Reply to Empower DC Releases Internal DCPS School Closure Emails

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Hello this is Daniel from Empower DC, we are a grassroots organizing group that has been working in the District for over 10 years now, our Education campaign focuses on working with DCPS parents to save and improve Public Education here in DC, we work primarily with parents of DCPS students (however many of the parents we work with have children in both public and charter)and one big piece of our work has been working to stop school closures, so as mentioned in the initial post we filed a lawsuit in 2013 to stop the school closures then Mayor Gray and Chancellor Henderson eventually carried out.

[b]Why are we releasing the emails? [/b] We are releasing these emails so folks can get a really good glimpse of how the school closure process worked internally at the DCPS central office.

[/quote]

Okay, I'll bite.  DCPS enrollment has been dropping for years, since around 1965.  The basic causes are obvious- general population shift to the suburbs, dropping family sizes, lower overall birthrates, etc.  The quality of education is probably connected also, with people leaving the city or going private because they felt like they couldn't get the education they wanted through DCPS.  This began well before charters even existed.  It continued with the introduction of charters, and in fact has now stopped, and DCPS enrollment is increasing by about 1% a year the last few years.  But the system was left with many, many more school buildings than necessary for the number of students.  What does your group suggest should have been done other than closing the schools?  A lot of these buildings had enrollments of half or less than the building was designed for.  Over many years that is millions and millions of dollars in wasted space and resources as specialists have to serve multiple schools, specialized programs can't get big enough to continue, etc.

So what else does your group suggest should have been done?  I ask honestly, as someone who has observed this process and glanced at the emails.  They look like a set of people struggling to deal with a complex question and competing interests.  Personally I thought the 2013 closure process seemed pretty fair and reasonable.  The outcome was unevenly distributed because of income inequality that DCPS has to deal with and can't do a whole lot about in the short term.  but I think it's unfair to blame DCPS for that.[/quote]

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