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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Hardy should just use Ellington field.  It is good enough for Georgetown University yet somehow beneath Hardy.[/quote]

Ellington controls Ellington field. Schools/teams can't just show up and play. Georgetown has a long standing agreement with Ellington to use the field at certain times.

From what I understand, Ellington didn't really want to manage the field. It didn't want to pick & choose among applicants, it didn't want to invest in the field's infrastructure, and it didn't want to manage scheduling. It was content to let the field sit empty, except when the DESA marching band has practice after school. Lots of different entities approached Ellington over the years to reserve the field but Ellington basically just never responded. [/quote]

There is a bigger narrative that this is all a part of.

This year DCPS made news when enrollment passed 51,000 students, a modern record. But in 1968 DCPS had 149,150 students. Fifty years ago DCPS was three times the size it is now. DCPS lost students every year from 1968 to 2008, forty years running. For most of the past fifty years the biggest facilities problem that DCPS faced was what to do with all the empty buildings, some of them literally couldn't be given away. The city also had too many libraries and rec centers. The bankruptcy of the Boys and Girls Club in 2008, which led to the city assuming their property, was also due to the collapse of the city's youth population.

During most of that time the city was happy to basically give away those properties to anyone who could find a use for them. The youth population started rebounding in 2008, and between 2008 and 2013 DCPS closed 24 schools, and only in the past few years has DCPS started coming close to having the right number of buildings and other facilities.

In that environment it raised no eyebrows that Ellington had literally an entire city block in one of the most expensive neighborhoods in the city that it used only for band practice a few hours a week. [/quote]

For a marching band in a school with no sports teams.  If that isn’t emblematic of the illogical waste in DCPS.... [/quote]

Why do you have to have sports teams in order to have a marching band. If that isn't emblematic of illogical thinking...[/quote]

It’s valued in the African-American community, which is in Ellington’s mission to serve.[/quote]

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