D.C. Council Chairman Kwame Brown said the District is headed for a “racial explosion” if more parity is not created between middle schools in affluent areas of the city and those across the Anacostia River. Most D.C. Public Schools in Wards 7 and 8 are underenrolled, while Alice Deal Middle School in Tenleytown is at capacity just one year after a $70 million renovation. Ward 3 Councilwoman Mary Cheh is seeking another middle school in the Palisades area to relieve crowding.
As city officials examine middle schools in hearings this fall, Brown said he is disgusted to see the state of Sousa Middle School near Fort Dupont Park, which was renovated at about the same time as Deal — “but Deal is a 10 and Sousa is a five.”
“Adults,” he said, let this happen.
“Johnson Middle School — that is a crime. It is an absolute crime. No child in America should have to go to a school like that. Have you gone to Sousa? And they say it’s been modernized,” Brown said.
School officials have acknowledged that low enrollment figures in the middle grades — more than half of stand-alone middle schools have fewer than 300 students — make it difficult to provide the robust offerings of schools like Deal and Hardy Middle School in Georgetown. In the charter world, parents look to Washington Latin Public Charter School.
The city’s out-of-boundary lottery allows parents who are dissatisfied with their neighborhood schools to send their kids to other schools with open seats. But as those top schools get further and far between, “it’s coming to a point where there will be no more seats available,” Brown said. “And when there are no seats for a Ward 7 or Ward 8 child to get into a school like Deal or Hardy or Washington Latin, you’re going to have a racial explosion.” – Lisa Gartner
