Reply to DCPS students shafted again - sign petition to keep Jelleff field public

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]The DCline article - and the beautiful analysis of the very ugly field situation on page 56 - underscores that this issue is much bigger than Jelleff and probably bigger than DPR. You have GU at Mason, Maret at Hardy, Howard at Banneker, far too many baseball fields, and also the mayor trying to use “emergency” powers to give away vital DCPS buildings to a wealthy and connected private school. All of these issues have not each themselves pissed enough people off for the mayor and others to care about, but if we roll them together, the equation starts to become more encouraging.[/quote]

The long-term view: in 1968, the height of the baby boom, the city had 148,000 DCPS students. Enrollment dropped every single year for 40 years and hit bottom in 2008 at less than half of that. The city had way too many school buildings and rec centers for the youth population, for decades. It didn't know what to do with those properties, it literally had trouble giving them away. For years they were happy to turn them over to anyone who could find a use for them. It's only in the past ten years that the youth population has started rebounding, and all of those deals are proving incredibly hard to unwind.

The short-term view: DPR permitting is a mess. They have over 100 fields and rec centers to allocate. They don't have the resources or the vision to do any sort of thoughtful allocation. The most they can do is just day "everyone gets what they got last year" and even that is a struggle. From DPR's perspective, if Maret goes then they have to figure out who gets Jelleff, which means weighing competing claims from Jelleff B&GC, Hardy, Walls, and perhaps others. Status quo is less work for them.[/quote]

Great observations.  Definitely it seems that “less work” is part of it.

And the long-term view makes sense.  But one question:  Why did DC spend $20 million on a new property at the bottom of the decline, especially when it couldn’t afford a fraction of that amount to renovate it to working condition (per Jack Evans)?[/quote]

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