School updates: Signs of change at Jackson-Reed High include changing the signs

The masthead from the last print edition of The Beacon of the 2021-2022 school year.

School’s out! So let’s read about school.

And specifically, about the former Wilson High School. In their reporting for The Beacon,
Jackson-Reed High School’s excellent student journalists have been covering issues such as their school’s name change, which happened during the 2021-22 school year. The most recent update on that change was about the old “Wilson” signage around the school being removed to make way for the new.

Other major news stories during the school year included the Jackson-Reed senior who ran for DC Council in Ward 3, and of course the hyperlocal impact of the global coronavirus pandemic.

Some of the recent Beacon reporting has been about changes students will see in the 2022-23 school year. Six portable classrooms will be brought in to address overcrowding. (The paper reported previously that projected enrollment is 2,128 students. The school’s capacity is 1,840.) As reported in the print edition, a Jackson-Reed social studies teacher will be one of 60 in the U.S. piloting a new AP African-American history curriculum. And Jackson-Reed will have a new principal, Sah Brown, who has served as principal at Eastern High School since 2016.

And here’s some noteworthy recent reporting that you won’t find anywhere else: A profile of the school custodians who are contending with strenuous workloads due to pandemic protocols, the large number of students, and an uptick in vandalism. Students forced to quarantine due to Covid-19 were inaccurately being recorded as unexcused absences, which could have threatened their participation in extracurriculars and even graduation. And in a print edition exclusive: Two editors “tried every chicken sandwich in Tenley so you don’t have to.”