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

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]

The Community Working Group members who examined this for months and solicited hours of testimony and hundreds of pages of written submissions are nobody? Families in Foxhall who will finally have the neighborhood public school that every other neighborhood in DC has are nobody? Elementary school kids who walk 1.5 miles to get to school are nobody? 4th and 5th graders at Key being taught in “modular classrooms” are nobody? Kids who are forbidden to talk when eating lunch because their cafeteria is too small are nobody? Families across the city who would like to send their children to one of the high-performing Ward 3 elementaries but can’t because there are no out-of-boundary slots available are nobody? Families in Ward 3 who would like to send their 3 and 4 year olds to pre-K at a DCPS school but can’t because, again, there isn’t enough space to accommodate them are nobody? All of these people took this “idea” rather seriously. But to you, apparently, they are “nobody”.

You can claim you are being taken out of context but the context makes the same point less succinctly. The Foxhall ES building may not be the most aesthetically pleasing addition to the Foxhall neighborhood but it is the only proposal with funding, a timeline, and mayoral support that promises to solve the above problems (which maybe you don’t think are worth addressing). We all realize that projecting oneself as having a Midas touch that can magically achieve miraculous solutions to intractable problems is part and parcel with running for office, but your stance on the issue opens up a can of worms that threatens to derail the only chance on the horizon of resolving the worsening  overcrowding in our local schools.[/quote]

I don't mean this first part to be insulting, but did the CWG really think they did a good job? Didn't the members go to the community meetings, or read the comments submitted, or interact with anyone outside the Palisades?  I commend everyone who serves on these sorts of committees, but doing a job does not mean doing a good job.

It's not pandering to actually weigh trade-offs, which the CWG failed to do.  Ward 3 needs more schools, agreed.  If you live in the Palisades and are presented with the option of Foxhall you will support Foxhall.  I don't blame you.  But enough of the thinking your motives are high and pure.  Building a school at Foxhall with few kids nearby, then having to reach around the Ward to find kids to fill it is nonsensical.

Since you bring up having to walk 1.5 miles to school, check the CWG working group's estimate of the distance of the new school (via the only catchment that make sense to DCPS):
https://ibb.co/DQq60tn
The majority of the kids will be traveling a farther distance (186 &gt; 155)!  And this is with the CWG's dishonest estimate that Glover Park is a simple hike through the slop of Glover-Archbold Park.  The actual distance, via walkable roads (with no bus line), is 2.0 miles, not the 1.2 reported in that table.  Does your compassion extend to those children?  As I said, you have to confront trade-offs, not simply take what's best for your own children.  Frumin's suggestion of a small school at Foxhall, to serve those kids who are currently traveling far distances makes sense: it minimizes the kids who will have a much longer walk.

I realize this is a topic to make deserved fun of the FCCA, but shouldn't we laugh at the Palisades forcing out their grocery store?  Safeway wanted to build a nice mixed-use building on the spot with housing and a new grocery store, but the Palisades couldn't imagine that.  Now everyone has to drive for groceries.  Maybe everyone in the Palisades has a car and loves driving.  Some of us in other parts of the Ward don't.  To the extent we ignore the FCCA's complaints, we should ignore the Palisades praise.[/quote]

Foxhall and the Palisades are not really distinct neighborhoods. Anyone who lived in Foxhall and bought groceries, most probably bought them from Safeway. People from Foxhall post to the Palisades listserv and regularly comment on Palisades’ issues. The FCCA likes to pretend they represent the neighborhood but I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that the PCA has more members from Foxhall than they do.

And the people who opposed the proposed Safeway building did so for the exact same reasons that the FCCA opposed Foxhall ES (and may have indeed been many of the same people). That reason is some warped kind of nostalgia-driven NIMBYism harbored by those who want the neighborhood to never change and to remain the same way as it has for the past 50 years, mixed in with a very healthy dose of aggressive (albeit disguised) self-interest from those who benefit from the status quo from various reasons and don’t want that disturbed. It was the same carry on with the proposed Trolley Trail development.[/quote]

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