective criteria. This keeps the school accessible to families across the region without regard to test scores or prior academic record. For families considering enrollment, the lottery is the entry point, and preferences are weighted toward the two chartering districts first, with remaining seats allocated through the broader lottery draw.
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