News Bytes: Jack DeGioia, MacArthur HS, Ellington Field
By • September 9, 2024 0 599
Get Well Soon, President DeGioia
On the evening of June 5, Thomas A. Reynolds III, who chairs the board of directors at Georgetown University, sent an email to the GU community. The message: President John J. DeGioia had suffered a stroke earlier that morning, but thanks to a surgical intervention at MedStar Washington Hospital Center, his condition had stabilized later that day.
The next day, Reynolds announced in a follow-up email that, in accordance with the university’s bylaws, Provost Robert M. Groves would assume the responsibilities of the president until DeGioia’s return.
On July 11, Groves sent an email updating the community, stating that DeGioia “is receiving daily rehabilitation therapy sessions that aid in his recovery and help him get stronger each day.” The message also contained words of gratitude on behalf of Georgetown’s 48th president and his family: “This outpouring of messages from the Georgetown community, and beyond, has been very uplifting.”
Just over three months later, though, DeGioia, 67, has yet to return to campus. His family reports that he is “continuing to make improvements each day.”
As DeGioia’s recovery proceeds, his family encourages the community to continue sending him well-wishes, by email to presidentsoffice@georgetown.edu or by regular mail. The mailing address follows.
DeGioia Family
c/o Georgetown University President’s Office
207 Healy Hall, 37th and O Streets NW
Washington, D.C. 20057
More Than Twice as Many Students at MacArthur H.S.
As planned, MacArthur High School, at 4530 MacArthur Boulevard NW, opened for its second year with double its first-year enrollment. Some 580 students are registered in grades 9 and 10, plus a few 11th graders, at a school that opened in 2023 with 250 students. (Those students were mainly grade 9 transfers from Hardy, Georgetown’s only public middle school.) MacArthur is expected to expand to 800 to 1,000 students by 2027-28.
When the District decided to invest $46 million to reconstitute the school as the first new public high school in decades, the campus was owned by Georgetown Day School. “We are pleased to see that additional new classrooms and faculty hires have been completed as scheduled for the new 2024-25 term,” said Advisory Neighborhood Commissioner Kishan Putta. Among the issues to be monitored this year: traffic in nearby residential areas, new public bus routes and the need for a large cafeteria.
Ellington Field Public Meeting Set for Sept. 12
A long-awaited public meeting to get updates and make suggestions about the renovation of the Duke Ellington School playing field at 1600 38th St. NW has been scheduled for 6 p.m. on Thursday, Sept. 12, at the Georgetown Neighborhood Library, 3260 R St. NW. It is the seventh community meeting about the project in three years.
Parking, noise, lighting for the field and field houses and limitations on competitions top the list of concerns about the project, according to Commissioner Kishan Putta of ANC 2E. New technology has resolved some issues. But for many neighbors, the most immediate questions are: When will the project begin, when will it end and how will the facilities be accessible to local users during construction?
2 Public Pools, But Not Ours, Stay Open Until Sept. 22
On one of 2024’s hottest weekends, Aug. 24-25, many Georgetowners were disappointed to find the public swimming pools at Volta Park and Jelleff Recreation Center emptied of water and closed down, though their webpages said they were open.
“D.C.’s pools and spray parks typically close after Labor Day,” wrote the City Paper (also incorrect). In Georgetown, the pools closed a week earlier. On those sweltering days, Mayor Bowser had to reopen cooling centers. However, the mayor’s office announced at the Sept. 2 Georgetown-Burleith Advisory Neighborhood Commission meeting that the Hearst Pool and the Oxon Run Pool (but not the ones in Georgetown) will remain open six days a week until Sept. 22.
D.C. Kindergarten Teachers Learn About Literacy Program
“Teaching kindergarten children ages 4 to 6 how to read is one of the biggest challenges even the most experienced teachers face. Methods have swung back and forth between phonics and whole language approaches, all exasperated by classrooms of children who only speak English minimally. But now there is a tested successful method of teaching how to read that is sweeping the country and will be required for kindergarten teachers in D.C. to use by 2026.”
Structured Literacy Learning changed Jacqueline Pogue Lyons’s life as a kindergarten and ESL teacher, she told The Georgetowner at a Sept. 5 “Literacy Mixer” on the breezy rooftop of the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library. Lyons has been president of the Washington Teachers’ Union since 2021. Earlier, from 2000 to 2013, she taught reading to ESL and kindergarten students at Georgetown’s Hyde-Addison School.
“It’s important to proactively engage the educators that the new legislation affects,” said Allister Chang, Ward 2 representative on D.C.’s State Board of Education, who organized the back-to-school mixer. The Council budgeted $5 million to compensate teachers for the time they will take to learn and practice the new methodology.
“I am proud of the investments I secured in this year’s budget to provide much needed literacy training for our kindergarten teachers,” said Ward 2 Council member Brooke Pinto, one of the new literacy amendment’s principal architects. All teachers will be taught to use the Structured Literacy program, made up of five proven steps, and trained to teach others to use it, including volunteers.
