Meeting tomorrow nite on the state of DC public school buildings

From Jan Eichhorn, Ward Six Democrats:

Tom Sherwood of NBC/TV will moderate a panel that includes Kathy Patterson, the Chair of the DC Council's Committee on Education, Tommy Wells, the school board member serving Wards 5 and 6, and Jason Spooner of 21st Century School Fund. (Also, the Ward 6 Democrats are cosponsoring a forum in October on the proposed National Capital Medical Center at the DC General Hospital site.)

Come to our meeting tomorrow night to express your priorities! Tuesday, Sept. 27 at 7 p.m. at the Eastern Branch of the Boys and Girls Club, 261 17th St. SE (at Massachusetts Avenue).

Ms. Eichhorn goes on to say:

DC probably cannot use bonds to raise more funds to fix our schools because there are too many other major projects on the table ("the baseball stadium, the new convention center hotel and the hospital") and we must protect our bond rating. I was told that this weekend by a councilmember who also said he did not believe that fixing schools was a major issue to most DC residents.

Richard Layman replies:

Frankly, I think that if we think of the school system's mission as building the capacity and reality of the community's ability to learn, then citizens should demand that DCPS reconceptualize how buildings are utilized and how school facilities can better connect to community needs.

You might be interested in this blog entry from June (below) and I also recommend this website: New Schools Better Neighborhoods; although I don't think the issue is new schools as much as it is better schools. As a historic preservationist, I favor continued use of historic school buildings (see e.g., Historic Schools from the National Trust website).

Furthermore, you might also be interested in the developing People's Property Campaign, which is addressing how the District Government utilizes municipal assets, and current plans to declare various buildings "surplus" having "no further public use," which allows the buildings to be sold and removed from the asset portfolio held in trust for residents of the District of Columbia. Parisa Norouzi of EmpowerDC is one of the organizers of this campaign.

Monday, June 13, 2005, "Summer, Curfews, and Year-Round School"

An article in yesterday's Washington Times, "Summer times," talks about parental managing of children when school's out for the summer, which reminds me of something that I think we should seriously consider in DC: "year-round" schooling.

I thought this was something I wrote about in the blog before but I guess not (it was written elsewhere including in themail where Ted Knutson asks [themail, March 13]: “if youth crime goes up on days when the schools are closed for snow (or the prediction of snow)?”

How about being concerned about the reduction in opportunity to learn? One way to “reduce youth crime,” and more importantly to expand the community’s capacity to learn and grow, would be to expand the school year. If the average DC student starts off behind, let’s provide more time in school (N.B., I do understand that more of the same things not working isn’t necessarily better, but I have hopes that the curricular changes that are coming will be positive).

Suggestion One: how about a 210 or 220 day school year instead of 180 days? What better way to demonstrate DC’s commitment to K-12 education?

Suggestion Two: consider adopting a year-round school calendar. This could have at least three benefits, one that Ted would find of interest.

1) better utilization of school facilities that would require fewer school buildings overall;
2) elimination of the 2.5 month long summer break, which is a period where youth crime does increase; and
3) helping improve learning outcomes by reducing the time required for catch up and review in each subsequent year.

Also see "Community Education and Neighborhood Schools" from the Neighborhood Planning meta-site.

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Note that after I wrote this a couple weeks later I wrote about "positive deviance" and the case of successful schools in Brazil, and how they exceeded national high scoring averages by entering into family learning contracts, engaging the entire family in the student's plan for success at school.

Stalwart neighborhood activist and ex-teacher Rich Luna suggested that such parent involvement with students would go a long way towards changing the success paradigm in local schools. I will say that year-round school isn't literally year-round, but it does reduce the duration of each break off school to 3-4 weeks.