Why is the Foxhall Community Citizens Association scared of public school children?

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03/30/2021 21:42

Subject: Why is the Foxhall Community Citizens Association scared of public school children?

quote

Anonymous

In the heart of Foxhall Village - a bucolic neighborhood populated by faux-Tudor townhouses and hosting various members of the city's professional class - lies Hardy Park. Hardy Park has a couple of tennis courts, a soccer pitch, a playground, a recreation center, and a public school building, colloquially known as "Old Hardy". For the past ten years, the DC Government has leased the Old Hardy building out to The Lab School, a private school for children with learning disabilities that charges between $53,800 and $55,700 per year for tuition. The Old Hardy building hosts just 90 students from The Lab School, with the rest schooled at the main campus on Reservoir Rd..

The Lab School's lease for the Old Hardy building is (or was) due to expire in 2023. As the local public elementary school - Key Elementary - is at excess capacity (with 5th grade students taught in trailers), many local families and public school advocates were hoping for the Old Hardy building to be brought back into DCPS use. Much uproar therefore ensued when in early 2019 Mayor Bowser proposed that the city dispose itself of the building via "emergency" legislation (https://www.kohp.org/2019/03/06/mayor-bowser-sends-dc-council-emergency-legislation-to-dispose-of-old-hardy/; https://www.kohp.org/2019/04/02/anc-2e-passes-resolution-opposing-disposition-of-old-hardy-urging-action-on-wilson-feeder-crowding/; https://www.kohp.org/2019/03/28/anc-3e-votes-to-support-the-return-of-the-old-hardy-school-to-use-as-a-dcps-school/). The effort ultimately failed to garner the necessary Council votes, but not before the Foxhall Community Citizens Association (FCCA) - a mysterious group of characters in itself - sent a letter to the mayor endorsing the renewal of the Lab School's lease (https://www.kohp.org/2019/03/19/fcca-board-backs-lab-school-lease/). At a meeting to discuss the proposed letter, the then-President of the FCCA mentioned the FCCA Board's fear that, absent an extension of the lease, Old Hardy could be converted into a "homeless shelter" or "public high school".

With the renewal of the Old Hardy lease hanging in the balance, the FCCA then sought to make it unattractive for conversion to any other use by applying for the designation of the building as a "historic landmark" (https://planning.dc.gov/sites/default/files/dc/sites/op/publication/attachments/Rose%20Hardy%20School%20Nomination_0.pdf). As a result of this, furious lobbying by The Lab School, and goodness only knows what other considerations, the DC Government renews the lease until 2038 (https://www.kohp.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Old-Hardy-Lab-4th-Amendment-to-Lease-12.24.20.pdf). The contract stipulates that Lab School must pay base market rent at "fair market value" but allows The Lab School to select its own appraiser, allows said appraiser to base said base rent on a comparison with "similar properties used for similar purposes within the District of Columbia" (i.e., much less than what the property is worth given where it is located), and allows the appraiser to mark down the value based on its use at less than 50% capacity.

In the meantime, though, the law of unintended consequences has smacked the FCCA upside the head. Rather than giving Old Hardy back to DCPS as a means of relieving overcrowding in the Wilson feeder pattern, the Bowser administration instead programs funding for the construction of an entirely new elementary school ("Foxhall Elementary") adjacent to Old Hardy (https://www.kohp.org/2020/05/28/mayors-budget-proposal-includes-56-million-for-new-foxhall-elementary/). As planning proceeds, it appears that the new school may be sited on land currently used for a soccer pitch or a tennis court and, according to the FCCA at least, could host between 450 and 550 students. One of the proposed scenarios is a slide deck circulated by FCCA indicates that Foxhall Elementary may include a lottery preference for "at-risk students" (https://drive.google.com/file/d/1CXfjtqR4vfTVRhW2iZBpLjP6q7seYXB8/view).

The honest thing for the FCCA to do would be to own their screw-up. Bowser gave FCCA what it asked for by renewing the Old Hardy lease. However, this also resulted in the Foxhall community losing a chunk of its public park to solve the problem that would have otherwise been solved by not renewing that lease. Of course, FCCA opts not to admit to its vast incompetence but rather responds by launching an all-out attack on the Wilson Feeder Pattern, opposing the construction of this new public elementary school on the grounds that it would result in a "significant increase in traffic, congestion, and loss of parking, and the loss of much - if not all - of Hardy Park". It's a shame of course for everyone in the neighborhood that they hadn't considered such consequences before endorsing the renewal of the Old Hardy lease.

The FCCA is holding a meeting about Foxhall Elementary - and DCPS' acquisition of the GDS MacArthur campus - tomorrow (Wednesday, March 31) at 7pm on Zoom (link to the meeting is here: https://foxhall.org/) to which they have invited "ANC reps, Council member Mary Cheh, School Board member Ruth Wattenberg, and representatives from DCPS". In a newsletter circulated ahead of the meeting, the FCCA stresses the importance of not letting the "views of the FCCA community be misrepresented, dismissed, and belittled by out of area activists". Curiously, though, the newsletter indicates that the FCCA plans on barring the vast majority of the neighborhood from participating in the meeting in order to give said invited representatives a biased impression of community sentiment. According to the FCCA, you have to live on a particular set of streets they've identified in order to be "most impacted" by the alleviation of over-crowding in the Wilson Feeder Pattern. You just can't make this stuff up . . .

Please attend their meeting tomorrow and call them out.