Reply to Shaw Middle School Community Meeting

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[quote=Anonymous]Dear Neighbors,

Come hear how our neighborhoods were left without a standalone middle school and what you can do to help get it back.

Bring your neighbors, friends, kids and dogs on Saturday, November 3, 2018 at 2:00 p.m. at the open-air amphitheater in front of the old Shaw Junior High School (Old City Farm & Garden, 925 Rhode Island Avenue, NW). Complimentary hot drinks and snacks will be served.

Time is of the essence as the DC Council is holding a public roundtable to discuss Shaw Middle School on November 15, 2018. We need the support of our entire community to ensure the 600 kids graduating into middle school from our neighborhood elementary schools by 2022 have a great standalone middle school to feed into.

A detailed history of how we were robbed of our middle school is below.

Great neighborhoods need great neighborhood schools. Thank you for raising your voice in support of our communities getting their standalone middle school back.

—The Save Shaw Middle School Committee

On Friday afternoon, October 26th, Mayor Bowser announced her administration’s intention to build a new Banneker High School on the site of the closed Shaw Junior High School at 925 Rhode Island Avenue, NW. This represents a major threat to the future of the Shaw neighborhood and a betrayal of needs of children and families in Shaw and adjacent neighborhoods.

The old Shaw Junior High School closed in 2008 when DCPS Chancellor Michelle Rhee consolidated Shaw and Garnet Patterson Middle School at Garnet-Patterson at 10th and V Streets, NW. The community successfully convinced Rhee and then Mayor Adrian Fenty to build the new school for the combined student bodies at the Shaw site, as Shaw offered recreation space, which Garnet Patterson did not.

$54 Million was budgeted for the construction of the new school during the administration of Mayor Vincent Gray. In 2014, the DCPS School Boundaries Final Implementation Plan identified a Center City Middle School as the receiving school for students from Cleveland, Garrison, Ross, Seaton, and Thomson Elementary Schools, with the Shaw site as the ideal location.

In the years since, students that should have been attending the new middle school have been forced to travel a mile or more to the Cardozo or Francis-Stevens Education Campuses, further than their parents have felt comfortable sending them. The lack of an in-boundary, walk-to public middle school option has forced many parents to move their children to charter and private schools, reducing the number of students in this age group at the more distant schools.

In 2015, the DC Council’s Committee on Education included a provision in DCPS’ budget that the agency perform a study of the middle school needs of the students in the feeder patterns intended to be served by the new middle school in Shaw. DCPS repeatedly refused to do so, claiming a lack of demand based on enrollment. But when Shaw Junior High School closed, it had 450 students attending, after a boundary realignment reduced that number from over 700. And all the elementary schools that would feed it have a growing enrollment.

In the Cleveland, Seaton, Thomson, Ross, and Garrison boundaries, there are currently 526 kids enrolled in public grades 6, 7, and 8. In 2022, this total is projected to be 584, but that number would likely increase if there were a new middle school serving those neighborhoods on the Shaw site.

In November 2017, when questioned about the status of the new middle school at an Advisory Neighborhood Commission 6E meeting, Mayor Muriel Bowser responded that she was looking for a public–private partnership that would build a mixed use project at the Shaw site, with the developer paying for the construction of the new school.

This spring, Ward 6 Councilmember Charles Allen and neighborhood leaders were advised that DCPS had for some time been exploring a variety of options for the future of Banneker High School, an application-based academic school housed in a historic building on Euclid Street, NW. Until that time, only Ward 1 stakeholders had been engaged in that process, which included hiring architects to prepare feasibility studies. Among the options being considered were several that would occupy part of the old Shaw Junior High School site. Shaw leaders reminded DCPS of the past unfulfilled promises to build a new middle school at the Shaw site, and requested that if a new Banneker were to be built there, that a middle school be included in the development of an education campus.

DCPS, in its traditionally opaque process, refused to consider any options that would include a new middle school on the Shaw site, leaving the Shaw community with no viable options for a future middle school, despite a decade of assurances from three mayoral administrations.

This issue goes beyond just the length of the walk to a different middle school. Neighborhood schools are an important part of a community’s identity. If DCPS is allowed to move forward with its plans unchallenged, Shaw and adjacent neighborhoods will become second-class neighborhoods, by virtue of having strong public elementary schools but no viable public middle school options. Parents and neighborhood residents will not be able to participate in the development and growth of their neighborhood middle school. Families will be forced to continue to shuttle their middle school-aged children to distant schools instead of being able to have their children walk a few blocks to a neighborhood in-boundary, matter-of-right school, like students in other major District neighborhoods are able to.

A decade and a half ago, DCPS schools in these neighborhoods were in such poor condition that families would move to the suburbs shortly after children were born, in order to ensure that the availability of high quality schools paid by their tax dollars. Some families stayed and fought for the reforms and renovations that have resulted in today’s vastly-improved neighborhood DCPS elementary schools. If DCPS is allowed to steal our neighborhood’s middle school future, Shaw and adjacent neighborhoods will be diminished forever.

WHAT CAN YOU DO TO HELP?

1)      Testify at a public roundtable on “The District of Columbia Public Schools’ Plans for Shaw Junior High School Campus and Benjamin Banneker Academic High School” being held by the DC Council’s Education Committee on Thursday, November 15, 2018 at 10:00 AM at the John A. Wilson Building, 1350 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, Room 500. You can register online at http://bit.do/educationhearings or call 202-724-8061 by 5:00 p.m. on Tuesday, November 13, 2018.

2)       Ask neighbors and friends to also register to testify.

3)      Ask your neighborhood association or Advisory Neighborhood Commission to take a written position on the need for a new middle school at the Shaw site.

4)      if you’re unable to testify in person, you can submit written statements by email to Ashley Strange, Committee Assistant, at astrange@dccouncil.us. or by postal mail to the Committee on Education, Council of the District of Columbia, John A. Wilson Building, 1350 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, Suite 116, Washington, DC 20004. The record will close at 5:00 p.m. on Thursday, November 29, 2018.

5)      Participate in a DCPS Shaw Area School Planning Update conference call on Monday, November 5, 2018 at 5:30 PM by calling 712-775-7031 ID: 679-371-217.

6)      If you’re willing to speak to media reporters about your support for a new middle school in Shaw, email padroanc@gmail.com or call 202-518-3794.

7)      Watch for announcements of neighborhood meetings and action alerts.

The future of our neighborhood schools depends on our taking action now. Even if your children don’t attend DC Public Schools, and even if you don’t have children, your voice will make a difference in our neighborhood’s future. Please act today![/quote]

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