Henderson

After D.C. School Chancellor Kaya Henderson presented a proposal last month to close 20 public schools, parents and activists across the city girded for a fight. But after listening to their pleas at a series of D.C. Council hearings and community meetings, Henderson has hinted that some of the schools she originally said she’d like to close could be spared.

“One of the things that’s very different this round than the last rounds that I have seen is that we’ve asked the community to come up with solutions,” she said after the last of four ward-based community meetings last week in Brightwood, which, like similar meetings in wards 5, 7 and 8, was attended by hundreds of students, parents and activists.

“We were clear in articulating that we have a problem in a different way than before, and I’m actually inspired that the community is coming to us saying, ‘Alright, we’ve got a problem, but here are some different ways to think about solving it.'” That’s real for me. So we’re going to go back, we’re going to look at what we’ve heard…we’re going to spend the rest of December looking at this and re-crafting this plan, and then come back out to people,” she said.

During the meetings, Henderson stressed that her principal concern was under-enrolled schools, where the dollars aren’t as efficiently spent on instruction and programming, but rather on upkeep of half-empty buildings. And while she said she was encouraged to hear parents and activists step up to heartily defend their neighborhood schools, she was looking for input on how to make schools more cost-effective.

“We have to be creative, because we can’t continue to run schools with 200 kids in them,” she said. (At the Ward 4 meeting, she implored parents not to bring her 500 signatures on a petition demanding that their school not be closed, but rather 500 enrollment forms.)

Councilmember David Catania (I-At Large) was the only legislator to attend all four ward meetings, sitting rather anonymously in the back listening and taking notes. In an interview yesterday, he congratulated Henderson and the parents on the participation he saw, and said that good things could come from a process as painful as school closures can be.

“I was extremely excited about the parental and community participation. I think that’s a harbinger of good things—there’s energy in the system that can be harnessed for the advantage of the students,” he said.

Catania, who is again seeking the chairmanship of a stand-alone education committee on the D.C. Council, said that he would leave deliberations over which schools to close up to Henderson, but that he felt that three had made a good case for remaining open.

“I think there are three community schools that have made a strong case based on parental output, interest, participation, and enthusiasm for staying open…Francis-Stevens, Davis and Garrison,” he said.

Francis-Stevens Education Campus and Garrison Elementary School—both in Ward 2—have strongly pushed for their schools to remain open, saying that new principals and newly energized PTAs are invested in improving the schools. And while the Ward 7 Educational Council has pushed for a moratorium on all school closures—five in the ward are currently on the chopping block—parents from Davis said that student proficiency at the school was on the rise. (Under Henderson’s proposal, students at both Davis and Garrison would be sent to receiving schools where test scores are lower.)

But much like Henderson has, Catania argued that if schools are to be removed from the list, parents, teachers and administrators will have to help ensure that they prove their worth in the long term.

“If a reprieve is given, it needs to come with certain conditions, almost a contract. If the community has stood up and said, ‘We want to stay open,’ then I think something akin to a community contract needs to be signed with the chancellor in which all sides agree on what needs to be done to make this school a success. I don’t think that’s unreasonable,” he said.

Without such a contract and other systemic changes in how D.C. public schools function, warned Catania, the entire system may soon be a mere shadow of what it once was. “Traditional, community-based public schools in the city will be a relic in a generation if something isn’t done soon,” he said.

Whatever Henderson ultimately decides, the pressure will be on her to not only demonstrate how the savings from closing schools will benefit those that remain open, but also ensure that parents don’t pull their students from the city’s public schools altogether. Parents at almost every meeting said that the worried about neighborhood turf wars if schools were consolidated, complained of further commutes for their kids and criticized what they called the unchecked growth of charter schools throughout the city.

Henderson said that she plans on having a final proposal to present to Mayor Vince Gray by mid-January.