Dispatches from Jackson-Reed High School reporters: Too-long school year, music these days, being the new kid

The masthead for the May 2023 edition of the Jackson-Reed Beacon. Click the image to read that newspaper.

Kids in DC Public Schools don’t speak with one voice, but we’re pretty sure that the prevailing sentiment at the last bell of the 2022-2023 school year was, “FINALLY.” Their last day was Thursday, June 22nd, a week after many of their charter school friends finished for the summer, and three weeks or more after their private school friends started their vacations.

Our evidence includes this op-ed in the The Beacon, Jackson-Reed High School’s student newspaper: “The school year drags on for too long,” reads the headline. “Currently the DC Public School school year lasts 180 days, leading us to believe that the year is unnecessarily stretched out,” say the weary writers.

Some things never change. But the music does. And a pair of 17-going-on-70 writers opine that it’s getting worse as time goes by.

The next time you walk by the school, check out the banners that went up along the fencing around the classroom trailers installed late last fall. They feature Jackson-Reed’s namesakes, Edna Jackson and Vincent Reed. And here’s an explanation of the student artwork on display.

The Beacon’s young journalists are never ones to shy away from weightier topics, with reporting and perspectives you won’t see anywhere else. And we want to highlight that, too. Those stories throughout the school year included the failure of the school’s public address system during a lockdown drill, why DCPS barred a Christian athletic group from establishing a chapter there, the weeks-long delays in vetting new teachers and getting them in classrooms, how and why students cheat, and additional stories that were featured in The Beacon’s print editions, but not online.

Finally, and with apologies to the first op-ed writer, we note that the first day of the next school year is only 54 days away. So we leave you with one more opinion piece on the unexpected pains – and surprise joys – of being the new kid in school.

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