Members of the District of Columbia Board of Education will vote tomorrow on the first phase of School Superintendent Clifford Janey’s plan to close up to 30 schools by fall 2008. The Janey plan is expected to eliminate 3 million square feet of underused space and save $8.2 million a year. The closures — the first by DCPS since 1997 — are long overdue. Declining enrollment has left many city schools operating with far fewer students than they were designed to handle. Consolidation makes sense from an educational as well as a financial perspective, since providing enrichment programs is not cost-effective in half-empty schools.
But like seemingly everything else in this troubled school system, there’s much to criticize. For one thing, a lot more than six out of 147 schools should have been closed during the critical first phase. Some parents, teachers and education activists are already urging board members to cut the number of closures or delay implementation until next year. The inevitable difficulties and disruptions of moving 1,402 students will add fuel to their obstructionist fire. And it certainly doesn’t help that four of the six schools scheduled to close first — Fletcher-Johnson, Shadd Elementary, M.C. Terrell and Van Ness — are disproportionately located in Southeast where 41 percent of the city’s 58,000 students live.
Board Member Victor Reinoso, District 2, wants Janey to provide detailed relocation plans for the receiving schools, with the implication that some closures may be nixed if the board’s not happy with the results. But it’s far too late for the same people who’ve presided over the District’s long-running educational nightmare to start throwing monkey wrenches into the process.
Unfortunately, Janey has provided them the opportunity by not releasing his Master Facilities Plan until the fall to “avoid confusion.” But delaying the unpleasant reality that dozens of schools must be closed will not make this bitter pill any easier to swallow.
Janey plans to hang on to most of the properties and either lease them to city agencies or turn them into “parent resource centers.” But DCPS has enough to do fixing the worst public school system in the nation without becoming a landlord or social service agency. Handing over underused property to some of the city’s 51 charter schools is another matter, since these alternative public schools are currently educating thousands of District children.
The City Council already approved $1 billion over the next 10 years to modernize remaining schools, so funds from the sale of excess property can and should be used for scholarships without strings. Doing so will encourage transformation of DCPS into a competitive, parent-selected charter system. How many more generations of District kids will be cheated of a decent education before that kind of radical change is made?
