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The Washington Post
Schools for education
Allowing charters to use closed facilities is a welcome step by the
District.
Editorial
Monday, November 16, 2009
THE D.C. government has never been particularly generous when it comes to
making space for public charter schools. It grudgingly accepts applications
from charters hoping to acquire vacated school buildings but, more often
than not, opts to sell the properties to private developers or, worse, lets
the buildings rot. So it's important to celebrate when the city gets it
right -- as in the recent renovation of an old elementary school into an
incubator for fledgling charters.
Draper Elementary School on Wahler Place in Southeast closed at the end of
the 2008-09 school year. The facility will now serve as home to two new
public charter schools until they outgrow it. Achievement Preparatory
Academy Public Charter School is a middle school in its second year of
operation; National Collegiate Preparatory Public Charter High School is in
its first year.
The project comes courtesy of the D.C. Charter School Incubator Initiative,
a partnership between a nonprofit established by Sallie Mae and the D.C.
Office of the State Superintendent of Education to help charter schools find
appropriate and affordable space. The U.S. Department of Education is
helping to fund the Draper renovation.
Finding appropriate facilities is a struggle charters face nationwide. Many
end up crammed into church basements or take out expensive loans to turn
warehouses into school space. That's why the reuse of Draper to accommodate
up to 500 public charter school students is so significant. Think, for
instance, what would have happened to E.L. Haynes Public Charter School and
Capital City Public Charter School -- two of the city's highest-performing
schools -- if the initiative had been unable to give them space to operate
and grow. Look also at the promise already being shown at Achievement
Preparatory in boosting student performance. Test scores from 2007 show that
29 percent of students entering the school were proficient in reading and 35
percent were proficient in math; in the 2008-09 school year, 56 percent of
the students were proficient in reading, and 82 percent were proficient in
math. And, 83 percent of these students are economically disadvantaged.
There are six incubator sites in the city. Three are former schools that
Mayor Adrian M. Fenty agreed to make available. We hope that's a sign of a
new willingness by the city to make sure surplus schools are used for public
education by allowing charters to buy or lease them.
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The Washington Examiner
Rays of hope and joy for D.C. public school kids
By Harry Jaffe
Sunday, November 15, 2009
It's time to start thinking about public education in
Washington D.C. in a new light. Change is afoot, and the prospects for
students of all ages and places are brighter -- much brighter. School
Chancellor Michelle Rhee's wrenching reform is just beginning to have an
impact on classrooms and test scores, but judging from the unveiling of a
new charter school campus last Friday, students from the city's roughest
neighborhoods can hope for a decent, even stellar, education. Shantelle
Wright, founder and head of Achievement Preparatory Academy, told me she
wants to put the "J Factor" back in schools -- "J for joy." And her
students, all in uniform, sang and chanted and danced their joy -- at having
a clean, safe joyous place to learn. Their test scores are joyous, too. At
least three firsts took place at Draper Campus, in the far eastern edge of
the city, on this rainy chilly Friday morning. Mayor Adrian Fenty showed up
to cut the ribbon on a charter school. It was the first time he had given
such attention to a charter. The public and private coalition that has been
creating and funding the steady growth of charter schools was on public
display for the first time. Discovered for the first time that the city's
Office of State Superintendent of Education has been actively financing
charter schools. "It represents the bringing together of the pieces of the
puzzle we have not seen before," Tom Nida, chairman of the public charter
school board told me. The "pieces" spoke to an auditorium of students and
educators who had gathered to commemorate the opening of Draper. On hand
were Victor Reinoso, deputy mayor for education; Stefan Huh, director of the
Office of Public Charter School Financing and Support in OSSE and bankers.
The master of ceremonies was Joe Bruno, president of Building Hope, a
nonprofit funded by Sally Mae that has built and financed and coaxed 30
charter schools into being. Draper, once a run down school on a side street
in the infamous Congress Heights neighborhood, was reborn as a new home to
two charter schools, both the product of the "charter school incubation
initiative." The event was as uplifting as anything I've witnessed at
schools in D.C., but I could tell it was especially sweet for three people:
Tom Nida grew up a few blocks east on Southern Avenue and graduated from
Anacostia High. He's a tall banker who now lives in Virginia, but Draper's
in his 'hood. Marie Bibbs grew up in Congress Heights and graduated from
Ballou High in 1971. She's now an executive vice president of City First
Bank, which helped finance Draper. Shantelle Wright, founder and head of
Achievement Prep, grew up in a tough part of Rochester, New York. A lawyer
who came to D.C. in 1994, she dropped handling clients for teaching kids.
"It was time to quit complaining about schools and start doing something
about it," she says. "Too many children are stifled because of their zip
code." Not any more, at least for the kids at Draper.
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