05 Jun 2015

Kids:

Middle School Blues

This post originally appeared in the May issue of the Hill Rag, both in print and online. There will be a Ward 6 town hall meeting on Tuesday June 24 led by At-Large Councilmember David Grosso where parents can bring their questions and concerns.

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Screen shot of Heather Schoell's tweet at Mayor Muriel Bowser.

Screen shot of Heather Schoell’s tweet at Mayor Muriel Bowser.

Ward 6 parents have been doing it all for years: organizing fundraisers, yard sales and auctions to help schools out. These parents have been hoping that major fixes to the schools’ infrastructure, particularly at the middle school level, would be completed in a timely manner so Hill children can stay on a local track. Great incentives have made the schools more attractive, too: Eastern High School, and Stuart-Hobson and Eliot-Hine Middle Schools boast the prestigious International Baccalaureate program. Jefferson Academy in southwest will be joining IB in the next two years, according to DCPS’s school profile card. Jefferson also has great athletic programs. All schools have seen marked improvement in their DC CAS scores over the past years.

However, when basic structural elements, such as cooling and heating systems, are still five to ten years away from being fixed, the message sent is a very disapointing one: the DC government doesn’t seem to think Ward 6 schools are a high priority. When Mayor Muriel Bowser unveiled her Capital Plan on April 2, 2015, that was what parents across the Ward heard. In her proposed budget, which is still under review as of this writing, the Mayor postponed funding of several Ward six schools, including many elementary schools. However, the hardest-hit schools were Eliot-Hine Middle School, 1830 Constitution Ave. NE, and Jefferson Academy Middle School, 801 7th Street SW. According to the budget, which can be viewed online at http://cfo.dc.gov/sites/default/files/dc/sites/ocfo/publication/attachme…, these schools will not be getting funds until 2019.

Disappointment

Joe Weedon, Ward 6 representative to the DC State Board of Education, feels the oversight is not just a disappointment to the ward he represents, but the timing on the budget’s announcement – released right after the DC school lottery results were announced– placed parents in an inconvenient position: while they have been supportive of the schools in hopes that their children can benefit from the improvements that have been deemed critical since FY 2008, families want their children to attend schools that can provide a better overall learning environment.

 Weedon says that between $80 and $100 million in funds have been pushed back beyond the five-year plan. Specifically on Eliot-Hine, Weedon believes that its 63-percent at-risk student body makes the funds that much more urgent, because well-maintained facilities can have a crucial impact on students’ lives. Heather Schoell, a parent of a 6th grader at Eliot-Hine, couldn’t agree more. Schoell took to Twitter before the April 9, 2015 ANC 6A meeting and tweeted pictures of bathroom stalls without locks, a crassly spray-painted school address number and a picture of a bathroom with peeling paint, two mismatched sinks and a broken pipe casing, with the caption, “What if your office bathroom looked like this? @MayorBowser #fixeliothine”

For Amidon-Bowen parent Marty Welles, the president of the Amidon-Bowen Parents Teachers Association, it’s a matter of making sure a school such as Jefferson Academy, housed in an architecturally significant building, gets the treatment it deserves. Amidon-Bowen’s enrollment has gone up steadily over the past three years or so, as Southwest has seen its population soar: it is currently hovering around 375 students, which is near capacity. These students will matriculate into Jefferson, which had been promised $12 million for the summer of 2016, $12 million for 2017, and an additional $10 million for 2018. All those monies have been deferred until 2019 and reduced by $10 million.

For children in Southwest, attending Jefferson would be a downgrade from the Amidon-Bowen and Tyler Elementary experiences: both schools have had recent renovations and Welles believes there is a “raised standard and expectations that should be carried forward to middle school.” Jefferson, like Eliot-Hine, has outdated cooling and heating systems. There is no wiring for IT, a necessity for students who want to do research online. It also needs exterior repairs as well as a new roof, among many other basic repairs. Jefferson Academy’s façade is crumbling in sections, and Welles even commissioned an architectural firm to do a rendering at no cost to show how striking the building could be if opened up onto the Southwest Waterfront, which would also make functional sense. Without adequate funds, this is nothing but a dream.

Alex Padro, ANC 6E commissioner, has witnessed his Shaw neighbors getting up their hopes for the reopening of Shaw Junior High School, which closed in 2008. Currently, Shaw children have to attend the middle school housed at Cardozo High, or attend Francis-Stevens. Neither school is a convenient walk for the growing numbers of children in this part of Ward 6, and the proposed Center City Middle School may not be able to handle the overflow in coming years. With Shaw’s renovations slated to start in 2022 at the earliest, Padro is incensed on behalf of parents in 6E. “The Mayor has basically put all these communities in competition with one another,” he says. “I hope [she] realizes the error she’s committed in betraying the trust of countless families and reverse her course.”

Mayor Bowser made an appearance to pacify frustrated parents at that ANC 6A meeting. In his blog Capitol Hill Corner, blogger Larry Janezich summed up the Mayor’s quandary in her own words: “It can’t be ‘us not them’ – I don’t want the conversation to be about a tradeoff between schools. We have to worry about all wards, not just [Ward] six.”

The Mayor Responds

For her part, Bowser has been proactive about understanding her constituents’ frustrations and anger. She scheduled a drop-in visit to Eliot-Hine Wednesday April 15, accompanied by Ward 6 Councilmember Charles Allen, as well as representatives from the Department of General Services (DGS). During her visit she saw the aging infrastructure as reported in Schoell’s and Weedon’s tweets, and had workers fix locks and make other repairs on the spot. Schoell is “very pleased with the Mayor’s response” to her advocacy efforts as well as those of her fellow parents, who met earlier this month with Allen, David Grosso (At Large) and Anita Bonds (At Large).

Charles Allen said in a statement to the Hill Rag, “Last week I joined Mayor Bowser for a walk-through at Eliot-Hine MS to review the building’s condition and prioritize urgent repairs so students were able to return from spring break to a safer, cleaner, more comfortable school. More work remains, but this visit was an important step toward ensuring Eliot-Hine has the kind of high quality facility our middle school students deserve. I am troubled by the proposed cuts and delays to Ward 6 school modernization projects, especially to middle schools, and will continue working hard to restore those funds and get our long-promised modernizations back on track.”

For his part, Joe Weedon hopes the budget can be reconciled so that Ward 6 schools can be at their best for the students who are incoming. Weedon postulates that since Eliot-Hine is at 40 percent capacity, it would be appropriate to cut down renovation costs by working while school is in session, as construction costs rise when the work is done over the summer months, for instance. His hope is that the administration will focus less on “what can we build for this” amount of money, and more on what is truly important: how can the government best serve DCPS students?

 

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