DCPS students shafted again - sign petition to keep Jelleff field public

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Until a baseball flies to them and hurts someone. You really think that’s a viable option? It’s a lawsuit waiting to happen.

Stop lying. You Maret boosters couldn’t care less about the safety of anyone poorer, or less white, than you.

You all are big on performative wokeness, but the minute you get slightly inconvenienced, you show your true colors. And they aren’t pretty.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Yeah, and folks should do a little digging about who is using Guy Mason...

By the way, Stoddert Elementary is co-located with Glover Park Rec Center. The rec center and school partner and share a ton...the gym, the soccer fields, the baseball field, etc.

I'm thinking Guy Mason is the next shoe to drop.

DPR seems to have wildly inconsistent relationships with DCPS schools (and charters seem to have it even worse). There are lots of schools that are co-located with DPR facilities -- Stoddert and Wilson, as mentioned, also Hearst, Lafayette, Shepherd, Watkins just off the top of my head. Some, like Stoddert and Wilson, seem to have great relationships. At others you'd think DPR and DCPS are different countries.

DPR is extremely conservative. If you've ever dealt with cows, cows are happiest when everything is exactly the way it was the day before. DPR is the same way. They want their facilities to be used the way they've always been used. I really think this inertia worked in Maret's favor.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Until a baseball flies to them and hurts someone. You really think that’s a viable option? It’s a lawsuit waiting to happen.

Stop lying. You Maret boosters couldn’t care less about the safety of anyone poorer, or less white, than you.

You all are big on performative wokeness, but the minute you get slightly inconvenienced, you show your true colors. And they aren’t pretty.

And Hardy boosters couldn’t care about critical thinking beyond baseless attacks based on your own biases and ignorance. Oh wait, that’s not true because no community is one monolithic being, but rather lots of different people building a community. Whether Hardy, BGC, or Maret. But that’s not the easy way out. Taking lazy pot shots is obviously the easy route for you.

[Anonymous]

I can’t wait for the mash-ups of Maret’s testimony, which will be absolutely priceless. Maybe someone can splice together footage of Ian Cameron’s remark and what was going on at the Fortune conference across town. It will be educational for the rest of the world to witness the self-regard of DC’s “private school set” (because we can't call them "elites"). A viral sensation, to be sure. Where can I buy futures in those videos?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Until a baseball flies to them and hurts someone. You really think that’s a viable option? It’s a lawsuit waiting to happen.

Stop lying. You Maret boosters couldn’t care less about the safety of anyone poorer, or less white, than you.

You all are big on performative wokeness, but the minute you get slightly inconvenienced, you show your true colors. And they aren’t pretty.

And Hardy boosters couldn’t care about critical thinking beyond baseless attacks based on your own biases and ignorance. Oh wait, that’s not true because no community is one monolithic being, but rather lots of different people building a community. Whether Hardy, BGC, or Maret. But that’s not the easy way out. Taking lazy pot shots is obviously the easy route for you.

DP: Maret did a pretty good job yesterday of presenting itself as having a monolithic perspective.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Until a baseball flies to them and hurts someone. You really think that’s a viable option? It’s a lawsuit waiting to happen.

Stop lying. You Maret boosters couldn’t care less about the safety of anyone poorer, or less white, than you.

You all are big on performative wokeness, but the minute you get slightly inconvenienced, you show your true colors. And they aren’t pretty.

And Hardy boosters couldn’t care about critical thinking beyond baseless attacks based on your own biases and ignorance. Oh wait, that’s not true because no community is one monolithic being, but rather lots of different people building a community. Whether Hardy, BGC, or Maret. But that’s not the easy way out. Taking lazy pot shots is obviously the easy route for you.

DP: Maret did a pretty good job yesterday of presenting itself as having a monolithic perspective.

It was a train wreck. Mind-boggling that they cannot see that.

[Anonymous]

I have nothing to do with Maret, Hardy, their rival schools, or the neighborhoods. I'm just a DC resident trying to get my head around the issue.

In 2008 DC borrowed $15ish million at 5ish% interest to buy a property in Upper Georgetown and then gave the sports team.at Maret, a private school in Woodley Park, exclusive access to the property for a decade in exchange for up to $2.5m in renovations and improvements with a life span of 10-20 years. DC however was still responsible for general maintenance and the exclusivity arrangement meant that DC has to pay to transport the public school sports teams across the street to other DC owned facilities. Now they want to re-up the arrangement for another 10 years at only $900k.

I'm struggling to see the benefit of this arrangement for DC. It's already cost us way more, in interest alone, than what Maret has contributed and now they want to re-up for 10 years and reduce their "payment" to $900k. Why is the DC Government spending $1+m per year on Maret's sports teams?

Did Maret use their connections to get us a sweetheart deal on the land? Am I missing something?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I have nothing to do with Maret, Hardy, their rival schools, or the neighborhoods. I'm just a DC resident trying to get my head around the issue.

In 2008 DC borrowed $15ish million at 5ish% interest to buy a property in Upper Georgetown and then gave the sports team.at Maret, a private school in Woodley Park, exclusive access to the property for a decade in exchange for up to $2.5m in renovations and improvements with a life span of 10-20 years. DC however was still responsible for general maintenance and the exclusivity arrangement meant that DC has to pay to transport the public school sports teams across the street to other DC owned facilities. Now they want to re-up the arrangement for another 10 years at only $900k.

I'm struggling to see the benefit of this arrangement for DC. It's already cost us way more, in interest alone, than what Maret has contributed and now they want to re-up for 10 years and reduce their "payment" to $900k. Why is the DC Government spending $1+m per year on Maret's sports teams?

Did Maret use their connections to get us a sweetheart deal on the land? Am I missing something?

You're not missing anything. There is no public benefit to the renewal.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I have nothing to do with Maret, Hardy, their rival schools, or the neighborhoods. I'm just a DC resident trying to get my head around the issue.

In 2008 DC borrowed $15ish million at 5ish% interest to buy a property in Upper Georgetown and then gave the sports team.at Maret, a private school in Woodley Park, exclusive access to the property for a decade in exchange for up to $2.5m in renovations and improvements with a life span of 10-20 years. DC however was still responsible for general maintenance and the exclusivity arrangement meant that DC has to pay to transport the public school sports teams across the street to other DC owned facilities. Now they want to re-up the arrangement for another 10 years at only $900k.

I'm struggling to see the benefit of this arrangement for DC. It's already cost us way more, in interest alone, than what Maret has contributed and now they want to re-up for 10 years and reduce their "payment" to $900k. Why is the DC Government spending $1+m per year on Maret's sports teams?

Did Maret use their connections to get us a sweetheart deal on the land? Am I missing something?

The testimony from the Maret folks on Monday suggested that they entered into the original 10-year easement with DPR based on an understanding that it would extended pro forma for another 10 years following that provided they fulfilled the terms of the original contract. A number of Maret affiliates claimed that Maret would never had done the deal if they thought it was just for 10 years. However, this doesn't seem to have been committed to paper anywhere and so they are effectively asking us to take their word for it.

Why Maret and DPR didn't just do a 20 year deal in 2009 is murky. Some Maret affiliates implied that it was precluded by city regulations, although there are certainly cases to disprove that - LAB has a 25 year lease on a DCPS building in Foxhall, for instance. It was also suggested - perhaps by Elissa Silverman - that anything longer than a 10 year deal would have had to be approved by the DC Council. Some have thus made the case that the original 10 year easement - coupled with an informal agreement that it would be extended - was thus deliberately structured to avoid scrutiny by the broader Council.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have nothing to do with Maret, Hardy, their rival schools, or the neighborhoods. I'm just a DC resident trying to get my head around the issue.

In 2008 DC borrowed $15ish million at 5ish% interest to buy a property in Upper Georgetown and then gave the sports team.at Maret, a private school in Woodley Park, exclusive access to the property for a decade in exchange for up to $2.5m in renovations and improvements with a life span of 10-20 years. DC however was still responsible for general maintenance and the exclusivity arrangement meant that DC has to pay to transport the public school sports teams across the street to other DC owned facilities. Now they want to re-up the arrangement for another 10 years at only $900k.

I'm struggling to see the benefit of this arrangement for DC. It's already cost us way more, in interest alone, than what Maret has contributed and now they want to re-up for 10 years and reduce their "payment" to $900k. Why is the DC Government spending $1+m per year on Maret's sports teams?

Did Maret use their connections to get us a sweetheart deal on the land? Am I missing something?

The testimony from the Maret folks on Monday suggested that they entered into the original 10-year easement with DPR based on an understanding that it would extended pro forma for another 10 years following that provided they fulfilled the terms of the original contract. A number of Maret affiliates claimed that Maret would never had done the deal if they thought it was just for 10 years. However, this doesn't seem to have been committed to paper anywhere and so they are effectively asking us to take their word for it.

Why Maret and DPR didn't just do a 20 year deal in 2009 is murky. Some Maret affiliates implied that it was precluded by city regulations, although there are certainly cases to disprove that - LAB has a 25 year lease on a DCPS building in Foxhall, for instance. It was also suggested - perhaps by Elissa Silverman - that anything longer than a 10 year deal would have had to be approved by the DC Council. Some have thus made the case that the original 10 year easement - coupled with an informal agreement that it would be extended - was thus deliberately structured to avoid scrutiny by the broader Council.

They can't have it both ways. If the 2009 discussions were binding, they would have required Council approval. So either they're not binding, or they're not valid.

Conveniently for Maret, nobody in a policy position at DPR remains from 2009. So everyone just has to take their word for it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:They can't have it both ways. If the 2009 discussions were binding, they would have required Council approval. So either they're not binding, or they're not valid.

Conveniently for Maret, nobody in a policy position at DPR remains from 2009. So everyone just has to take their word for it.

Maret wants us all to believe that DC having an option to renew the agreement at its sole discretion means, in fact, that DC was obligated to renew the agreement if Maret fulfilled its duties. This repeated over and over in their testimony and appears again in their latest update to their website page on the issue.

[Anonymous]

So, DC had an option not to renew, which is what they should have done given that renewal violated the cities own procedures/laws. That is the problem. That is why everybody is upset. And all of these cozy deals with private schools/groups need to be reassessed. DC has more kids in public school and the number will continue to increase. Public land is needed for public use. I can't believe some city officials, such as the Mayor, don't understand this. Or, maybe bowser is already planning on getting her daughter admitted and is copying the play book of evans.

[Anonymous]

This was renewed only do to corruption by some (or someone) on the council and perhaps at DPR and a Mayor who never met a single rich person who’s ass she wouldn’t slobber.

The Maret implication that this has to be renewed based on the original deal is because they are privileged bullies who are used to getting their way. Ian Cameron and everyone else should be ashamed.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have nothing to do with Maret, Hardy, their rival schools, or the neighborhoods. I'm just a DC resident trying to get my head around the issue.

In 2008 DC borrowed $15ish million at 5ish% interest to buy a property in Upper Georgetown and then gave the sports team.at Maret, a private school in Woodley Park, exclusive access to the property for a decade in exchange for up to $2.5m in renovations and improvements with a life span of 10-20 years. DC however was still responsible for general maintenance and the exclusivity arrangement meant that DC has to pay to transport the public school sports teams across the street to other DC owned facilities. Now they want to re-up the arrangement for another 10 years at only $900k.

I'm struggling to see the benefit of this arrangement for DC. It's already cost us way more, in interest alone, than what Maret has contributed and now they want to re-up for 10 years and reduce their "payment" to $900k. Why is the DC Government spending $1+m per year on Maret's sports teams?

Did Maret use their connections to get us a sweetheart deal on the land? Am I missing something?

The testimony from the Maret folks on Monday suggested that they entered into the original 10-year easement with DPR based on an understanding that it would extended pro forma for another 10 years following that provided they fulfilled the terms of the original contract. A number of Maret affiliates claimed that Maret would never had done the deal if they thought it was just for 10 years. However, this doesn't seem to have been committed to paper anywhere and so they are effectively asking us to take their word for it.

Why Maret and DPR didn't just do a 20 year deal in 2009 is murky. Some Maret affiliates implied that it was precluded by city regulations, although there are certainly cases to disprove that - LAB has a 25 year lease on a DCPS building in Foxhall, for instance. It was also suggested - perhaps by Elissa Silverman - that anything longer than a 10 year deal would have had to be approved by the DC Council. Some have thus made the case that the original 10 year easement - coupled with an informal agreement that it would be extended - was thus deliberately structured to avoid scrutiny by the broader Council.

They can't have it both ways. If the 2009 discussions were binding, they would have required Council approval. So either they're not binding, or they're not valid.

Conveniently for Maret, nobody in a policy position at DPR remains from 2009. So everyone just has to take their word for it.

If only everyone in the city read the three posts above, this discussion would be over and this deal would be properly rescinded.

I think some of the Maret parents and students don’t fully understand these facts. (Although Maret’s Board, head, and the multiple real estate developers who spoke Monday all understand quite well.)

[Anonymous]

Does anybody know when the council will reach a decision? I hope it will be one that will rescind the deal. it would be nice if everybody could share the field, Hardy, Maret and Boys and girls club.