FOCUS D.C. Public Charter School Bulletin

May 15, 2006

Superintendent Wants DCPS to Give Up Seven Buildings By Fall

Superintendent Clifford Janey announced at a press conference this afternoon that he would ask the Board of Education to move six DCPS schools out of their buildings before the start of the next school year. The six have a total square footage of 730,100 square feet and a combined enrollment of just 1,403 students. The six buildings are the gigantic Fletcher-Johnson Education Center (302,000 square feet) and five elementary schools: Merritt (90,400 sf), Shadd (72,100 sf), M.C. Terrell (112,000 sf), Van Ness (49,400 sf), and Walker-Jones (104,200 sf). All of these buildings are to be made available for non-DCPS use.

Another whole building to be offered for non-DCPS use was identified in “Superintendent’s Recommendation to the Board of Education,” a 42-page booklet distributed at today’s briefing. The building, Harrison School, has been held vacant for use as “swing space” but is not needed for that purpose, according to the superintendent. Harrison encompasses 49,000 square feet of space.

The booklet also contains the superintendent’s recommendation that three additional schools be continued as co-location sites for charter schools and a fourth be added. Bunker Hill ES, Eliot JHS, and Evans ES currently house public charter schools in their excess space. The new co-location site is Sharpe Health Annex, which has more than 17,000 square feet of excess space. Combined, the four spaces provide 137,413 square feet of co-location space.

All of these recommendations are a response to the Board’s recent directive that one million square feet of space be made available for lease by the 2006-2007 school year. The Board also has directed that DCPS clear out of an additional two million square feet of excess space within the next two years. In all, DCPS controls upwards of six million square feet of space it doesn’t need to house its students.

Not clear from the recommendations is the extent to which the school system intends to honor the charter schools’ legally mandated right of first offer on the property identified today. The superintendent does recommend specifically that charter schools be permitted to lease the Harrison School and the shared space available in the four co-location sites. However, as to five of the six currently-occupied buildings to be vacated, the superintendent either makes no recommendation as to use or merely identifies them as “leasing opportunities” or as being suitable for public-private development partnerships. Finally, one of the six, Walker-Jones ES, evidently is scheduled to be developed in partnership with Parks and Recreation and the Public Library.

As regular readers of the Bulletin are all too aware, the District’s charter schools have been shut out of most school buildings surplused by the school system over the years and also have been denied access to 99+% of the excess space that remains in the school system’s active inventory. Many of the District’s 51 charter schools are expected to bid on any space the Board makes available in response to the superintendent’s recommendations.

Friends of Choice in Urban Schools
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