Interim schools Chancellor John Davis will give the “State of DC Public Schools” address on Tuesday, Oct. 18. The event begins at 6:30 p.m. and will be held at Roosevelt High School in Northwest.
This year’s gathering will feature a series of presentations from students, parents, educators and school leaders on topics such as school culture, family engagement and career readiness, as well as student performances.
Student Holiday
There will be no school on Oct. 10 in observance of Columbus Day.
New Athletic Director
After a yearlong search, Diana Parente was recently hired as DCPS’ new athletic director.
Parente, who previously served as a top deputy for the New York City Public Schools Athletic League, will oversee athletics at all of the District’s public schools.
Student Filmmakers in NYC
Student filmmakers from School Without Walls and Woodrow Wilson High School, both in Northwest, are getting to use their talent in filmmaking to tackle dangerous behaviors on cellphones.
Teams from both schools are in New York City through Oct. 9 to participate in the final stages of the AT&T Film Invitational, a 10-week film competition that provides high school students from across the country the chance to write, direct, shoot and edit an 8-minute film.
The project is part of the All-American High School Film Festival, which is taking place during National Cyberbullying Awareness Month.
DCPS Pride Celebration
The Charles Sumner School Museum and Archives in northwest is celebrating its 30th anniversary with a commemorative art gallery exhibition and gala event, presented in collaboration with groups and organizations that include DCPS and the Office of the State Superintendent of Education.
The gala takes place on Nov. 10, exactly 30 years after then-Mayor Marion Barry signed the proclamation designating the Charles Sumner School as the official DC Public Education Museum, the only of its kind in the nation
The art exhibition, themed “DCPS Pride: Reflections & Memory Making,” will be housed in two galleries on the ground floor of the Sumner Museum and will feature art work by current DCPS students and DCPS alumni.
The galleries will open to the public on Nov. 1.
Public Charter Schools Celebrate
The public charter school system in D.C. is celebrating 20 years of providing quality education to its students, as well as the impact the schools make every day on both the students and families they serve.
Part of the celebration centers on test score accomplishments, such as the recent Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) results that reflect more than 14,000 public charter school students who took the English Language Arts and Math assessments.
Students from every ward attending a citywide public charter school took the assessments, and 79 percent of the students taking the assessments were African-American, 12 percent Latino and 6 percent white.
Lessons from Seasoned Journalists
For six weeks this summer, a group of students from Richard Wright Public Charter School in Southeast participated in DC Humanities’ “Soul of the City Youth Leadership” program, where they learned about modern journalism.
The students, who learned from Pulitzer-winning journalists and publications, also had the chance to report on events around the city.
Charter School Stories
When Malaika Khafra first arrived at DC Prep’s Edgewood Middle School campus in Northeast as a 5th-grader, she knew its environment was different from any other school she’d attended.
At her new school, Khafra said she had space to imagine, create and grow into the person she is today — an accomplishment she largely credits to teachers and staff who were wholeheartedly invested in her development.
Khafra is now the technology and data/enrollment associate and a member of the “PrepNext” alumni program at DC Prep’s Home Office.
Khafra said that after college she wanted to come back to a place where she could continue to grow, where it “felt like home” and where everyone always followed through on their commitment to foster students’ growth, academically and personally.