12 Wednesday, December 12, 2012
The Current
Let charters use shuttered school buildings VIEWPOINT tom nida
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ast month, the city announced plans to close 20 public schools. This follows a city-commissioned report highlighting poor academic performance in many District public schools. The report underscored the need to add 39,758 quality seats for every child to receive the same quality schooling as in D.C.’s top-performing public schools. The report recommends closure or new management for the worst performers. Many of the city’s underperforming schools are underenrolled. Enrollment in the city’s traditional public school system is about one-third of what it was when I graduated from Anacostia High School in 1966. While school system enrollment has been flat for the past five years — after decades of decline — the system retains more building space than it requires. Cardozo High is one example. Built in 1928 to house 1,500-plus, it enrolls one-third that number. Many other school buildings lie derelict or are used for non-educational purposes while charter schools are often forced to find inadequate facilities in the commercial market. But D.C. Public Schools is not the sum total of public education in the District. Some 43 percent of District public school students are educated in publicly funded charter schools independently of the traditional school system. Based on historic trends, charters will soon have the majority of D.C. public school enrollment. Unlike traditional public schools, charters must find a building in which to operate. Almost always, this means buying or leasing space and renovating it — competing for commercial real estate and loans. For years the city has allowed many school buildings that it could no longer fill to rot, or sold them to private developers for luxury condominiums. Meanwhile, charters have had to convert office, retail or warehouse space at great expense, or even locate in church basements. A lucky few have paid millions to repair, restore and renovate derelict school buildings, after the city agreed to lease or sell them. Financing these renovations has been very difficult for most charters in this economic climate. Charters’ lack of city funds — charter students receive half the city facilities funds as their D.C. Public Schools peers — is not because of inferior academic performance.
Letters to the Editor Zoning code rewrite ignores critical points
I continue to be amazed at how little attention is being given to the rewrite of the zoning code. Imagine that for 54 years no changes had been made to a regulatory framework that affects every property owner in the District. Where would you start? Would you conduct a comprehensive review and identify areas that need to be addressed so that property owners would have some idea of the goals to be achieved? How would you identify these areas? Would you ask whether the zoning regulations work for the average property owner or require hiring land-use attorneys to figure out what is being mandated? Would you ask what has worked and what has not, and what is outdated? Sadly, in my opinion these questions have not been asked or answered comprehensively. Outside of some administrative tinkering
D.C. charters have a high-school graduation rate that is 21 percentage points higher than the school system’s, and much higher college-acceptance rates. D.C. charters post higher student test scores than the traditional system, especially among disadvantaged students. Charter test scores among D.C. students eligible for federal lunch subsidies are 12 percentage points higher in reading, and 16 points higher in math than those of D.C. Public Schools. Some 77 percent of charter students qualify for these while 69 percent of the school system’s students do so. District law requires the city to allow charters to offer to buy or lease school buildings no longer used by the school system before developers can. Successive administrations flouted this by failing to request offers on surplus school buildings, rejecting multiple charter bids, opening some facilities to private development, or using them for government office space. This latest round of closures is the eighth downsizing of the school system’s real estate inventory. Of the 19 proposed building closures, the government is making only three available to charters — and these only if the charters agree to partner with the school system, creating a new school. In two years, Mayor Gray has requested offers on 11 vacant D.C. Public Schools properties. Of these, four buildings received multiple charter bids, all of them rejected. An additional four buildings were awarded to charters. One building is in such a state of disrepair that no charter schools bid for it. The remaining two are slated for non-charter uses. The D.C. government knows that it needs nearly 40,000 new seats in high-performing schools and that charters have 15,000 more student applications than spaces but can’t find adequate and affordable facilities. Why empty more school buildings of children when tens of thousands of District children cannot access a quality public education? And how can the mayor justify allowing the school system to retain control of the buildings being closed, mothballing a number of them in case D.C. Public Schools enrollment grows between now and 2022? The District’s children — especially those who live in our most vulnerable communities — need charter schools to be able to offer quality seats in these school buildings now. Tom Nida, former chair of the D.C. Public Charter School Board, is regional vice president of United Bank for D.C. and Maryland.
and a focus on smart growth, the current proposals do not address many residential property owners’ concerns. For the past 25 years or so, the city’s Comprehensive Plan has noted my neighborhood’s concern with institutionalization of our community, which is zoned R-1 — lowdensity residential. Yet this is not one of the areas being addressed in the zoning rewrite proposals. How is this possible? Has the Office of Planning looked at how other jurisdictions have addressed this issue? Why are there no specific regulations addressing the proximity of private school playgrounds to neighboring residences in R-1 communities, as there are in other jurisdictions? Fifty-four years ago, churches were neighborhood institutions, not regional draws. What are the cumulative impacts of their presence in residential communities today? And what does it mean for a community with a surfeit of institutions when a new church attempts to move in? Fifty-four years ago, a 200-foot notice requirement to affected property owners worked. Does it today?
The zoning rewrite process has raised a number of questions that should not be ignored. Is it possible that the Office of Planning was not the appropriate agency to have been charged with this undertaking? Who represents the voice of the residential community? Should there be a public advocate at the Zoning Commission? Given the great weight given the advisory neighborhood commissions, what training or assistance should members receive? Should the Office of the Attorney General or the Office of Zoning provide assistance to the commissions? Should residents be provided legal assistance when they go before the Board of Zoning Adjustment or the Zoning Commission, since they are at a great disadvantage in light of the omnipresent legal counsel hired by developers and deep-pocket institutions? The D.C. Bar has a pro bono project that represents child development centers in zoning matters. But who represents the residents? Doreen Thompson President, Carter Barron East Neighborhood Association