The Current
Development plans a sham at Stevens
by Robert Cane
“The Stevens school has an incredible history,” says newly appointed City Administrator Neil Albert. Yet Mr. Albert has decided not to honor that history by making education part of this historic public school building’s future, as it was in its past.
The Stevens school building was the first school for freed slave children in the District. Now, this historic school building is slated to join the many other D.C. public school buildings that have been sold by the District government to private developers. In accordance with D.C. law — which states that public charter schools have the right to negotiate to buy or lease surplus public school buildings before private developers can — no fewer than four D.C. public charter schools made bids on Stevens. All were ignored by the government.
Firmly in the tradition of the old Stevens school, D.C.’s public charter schools are educating children from some of the city’s most vulnerable communities. With higher shares of African-American and economically disadvantaged
students than in the city-run schools, charters ensure that when their students reach middle and high school they are nearly twice as likely to be proficient in reading and math as their peers in regular D.C. publicschools.
Increasingly popular with parents, public charter schools educate 36 percent of District public school children. Taxpayer-funded like regular public schools, open to all and tuition-free, charters receive only half as much school building funding per student as does the D.C. Public Schools. And while the school system pays nothing to acquire its buildings, charters must use this fundingto buy or lease their space. Because the government favors developers over public charter school children, many are in unsuitable facilities.
D.C. law says that the city government must negotiate in good faith with charters to buy or lease surplus school buildings before hawking them on the open market. There are many such buildings in the District, but the government permits few of them to be acquired by public charter schools, ignoring its legal and moral responsibilities to D.C. public school children whose parents happened to choose to put them in public charter schools.
This tradition is far less honorable than that which the Stevens school represents.