ANC3D Discussion on Foxhall Elementary / Old Hardy

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Of course, the FCCA’s stance has nothing to do with traffic. That is, I’m sure that they’re collectively smart enough to figure out that the traffic footprint of a neighborhood ES on a x-city bus line is going to pale in comparison to the hordes of SUVs that descend upon an expensive private school serving kids from MD and VA. Yet they’ll bend over backwards to make sure the latter stays yet gesticulate wildly about the traffic chaos that the former will bring to their precious Foxhall Rd.

No need to include Lab School elementary @ Old Hardy in this debate. A) The school is constantly misrepresented like above. B) Lab School has NO control or outsized influence, despite conspiracy theories of a rich cabal of out of state parents pulling the strings. That. Is. Not. True.

Lease/usage of Old Hardy is, and always has been, up to the mayor and DCPS. They are in control. They decide. They are supposed to come up with a plan.

A) For those new to the drama, Lab is a special education school. It was supposed to have more DC students with diagnosed disabilities. But DC politics got in the way because of "optics." The school has sought lease extension for maintenance and repairs with NO expansion of 90 kids. Period. It does not get preferential use of Hardy Field and has no field of it's own. Foxhall neighbors locked in strict dropoff/pickup & parking rules. Most MD & VA families use shuttle buses and carpooling. It's not the school's fault that Foxhall folks have gotten used to being entitled to a compliant tenant of the city.

Full responsibility for this whole thing falls with the Mayor, the Chancellor, the Deputy Mayor for Education (who lives IB for Hyde-Addison but sends kids to private), & Mary Cheh who's been playing all sides for years.

b) Lab does NOT have some all-powerful cabal of rich parents pulling the strings. That is hearsay and gossip of space-coveting locals who keep bringing it up to distract from the real problem: DCPS ward 3 feeder plan.

Lab is NOT a fancy general education private school like St Patrick's and Field School. Those two schools recently added campuses on MacArthur near old GDS elementary and have their own athletic fields. They have deep pockets, rich parents from DMV, and ZERO publicly-funded students with disabilities. No idea if they use shuttles or cap # of kids like Lab does.

So please, stop using Lab @ Old Hardy like some bogeyman. If we really cared about equity for DC kids, we would lobby DCPS to fund DC kids from wards 7 and 8 where there are high rates of special education students. Lab will keep educating kids with language and attention disabilities like it has for 50 years. Hopefully politics and prejudice will allow it to help the District more as intended.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Of course, the FCCA’s stance has nothing to do with traffic. That is, I’m sure that they’re collectively smart enough to figure out that the traffic footprint of a neighborhood ES on a x-city bus line is going to pale in comparison to the hordes of SUVs that descend upon an expensive private school serving kids from MD and VA. Yet they’ll bend over backwards to make sure the latter stays yet gesticulate wildly about the traffic chaos that the former will bring to their precious Foxhall Rd.

No need to include Lab School elementary @ Old Hardy in this debate. A) The school is constantly misrepresented like above. B) Lab School has NO control or outsized influence, despite conspiracy theories of a rich cabal of out of state parents pulling the strings. That. Is. Not. True.

Lease/usage of Old Hardy is, and always has been, up to the mayor and DCPS. They are in control. They decide. They are supposed to come up with a plan.

A) For those new to the drama, Lab is a special education school. It was supposed to have more DC students with diagnosed disabilities. But DC politics got in the way because of "optics." The school has sought lease extension for maintenance and repairs with NO expansion of 90 kids. Period. It does not get preferential use of Hardy Field and has no field of it's own. Foxhall neighbors locked in strict dropoff/pickup & parking rules. Most MD & VA families use shuttle buses and carpooling. It's not the school's fault that Foxhall folks have gotten used to being entitled to a compliant tenant of the city.

Full responsibility for this whole thing falls with the Mayor, the Chancellor, the Deputy Mayor for Education (who lives IB for Hyde-Addison but sends kids to private), & Mary Cheh who's been playing all sides for years.

b) Lab does NOT have some all-powerful cabal of rich parents pulling the strings. That is hearsay and gossip of space-coveting locals who keep bringing it up to distract from the real problem: DCPS ward 3 feeder plan.

Lab is NOT a fancy general education private school like St Patrick's and Field School. Those two schools recently added campuses on MacArthur near old GDS elementary and have their own athletic fields. They have deep pockets, rich parents from DMV, and ZERO publicly-funded students with disabilities. No idea if they use shuttles or cap # of kids like Lab does.

So please, stop using Lab @ Old Hardy like some bogeyman. If we really cared about equity for DC kids, we would lobby DCPS to fund DC kids from wards 7 and 8 where there are high rates of special education students. Lab will keep educating kids with language and attention disabilities like it has for 50 years. Hopefully politics and prejudice will allow it to help the District more as intended.

What the hell is this crap? Care to share with us the details of your lobbying activity, LAB PR person? And if you’re so concerned about the availability of special education in Wards 7 & 8, why not relocate your school there? The Foxhall community wants its public school building back.

[Anonymous]

Setting aside the history, Lab is a poor fit for that building. They have 60 kids in a building built for 200. At the same time, it's clear that the carve-out of 1+ acres from the site for that school complicates the planning for the rest of the site, there would be a lot more flexibility if the entire site could be considered.

Lab's current lease expires in 2023. It began in 2018. They have never had more than a five year commitment from the city. This is deliberate. When the building was closed as a DCPS school, the decision was made not to sell it, but to lease it on a short-term basis in case it was ever needed again. Well, it's needed again.

I have nothing against Lab and nothing against the city helping Lab. But working group members have been told the property is "off the table." A very reasonable solution would be for the city to help Lab find a more suitable location elsewhere so that the Hardy site can be used to its full potential.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Interestingly, there seems to be no love lost between the FCCA and the Palisades Community Association.

PCA Rules!

PCA has sane and balanced leadership and makes an effort to listen to their community. FCCA is a very insular group and is detached from reality.

Do all the FCCA board members even live in Foxhall? The community by and large is populated by reasonable people. Those FCCA types are bonkers.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
b) Lab does NOT have some all-powerful cabal of rich parents pulling the strings. That is hearsay and gossip of space-coveting locals who keep bringing it up to distract from the real problem: DCPS ward 3 feeder plan.

Lobbyist disclosure records are available at: https://efiler.bega.dc.gov/LRRSearch

They tell a different story.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Of course, the FCCA’s stance has nothing to do with traffic. That is, I’m sure that they’re collectively smart enough to figure out that the traffic footprint of a neighborhood ES on a x-city bus line is going to pale in comparison to the hordes of SUVs that descend upon an expensive private school serving kids from MD and VA. Yet they’ll bend over backwards to make sure the latter stays yet gesticulate wildly about the traffic chaos that the former will bring to their precious Foxhall Rd.

No need to include Lab School elementary @ Old Hardy in this debate. A) The school is constantly misrepresented like above. B) Lab School has NO control or outsized influence, despite conspiracy theories of a rich cabal of out of state parents pulling the strings. That. Is. Not. True.

Lease/usage of Old Hardy is, and always has been, up to the mayor and DCPS. They are in control. They decide. They are supposed to come up with a plan.

A) For those new to the drama, Lab is a special education school. It was supposed to have more DC students with diagnosed disabilities. But DC politics got in the way because of "optics." The school has sought lease extension for maintenance and repairs with NO expansion of 90 kids. Period. It does not get preferential use of Hardy Field and has no field of it's own. Foxhall neighbors locked in strict dropoff/pickup & parking rules. Most MD & VA families use shuttle buses and carpooling. It's not the school's fault that Foxhall folks have gotten used to being entitled to a compliant tenant of the city.

Full responsibility for this whole thing falls with the Mayor, the Chancellor, the Deputy Mayor for Education (who lives IB for Hyde-Addison but sends kids to private), & Mary Cheh who's been playing all sides for years.

b) Lab does NOT have some all-powerful cabal of rich parents pulling the strings. That is hearsay and gossip of space-coveting locals who keep bringing it up to distract from the real problem: DCPS ward 3 feeder plan.

Lab is NOT a fancy general education private school like St Patrick's and Field School. Those two schools recently added campuses on MacArthur near old GDS elementary and have their own athletic fields. They have deep pockets, rich parents from DMV, and ZERO publicly-funded students with disabilities. No idea if they use shuttles or cap # of kids like Lab does.

So please, stop using Lab @ Old Hardy like some bogeyman. If we really cared about equity for DC kids, we would lobby DCPS to fund DC kids from wards 7 and 8 where there are high rates of special education students. Lab will keep educating kids with language and attention disabilities like it has for 50 years. Hopefully politics and prejudice will allow it to help the District more as intended.

Ha, sure.

"In May 2016, however, At-Large Councilmember David Grosso, chair of the Education Committee, inserted enabling language into legislation that changed the continuous occupancy requirement from 2004 to 2008 [a move that greatly aided Lab School's quest to renew its Hardy lease]. The Council approved that change last November in an 10-3 vote. About a month-and-a-half earlier, seven Lab School board members and their lobbyist, Ben Young, with powerhouse law firm Greenberg Traurig, had dumped $7,700 into Grosso’s campaign fund."

https://washingtoncitypaper.com/article/188066/will-dc-look-to-a-leased-schoolhouse-to-ease-overcrowding/

"Lab is not a fancy general education private school" might be true. Also true: "Lab *is* a fancy special-education private school," with tuition topping $50,000 per year.

https://www.labschool.org/admissions/tuition-and-fees

Let Lab School's 1 percenter parents and board members pay for their own damn school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
b) Lab does NOT have some all-powerful cabal of rich parents pulling the strings. That is hearsay and gossip of space-coveting locals who keep bringing it up to distract from the real problem: DCPS ward 3 feeder plan.

Lobbyist disclosure records are available at: https://efiler.bega.dc.gov/LRRSearch

They tell a different story.

Yes they do. LAB’s high-powered lobbyists have been talking awfully frequently with DGS and EOM directors about the “Hardy School Lease”. PR doesn’t make that go away.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Lease/usage of Old Hardy is, and always has been, up to the mayor and DCPS. They are in control. They decide.

And you’ve been lobbying them like crazy to decide in your favor, community sentiment and public interest be damned. How stupid do you think we are?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Lease/usage of Old Hardy is, and always has been, up to the mayor and DCPS. They are in control. They decide.

And you’ve been lobbying them like crazy to decide in your favor, community sentiment and public interest be damned. How stupid do you think we are?

She pops up every time there's an Old Hardy thread, spouts a few talking points, gets hammered and disappears.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:In 2018, the FCCA tried to push through a resolution “on behalf of the community” asking the mayor to renew LAB’s lease of the Old Hardy building. They claimed that unless the lease was extended, the city would repurpose the building as a homeless shelter or a public high school, both of which they apparently did not want in their neighborhood. The community they were purportedly speaking on behalf of showed out in force to tell them what they thought of them so they dropped the resolution. The FCCA then successfully applied to NPS to have the building designated as a “historic place” (https://planning.dc.gov/sites/default/files/dc/sites/op/publication/attachments/Rose%20Hardy%20School%20Nomination_0.pdf), knowing that this would complicate the repurposing of the building to a public school. So now that the city is restricted from using the building for other purposes, the LAB School lease is almost certain to be extended. But because Ward 3 desperately needs another elementary school and because there is no land elsewhere, the city has decided to use part of the park next to Old Hardy as the site for the new elementary school. And so now the FCCA is complaining bitterly about the loss of their park and all the traffic that will be created by having three schools in close proximity. Of course, this situation that FCCA is now bemoaning is one they very much helped to create.

That's hilarious. Didn't the FCCA also lose the neighborhood their only grocery store by putting unreasonable demands on the developer?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:That's hilarious. Didn't the FCCA also lose the neighborhood their only grocery store by putting unreasonable demands on the developer?

I believe that was more the PCA. That supermarket was in the Palisades rather than Foxhall. Also, the causation is not clear, I believe as there were other factors that suggest the redeveloped wouldn’t have gone ahead even if the community had been fully supportive. Ironically, the supermarket could probably have been saved had the PCA or another entity opted to do what the FCA did and pursue a historical places designation. In truth, the building was a hideous eyesore and had no business being designated as a historical place but I don’t think many in the community would have quibbled with it if it had meant keeping the supermarket.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:That's hilarious. Didn't the FCCA also lose the neighborhood their only grocery store by putting unreasonable demands on the developer?

[b]I believe that was more the PCA. That supermarket was in the Palisades rather than Foxhall. [b]Also, the causation is not clear, I believe as there were other factors that suggest the redeveloped wouldn’t have gone ahead even if the community had been fully supportive. Ironically, the supermarket could probably have been saved had the PCA or another entity opted to do what the FCA did and pursue a historical places designation. In truth, the building was a hideous eyesore and had no business being designated as a historical place but I don’t think many in the community would have quibbled with it if it had meant keeping the supermarket.

Ah yes. Palisades. Well, if they hadn't considered their neighborhood as too good for luxury condos, they would now have a brand new walkable grocery store instead of an ugly office building. Also, "no bike lane on MacArthur! We need it for the cars!" and "keep the gravel on the trails! We don't want anyone using them! They get in the way of the view out of a few of our expensive houses!" "Yes, sure, cancel those bus lines! They bring poor people!"
Be better, rich people, be better.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:That's hilarious. Didn't the FCCA also lose the neighborhood their only grocery store by putting unreasonable demands on the developer?

[b]I believe that was more the PCA. That supermarket was in the Palisades rather than Foxhall. [b]Also, the causation is not clear, I believe as there were other factors that suggest the redeveloped wouldn’t have gone ahead even if the community had been fully supportive. Ironically, the supermarket could probably have been saved had the PCA or another entity opted to do what the FCA did and pursue a historical places designation. In truth, the building was a hideous eyesore and had no business being designated as a historical place but I don’t think many in the community would have quibbled with it if it had meant keeping the supermarket.

Ah yes. Palisades. Well, if they hadn't considered their neighborhood as too good for luxury condos, they would now have a brand new walkable grocery store instead of an ugly office building. Also, "no bike lane on MacArthur! We need it for the cars!" and "keep the gravel on the trails! We don't want anyone using them! They get in the way of the view out of a few of our expensive houses!" "Yes, sure, cancel those bus lines! They bring poor people!"
Be better, rich people, be better.

The Palisades is actually much more economically diverse and politically progressive than the rest of the city gives it credit for. The problem is that the neighborhood’s politics is dominated by crusty NIMBYs who haven’t moved in decades, seem to harbor a total fear of the rest of the city, can’t bear the thought of anything in the neighborhood ever changing, frankly couldn’t give a flying farfignewton about anyone else besides themselves and their immediate neighbors, and blast city agencies with letters and phone calls anytime anyone tries to do anything that might make their neighborhood a better place to live.

[Anonymous]

Sounds like a great place for a citywide school

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Sounds like a great place for a citywide school

Yes! Make a protected bike trail, with itty bike traffic lights along the whole thing, crossing all the way in a straight line from Woodridge NE to Palisades NW, and a Circulator too. Desegregation by transit.