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WASHINGTON In January 1977, the 9-year-old daughter of newly inaugurated President

Jimmy Carter started classes in a three-story brick school in downtown D.C., improbably
nestled between a maze of concrete and glass office buildings.

This was no posh private school.

While the children of high-ranking Washington officials customarily attended leafy, cloistered
institutions in the Districts toniest enclaves, Jimmy Carter and first lady Rosalynn Carter took a
different path: public school.
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The Carters decision to enroll Amy in the Thaddeus Stevens School, a historically African-
American public elementary school whose attendance zone the Executive Mansion just
happened to fall in, became the subject of intense media scrutiny.

After all, only one other president Theodore Roosevelt in 1902 had ever sent a first child
to public school before. (And no president since, including fellow Democrats Bill Clinton and
Barack Obama, has emulated Carters decision).

President Donald Trump is also taking a page from the establishment playbook.
His administration announced in May his son, Barron, will attend the nearly $40,000-a-year St.
Andrews Episcopal School in Potomac, Maryland, this fall.

With Barron Trump beginning his own unique back-to-school moment next month, WTOP is
revisiting the fascinating history behind the D.C. public school that opened its doors to a
presidents child 40 years ago and the pioneering educators who made it happen.

The Carters choice of schools turned modest Stevens elementary into one of the most famous
schools in America seemingly overnight. But by all accounts the president and first lady were
not interested in making a splash.

The Carters were just nice, everyday kind of people, recalled Jane Jackson Harley, the
longtime school counselor at Stevens, now 79, in an interview with WTOP.

Fourth-grade teacher Verona Meeder recalled an after-school White House visit the day Amy
joined her class at Stevens. Just treat her like any other student, the president told her. And if
she gives you any trouble, you give me a call.

To me, it seemed liked just another family moved into the area, Meeder, now 86, told WTOP.

At first a frenzy, but Amy made it feel normal

The first day of school for a new student usually brings at least a few jitters. In this case, it also
brought a Secret Service detail and a crush of TV and newspaper reporters.

Photographs and video of Amys first day of school, just a few days after her fathers
inauguration, show a pensive girl in jeans and a stocking cap walking past a rope line of
furiously shuttering cameras.

It was like the red carpet at the Grammys, recalled Juan Herron, who was then a third-grader
at Stevens.
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During those first few weeks, reporters covered school field trips and the cafeterias lunch
menu, and tour buses filled with sightseers crawled past the school aiming to catch a glimpse
of the blonde, bespectacled 9-year-old at recess.

But things eventually settled down.

We probably didnt understand the significance of that being the presidents daughter even
though we knew who she was, Herron, now 48, recalled.

She was just Amy.

Amy made it feel normal, because she would do her work and then read her book, Meeder
said. She always had a book on the corner of her desk. She never asked me what she could do.
She just read.

Other teachers describe her as a quiet, unassuming fourth-grader.

Amy was very, just, normal, recalled Rebecca Medrano, who taught Spanish for an after-
school program at Stevens. She was not somebody who was going to be in your face and
talk about being the presidents daughter. It wasnt that important to her. There were other
things she was thinking about you know, being a kid.

A kid being trailed by two Secret Service agents at all times.

The agents even turned a second-floor closet next to Meeders classroom into a makeshift
office to watch the comings and goings. But they gave the first daughter space in the
classroom.

At first, I wasnt aware of them, Medrano said. And I was like, This is strange. I thought I
wouldve had to go through a high-security clearance. Here I am taking a piata in; it couldve
had a bomb, you know!

Amy made friends easily, inviting some to slumber parties at the White House. In fact, she
seemed to get along with everyone, even the bullies.

Theres a whole lot of mean boys in this school, Herron, an 8-year-old on the school safety
patrol, told a Washington Post reporter in a June 1977 article. But nobody messes with Amy.
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We were about to close down: History of a historic school

Aside from the roaming Secret Service detail, the most abnormal thing about the school may
have been the late hours it stayed open thanks to an innovative extended day program.

The program the first offered at a D.C. school allowed parents who worked late in nearby
office buildings to drop off their children early in the morning for a hot breakfast and pick
them up as late as 6 p.m. in the evening.

Today, such extended day programs are common in urban school districts. In D.C., 30 public
schools currently offer extended hours. But back then, such a program was unique. I
shouldve trademarked the name, said Harley, the school counselor who developed the
program.

Amy, who arrived several months after Stevens program rolled out, stayed late most days to
take part in the extra classes, which included photography, computer lessons and Spanish.

Harley said she wasnt necessarily trying to be cutting edge. She was trying to keep the school
from closing its doors.

We were having problems keeping the school open because there were no children in the
area, Harley said. We were about to close down. We were in trouble.

The school had once been the cornerstone of D.C.s historically African-American West End
community and a symbol of progress and achievement. Constructed in 1868 and named for
the crusading abolitionist Senator Thaddeus Stevens, the school was the first in D.C. built with
public funds to educate black children. Opened amid the height of Reconstruction in the South,
its classrooms swelled with students as D.C.s population surged with the migration north of
newly freed slaves.

But by the 1960s, the tectonic plates of gentrification began to shift, and the neighborhoods
row houses and modest dwellings were razed to make way for office buildings and parking
garages.

By 1976, the area surrounding Stevens had become virtually an asphalt neighborhood,
according to a 1980s-era oral history of the school on file at the Charles Sumner School
Museum and Archives.
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Harleys extended-day program turned the historic African-American neighborhood school

into a sort of magnet school for the children of downtown office workers and boosted
enrollment back into safe territory.

The enrollment went up It just zipped, especially when they heard the presidents daughter
was there, Harley said. That was it. The school was saved.

And having the presidents daughter signed up for D.C.s first extended school-day program
did have its perks.

When red tape threatened the program during its second year, parents packed a school
meeting with the D.C. official responsible for doling out funding. One concerned mother in
attendance: Rosalynn Carter. Within two days, funding was sorted out, according to a March
1978 Washington Post article.

A political stunt? The Carters were not those kind of people

The intersection of presidential privilege and a historically black public school couldve been
tricky territory. A few years earlier, President Richard Nixons 20-something daughter, Tricia,
courted controversy attempting to do something constructive, when she tutored two black
schoolchildren at the White House.

At the time, D.C. school board member Julius Hobson blasted the seemingly well-meaning
gesture as welfare colonialism, and told a reporter: Im going to find out who in hell gave
permission for her to take two black children from the school system.

Did parents and teachers think the Carters choice to send Amy to a predominantly black
school was a political stunt? No, Harley said. The Carters were not those kind of people, she
said.

Many parents and teachers saw it as Carter living up to his ideals.

During his acceptance speech at the 1976 Democratic National Committee, Carter denounced
the political elite who, from afar, shaped decisions that affected other peoples lives. When the
public schools are inferior or torn by strife, their children go to expensive private schools, he
said.

Not that quiet Stevens Elementary was torn by strife, but Carter wanted to be clear: Public
school was good enough for a presidents daughter.
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Still, Amy was living in a mansion down the street while about a third of her classmates
qualified for free lunches.

Medrano recalled a tense exchange one afternoon during Spanish class. Some kid was talking
about Oh, well, Amy has a pool because shes the presidents daughter. Shes just got
everything. And we dont have anything.

Medrano sat the other students down for a discussion. Shes just like you, she told them.
This is not about being rich or being the presidents daughter. This is a program for all of you.
And everybodys special, not just Amy.

But being a classmate of Amy Carters did come with some special opportunities, including a
memorable field trip to the White House for the whole class for its very own Easter Egg Roll.
The White House chef grilled up hot dogs and hamburgers. Later, Amy and her classmates
roamed the grounds for a hands-on tour of her treehouse hideaway near the White Houses
West Wing.

A photo in Meeders collection of scrapbooks captures the moment Amy and her Stevens
classmates gathered for a class photo on the south lawn of the White House.

Amys off to the side she always shunned center stage grinning into the glare of the April
sunlight alongside her classmates. For at least that day, just another Stevens student.

Where are they now?

Amy Carter transferred to a D.C. public middle school Rose Hardy Middle School after two
years at Stevens. After her father left the White House in 1981, she moved back to Georgia,
attended Brown University, got arrested protesting the CIA and, eventually, got an art degree.
She married in 1996 and has a teenage son. Famously press shy, she rarely gives interviews
and, through a representative for the Carter Center, declined to be interviewed for this article.

Herron, the 8-year-old on the school safety patrol went on to join the Marines and served
during Desert Storm. Now, 48, he lives in Oxon Hill, Maryland.

A few months before she was hired to teach Spanish for Stevens extended-day program,
Medrano, along with her husband, founded a small theater company out of their row house in
Adams Morgan. They focused on featuring Latin American performers and playwrights. Now
working out of a lavish space in the restored Tivoli Theater on 14th Street in Columbia Heights,
GALA Hispanic Theater is one of the premiere Latino theaters in the U.S.
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Harley, the counselor who spearheaded the extended-day program at Stevens, retired from the
D.C. schools in the 1980s after an injury. The daughter of legendary radio DJ and concert
promoter Hal Jackson, she went back into the family business, taking up as a talent scout and
helping shuttle performers from the D.C. area to the famed Apollo Theater in New York.
Among her discoveries: a teenage Dave Chappelle, whom she accompanied on his first stand-
up gig at the Harlem theater.

Meeder, 86, lives in Columbia, Maryland, at the end of a quiet cul-de-sac. She retired from
teaching in 1992 after 25 years of teaching in D.C. public schools, all but one them at Stevens.

Stevens Elementary still sits near the corner of 21st and L Streets in downtown D.C. But it
hasnt seen any students strolling its halls for nearly a decade. And its now facing an uncertain
future.

Perpetually bedeviled by low enrollment, Stevens officially closed in 2008 a victim of then-
schools chancellor Michelle Rhees controversial school reforms. Its student body merged with
nearby Francis-Stevens middle school.

After years standing vacant, the D.C. Council in 2014 approved a nearly $20 million plan
allowing developers to renovate Stevens and to build a new 10-story trophy-class office on
its playground.

But a plan to move a private special-needs school into the building fell apart earlier this year.

At a community meeting last month, an official with D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowsers office told
community leaders reopening Stevens as a public school is now the mayors top choice for the
historic site.

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