After school in Crozet

The official source

The school division posts the final word on this. When an answer here is still coming, check there first.

Albemarle County Public Schools ↗

Is there after-school care at my child's Crozet elementary school?

Yes, at all four. Albemarle County's Extended Day Enrichment Program — the after-school half is called ASEP — listed Brownsville, Crozet, Ivy and Virginia L. Murray among its sites in the division's 2025-26 parent handbook. It runs from dismissal on every full school day, and a child attends the programme at their own school rather than transferring to another.

It is kindergarten through fifth grade only. A child must turn five by September 30 to enrol in the kindergarten year.

If a child is absent from school for any reason that day, the handbook says they may not attend the programme that afternoon.

Is there before-school care in Crozet?

Not from the school division, as far as its own published handbook goes. Albemarle County's Extended Day Enrichment Program covers after school and designated student holidays, and the 2025-26 handbook describes no morning equivalent. For a household where both adults start work before 8am, that is the hardest scheduling problem in moving here.

Brownsville Elementary opens for drop-off at 7:45am, ten minutes before its 7:55am bell. Virginia L. Murray opens at 7:40am. Those windows are supervision, not care.

What does after-school care cost in Albemarle County?

The 2025-26 handbook lists a $50 registration fee, then $400 per cycle for four or five days a week and $290 per cycle for one to three days, billed over ten cycles of roughly seventeen or eighteen school days. Albemarle changed its after-school model for 2026-27, so treat these as last published rather than current.

The handbook also lists reduced rates of $300 and $217.50 full-time, and $200 and $145 part-time.

Late pickup was billed at $1.00 per minute, per child, past the programme's closing time.

Can my child take a bus from school to an after-school program?

Yes, to two Crozet providers. acac at Crozet Park lists school transportation from all four western elementary schools — Brownsville, Crozet, Ivy and Murray. Little Explorers lists pickup from Crozet Elementary and Brownsville Elementary only. Both are private programmes billed separately from the county's, and each arranges its own transport rather than ACPS running a route to them.

acac at Crozet Park, 1075 Claudius Crozet Park, adds snacks, homework help and outdoor play. Neither provider publishes its rates online; acac's number is 434-817-2063.

Does the Crozet YMCA run after-school care?

There is no Crozet YMCA. The Piedmont Family YMCA operated Crozet Park's recreational facilities for about nine years; acac was announced as the park's new operator in December 2019 and took over on 1 April 2020. The Y's current after-school sites are in Charlottesville, at Red Hill Elementary and in Greene County. Families moving out from the city routinely assume the Y follows them west. It does not.

The Boys and Girls Clubs of Central Virginia has six locations — Albemarle Campus, Cherry Avenue, James River, Madison, Orange and Southwood. None is in Crozet.

What happens after fifth grade? Is there care at Henley Middle?

County after-school care ends at grade five, so the year your child moves up to Joseph T. Henley Middle School is the year that coverage stops. What Henley has instead is Albemarle County Parks and Recreation sports, which run a season at a time and are not child care.

Albemarle Parks and Recreation prints one window for track — games and practice both run 4:10pm to 5:45pm after school, at a $75 season fee — and boys volleyball on Tuesdays and Thursdays, 4:30pm to 6:00pm.

Who watches my kids on teacher workdays and school holidays?

The county runs a Student Holiday Program on designated no-school days, 7:30am to 6:00pm in the 2025-26 handbook. The catch for a Crozet family is geography: the handbook hosts it at Agnor Elementary, in the county's northern ring near Charlottesville, not out here.

It cost $65 per day in 2025-26, with reduced rates of $48.75 and $32.50, plus a $30 registration fee.

It does not run on Labor Day, Thanksgiving, winter break, Martin Luther King Jr. Day, spring break or Memorial Day.

Does Albemarle County have early-release days every week?

No, and this is worth knowing if you are moving from a division that does. Albemarle uses full-day student holidays for teacher planning instead of a recurring weekly half day. The entire 2026-27 calendar contains exactly one scheduled half day for students: the last day of school.

That one half day is Thursday, 27 May 2027, with the afternoon reserved for a teacher workday. The year runs 177 school days from Wednesday, 12 August 2026.

What time does school start and end in Crozet?

Elementary schools run earliest and Henley Middle runs latest, which is the reverse of what most families expect. Brownsville starts at 7:55am and dismisses at 2:30pm; Virginia L. Murray runs 7:55am to 2:25pm. Henley Middle runs 9:05am to 4:10pm. Western Albemarle High dismisses at 3:50pm.

Crozet Elementary publishes no hours at all — not on its fact sheet, not on its family pages. Call the school at 434-823-4800. Ivy Elementary lists hours of 7:45-2:30 without separating the drop-off window from the bell, so confirm that one too.

The honest version

Put two children in this system and the seams show. A third grader at Brownsville is dismissed at 2:30pm. A seventh grader at Henley is dismissed at 4:10pm. That is a hundred-minute gap between your two pickups, in opposite directions, every weekday — and the older child, the one you would expect to need less supervision but who is now too old for the county program, is the one with nowhere to be. Families here solve it with carpools, a sport every season, or one parent working a shifted day. It is solvable. It is not free, and no listing photo will tell you about it.