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Notes: ACHS student newspaper slams botched rollout of new Minnie Howard campus

By ALXnow.com

Good Friday morning, Alexandria!

☀️ Today’s weather: Expect sunny skies and a high of approximately 68 degrees, accompanied by a west wind ranging from 5 to 7 mph. As the night rolls in, the sky will remain clear, with the temperature dropping to an estimated low of 49 degrees while a southwest wind blows at about 6 mph.

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Students get on school buses at Alexandria City High School’s Minnie Howard Campus (staff photo by James Cullum

Alexandria City High School has a uniquely impressive student newspaper, Theogony, and the editorial board didn’t mince words when they described the frustrating state of the school’s two-campus plan.

Theogony reported previously that a lack of proper bus transportation — something ACPS was aware of even before the school year started but downplayed — meant students were stranded with no buses in sight to take to their next classes. The result is hundreds of students walking, unsupervised, the 0.6 mile stretch between the two campuses.

That’s not just any 0.6 mile stretch, however, it’s one that crosses one of the city’s busiest and most dangerous intersections as noted by city leaders in a meeting earlier this week. It’s also one that runs adjacent to the Bradlee Shopping Center; a tempting target for rampant truancy even before students were traveling unsupervised between campuses.

Planning for the shared campus started after the School Board vote five years ago and these concerns were raised throughout the process by Alexandria’s City Council. Theogony took ACPS to task over its flippant disregard for these transportation concerns:

When asked by Theogony over the summer how ACPS planned to adapt for new intercampus transport, district Chief Academic Officer Pierette Finney said that “transport will occur as it always has.” District Chief of Staff Grace Taylor said, “I wouldn’t get caught up in the numbers.” More recently, school Lead Operations Administrator Michael Burch said “the number of students traveling … remains consistent,” as 35% of students at Minnie Howard both last year and this year switch campuses — a sly way to characterize a 400% increase.

This lack of planning and unwillingness to engage in sincere conversation with stakeholders has severely impacted students. We have missed hours of instructional time since the beginning of the year due to long wait-times for buses, crowded lines to enter the other campus and inconsistency in communication from administrators to teachers on how they should adapt. We are provided with roughly 15 minutes to eat lunch at the King St. campus (depending on which lunch block we are assigned), as busing takes up much of the lunch block. Two-hour delays are no longer a possibility, as there are not enough buses to account for elementary school dismissal and intercampus transport when following the two-hour delay schedule.

Theogony isn’t the only one that’s taken note of the debacle at ACHS. At a City Council meeting earlier this week, after discussing changes near the Bradlee Shopping Center, City Council member John Chapman expressed similar frustration and asked city staff to work with ACPS to help fix this.

“One of the questions I’ve heard from a number of people and parents… folks are asking a lot about what ACPS is doing in regards to making sure students are safely moving from the High School to Minnie Howard,” said Chapman. “I know we’ve previously talked to ACPS, at least in my recollection, and they assured us this would not be an issue, but it seems like it’s an issue.”

Chapman said multiple parents this week have come forward and complained about it. Staff said they are working with ACPS on solving it.

“We thought we were going to have this issue,” Chapman said, “and now we do.”

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About the Author

  • This is the staff byline for ALXnow, used by editors and other full-time staff. Launched in October 2019, ALXnow is the place for the latest news, views and things to do around Alexandria, Virginia.