With just about 200 students, D.C.’s career and technical high school is not usually a bustling place. But on a recent school day, as a busload of students arrived for their afternoon classes, the small Northeast Washington campus livened up — music blared from a speaker in the common room and teens chatted excitedly over trail mix.
Washington, D.C
D.C.’s career prep program offers a solution to its attendance problem
The Advanced Technical Center, now in its second year, is not like most high schools in the District — or even the country. Teens practice taking vitals on medical dummies and coding in computer labs. Its entire curriculum is designed to provide a training ground for students pursuing high-demand careers in cybersecurity and nursing.
But the school also offers a possible solution to D.C.’s attendance crisis: students who took classes at the ATC last year attended nearly 13 more days of school than their peers who did not, according to the Office of the State Superintendent of Education. The teens — who split their time between the ATC and their primary high schools — said they appreciate the school’s climate, their relationships with teachers and staff, and the chance to study their interests.
Those factors are not only motivating students to show up for their career prep classes, but also the courses at their regular high schools, the data suggests. The ATC has advisers who closely monitor each student’s attendance, as well.
Officials noted the analysis isn’t perfect — enrollment at the ATC is small and teens elect on their own to attend. But it remains a promising sign for officials desperate for ways to get students to come to school. Chronic absenteeism, which hit a high during the pandemic, has inched downward in recent years. But it remains particularly concerning at the high school level; 60 percent of D.C. teens missed at least 18 days of school last year.
“It’s really clear for them why they’re here. And when they start to lose sight of the ‘why,’ we have our support systems here to help bring them back on track,” said Andrea Zimmermann, the school’s administrator. Students said they see an obvious benefit to investing the extra time and work, including industry credentials, paid internships and scholarships. They earn college credits that are aligned with the cybersecurity program at the University of the District of Columbia or nursing track at Trinity Washington University.
Those perks are what drew Charlie Irizarry, a ninth grader who is studying nursing.
“It’s a privilege and an honor to be able to work here with all these incredible students and get to learn about something I’m passionate about before going on to pursue it, to get a little bit of a head start and some background knowledge to help me out when I do get to college and maybe some help with scholarships,” she said. Students who finish the program and then attend Trinity after graduation can receive $15,000 each year in scholarships.
Just like at a normal high school, the teens are expected to show up every day. Students spend part of the school day at the ATC — sessions are offered in the morning, midmorning and afternoon — and spend the rest of the day at their primary high schools. The ATC provides taxi or bus transportation during the day.
There are few entrance requirements so that more students are encouraged to apply, Zimmermann said. They mainly need to be on track for graduation and have space in their schedules. Most of the students come from Bell, Dunbar and Eastern high schools, and Friendship Collegiate Academy, Paul and Sojourner Truth public charter schools.
Students said they come to school because they like environment at the ATC, which feels more supportive than the average high school. Teachers and students treat each other with respect.
“School is supposed to be a safe space and a lot of these kids do not feel like school is a safe space at all,” said Christa Cummings, an eleventh grader on the cybersecurity track. “The way that they treat you here … feels like a family. It feels way more intentional and personal with everything that they do. I feel like, if we had more administrators that cared like how they do at ATC, a lot more kids would be more involved in the things that happen in the school, in their school environments.”
Chris Nelson, also a junior studying cybersecurity, said he likes the challenge the ATC offers.
“When you come here, it puts you in a mind-set of setting high expectations for yourself and just like becoming the best version of yourself,” said Nelson, also a student at Paul Public Charter School. “This is what I want to do. This is what I want to be. This is going to help me become the person that I want to be in the future. This is going to help me provide for my family.”
The ATC is part of a larger effort by the city to improve high schools and offer students more opportunities to explore their interests before college. Officials have poured $30 million in pandemic recovery dollars into internship, dual-enrollment and career training programs. Many leaders hope such investments will pay off in improved attendance.
Forty-three percent of students across D.C. were chronically absent from classrooms last school year, down from 48 percent during the 2021-22 school year. There are myriad reasons students are missing chunks of school, but teachers have noticed more students — particularly older ones — just don’t think being there is important.
Schools, as a result, are under growing pressure to make classrooms places where students want to be.
“It is our job to ensure that schools are welcoming and are engaging for kids,” Paul Kihn, D.C.’s deputy mayor for education, said in a December interview about attendance. “We’ve just got to make sure schools are the best possible environments for them to be in, so where they’re actively choosing, they choose to be in rather than out.”
That is part of the formula at the ATC, according to Clifton Martin, state director of career and technical education at the superintendent’s office. The student body is small, so adults in the building know every child’s name. Teachers, administrators and staff frequently check in on students and ask them how they are doing.
“I think a lot of students feel like they get lost and they don’t have someone who’s going to keep an eye on them, so they can miss five days in a row,” he said.
Zimmermann added that if a student starts to miss classes, ATC staff are in touch with the child’s primary high school and family — not only to get the student back, but also to understand why they aren’t getting there. After she learned some students lived more than an hour on public transit from the ATC, officials set up a morning pickup service so they could get to school on time. Rides are provided in the afternoon, as well. “So there’s interventions in place, kind of speed bumps to catch kids and get them back on course, support them.”
Martin added that understanding what students want in school is also an important driver of attendance.
“Student voice is important. So, all schools can’t have a cybersecurity program, they all can’t have a nursing program,” he said. “But there are things that they can do inside the school, you know, talking to the students, figuring out what they want in the building that will bring them in there.”
WASHINGTON (7News) — Tuesday was the last day the D.C. Council could vote to enact an expanded curfew in time for summer.
7News learned it never even made it on the agenda for a discussion and went to council members to find out why.
For the next two months, it’ll be up to the mayor to declare a curfew until the permanent version kicks in. There is already a city curfew. The curfew that has been up for debate for more than a year is the expanded version of the curfew. The expanded version allows the Metropolitan Police Department to create zones where teens 17 and under cannot gather in groups of nine or more.
RELATED | DC curfews pushed large groups into local neighborhoods, some residents say
Mayor Muriel Bowser currently has her own curfew order in place, which ends Saturday. The mayor can continue issuing an order. Councilmembers against the expanded curfew said that’s why it doesn’t need to come from the council.
In a video posted two weeks ago, D.C Council public safety chair Brooke Pinto said she wanted her councilmembers to vote to fill the gap today. 7News asked her why she never presented it to the council.
“Unfortunately, in working with my colleagues over the last several weeks, we did not have the votes,” said Pinto. “We have to have enough votes to pass the law and make sure that we didn’t have a gap.”
Bowser, in a letter to council Tuesday, said councilmembers Trayon White, Robert White, Zachary Parker, Brianne Nadeau and Janese Lewis-George are “blocking the will of the public and majority of council.”
7News spoke to three of the members she called out about the mayor’s pushback.
“I reject the rhetoric and the political games that are being played, and I’m wanting for us to get to the bottom of how do we stop the teen takeovers and the delinquent behavior we’ve been seeing,” Parker said.
“I stand by my belief that a curfew policy is a failed policy, kind of smoke and mirrors, and what we really needed is investments in our young people, so I’m pretty firm on that,” Nadeau said.
“We have to choose our tools and the time we use those tools. I’ve supported the curfew in the past, but I think with the current surge of more federal troops that have been impending, we’re putting our youth in even more danger by extending that work. I know the executive has put in an emergency executive order that will fill the gap. I hope that comes alongside extended hours, I’ve funded at DPR, extended weekends, and opening more safe spaces for youth here in the city. And that’s the solution that we do agree on,” Lewis-George said.
The mayor has not confirmed if she’ll issue another order, but it is on the table.
Whispers, mysteries still hang in air 50 years after Bolles’ murder
Arizona Republic reporter Don Bolles died on June 13, 1976, 50 years ago. There are still mysteries surrounding his death from a car bombing.
A memorial designed to pay tribute to journalists who have died in pursuit of a story — including Arizona Republic reporter Don Bolles, who had a bomb explode under his car 50 years ago — will soon have a home on the National Mall in Washington, DC.
The Fallen Journalists Memorial, set to open in June 2028, won’t include individual names of journalists. A rule says that unless Congress makes an exception, a memorial wall can only include a group whose last member died more more than a quarter century prior.
And the number of journalists who die in pursuit of truth continues to grow every year.
The foundation creating the memorial has featured journalists on its website. Included in the first round of those showcased is Bolles.
Bolles was a reporter with The Arizona Republic who investigated the mafia, land fraud and political corruption. He was killed in June 1976 by a bomb planted under his Datsun at a midtown Phoenix hotel, an incident that shocked the nation and shook the journalism community.
Barbara Cochran, president of the Fallen Journalists Memorial Foundation, said the aim was to remind people of the work done by journalists like Bolles.
“They go as eyewitnesses. They document,” she said. “They dig deep and come up with information that people don’t have time to do on their own.”
Bolles’ legacy was not just forged by his death, Cochran said, but the work his death inspired.
Scores of reporters from around the country descended on Phoenix to continue investigating political corruption as Bolles had.
That collective action sent a message.
“Even if you kill the journalist, you won’t kill the story,” Cochran said. “Don Bolles was really the symbol of that.”
The memorial will honor journalists who, like Bolles, were targeted for their reporting, Cochran said. It would also honor those who died in pursuit of a story.
That’s the story of at least five more Arizona journalists.
In 1985, Republic reporter Charles Thornton was killed in Afghanistan, which at the time was invaded by the Soviet Union. Thornton was a health reporter and took the trip to cover a clinic set up by Americans looking to save the lives of people injured in the war by bombs and chemical weapons.
Thornton knew the risks of traveling to a war zone. But said he thought it was worth it to bring the story of the injuries suffered by the Afghan rebels to Republic readers.
In 2007, two news helicopters collided while covering a police chase in midtown Phoenix. The helicopters, one from Channel 3, KTVK-TV, and one from Channel 15, KNXV-TV, each carried a cameraman and a pilot. All four men died when the helicopters crashed onto Steele Indian School Park.
Bolles will be the only Arizona reporter among the first to be honored as part of the new National Mall memorial project.
The physical memorial in Washington will be made up of glass rectangles.
On one end of the plaza, they will be laid in an abstract design. The glass rectangles could serve as benches on the plaza.
As visitors walk to the other end, the glass rectangles begin stacking. Visitors will then enter a circle formed by more glass rectangles.
On the ground in the center of the circle will be the words of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
Reporter writes ‘the book I wanted to read’ on slain journalist Don Bolles
Axios reporter Jeremy Duda discusses “Murder in the Fourth State,” a book on the murder of The Arizona Republic’s Don Bolles, who died after a car bombing in 1976.
Arizona effort to create a Don Bolles memorial stalls at state Capitol
The DC memorial was introduced in Congress in 2019. It passed both the House and Senate unanimously in 2020 and was signed into law in December 2020 by President Donald Trump.
In contrast, a push to create a memorial for Bolles on the grounds of the state Capitol was proposed at the Arizona Legislature each of the past few years. But every attempt has stalled.
The bill passed the Arizona House unanimously this year. It was bottled up in the state Senate, as has happened since it was first introduced in 2023.
The Bolles memorial bill was assigned to the Senate Government Committee, chaired by state Sen. Jake Hoffman, R-Queen Creek. He did not give the bill a hearing, just as he had declined to do in the previous two sessions.
Hoffman, who has done contract work for the conservative groups Turning Point USA and Turning Point Action, has had an antagonistic relationship with the mainstream press and The Republic.
Rep. Selina Bliss, R-Prescott, the sponsor of the measure, said she is not sure exactly why Hoffman hasn’t given the bill a hearing. She expected it would easily pass if it made it to the state Senate floor.
“I can’t get into the minds of others,” she said, “why they choose to hear or don’t hear a bill.”
Bliss said she recognized the passion that Bolles had for journalism.
“It’s like a line of duty death, if you will,” she said. “People are killed in action doing what they do.”
Bliss said she was a teenager in Prescott at the time of the Bolles bombing. She remembers the experience as searing.
“It shook everyone so dramatically,” she said.
Bliss said she might expand the bill next session to include all fallen Arizona journalists, in hopes of getting it out of the logjam in the Senate.
Tim Eigo, president of the Arizona chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists, has testified at the Arizona Legislature in support of the bill to allow a Bolles memorial.
Eigo said it was unfortunate that the bill was caught up in the swirl of current political feelings about journalism.
“I think people can get confused about whether dogged coverage is also advocacy. It’s not,” he said. “Some people get confused by that. So, they hesitate to honor a remarkable journalist like Don Bolles because there are other journalists they don’t like.”
Commemorating reporters who were targeted specifically because of their work like Bolles sends a signal, Eigo said.
“When we are honoring their accomplishments and commitment,” he said, “we are also defeating those who feel they can commit crimes against the press with impunity. … We are speaking truth to that cynical power.”
Shooting that killed journalists in Maryland inspired push for memorial
The idea for the DC memorial came after the June 2018 mass shooting at the Capital Gazette newsroom in Annapolis, Maryland. Five people were killed in the incident, four of them journalists.
The convicted gunman had filed a defamation suit against the newspaper after it reported on his legal troubles. He reportedly sent letters threatening to attack the newspaper’s journalists before he stormed the newsroom with a shotgun.
Retired U.S. Congressman David Dreier sat on the board of Tribune Publishing, the corporate owner of the sister newspapers, The Capital and the Maryland Gazette. Dreier, a Republican from California, worried that by 2019 the memory of the shooting was already fading.
He wanted a public memorial on the National Mall. The idea gained urgency, Cochran said, when the Newseum announced in 2019 that it was closing. That museum had an exhibition honoring slain journalists. Its centerpiece was the blown-out car from the 1976 Bolles bombing.
“There is nothing in Washington that talks about the sacrifices of journalists or that talks about the First Amendment, which is such a unique contribution to freedom and free expression for people everywhere,” Cochran said.
The location cited for it is a triangular plot of land about three blocks from the U.S. Capitol. The site, about a quarter-acre, was formed by the intersection of Independence Avenue and Maryland Avenue, which runs on a diagonal to the U.S. Capitol.
“The site has a clear view of the Capitol Dome,” Cochran said. “It’s a connection to journalism and a symbol of democracy. It reinforces the idea that journalism is a pilar of democracy.”
The memorial will not carry the names of any of the fallen journalists.
Cochran said a federal regulation governing memorials on the National Mall has a rule about those being honored in a group needing to have been deceased for more than 25 years.
“This is a memorial for which there would never be an end time,” she said.
Threats to press freedom are on the rise across the globe
The anniversary of Bolles’ death and the memorial underway come as journalists around the world face increased threats.
Reporters Without Borders, a global nonprofit advocating for independent journalism, has tracked press freedom around the world since 2002. The organization scores countries based on how free journalists are to report, evaluating the legal, political, economic and cultural constraints. It also looks at journalists’ safety working in the countries.
The organization’s 2026 World Press Freedom Index returned the lowest average score among all countries in 25 years.
The United States ranked as the 64th freest country in the world, dropping seven places from its ranking in 2025. The organization cited Trump’s continued attacks on journalists who cover him, as well as his administration’s pressure on networks and news outlets as part of the ranking.
Trump has made attacking the press and sowing distrust in traditional news media a hallmark of his agenda since his first run for higher office in 2015. He has threatened to ease libel laws to make it easier to sue news outlets.
Trump himself sued the CBS and ABC networks based on their journalists’ work. The networks settled despite legal experts saying the cases were weak.
U.S. presidents have long had an antogonistic relationship with the press.
George Washington, the first president of the United States, referred to journalists as “infamous scribblers.” Vice President Spiro Agnew called the press “nattering naybobs of negativism.” President Barack Obama used the Espionage Act to plug what he perceived were leaks from his administration to the press, according to the Cato Institute.
The Freedom of the Press Foundation, a nonprofit news advocacy group, has tracked more than 2,500 anti-press incidents in the United States since 2017, with nearly 1,400 assaults making up the majority. The tracker records non-physically violent threats, too, such as subpoenas and legal interventions, or chilling statements.
The Committee to Protect Journalists has recorded 17 journalists and reporters killed in the United States since 1992.
In Arizona, 28 anti-press incidents were recorded since 2017, including arresting reporters and denying them access to government events.
The Arizona incidents over the past decade include an interview subject who pushed and shoved an Arizona Republic reporter before stealing her cell phone during the interview, the detention by Phoenix police of a Wall Street Journal reporter who was talking to customers outside a bank, and the detention of an Arizona Republic photographer who was covering protests outside the state Capitol in 2024.
Taylor Seely is a First Amendment Reporting Fellow at The Arizona Republic / azcentral.com. Do you have a story about the government infringing on your First Amendment rights? Reach her at tseely@arizonarepublic.com or by phone at 480-476-6116.
Reach Richard Ruelas at richard.ruelas@arizonarepublic.com or at 602-444-8473.
WASHINGTON – Authorities in Washington, D.C. are asking for the public’s help in identifying a man accused of stabbing a dog in Southeast, an incident that left the animal seriously injured but now recovering.
What we know:
The case is being investigated by the Metropolitan Police Department after officials say they received an anonymous report that a man attacked a dog on the 2300 block of Nicholson Street SE around 9:30 Saturday morning.
Responding officers located the injured dog, identified as Edward, a pit bull who was later taken into care by the Brandywine Valley SPCA, according to police.
The suspect fled the scene before authorities arrived, and a search of the surrounding area did not turn up any leads.
What they’re saying:
At the shelter, officials say Edward is now in stable condition and continuing to recover.
“We’re very happy to report after receiving care from our medical team, at our facility, that he is in stable condition, and he’s doing well,” Erin Johnson with Brandywine Valley SPCA said.
She added that anyone with information about the incident should contact the Humane Rescue Alliance, which handles animal cruelty investigations in the District.
What you can do:
Officials say they are continuing to investigate what led to the attack and are urging anyone with relevant information or video to come forward. The goal, they say, is both to identify the suspect and to ensure accountability in the case.
Once fully recovered, Edward is expected to be placed for adoption through the shelter system.
The Source: Information from FOX 5 D.C. reporting.
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