Several D.C. Council members are preparing to introduce legislation that would stop a charter school from opening a second campus in the Kingman Park neighborhood near RFK Stadium.
Mayor Anthony Williams, an ardent supporter of the School for Educational Evolution and Development, the nation’s only urban boarding school, said the attempt to block its efforts was “ill-advised.”
The legislation, being supported by D.C. Council Members Adrian Fenty, Vincent Gray and Kwame Brown, coincides with neighborhood leaders’ plan to rally today outside of the offices of the SEED Foundation in Northwest to protest what they call an “outrageous” attempt by the group to put a new campus in their neighborhood.
SEED is proposing a 600-student campus — nearly twice the size of its current campus in Anacostia — on a 15-acre site that currently serves as a parking lot for RFK Stadium.
Neighbors want to see the site reverted to parkland that would serve as an entry point for the planned state-of-the-art nature center to be built on nearby Kingman Island.
Kingman Park Civic Association President Frazer Walton said the SEED project “is an inappropriate land use which is environmentally unsound and harmful.”
SEED officials have spent months trying to convince skeptical neighborhood leaders, but have been forced out of some community meetings and been turned away at others, officials said.
More details
» The SEED School is the country’s only urban boarding school.
» Mayor Anthony Williams pressed the federal government, which owns the site, to set aside the land for the SEED School.
