A local grassroots organization is preparing to sue DC Public School Chancellor Kaya Henderson over her plan to shut down 15 DC Public Schools.
Daniel del Pielago, education organizer at Empower said his group will submit the lawsuit within the next couple of weeks seeking to block Henderson’s plan of closing down the schools.
“Using closures and all of this instability, it actually blocks us from looking at the task at hand, which is educating our young people,” said del Pielago.
Henderson proposed to close down 15 additional public schools in the southeast quadrant of Washington. This is in addition to the 23 closed in 2008 by former Chancellor Michelle Rhee.
During the earlier closures, Mary Church Terrell Elementary School and McGogney Elementary School merged creating Mary Church Terrell/McGogney School. This merged elementary school is on the list to close in July of this year.
D.C. City Council member David Catania, who chairs the council’s education committee has expressed concern that the public school system is shrinking because parents are moving their children to charter schools.
“I believe that we are within a year or two of hitting an irreversible tipping point,” Catania said at a recent hearing on the planned closures. He said if the public school system did not start doing a better job of marketing itself and competing with the charter schools “traditional public schools, as we know them, will become a thing of the past.”
Opponents worry that closing down public schools will result in crowding at the remaining schools. The closures will affect more than 2,400 students and 540 employees. Charter schools, which work on a lottery pull, will leave those who are not chosen searching for a school to attend.
This will cause higher transportation costs for parents if they are unable to find a nearby school and if transportation is not offered by a more distant school.
“So while the resources are being saved by closing these schools, we want to see the resources put in the existing schools that are still open,” said Council member Yvette Alexander as reported by ABC 7 news.
Four of the 15 schools to be closed are in Ward 7: Ron Brown Middle School, Kenliworth Elementary, Davis Elementary, and Winston Education Campus.
Henderson says that the closing of half-empty schools will allow her to use the school system’s resources efficiently. But opponents doubt those claims.
“Those schools closures haven’t resulted in better education outcomes; [they] haven’t saved our city or taxpayers any money, yet, the city and the school system continue to do the same thing in the name of working to better the public schools,” said del Pielago.
Del Pielago considers the action to continue to close down public schools “discriminatory.” Public schools in Wards 5, 7, and 8 have a high concentration of minority children, and in affecting these students, there have been no tangible benefits to the students or their families.
“What we are trying to attack is the systemic nature of all of this,” del Pielago said. “So what we’re trying to bring attention to, and we’ve done so [is the fact that] this is a cycle.”
