You should seriously look at the kids commute to school when making a decision.

My son is a freshman at JR and so I can't answer all your questions but here are my thoughts:

If your kid is going to go to JR they should seriously look at an academy. If they are in an Academy you will certainly get a newsletter that has a lot of information. Kid has had two field trips so far this year because he is in an academy. There are 400+ kids in a grade, so I don't know about all grade field trips. Website has a lot of info on the academies. The school newsletter is once a week and is just fine.

You might also want to look at the Instagram pages for the two schools. JR posts a lot and has multiple accounts for different aspects of the school.

My child reports fewer fights than at middle school.

Lastly, my kids Spanish teacher quit the second week of school. They finally had the replacement start last week. That's a whole term of no teaching. The sub sat in the room and made sure the kids behaved, but didn't teach. The school was bad on communication until the parents pushed. The slowness in onboarding the replacement was a DCPS issue, but the lack of communication was a school issue. Once the parents started pushing on the lack of communication, the VP did improve and provide more updates.

Regardless those older threads should give you all the information that this board is likely to yield.

Jackson Reed has an established pattern of excellence. If you don't have a great reason for picking MacArthur, given that it's just getting started, it seems like you might as well choose Jackson Reed.

Anonymous wrote:https://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/1294241.page

https://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/1298595.page

the emphasis on field trips is interesting.

I see how you could think the first one is similar to mine because of the field trips but note that both of them have/had a kid at Hardy Middle School (we haven't even moved to DC yet) and both have daughters while my child is a boy. Please don't post assumptions. I have noticed that there are more posts about MacArthur than other high schools and my thought is that it's because MacArthur is a newer school.

https://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/1294241.page

https://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/1298595.page

the emphasis on field trips is interesting.

Anonymous wrote:Troll. You just did the same post a few weeks ago.

? I did do my research on a couple posts but didn't see one that was the same. Definitely wasn't me and could you share the link so I can get my information off of that? Thanks

Troll. You just did the same post a few weeks ago.

Hey all!
We are planning on moving to the DC area and are looking at multiple houses in the Jackson Reed and Macarthur area. Our DC is a freshman so they would be going to either Jackson Reed or MacArthur. I looked at some recent posts on DCUM and both seems to be good schools. I have some questions for both of them and was wondering if anyone could answer them or share some positives or negatives about the school.
1. Do they have all grade field trips?
2. How are the schedules oriented?
3. How is lunch/recess? (Do all grades eat together, separated per grade, do they eat outside of school etc...)
4. How is the parent involvement? PTA/PTO and overall community sense?
5. Are they good at keeping parents informed such as newsletters?
6. How are the teachers?
7. How are the students? Friendly? Lots of fights/drugs?

Thank you very much!!!