Along with the Star Wars Legos and Pokémon trading cards that litter the Cleveland Park bedroom of 10-year-old Noah Nash, the wooden desk where he sometimes does his homework holds an Oxford Latin dictionary.

Noah happily cracked open the thick hardcover during his summer break, learning phrases such as c ave canem , which means "beware of the dog." He assigned himself the summer reading in anticipation of starting fifth grade at the Washington Latin School. The new public charter school in Cathedral Heights will open today as the first public school in the District with a humanities and classical curriculum as its focus.

"I just can't wait for the new knowledge to flow into my head," Noah said as he played with his best friend, Skylar Lovett, 10, who will attend the school, too.

New schools open all the time, especially in the District, where the proliferation of public charter schools since 1996 has led to 55 operating on 69 campuses this year. But for parents who are nervous about making a long-term commitment to the troubled D.C. system -- and have the financial means to consider other options -- the arrival of Washington Latin is being heralded as a welcome alternative to taking a chance on public schools or paying private school tuition to gain peace of mind.

"This gives us another choice," said MaryAnn Nash, 44, a lawyer who is the mother of Noah and two other children: a daughter in third grade at Sidwell Friends School and a daughter in first grade at John Eaton, a D.C. public elementary school in Cleveland Park. Last year, Nash and her husband Rick, 46, also lawyer, enrolled their three children at a private Montessori school, which they had attended since they were 18 months old.

The new charter school also provides a choice for those parents who can't afford private education but want a more rigorous curriculum than they think the D.C. public schools offer. Headmaster T. Robinson Ahlstrom said, "It would be easy to go out and get a bunch of Northwest parents," but school officials recruited throughout the city to find an economically and racially diverse student body.

Washington Latin, in the 3800 block of Massachusetts Avenue NW, will have 192 students in grades 5, 6 and 7 and will eventually run from grade 5 to 12. Students will don uniforms and be required to study six years of Latin, four years of modern foreign language, and learn about old-school Greek and Roman humanities heavyweights such as Socrates and Cicero.

Parents from Anacostia in Southeast to American University Park in Upper Northwest have enrolled their children. The student population will be about 50 percent white, 30 percent black, 15 percent Hispanic and the remaining, Asian American, Ahlstrom said.

But not everyone welcomes Washington Latin to the city's educational landscape. Capitol Hill parent Gina Arlotto, a co-founder of the public school advocacy coalition Save Our Schools, said that she supports a rigorous education but that Washington Latin caters to elite parents, making it easier for them to abandon their local public school and, by extension, their community.

"It allows people to opt out of a system where its strengths are that it could be a diverse school with all different kinds of kids," said Arlotto, whose three children attend public schools.

The school originally had 176 spaces but proved so popular that Ahlstrom got permission from the D.C. Public Charter School Board, which authorized the school, to increase its enrollment cap by 16 students. It has a waiting list of more than 20 families, Ahlstrom said. Charter schools are publicly funded and open to all students citywide but have different focuses and criteria in selecting students.

The Washington Latin model is based on Boston Latin, a public school in Massachusetts founded in 1635 that includes Samuel Adams, John Hancock and Benjamin Franklin among its alumni. That school has 2,400 students, who take an entrance exam as part of the admissions process.

Ahlstrom said Washington Latin will be smaller, about 800 students when it has all grades. District students will be required to take two more years of Latin than Boston's students and won't have to take an entrance exam, he said.

"I look for that intangible spark," said Ahlstrom, who spent the summer interviewing children and families. "A child who is eager to learn, willing to work -- that they have that something, that intellectual curiosity. "

Washington Latin will serve an academic void among the nearly 200 public schools and public charter schools. Among the 141 public schools, there is one full-time Latin teacher, at Woodrow Wilson High School in Tenleytown. Students can take a full sequence of classes that prepares them for the Advanced Placement exam in Latin, said Claudia Bezaka, D.C. schools world language coordinator. The charter board has no cumulative database of curriculum offerings at all of its charter schools, but officials said that Paul middle school offers an introductory Latin course.

D.C. School Superintendent Clifford B. Janey wants to shore up the system's Latin curriculum. Janey, a Boston Latin graduate, plans to turn Eastern Senior High School in Capitol Hill into a Latin school and hired a former Fairfax County principal to lead the transition, which is being planned. The low-performing school was once known as "the Pride of Capitol Hill," but the building is so dilapidated that it was recently featured on the Oprah Winfrey Show.

Ahlstrom said he welcomes the competition.

"Janey has my 35-page education plan, and I hope he runs the play," Ahlstrom said. "I think every high school in D.C. should teach Latin."