The King Open parent community maintains a separate parent website with current info for the KO community (not maintained by CPS).

A group of Cambridge parents and teachers started King Open as a public magnet school more than 25 years ago as an alternative to the then-standard model of public education.

The founders of King Open believed that this standard model often shortchanged children of color, poor and working-class children of all colors, the children of immigrants, and also privileged white children who didn't easily excel in this environment. Even students typically viewed as successful, these founders thought, were receiving a narrow, unchallenging education.

Their alternative, which has grown to become King Open, is open to different learning styles, different personalities, different cultures and family backgrounds, and varied teaching methods, and the front door and the classroom doors are always open to parents and other family members. In practice, this means that the teachers engage in active conversation with the students rather than simply deliver instruction. They focus on helping every child develop his or her skills. And they keep working on a curriculum that allows students to grapple with new material in a number of different ways and that encourages them to ask probing questions.This way of teaching is no longer really alternative. Most good schools, even those called traditional schools, have adopted many of these once-alternative methods. And King Open and many other alternative schools have readopted some traditional methods of teaching. Still, King Open maintains a remarkable degree of openness to parent involvement and especially to the individuality of every child.