Dear Readers,

The Arlington Career Center (ACC) is one of Arlington’s most dynamic schools. We host over 650 full-time students in a diverse range of programs, including Arlington Tech, Academic Academy, the English Learner Institute, the Program for Employment Preparedness, and the Teen Parenting Program. We are home to 24 unique Career and Tech Education (CTE) classes, open to all APS high school students. Plus, we are expanding as we prepare to break ground on a new building project to open in December of 2025. With so much happening at the Career Center, it makes sense that we should have a newspaper to showcase the people and events that make our school great. 

Allow me to introduce myself. I’m Rachel Nance, a Junior at Arlington Tech and founder of the new ACC Chronicle. Since Freshman year, I’ve seen a need for a school newspaper here. However, it wasn’t something I thought about fixing until after the 2022 summer break during my internship with the Sun Gazette, a local newspaper. Seeing the work of a local news organization up close, I knew for sure that we needed a newspaper at ACC. I wanted a place where students from all programs could not only explore journalism, but share news about our community with others.

Fast forward to September, I pitched the idea to Ms. McFarlane, and she was equally passionate about it. Then through word of mouth, our newspaper committee was formed. Composed of fourteen active members (so far), the newspaper committee has banded together to design our website, start a comic series, vote on a newspaper logo, and write a handful of awesome articles. We meet every Thursday during Archers to build our journalism program from the ground up. 

Thanks to Ms. Chung and the ATAC Committee, we gained funding for this online news platform. This first edition is only the beginning of the ACC Chronicle, and we are all looking forward to the different ways the newspaper will be used to show the multitude of talents at the Career Center. 

Please enjoy, 

Rachel Nance