Montessori Elementary School near Potrero Hill
The reason most families end up at Mills rather than somewhere closer: almost every other Montessori school within reach of here stops at kindergarten. Mills is about 6 miles from Potrero Hill, at 1400 Hillside Blvd. in South San Francisco.
Why families here choose it
The question we get from Potrero Hill is almost always the same one: what happens at six. Here the answer is that nothing happens — the child stays, in the same school, through fifth grade.
Potrero Hill has a clean shot down 280, which is a very different experience from crossing the city east to west — the freeway does the work and the exits at the county line are quiet in the morning. The families we see from the hill are usually weighing an SFUSD assignment they did not choose against something they can simply accept, and want the answer settled for more than one year at a time.
What Montessori elementary school at Mills actually is
Elementary Montessori is not preschool with more reading. The work gets genuinely hard — long research projects running for weeks, extended writing, mathematics carried from concrete materials into abstraction, and findings presented to the class. It opens with the largest possible frame, the story of how the universe, the earth and human beings came to be, and hangs history, geography, biology and mathematics off it, because six- to eleven-year-olds want the whole story rather than the chapter. Collaboration is the default rather than an exception: work is negotiated, argued over and produced in pairs and small groups.
- Continuity is the whole argumentA child who already knows how to plan a morning and finish what they start walks into a curriculum built on those habits, instead of one that has to replace them.
- Big questions, deliberatelyCosmic education: the frame first, the specifics second.
- One school, one commuteFamilies with a toddler and a fourth-grader do a single drop-off. The eleven-year-old is still in the building the two-year-old is starting in.
The details that decide it
| Our campus | 1400 Hillside Blvd., South San Francisco, CA 94080 |
| Distance from Potrero Hill | About 6 miles |
| Getting here | South on 280 to the Brisbane exits, then across. |
| Area | San Francisco |
| Local public district | San Francisco Unified School District |
| Ages served | Two through fifth grade |
| Hours | Monday to Friday, 7:30 am – 6:00 pm |
| Enrollment | Open year-round, subject to availability |
Distance is approximate and measured in a straight line. The honest test is to drive it once at drop-off time — book a tour and you will.
What Montessori elementary school costs
Elementary and summer run full day or extended full day rather than mornings, so from Potrero Hill the question is which end of the day you need rather than how much of it.
- AgesThrough 5th grade
- Rates$1,400 full day · $1,750 extended full day, monthly, plus a $450 annual materials and testing fee. Every fee is on the tuition page.
- SchedulesMorning, full day, or extended full day 7:30 am to 6:00 pm — three, four or five days a week.
- EnrollmentOpen year-round, subject to availability, with a one-time $200 new-student fee.
What Potrero Hill families ask about Montessori elementary school
- Will my child transfer to a traditional middle school all right?Yes — children leave at the end of fifth grade for public and private middle schools. The habits elementary Montessori builds are the ones middle school assumes and rarely teaches.
- Can a child join without a Montessori background?Yes, and children do. It takes a settling-in period — a child used to being told what to do next often finds the freedom harder than the work — and we would want to talk through your child specifically first.
- Is the Montessori elementary school different for families traveling from Potrero Hill?No — there is one program and one campus. What changes with distance is the schedule that suits you: families driving further usually choose the extended full day so they are not fighting the peak twice a day.
- Can we come part-time?Yes. Three, four or five days a week, and morning, full day or extended full day. Families driving from Potrero Hill more often lengthen the day than shorten the week, but both are offered.
- Do you have a campus in Potrero Hill?No — and we would rather be straightforward about it. Mills Montessori has a single campus at 1400 Hillside Blvd., South San Francisco, CA 94080, about 6 miles from Potrero Hill. Everything on this page is about that one school and the families who drive to it.
- How long does the drive from Potrero Hill really take?South on 280 to the Brisbane exits, then across. We will not pretend to know your morning — the useful thing is to drive it once at drop-off time. Book a tour for 8:45 am and you will find out on the way in.
- Do you give priority to families from Potrero Hill?No. Enrollment is open year-round and offered in the order places come free, regardless of which town you are driving from.
Montessori Elementary School in other areas
Come and watch a morning
Tours run mid-morning during the work cycle, year-round, by appointment.