- What will come of the buildings on D.C's closed-school list
- D.C. school boundaries fight looms
- Debate stirs around school closings
- Truancy in the District demands more from parents
- DC Public Schools’ failure to compete
- Friendships builds new facility for Tech Prep campus [Friendship PCS mentioned]
What will come of the buildings on D.C's closed-school list
The Washington Post
By Jonathan O'Connell
November 18, 2012
It prompted hours of D.C. Council testimony, public shouting matches at neighborhood meetings and street demonstrations where protesters called on the mayor to be jailed.
Then-Mayor Adrian M. Fenty and his schools chancellor, Michelle Rhee, closed 23 schools four years ago. Once the schools were closed and the students relocated, the mayor transferred a dozen or more of the buildings to his deputy mayor for planning and economic development, Neil O. Albert, to see what the market value for the properties were.
Fenty was heavily criticized for his efforts to redevelop schools he and Rhee had closed. With Mayor Vincent C. Gray’s schools chancellor, Kaya Henderson, proposing to close 20 schools last week, memories of Fenty’s school redevelopment plans have been rekindled even though Henderson has proposed retaining most of the current buildings. What did Fenty achieve for his troubles? What became of those buildings?
Of 11 former school buildings that Fenty offered to the real estate market in December of 2008, none have been fully developed for commercial uses. This is in large part because of the economy; Fenty and Albert issued solicitations for the schools just three months after the collapse of Lehman Bros., when many real estate developers were scrambling for cash and not in a position to take on new projects.
Now, some of them are getting close. In August, three organizations began construction on a project that will turn the former M.M. Washington Career High School, at 27 O St. NW, into 82 subsidized apartments and 15,000 square feet of community space.
Two valuable properties that Fenty made available — the former Hine Jr. High School on Capitol Hill and the former Stevens Elementary School in the West End — are on their way to development as well. Hine is set to become a mixed-use project led by District developers EastBanc and Stanton, while District-based Akridge and Ivymount School plan to turn Stevens into an office building and special education center.
Many remain tied to education
Three of the schools Fenty proposed developing will assume new educational uses. Bertie Backus Middle School, at 5171 S. Dakota Ave. NE, is used by the University of the District of Columbia’s community college. Mary McLeod Bethune Day Academy Public Charter School took over the former Slowe Elementary School, while Washington Latin Public Charter School plans to open in the former Randolph School.
Of the remaining five schools Fenty proposed for redevelopment, three remain vacant (Langston, Randall Highlands and Young) according to the office of the deputy mayor for planning and economic development.
The former John Fox Slater elementary school has been used for a child care facility while the former Grimke School, on Vermont Avenue Northwest just south of U Street, contains some District and cultural offices currently but is viewed as a future development site.
Two other schools not included in Fenty’s original solicitation, Bruce Monroe on Georgia Avenue and Gage-Eckington in LeDroit Park, were torn down and turned into parks.
Henderson reiterated before the D.C. Council last week that she would like to retain most of the 19 buildings currently occupied by the schools she plans to close, with a final decision on the closures expected in January.
By law, charter schools have the right of first refusal for buildings the city decides that it does not need. But some buildings may be required for swing space as other schools are renovated, while others may be needed as the city grows.
Council member Yvette Alexander (D-Ward 7) said with so many apartments being built in her ward, some of the buildings may be needed in the near future. “We want to have schools in the community to accommodate them,” she said.
D.C. school boundaries fight looms
The Washington Post
By Emma Brown
November 25, 2012
As District parents and activists organize to oppose Schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson’s proposal to close 20 city schools, a potentially larger and more divisive fight looms.
Henderson plans to overhaul D.C. school boundaries and feeder patterns for the first time since the 1970s. The move, which will come after Henderson finalizes the school-closure plan in January, is likely to limit access to some of the city’s most sought-
after and best-performing schools, including Alice Deal Middle and Woodrow Wilson High. And it could trigger a political brawl.
“School boundary and feeder pattern changes can be even more challenging than school consolidations,” Henderson told the D.C. Council at a hearing last week. “These discussions truly do pit one community against another.”
In any community, school boundary fights tend to carry undercurrents of race and class. Last year, for example, a decision to shift elementary boundary lines in Loudoun County sparked an outcry and lawsuits from parents of the 1,000 children who were moved. Washington is no different.
Many of the city’s best-
performing schools are clustered in affluent, majority-white neighborhoods in Upper Northwest Washington. For years, those schools have drawn diverse student bodies from wide swaths of the city, but now they are attracting more local families and have become increasingly overcrowded.
All of the schools in Northwest’s Ward 3 are over capacity, with enrollment across the ward growing 23 percent in the past three years, according to staff for Council member Mary M. Cheh (D-Ward 3), who has been pressing for boundary changes to ease overcrowding.
Cheh is even sponsoring a bill that would create a commission to study city demographics and recommend boundary changes to the mayor every 10 years. But the council would play no role in redrawing boundaries; nor does the city have an elected school board that would grapple with proposed changes.
Since 2007, the District’s school system has been under the direct control of the mayor. Henderson, appointed by Mayor Vincent C. Gray (D) to be schools chancellor, holds the power to determine school boundary lines.
Parents worry that Henderson will shrink the boundaries around popular Northwest schools. Such a decision could shut out poor and minority students from other parts of the city, and it could cause a firestorm among residents who spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on homes with access to specific neighborhood schools.
The fiercest battle will almost certainly be over who has the right to attend Deal Middle and Wilson High, two of the city’s highest-performing and most diverse neighborhood secondary schools.
Deal’s enrollment has more than doubled since 2008 — to 1,165 this year — nearly 200 more than the school was designed to hold. Wilson has grown nearly 20 percent since 2008, and it, too, is over capacity. The city has spent about $200 million renovating both schools in recent years.
The intense demand for Deal and Wilson highlights a striking difference from the rest of the city, where charter schools are growing quickly and DCPS is proposing to close schools because of under-enrollment.
See link above for full article.
Debate stirs around school closings
The Northwest Current
By Deirdre Bannon
November 21, 2012
The D.C. Council concluded a two-day hearing Monday on D.C. Public Schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson’s recently announced plan to shutter 20 schools. More than 100 public witnesses and the D.C. Council members weighed in on the
controversial proposal over the course of the 16-hour hearing.
Henderson argued that her school closure and consolidation plan is a necessary step to right a system in which too many underenrolled schools have become a financial drain. But as many debated the merits of her plan and what it would
mean for the future of D.C. Public Schools, a few key themes emerged:
The money
Council members peppered Henderson with questions about the savings the school system would see from the changes, and the benefits for the schools that remain open.
“Parents want to know how this cost savings will impact their school,” at-large Council member David Catania told Henderson.
Henderson couldn’t answer those questions yet, saying that it’s all “just a proposal” at this point.
But Catania had come prepared with a little number crunching from the report Henderson submitted to the council as testimony.
Catania said the school system spends nearly $50 million just on utilities. If 17 percent of the city’s schools close, there should be more than $8 million available to distribute, which he said could fund 89 extra teachers.
Several council members and witnesses criticized the lack of transparency in the current school budget, saying Henderson needs to show where the money is going.
“I don’t want to run the schools,” said Catania, “but there is enough money in this budget to educate every child in this school system, and when enough money isn’t linked to teachers, that’s a problem for me.”
Repeating History
For many residents who commented on the proposed plan, it felt like familiar territory, with the 2008 round of controversial school closures led by former Chancellor Michelle Rhee remaining a painful memory. They wanted
to know what would be different this time.
Like Rhee, Henderson said the closings would reinvigorate the school system, allowing better-funded individual schools to provide improved services to students.
But many didn’t buy it.
Mary Levy, longtime analyst of the D.C. school system, said that the 2008 closures led to an exodus from public schools, with many turning to newly formed public charter schools.
“Three thousand students dropped out of DCPS when schools closed in 2008, and it never recovered,” she testified.
So instead of growing the school system, the consolidations led to a continuing trend of lower enrollment. “The result was that we now have same amount of excess space in our schools as we did before,” Levy said.
A comprehensive plan
Several council members, including Ward 3’s Mary Cheh, said a lack of investment over the years has exacerbated problems at lowenrollment, low-performing schools.
“We have these schools that are in a downward spiral, and then their resources are cut, and they continue on this path,” Cheh said.
“We need a forward-looking plan to save our schools and not wait until they’re on a downward spiral and then say, ‘Let’s close some schools.’ We need a comprehensive plan.”
A number of residents said they want to press pause on the closures and consolidations until Henderson can come up with a long-term strategy for the public school system.
Performance
The bottom line for many is the overall low performance of D.C. Public Schools, with the four-year high school graduation rate now hovering around 50 percent. The D.C. school system spends about $18,000 per pupil,
according to U.S. Census data — more than many major cities — but the high spending isn’t translating into results throughout the city.
And the gulf in school performance between affluent and non-affluent areas doesn’t seem to be closing, advocates say.
“The lowest-performing schools are in the poorest parts of city,” said Dorothy Douglas, the Ward 7 representative on the D.C. State Board of Education. “The money is there,” but the funds don’t seem to be turning around the low-performers, she said.
Ward 4 Council member Muriel Bowser reiterated that sentiment Monday night.
“We have on a regular basis children going into our schools where only one in five kids is proficient in math and reading,” she said.
“That’s what we all need to be angry about.”
Truancy in the District demands more from parents
The Washington Post
By Colbert I. King
November 23, 2012
A death wish is unfolding before our very eyes. A generation of youth in this city is self destructing. These youth, mostly black, are wandering aimlessly toward a cliff’s edge.
Headlines tell the story.
“Truancy problem growing in D.C.,” WJLA.com, May 11, 2011. “School and city officials address truancy rates in District,” The Post, Nov. 8.
Seventh-, eighth- and ninth-graders by the thousands are finding trouble to get into, drifting toward that army of D.C. youth who have quit school and now face lives of sporadic, low-wage jobs, government handouts, hustling, living off the labors of others and keeping one step ahead of the sheriff.
A disaster.
At a time when young people around the world are absorbing all the education and technology they can get, and learning to compete on a global scale, many District youth are in full retreat. They are headed toward a life where success is a word without meaning. They are headed toward a life in which crime, violence, drugs and defeat are as common as the air they breathe; a life where they are of little value to their community or to themselves.
A few leaders — too few — in this city are aware of this calamity.
D.C. Schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson, Superior Court judges, the mayor and a couple of D.C. Council members have weighed in on this long-standing crisis.
Henderson has seen students, years behind their grade levels in reading, throw up their hands. “Why would I want to go to school if I can’t read the book, I can’t do the work, I’m 17 and in the ninth grade?” Henderson recently said at a D.C. Council hearing. “It should be no surprise to us that students we have failed for many years are now failing to come to school.”
To their credit, Henderson and leading figures such as Superior Court Chief Judge Lee F. Satterfield are sponsoring programs to reduce truancy rates. But they are fighting a losing battle. The key factor failing the students, the one that allows them to skip school, is beyond the control of Henderson and courts: namely, the parents.
How times have changed.
From 1944, when I entered kindergarten at Stevens Elementary School, until I graduated from Dunbar High School in 1957, I never missed a day of school. Neither did my sister or brother. Were we Goody Two-Shoes? Hardly.
Stevens School was three blocks east of our home. Francis Junior High was two blocks north. School started at 9 a.m.
By 7:30 a.m. the King kids were washed, fed and ready to leave for school. Not our choice. Mamma and Daddy demanded it. So did the parents of most of our classmates.
Missing school was out of the question. And tardiness was a sin punishable by shame and a tongue-lashing.
How dare we embarrass our parents, who, by the way, left home every day for work?
But wait a minute: What’s so old-fashioned about that?
That’s what parents are supposed to do, whether it’s the 1940s, ’50s or the 21st century.
What good is it if the city shells out millions of dollars for schools and the children aren’t there?
And whose responsibility is it to get them to school? A neighborhood collaborative? A city agency?
No, it’s the people who brought them into this world. And it’s time we stop letting them off the hook. Why should the rest of the city pay for their irresponsibility? The District should hold them accountable — in their pocketbooks or by incarceration, if necessary. After all, those parents are the ones who have, as council member David Catania (I-At Large) put it, “relegated their children to a diminished future.”
DC Public Schools’ failure to compete
The Washington Examiner
By Jonetta Rose Barras
November 22, 2012
For months, Mayor Vincent Gray and DC Public Schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson had been crying poor mouth, asserting schools must be closed to free up cash to ensure greater investments.
So you would think that when they finally released the plan to shutter 20 facilities, they would be able to tell the public exactly how much money would be saved and what those funds would buy.
Think again.
In two appearances before the D.C. Council, Henderson could not offer any details about savings, new academic investments or even how an existing school might be helped by merging with students from closed facilities. Worse, the chancellor seemed to blame charters for DCPS' state of affairs.
"The reason [enrollment] is so low is because there are so many charter schools," Henderson told Yvette Alexander when the Ward 7 councilwoman raised questions about the large number of schools in her area slated for closure.
"Parents are voting with their feet," Henderson added, as if she is powerless to stop the erosion.
Henderson didn't arrive in the city yesterday. When she accepted the job of deputy chancellor under Michelle Rhee and then took the helm as chancellor in 2010, charters were sprouting all over the city. And while the Public Charter School Board has begun a process to improve their quality, there is little evidence anyone intends to fully close down that system -- although it certainly needs tweaking.
The chancellor and her team have failed to compete.
"Whether we like it or not, this is the era of school choice. This is the era of competition," Ward 6 Councilman Tommy Wells said during the council's second public hearing, adding that schools must become more "entrepreneurial."
Hating or envying charters won't cut it.
Henderson's inability to answer Alexander's query about why parents in Ward 7 are racing to charters is revealing. After all, many charters east of the Anacostia River aren't producing test scores better than DCPS.
Why hasn't the chancellor parlayed that simple fact to her advantage? Has she bothered to survey, even informally, parents who once called DCPS home? Has she asked them what they wanted from DCPS that they didn't get? Did she ask any of them what it would take to bring them back?
Bringing art, music and other extracurricular programs aren't that expensive. Years ago, when some Ward 3 elementary schools couldn't afford full-time arts and culture instructors, they contracted with the Fillmore Arts Center.
Is there anything preventing a similar arrangement for small schools on the chancellor's closure list? Can celebrities or nonprofits be persuaded to adopt a traditional school for two years, providing critical investments? Has the chancellor sought out such help the way Rhee did to finance the switch to provide bonuses to teachers who agreed to performance evaluations?
During the opening chapter of the city's reform movement, Henderson famously told teachers gathered for the launch of a new school year to "play hard or go home."
She may want to take her own advice
Friendships builds new facility for Tech Prep campus [Friendship PCS mentioned]
The Washington Post
By Emma Brown
November 21, 2012
The District’s Friendship Public Charter School plans to spend $36 million to build a new facility for students enrolled at its Technology Preparatory Academy campus in Southeast.
Tech Prep is a middle and high school campus that opened in 2009 and focuses on science, technology, engineering and math. Its older students earn college credits through dual-enrollment arrangements with local universities.
The school’s new building will be down the street from its current location on the site of a shuttered McDonald’s. It’s across the street from the old St. Elizabeths Hospital, which is slated to become headquarters for the Department of Homeland Security and a technological innovation center.
Tech Prep will train students for the kinds of jobs that will be created by those new developments, said Donald L. Hense, chairman of Friendship, which enrolls more than 8,000 students on 11 campuses in Washington and Baltimore.
The project is being financed with charter school revenue bonds.