March 25, 2009
With the due date approaching for development proposals at 11 shuttered D.C. Public Schools facilities, Foggy Bottom-West End neighborhood leaders quizzed Ward 2 Council member Jack Evans on the likely fate of the former Stevens Elementary at 1050 21st St.
“There’s been a lack of information about what will happen” after the March 27 deadline for submissions to develop the historically landmarked site, complained advisory neighborhood commission chair Armando Irizarry at the neighborhood meeting Evans attended. Evans claimed no special knowledge of the process but said he would like to see a development that would contribute to a lively neighborhood —- something that charter schools and office buildings, he said, do not necessarily accomplish.
“I want life in those buildings 24 hours a day,” Evans said. The commission has repeatedly stated its support for an educational use at Stevens, which was the District’s oldest school in continuous operation before it closed in 2008.
In an earlier round of submissions, four charter schools — Appletree Early Learning Center Public Charter School, Capital City Public Charter School, Community Academy Public Charter School and the Living Classroom Foundation — applied to occupy the site and were rejected.
Charter schools have been “encouraged” to apply in the current round, wrote Sean Madigan of the Office of the Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development in an e-mail to The Current. His office has received no bids yet for the site, said Madigan, but he added that submissions typically arrive in the deputy mayor’s office on the due date.
The Stevens site is zoned C-3-C, which means that the space is available for “matter-of-right development for major business and employment centers of medium/high density development, including office, retail, housing, and mixed uses,” according to the city’s submission materials. The other former schools included in the current round of bids are zoned for residential use, a designation that also permits churches and public schools to occupy a site.
Though a school is not explicitly named as a potential use for Stevens, neighborhood leaders sought to convince Evans that a school would be the best use of the site for the community. Commissioner Florence Harmon pointed out that a charter school at Stevens could function as a lower school for nearby high school School Without Walls. “I know that’s how [School Without Walls principal Richard] Trogisch wants to use that site,” said Harmon. Trogisch, whose school is on spring break, did not return a call for comment.
“There are too many empty condos already” in the West End neighborhood, Harmon said of one possible use for the site. “We don’t need any more built.”
The community’s reasons for wanting a school are valid concerns, said Evans, but he challenged residents’ resistance to more residential uses. “That kind of thinking in the early 1990s would have meant no one living downtown now,” he said. What’s more, continued Evans, the recent economic downturn should lead taxpayers to question the pattern of more and more charter schools in the District. “Where does it all end?” Evans asked. “You’re paying for two systems now. There’s a lot of overlap. ... In the good times we could do it, but the good times are gone.”
Robert Cane, executive director of Friends of Choice in Urban Schools, disputed Evans’ characterization. “We have one system — DCPS. When they lose a child to a charter, they lose that funding, so the notion that we’re funding two systems is wrong,” Cane said.
Charter school facility questions recently became more urgent, said Cane. He said his organization is “extremely upset” over an item in the recently released city budget that makes it more difficult for charters to access $24 million in facility funds. First the city rejects the needs of charter schools in favor of possible private development, complained Cane, and then the mayor proposes to reduce funding for the facilities that the charters do occupy. Charter schools have had some luck finding space recently; the city announced this month that it will negotiate leases for two closed public school buildings, the former Clark Elementary School in Petworth and Taft Center in Brookland, with four public charter schools.
The eventual occupant of the Stevens site will have to demonstrate a successful track record as well as “the organizational and financial wherewithal to pull off the project they’ve proposed,” according to Madigan. Furthermore, in what may quite literally be a tall order given the Stevens site’s zoning, he said the District will want to maximize the site’s value. Proposals that do not request District subsidies will also be looked on favorably he added.