School year steps off

D.C. Schools Superintendent Clifford B. Janey marked the first day of school yesterday by getting some exercise — perhaps a precursor to the exertion awaiting him this year.

“You see the evidence, right?” said Mr. Janey, wiping his brow after he walked with two sixth-grade students and their mother to John Tyler Elementary School in Southeast. “A little bit of sweat. It was a great walk.”

Mr. Janey met twin brothers Marquel and Marquis Lewis — along with their mother, Ernestine — and made the muggy-morning jaunt from the Hopkins Apartments on K Street Southeast to Tyler on G Street at about 8 a.m.

Mr. Janey and Miss Lewis discussed their shared love of plants, as well as a few matters more pertinent to the subject at hand: an after-care program at Tyler and a consolidation policy under which the D.C. Board of Education closed several schools.

About 1,100 students were affected by the changes, and 10 schools began accepting new students yesterday.

“I told him I was glad [Tyler] was not one of the schools closed down,” said Miss Lewis, 47, who works in housekeeping at Howard University. “It’s really a blessing.”

Meanwhile, classes began in Montgomery, Anne Arundel and Baltimore counties and Baltimore city.

Catholic schools within the Archdiocese of Washington opened the school year with a Mass celebrated by Archbishop of Washington Donald W. Wuerl. Classes for the area’s nearly 33,000 Catholic school students begin today.

School officials in Anne Arundel County opened secondary schools on a staggered schedule. Incoming sixth- and ninth-graders attended classes yesterday and will be joined by the rest of their schoolmates today. Magothy River Middle School and Severn River Middle School closed early yesterday because of power problems.

In Montgomery County, nearly 140,000 students returned to class. Superintendent Jerry D. Weast, along with several Maryland delegates and county school board members, toured Clarksburg High School, the county’s first new high school to open since 1998.

“We strive to be the most aggressive, most dynamic school district in the United States of America,” Mr. Weast said.

Montgomery County Executive Douglas M. Duncan joined Mr. Weast at Walter Johnson High School in Bethesda and Highland Elementary School in Wheaton.

Officials also toured the county’s four new elementary schools. Mr. Weast announced that Montgomery County is the first school district in Maryland to have all-day kindergarten in its 123 elementary schools, a year ahead of the schedule set by the state of Maryland.

In the District, the beginning of the school year means a new opportunity for the city system and its estimated 60,000 students, some of whom said they were ready to hit the books.

“I missed my friends,” said Carla Harris, 10, a fifth-grader at Tyler, “and I want to meet my new teachers.”

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