Robert Cane: Use schools for kids, not condominiums
November 1, 2009
A wealthy developer vows to raise $1 million to fund a challenge to Mayor Adrian Fenty. Why? The word on the street is that the Florida-based real estate mogul is unhappy that Fenty did not take up his bid for the Stevens school building in Northwest D.C.
Nonetheless, the historic Stevens school building, once a beacon of hope for underprivileged District children, is now set to become home to luxury apartments and restaurants, the mayor’s office recently announced. The same fate also awaits Capitol Hill’s historic Hine Junior High school building, which will be converted into classy office space and high-end residential and retail units.
Stevens is named for Thaddeus Stevens, U.S. congressman for 13 years and chairman of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee during the Civil War and the national hero who proposed the 14th Amendment that finally ended slavery.
Stevens also is a local hero. A devout believer in social justice, Stevens left $50,000 — more than $800,000 in today’s money — to establish the Thaddeus Stevens School at 1050 21st St., one of the first publicly funded schools for African-American children in the nation.
Why is D.C.’s government determined to turn buildings that have traditionally served the District’s most vulnerable children into fashionably converted space catering to the well off? To the shame of the Fenty administration, the reason is decidedly not because every D.C. child has a decent school building in which to learn.
In fact, thousands of District schoolchildren are without an adequate school building, uncomfortably located in warehouse, retail and office space, or church annexes and basements. Often their schools lack basics such as playgrounds, playing fields, gymnasiums, auditoriums and cafeterias.
The D.C. public school children being crammed into inappropriate industrial and temporary sites attend the increasingly high-performing charter schools. Meanwhile, the D.C. government is spending more than $2 billion on traditional city-run public schools.
This disparity does not arise because there are too few school buildings to go around. In fact, there are more than enough for all public charter schools and traditional public schools with room to spare. The city-run schools’ ever-declining enrollment led Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee to empty out 24 school buildings last year. More closures are almost certainly on the way.
But, as with the Stevens school building, most of these properties are destined to fall into the hands of commercial real estate developers, destined to serve D.C.’s wealthier residents. Time and time again, charters are either not invited to bid for buildings or their bids are not seriously entertained.
The city government then offers the school buildings to developers who can offer a higher price. D.C. government has continued to do this despite passage of a 2004 law stating that charters have the right to make offers on buildings before developers can.
Public charter schools are a significant part of public education in the District, educating 38 percent of all public school students. Thousands of children are on waiting lists trying to get in, and some charters have nearly 30 applicants for every place.
The popularity of these charter schools is no surprise. They have excelled at educating students from low-income families. Charter middle and high school students in D.C. with a majority of economically disadvantaged children are nearly twice as likely to be proficient in reading and math as their peers in regular D.C. public schools.
Thousands of D.C.’s economically disadvantaged students grow up in neighborhoods in which one in two adults is functionally illiterate. In the proud tradition of Thaddeus Stevens, surely these at-risk children deserve school buildings more than developers.
Robert Cane is executive director of Friends of Choice in Urban Schools, which promotes school reform in the
District of Columbia via high-quality public charter schools.
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