New High School, Literacy Program News Popping in Georgetown
By • May 12, 2022 0 2237
Breaking news about a new high school for Georgetown students on MacArthur Boulevard to open August 2023, and a new District training program to train teachers in the latest “how to read” techniques is popping today.
Hot off the press are preliminary plans by the District of Columbia Public Schools for the new high school — temporarily named “MacArthur High School” — that will serve Georgetown students, beginning in August 2023 at 4530 MacArthur Blvd. NW, site of the Georgetown Day School’s former lower and middle school campus, which has unified its campus uptown at 4200 Davenport St. NW.
“Hardy Middle School will be the first feeder school. Hardy graduates next year will be the first class at the new high school, that will eventually serve up to 1,000 city-wide students in a full comprehensive high school program,” Ward 2 Council member Brooke Pinto told The Georgetowner May 12.
“All in-boundary students from Hardy will be ‘by-right’ students at the new high school that will ease the over-enrollment at Jackson-Reed [formerly Wilson] high school,” Pinto said. A traffic-transportation study is currently underway, as is the planning process for a brand new cafeteria and auditorium building, and the renovation of classrooms to make them appropriate for high-school level instruction, according to DPS officials at a long virtual meeting of parents and residents held May 11.
Many future meetings with parent and neighborhood stakeholders are being planned for school structural and curricular details, including a new name for the high school.
An ongoing study group about the future expansion of Hardy Middle School also will continue, according to Pinto. One proposal had been to make Hardy a high school, but that is off the table now.
Literacy Training
An $875,000 fund to train teachers and instructors in all District Kindergarten-to-fifth grade DCPS classes and schools on the latest techniques of literacy was approved unanimously in the D.C. Council’s May 11 budget.
“Knowing how to read doesn’t mean you know how to teach someone to read,” Ward 2 representative on the D.C. State Board of Education Allister Chang stated. “How you teach reading is both a science and an art. D.C. must do more to equip reading instructors with proven methods.”
“Every school will have at least one instructor or teacher trained in the proven techniques,” Pinto confirmed. “Allister Chang was very instrumental in helping make this a unanimous budget decision.”
