School updates: Amazon will pay employees’ UDC tuition; Jackson-Reed HS is crowded

When its employees enroll at the University of the District of Columbia, Amazon will foot the bill. UDC has been added to Amazon’s Career Choice program, which as of this year covers 100% of the tuition at participating colleges and universities. More than 5,000 hourly Amazon employees in the DC area are said to be eligible for the tuition benefit. Amazon says more than 80,000 employees globally have take part in the program.

UDC has formed a search committee who will guide the hunt for President Ronald Mason Jr.’s successor. Mason announced in July that he would be stepping down in 2023, after eight years of leading the university. Search committee members include current and former members of the UDC board of trustees, faculty members and the DC deputy mayor for education.

Jackson-Reed High School is bursting at the seams. When the last major renovation and expansion of Jackson-Reed High School was completed in 2011, it was designed to hold 1,550 students. DCPS somehow raised the school’s “programmatic capacity,” as of the 2021-2022 school year, to 1,850 students. Its current student population: 2,300. The Jackson-Reed Beacon reports every available space, including science labs and storage rooms, is being used as classroom space. Temporary trailers, which arrived in late September, will ease some of the crowding once installed and retrofitted for instruction. But they are not set to open until the second semester begins in January.

That’s not the only work keeping construction crews at the school busy. The school’s name change has meant changing signage, some of which was literally set in stone.

Jackson-Reed High School in Tenleytown changed their name last March, and physical changes to the campus are progressing, as the community comes around to the new identity.@savannahkuchar reports, https://t.co/7Y03AaJ9gK pic.twitter.com/H8MohKzFhw

— The Wash (@authewash) October 11, 2022

Read more about the task in The Beacon, and TheWash.org.

Jackson-Reed isn’t just short of space. It’s been short of teachers. Another report in The Beacon faults, in part, the onboarding process at DC Public Schools.

We’ve leaned rather heavily on Jackson-Reed’s student reporting for this feature, and we hope that like us, you are inclined to support their journalism with a donation. In return, the paper will email you a copy of each print edition. The Beacon welcomes donations via PayPal (search @WilsonBeacon, and include as many as four email addresses for print delivery), and cash or check (email [email protected] for information).