The acting director said that the AHD will recommend targeted closures if the Covid caseload becomes unsafe. Nikki Harris On Thursday, September 16, Theogony spoke to Anne Gaddy, the acting director of the Alexandria Health Department (AHD) about the management of the pandemic in Alexandria schools. According to ACPS’s Covid-19 Dashboard, there are 64 cases in ACPS as of September 20. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity. Nikki Harris: How are Alexandria schools broadly managing the containment of Covid and in-person learning so far? Anne Gaddy: So the Alexandria Health Department (AHD) makes recommendations to schools in Alexandria, both Alexandria City Public Schools (ACPS) and private schools about…
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Mark Eaton, TC Journalism Teacher And Former School Board Member, Retires
Kamilah Lawson will teach Journalism I and advise Theogony next year as Eaton’s replacement. Nikki Harris Mark Eaton, an AP Literature/Journalism teacher and Theogony advisor at T.C. Williams, is retiring at the end of the 2020-2021 school year. Kamilah Lawson, a T.C. English teacher and 1995 graduate of T.C., will replace him as the Theogony advisor and Journalism I teacher next year. A graduate of VCU’s communications program, Lawson taught journalism outside ACPS for eleven years before joining T.C. to teach English 10 and 12 in 2019. Before that she worked at ESPN for three years as a production assistant. Lawson, who is Black, said she has recently started making…
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Photos of the Class of 2021 Graduation
The senior class graduated last Saturday at the T.C Williams Chinquapin circle. Nikki Harris The photos in this post capture the T.C. Williams class of 2021 graduation ceremony that took place last Saturday, June 12, at the T.C. Chinquapin circle.
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Do Teachers At ACPS Reflect The Diversity Of The Student Body?
The school district has had more success recruiting Black teachers than it has Hispanic teachers. Nikki Harris Hispanic students represent 36.9 percent of the total student population in ACPS, as of 2020. But according to the 2017-2018 report from the School Board, only 7.2 percent of the teachers at ACPS are Hispanic. This contrast reflects a nationwide trend of Hispanic teachers being underrepresented in schools: Only 7.8 percent of the nationwide teaching field is Hispanic, while Hispanic students represent around a quarter of the country’s student population in public schools, according to a 2015 report from the Education Department. (ACPS employees are not required to self-identify their race/ethnicity, and they…
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Proposed Taylor Run Restoration Ignites Angered Opposition
Critics of the project are demanding the city reevalute the effects of the project before it is implemented. Mena Spencer, Nikki Harris, Hunter Langley Ever since Alexandria announced a planned restoration to Taylor Run Park earlier this year, residents have been quick to voice their opinions on the matter. “Save Taylor Run” signs have popped up on virtually every other street in the areas nearby, and Alexandria residents have assembled opposition to the implementation of the current plan. The proposed Taylor Run Restoration, which is set to be implemented around the fall of next year and will take about a year to complete, would raise the stream bed that sits…
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Exclusive: ACPS Superintendent Hutchings Sends Child To Private School Bishop Ireton
Alexandria City Public Schools (ACPS) Superintendent Dr. Gregory Hutchings has enrolled one of his two children in Bishop Ireton, a private Catholic high school in Alexandria that operates under a hybrid learning model, in contrast to ACPS’s entirely virtual model.
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Schools Reopening, Testing And Vaccines: A Conversation With Dr. Stephen Haering
The Alexandria Health Department Director said in an interview that his department holds the influence to stop distribution of a vaccine if it is skeptical of the vaccine’s safety. Nikki Harris Nikki Harris spoke with Dr. Stephen Haering, head of the Alexandria Health Department (AHD), on Saturday about the circumstances Alexandria could reopen schools under, vaccine politics and distribution, the AHD’s relationship with the CDC and more. Alexandria had 3,804 confirmed cases and 69 COVID-related deaths the day this interview took place. As of publication, Alexandria has 3,859 cases and, still, 69 COVID-related deaths. This conversation has been lightly edited for brevity and clarity. Harris: I wanted to start with…
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Pandemic Begets Financial and Logistical Roadblocks To College
Nikki Harris The Scholarship Fund of Alexandria (SFA), a nonprofit that raises money for T.C. Williams graduates’ college educations, is facing financial challenges as demand for scholarships from the nonprofit shot up by approximately $100,000 this year, according to Beth Lovain, the SFA Executive Director. The SFA holds an annual in-person gala and silent auction to raise money from its sponsors, but this year it held both events virtually. Lovain said that the SFA raised close to what it raised last year—upward of $400,000—at the virtual gala and silent auction when the expenses of an in-person gala such as renting a hotel and buying refreshments were subtracted. The SFA will…
