- Lawsuit over D.C. school closures moves to federal court
- Birth boom driven by real estate costs, crime rates
- D.C. students use photography to protest school security
Lawsuit over D.C. school closures moves to federal court
The Washington Post
By Emma Brown
April 4, 2013
A lawsuit challenging the District’s plan to close 15 city schools, filed by activists in local court last week, will now be heard in federal court.
The transfer comes at the request of lawyers for the D.C. government, who asked Tuesday that the case be removed from D.C. Superior Court to U.S. District Court, according to court records. Such a move is allowable in cases alleging violation of federal law.
The school-closure lawsuit, filed by a coalition of activists organized by the community group Empower DC, argues that the District’s planned school closures would disproportionately affect poor, minority and disabled students.
The complaint claims violations of several federal laws, including the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Americans with Disabilities Act.
An emergency hearing in the case, originally scheduled for April 4 in D.C. Superior Court, has been cancelled because of the transfer to federal court. The case will be heard May 10 by Judge James E. Boasberg.
Johnny Barnes, the plaintiffs’ lawyer, is seeking an injunction to force the city to keep the schools open. He said he expects the judge to rule on the injunction before May 22, when the D.C. Council is scheduled to vote on the budget for the next school year.
Chancellor Kaya Henderson, named as a defendant in the case, has argued that the schools are under-enrolled and must be closed to allow for more efficient and effective operations.
Many elected officials in the District have said they understand and generally agree with that premise. However Perry Redd, who is running in the April 23 special election for an at-large D.C. Council seat, disagrees.
Redd, an underdog candidate representing the DC Statehood Green Party, was scheduled to protest the school closures at The Washington Post’s downtown offices Thursday afternoon.
Birth boom driven by real estate costs, crime rates
The Washington Examiner
By Rachel Baye
April 3, 2013
The District has been experiencing a boom in births over the last decade thanks to a combination of dropping crime, a renewed interest in urban living and changing housing prices.
The number of babies born in the District each year rose from roughly 7,500 in 2002 and 2003 to slightly more than 9,000 in 2008, according to Peter Tatian, senior research associate at the Urban Institute's Metropolitan Housing and Communities Policy Center. Since 2008, the number has been between about 9,100 and 9,200, he said.
More than half of the births have been to black mothers, though the increase in births has been evenly divided among white, black and Hispanic mothers, he said.
The increase in babies has been caused by the large number of people younger than 35 who moved to the District over the last decade and have decided to stay to raise families.
Part of this stems from the crash of the suburban housing market, said Bill Frey, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution's Metropolitan Policy Program.
Real estate in the urban core is only slightly less expensive than houses in the suburbs, and the money families save on daily transportation costs makes up the difference, Tatian said.
Crime levels are also down, making the city feel safer than it was 10 or 15 years ago, Tatian added. "There's more things that are attracting people to live in the city and to remain here." - Rachel Baye
D.C. students use photography to protest school security
The Washington Post
By Annie Gown
April 4, 2013
The small band of guerrilla photographers spread out in schools across the District, snapping photos of metal detectors, police pat-downs, and scuffles between security guards and students.
The dozen or so teens, who hail from some of the area’s most troubled neighborhoods, are trying to document the kind of school security issues that have taken center stage in the wake of the Newtown, Conn., shootings.
Since the December tragedy, the question of whether schools are safe has gained new urgency, with the Senate weighing $40 million in funding for school security plans and the National Rifle Association — which has called for armed teachers, administrators or guards in every school — releasing recommendations from its experts Tuesday.
But H.D. Woodson High School senior Mike Ruff and other classmates have armed themselves with cameras to make the opposite point. They say that their learning environment has been scarred by relentless security. They say their high schools, among an estimated 10,000 nationwide with police on campus, feel like prisons.
“We want our school to be more like a school,” says Ruff, a shy honor student with a cheeky grin and aspirations to become a University of Florida Gator some day. “Other schools don’t have police officers. So why does our school have to have that?”
They’re hoping to use the photographs to persuade D.C. school officials to start a “restorative justice” program to cut down on the 6,000 students or so who were suspended last school year, some multiple times.
But in the current climate they may have trouble winning over school administrators such as the principal at Woodson, who says he thinks tight security is crucial to keeping kids safe.
“You shouldn’t feel like you’re going to jail,” says Richard Jackson, the principal, “but there are certain systemic things already we have to do. . . . We’re always looking at the balance between safety and just violating civil liberties. The adults want us to do a lot more than we do, and the kids are saying, ‘Like, you know, don’t treat us all as if we’re going to do something.’ ”
Breaking the ‘pipeline’
One month after Newtown, Ruff and about a half-dozen classmates gather in a stuffy classroom on the third floor of the Thurgood Marshall Center in Shaw. The Critical Exposure program, founded in 2004, teaches students to advocate for change by giving them cameras to document disparities in their urban neighborhoods.
In the past, students have gone into Wilson High School in affluent Northwest Washington and photographed the shiny bathrooms to compare them with the run-down facilities at Roosevelt High School in Petworth. One snapped a shot of a teacher sleeping in class. And it took just a few of their compelling images of an empty room with boxes of books to help persuade the school system to allocate $18,000 for a new library for Washington Metropolitan High School in LeDroit Park, they say.
This year, the kids toss ideas around and decide to consider the “school-to-prison pipeline,” the term for tough discipline practices that critics say take students out of schools — through suspension, expulsion or arrest — and funnel them directly into the criminal justice system.