The Current
Board proposes to revoke charter of Ward 4 school
By Jessica Gould
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
When Elmer Grant moved to the Lamond-Riggs neighborhood nearly 50 years ago, it was a quiet place.
"Oh, it was beautiful," he said. "You didn't have any noise or any- thing."
But, said Grant, the leafy Ward 4 community isn't as quiet as it used to be. And he said Young America Works Public Charter School, a high school, is part of the reason.
"They throw a lot of trash, beer bottles, and things from McDonald's and whatever," he said of Young America's students.
Meanwhile, Grant said, "The faculty there use up all of our parking spaces."
And he said fights - at the school, along neighborhood side streets and at the nearby 7-Eleven - are common. "Those kids are kind of rough," he said.
Now, the D.C. Public Charter School Board is considering closing the school, which is located at 6017 Chillum Place NE. If it does, Young America would be the fourth school the board has closed in 11 years.
In a recent news release, board members pointed to a list of safety issues at the school, including a stabbing last fall and attacks on faculty members.
At the same time, the release said, the scores at the school are "profoundly" low.
In 2009, only 12.7 percent of students tested proficient in math on the D.C.
Comprehensive Assessment System (DC-CAS). That was up from 4.2 percent in 2008.
Twenty-five percent tested proficient in reading, up from 14.8 per- cent the year before.
In an interview, charter board executive director Josephine Baker said the organization has been working with Young America for months to improve the situation at the school.
"We found that we kept going back to the same things - that nothing seemed to change," she said. "And some things had digressed or gone downhill."
A spokesperson for the board said Young America administrators have until Friday to request a hearing to address the board's concerns. The board will then vote on whether to revoke the school's charter at the end of the academic year.
"We want to make sure the parents understand the reason behind the revocation," she said. "We always have a plan in process" to help students and parents find another school, she added.
A Young America administrator said she had "no comment" at this time. But some students said they would be devastated if the school - which opened in 2004 with a mission to prepare students for college and careers - were to close.
"They have chances for me to learn that I can't get at other schools," said Columbia Heights resident Markese Alston, 15. "They make sure we get a good education. They give us tutors when we need help, and they show enthusiasm when we don't understand."
And yet, charter-school advocacy group Friends of Choice in Urban Schools lauded the board's decision to begin the revocation process at Young America, saying it underscores the board's emphasis on accountability.
"The high performance of so many excellent D.C. pubic charter schools ... has set a bar by which the city-run schools and other charters can be judged," executive director Robert Cane said in a release. "Their success has encouraged the Public Charter School Board and D.C. Public Schools to challenge and take action against schools that underperform academically."
Joe Younger, who lives about a block away from the school, said several neighbors have voiced concerns about the school. "We have a number of neighbors within the community who are retired educators, and we've tried to be as tolerant as we possibly could in weathering these issues, but as time has gone by, they seem to have mushroomed," he said.
In fact, Younger said, many neighbors have begun to wonder whether the neighborhood - which is home to seven charter schools, including two high schools - has reached its saturation point.
"When you have that many teens and that many schools with those ages, you're going to have some type of disturbance," he said. "We're all for educating the next generation, but at the same time, there are a whole variety of safety issues that come into play." Advisory neighborhood commissioner Judi Jones said the issue is really about putting two high schools so close together.
Ideal Academy is located at 100 Peabody St. NW, only a few steps away from Young America.
"If you have two high schools across from each other, they' re going to clash," she said. "We just think you have to be more thoughtful about how you place them and where you place them."
Ward 4 Council member Muriel Bowser agreed.
She said the charter board should consider the number of schools in a given area when approving charter applications. "The board should look into what the impacts might be on the surrounding community," she said.
But Public Charter School Board deputy director Tamara Lumpkin said finding space is already difficult enough.
"Should more [D.C. Public Schools] facilities be made available, that would be very helpful in us being able to be more thoughtful about where schools could be located," she said. "But without that, it is very much dependent on the applicant's being able to find space wherever it is available."