Why Us

Community & Sustainability Themed Magnet School

The overarching theme at MSMS is community & sustainability. Students have designed water filters, learned about water pollution, visited and sampled the Cocheco River. Students work in a collaborative manner and use critical thinking and creativity to solve problems.

Outdoor Classroom

At MSMS, we provide numerous opportunities to engage in our district's curriculum through the use of our outdoor learning spaces. Our goal is to increase the quality of our instruction while also including the benefits of outdoor experiences for our students.

Project-Based Learning

Project-based learning is a dynamic approach to teaching in which students explore real-world problems and challenges.

Family / School Partnership

Our family engagement vision is that families and school personnel engage in regular, two-way, and meaningful participation and communication in regarding student learning and other school activities. The mission of the team is to give back to the community with the hope that outside businesses and agencies will also form partnerships with the school.

200 Day School Calendar

By adding an additional 20 days to the school calendar, students retain more, so less remediation is necessary. Teachers also have more time to teach and can use the time to provide enriching activities as well as opportunities for re-teaching. Over a six-year period of time, children at MSMS will have gained 2/3 of a typical 180-day school year of additional learning opportunities.

The MSMS Lottery Process

Elementary students from the entire Rochester community are eligible to request the magnet school. The Superintendent will determine the number of students in each class, which will determine the available slots. The kindergarten classroom will have at least 5 students from the former Maple Street School assignment zone. Requests for available slots will be accepted from February 1st. If there are more requests than slots available, then a lottery will be used for any open slots and a waiting list established. The lottery will occur near the end of March each year. For more information, please see the Rochester School Board Policy JECC-1 , Assignment of Students to Magnet Schools.

What we offer