Reply to New school in Palisades

Forum Index » DC Public and Public Charter Schools

Reply to "New school in Palisades "

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous]Ruth Wattenburg’s msg after the vote. 
Just to note for those familiar with the trends in this area - stoddert is over capacity and key has 2 full grades in trailers. Clearly ward 3 is significantly more privileged than the rest of the city - but the previous plan for building a new school at hardy Rec were already due to this. The neighborhood will complain about traffic but no worse than gds being there

Hi All!
   You’ll be very happy to know: The DC Council voted this afternoon by 10-2 (plus one recusal) in favor of funding the purchase of the GDS campus! Many, many thanks to CM Cheh and Chairman Mendelson for shepherding this project through a difficult budget process--and to the Ward 3-Wilson Feeder Education Network, which was instrumental in getting the word out quickly to parent leaders across the ward and feeder system!  
And, special thanks to all of you, who responded to posts on the listserves and in my newsletter, with hundreds of emails that went to Councilmembers all night and all morning!  Someone called me from the beach this morning to see if there was still time to send an email (Yes, there was!).  Your very vivid personal stories of why this purchase was so badly needed were, I’m sure, part of why the vote ended up so lopsided in favor of the purchase. On behalf of all of our kids, thank you, thank you, thank you! 
      I also want to note: The schools in this area of the city are crowded, have been for a while, and relief is badly needed. This was truly a once-in-a generation-opportunity for DC to purchase a needed, turnkey building in an area where it was desperately needed, at a substantially lower cost than building from scratch. It does not solve all of our overcrowding problems, but it makes a substantial dent. For all of  these reasons, the Council was absolutely right to vote to make the purchase. But, it is also true that in other wards there are many schools that have still not been fully modernized. The statistic is that across the city (as of 2018), 65% of schools’ square footage had been fully modernized; and 35% had not been. Once Eaton is completed, 0% of the unmodernized footage will be in Ward 3.  In contrast, 3 out of the 5 middle schools in Wards 7 and 8 still have substandard mechanical systems (a real calamity with COVID), old science labs, and so on.  I hope that next year we can all advocate for a short, urgent timeline for getting every school finished!
It was really great working with everyone. Have a good night!

Ruth Wattenberg, [/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics