Thousands of students will head back to class Monday and in D.C., some will be going to a brand new school. WTOP got a sneak peek of the new MacArthur High School in Northwest D.C. during a tour Saturday.
Dozens of nervous yet excited students and their parents toured the halls of the high school in D.C.’s Palisades neighborhood.
“The building looks great. Obviously, still a work in progress. But they’ve done a lot and it looks ready to go,” said Gayle Kramer, whose sophomore daughter will attend the school.
“They have a lot of nice facilities, like theater and stuff. And you know, I’m pretty excited to come here,” student Eli Pasternak told WTOP.
Pasternak will be one of 200 incoming freshman Mammoths — that’s the school’s mascot. About 50 sophomores will round out the new student body.
“We are really thrilled to welcome students here,” D.C. Public Schools Chancellor Lewis Ferebee said.
MacArthur is the first new high school for D.C. Public Schools since 1972 when H.D. Woodson opened its doors.
“It’s a long time coming,” Principal Harold McCray said. “But I’m definitely excited to lay this groundwork, to be able to open up a new school has been a phenomenal experience.”
The school will only offer pre-AP, honors and AP courses, McCray told WTOP.
“One of the things that the students said to me is that they didn’t just want to get in college, they actually wanted to get through college,” McCray said.
The school will also offer career and technical courses through the NAF Academies, a national education nonprofit. The first two subjects will focus on aerospace engineering and computer science.
“Critical thinking, analyzing and writing is going to be our focus, and we want to make sure that we are developing global leaders,” McCray said.
The school also plans to delve into the arts as well with a newly built black box theater.
Tours highlighted the theater, as well as the brand-new cafeteria and full-sized basketball court.
The high school aims to relieve overcrowding at the massive Jackson-Reed High School in Tenleytown.
“That was one of the loudest concerns that I heard in my entry in DCPS years ago,” said Ferebee, the public schools chancellor. “We’ve been always trying to find a facility that works to relieve some of the crowding.”
McCray, who previously served as the principal at D.C.’s Stanton Elementary School in Southeast, has had his hands on the reins since early this year, helping oversee the completion of the building as well as hiring and curriculum development.
“Not many of my colleagues anywhere can go and say that they actually were able to open the school from the ground up,” McCray said about accepting the job. “When I saw the opportunity, and understood what we were trying to build as a school system, it wasn’t something that I wanted to turn away from.”
There have been concerns from some members of the community about possible traffic gridlock in the neighborhood. McCray hopes they can address the issue with plenty of driveway space that can handle more than a dozen cars at a time as well as public transportation.
McCray pointed to recent surveys conducted by the school that showed 70% of families will rely on public transportation to get students to and from school.
The school will add around 200 students each year until reaching a capacity of around 800 kids. This year’s sophomores will be the first graduating class.
While many modern facilities are built and ready to go, the school will begin a second phase of construction, which will include a building expansion. Full construction is expected to wrap in 2026.
