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.
