By Liane Scott, on December 29th, 2011 
River Terrace Students, courtesy DDOE
I just finished listening to the December 27 edition of the Latino Media Collective, a radio program that airs on WPFW every Wednesday night from 7:00 PM – 8:00 PM. This episode focuses on the city’s penchant for closing schools in neighborhoods that private developers have shown an interest in developing. River Terrace, a quiet, residential community along the Anacostia Waterfront, right across the river from long sought-after Kingman Island, is one such neighborhood. Despite loud and persistent objections from the residents, River Terrace Elementary School was the latest to make the school closure list.
Education advocate Alicia Rucker claims that you can predict when a school is going to be closed by the incremental withdrawal of attention and resources to the surrounding community by District government. She is concerned about her children’s school, Houston Elementary. River Terrace was at one time on the school modernization list, but with no explanation to the community, it was withdrawn. Houston Elementary has also been on the school modernization list, but because DCPS has become silent with regards to modernization plans, the school community speculates that Houston has been or shortly will be removed. One city official in the District’s Office of Facilities Planning has confirmed this, although no public announcement has yet been made. Will closure be next for Houston as well?
And then there’s the Illinois Facilities Fund Study. The Deputy Mayor for Education (De’Shawn Wright) hired the Illinois-based firm to evaluate the competing needs of charters and traditional public schools for DCPS space. Should we be concerned that the Illinois Facilities Fund is known for working with charter schools (often to the detriment of traditional public schools) or that the study was funded by the Walton Family Foundation (Wal-Mart)? Because the funding is private, IFF was chosen without any competition or public input.
How School Closures Hurt Our Community by the Latino Media Collective
All of these issues and more are covered in the above audio podcast. The show was co-hosted by Oscar Fernandez and Daniel del Pielago. Education activist Alicia Rucker was their in-studio guest and Diana Onley-Campbell joined them on the phone. If you think school closings ended in DCPS when Michelle Rhee left, you’re wrong. If you think school closings are good for DC’s historically Black communities or for DCPS students, then this program should prove enlightening.
By Liane Scott, on December 9th, 2011 In 2010, during Michelle Rhee’s tenure as DCPS school chancellor, the District government promised the parents, students and staff of Bruce Monroe Elementary School as well as the surrounding community that if they tore the building down they would rebuild the school on the same spot. Long story short, the building is down but the new one hasn’t been built. All those Bruce Monroe stakeholders are still wondering what’s up? After all, when you say you’re gonna do a thing, integrity demands that you make your best effort.
Despite the ethical challenges facing our elected officials, parents continue to attend and testify at public hearings regarding the school. The latest hearing in which Bruce Monroe was mentioned was in March of 2011. Although Grassroots Media Project radio producer Rachel Estabrook put this audio segment together way back then, I’m just now getting around to posting it. (My apologies. )
Bruce Monroe Follow Up
To join the campaign to rebuild Bruce Monroe contact Daniel del Pielago at (202) 234-9119 ext. 104 or Daniel@empowerdc.org.
In the above audio segment, you will hear a number of parents testify about their continued frustrations over unfulfilled promises and problems with Parkview Elementary, the school their children are now attending. One of those parents is Sequnely Gray, Empower DC’s childcare organizer. She is all too familiar with the Bruce Monroe saga seeing as how three of her children attended Bruce Monroe before it was demolished. I asked her to chronicle a brief history of the organizing efforts of the Parents and Friends of Bruce Monroe. Her response, which I think is an inspiring example of community leadeship in the face of a city hall that , follows:
For the past ten years the friends, teachers, parents and staff of Bruce Monroe have fought continuously to insure that our children receive a quality education as well as a beautiful, safe and healthy environment for them to succeed in. In 2008, we were informed by the Washington Post that Bruce Monroe elementary school would be closed for good.
At that moment parents, staff and teachers rallied together with the help of Teaching for Change to advocate for our children’s school. We advocated for closed classrooms and new windows. The parents, staff and community members got together and reached out to some businesses in our community. As a result of our efforts, we received a generous donation of $1 million dollars from Target to build a 21st century, state of the art library and the whole east side of the school remodeled, including new walls and new windows.
Several months later we meet with Ward 1 councilmember Jim Graham, Mayor Adrian Fenty, and newly appointed DC Public Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee. They each stated that we didn’t need to beg and plead for a new facility for our children because this is what they should have and the only way to get it was to relocate to Parkview Elementary School on Warder Street NW. They promised that a new Bruce Monroe Elementary School would be built by the fall of 2011 under a public/private partnership. The parents were excited to find out that the school would not be closed. We rallied once again, knocking on doors and passing out flyers to make sure the community knew that [even though the old Bruce Monroe would be demolished a new state-of-the-art Bruce Monroe was still going to be built and opened] was still going to be opened.
For the 2008/2009 school year, we relocated to Parkview Elementary on Warder Street NW. The conditions of that building were very poor; poorer than they were at Bruce Monroe. In the summer of 2009, the parents, community members and the staff formed a SIT team to work in partnership with DCPS to develop plans for the rebuild of Bruce Monroe. We meet 2 or 3 times but after that we heard nothing from the city officials. We tried to contact and schedule meetings with Mayor Fenty and Michelle Rhee but we got no response.
While trying to figure out who to talk to next about the rebuild of the school, we decided that we needed help advocating for this property that had been stolen from us and to inform the community of what DC Government was doing behind our backs. With the help of Ms. Dyana Forester, we were connected with Empower DC.
Empower DC held trainings and facilitated meetings with the parents, staff and community members to build leadership and to help . . . → Read More: Bruce Monroe at Parkview: A Story of Promises Unfulfilled
By Liane Scott, on October 8th, 2011 
DCPS student Quintess Bond has produced a digital story that anyone who has a child in school should see. I’ve posted it here along with her introduction below. Enjoy.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5gMUou3dZK4
“I am a senior at School Without Walls Senior High in Washington, DC. S.W.W. happens to be recognized as the top public school in the area with a 100% graduation rate, 100% 4-year college acceptance rate, and 100% reading and math proficiency rate amongst it 500+ students. It is among three public high schools in the DC area that has won the National Blue Ribbon title, and is acknowledged as one of the top schools in the Nation.
With that being said, my story tells the experience as I arrive to this school. As I explained, my experience was not always the best because of the pressure I felt from my mom to be perfect, academically. This story is not to bash my mom for being a so-called ‘tiger mom,’ but to show the vital role my mom plays in my success. My parents, from the beginning, set a strong foundation for me in education and have high expectations for my brother and me; I am blessed to have parents that care.
Personally, I see parents’ lack of concern for their children’s education a problem. School Without Walls has strong parental involvement compared to that of other schools in the District. Academically, those schools with higher parental involvement tend to do better. So this is for parents who just don’t understand how much their concern can change their child’s life.”
By Liane Scott, on November 12th, 2010 
Have you ever heard the phrase, “if you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu?” The Parents and Friends of Bruce Monroe Elementary School thought they were at the table when former School Chancellor Michelle Rhee and soon to be former Mayor Adrian Fenty promised that the school would be rebuilt by the fall of 2011. They sent their children off to Parkview Elementary School on Warder Street NW, out of the site of hungry developers and the passing traffic that helps keeps crime on Georgia Avenue at bay.
While test scores dropped and rodents infested the cafeteria, the $20.3 million allegedly put aside to help rebuild the school seemingly disappeared. The city did manage to come up with $2 million to construct an interim-use park on the site, so as not to remind the community that they don’t have the school they were promised. The first request for proposals that the city put out didn’t garner any serious takers now that Georgia Avenue doesn’t look like the developers dream that it was before the recession. And the latest RFP requires that developers submit two proposals, one for a school with commercial elements and one for commercial development only. No school included. Our presumptive mayor Vincent Gray has gone from saying that the promise made to the Bruce Monroe parents was a “cruel joke,” to “we can only afford one school,” meaning either Bruce Monroe or Parkview.
On August 10th, when the city planned to present this new RFP to developers, the Parents and Friends of Bruce Monroe Elementary School, were not invited to the table, as is blatantly clear in the video posted above. But being unwilling to be eaten alive, they showed up in force anyway.
Having community members show up at a meeting that was clearly meant for developers only may help to keep the Bruce Monroe site in the hands of the city’s residents. The Parents and Friends of Bruce Monroe Elementary School are scheduled to meet with Mayor Elect Gray, Ward One Councilmember Jim Graham and Council Chair Kwame Brown on Tuesday November 16. At the Ward One Town Hall meeting, Vince Gray expressed his appreciation for the activism of the Bruce Monroe community and claimed to be an activist himself. Next week will tell us whether he’s also willing to give them a meaningful position at the negotiating table.
To get involved in the Campaign to Rebuild Bruce Monroe, contact Empower DC’s education organizer Daniel Del Pialago at Daniel@empowerdc.org.
By Liane Scott, on October 8th, 2010 
Often times I feel that the progressive movement in DC is getting nowhere. I’ll make the mistake of reading the comments following some article that actually pertains to community organizing on DCist or the City Paper site and I am sickened by the classism and thinly veiled racism there. Spend too much time wading through DC’s blogosphere and one can start to believe that the gentrifiers are the only people whose opinions matter in this town. By contrast, last night’s Organizing for Post Election Accountability Empowerment Circle was heartening.
DC Rapper Head-Roc performs Change In America.
We discussed the record of the soon to be previous mayor Adrian Fenty. He and the city council did many things that the community didn’t appreciate in the last four years. In many ways, the city is not better off. We are not better off without Franklin Shelter, or the 23 neighborhood schools that were closed down, or the 13 early childhood and out of school time programs that were shuttered at Parks and Recreation Centers in wards 6, 7 and 8. But none of those things were taken away without a fight.
Hundreds of homeless and homeless advocates protested in Franklin Square, testified before the city council and won emergency legislation to keep the shelter open. Mayor Fenty ignored the emergency legislation, and the city council that enacted it did not sue the Fenty Administration for flouting the law, but the activists did. The fight to reopen Franklin Shelter continues. On Friday, October 8, the federal courts will hear the case. Go to Reopen Franklin Shelter Now for the latest updates.
Under Mayor Fenty, schools chancellor Michelle Rhee managed to close down 23 neighborhood schools that were supposedly under-enrolled and/or under-performing. As it turns out, some were and some weren’t. She fired 266 teachers and support staff due to a shortfall in the budget that turned out to be some kind of accounting error. And she fired or forced to retire dozens of beloved and committed school principals. But none of this came without a price.
After rallies, demonstrations, school walkouts and many, many lawsuits over illegal terminations, alleged warrior woman Michelle Rhee’s days are numbered. Parents from Bruce Monroe Elementary School, which was closed with the promise that a new school would be rebuilt on the site, have continued to pressure the Fenty Administration, the city council and even the developers who’ve shown an interest in building commercial property on the site. So far as the parents are concerned, the school will be rebuilt as promised. The plan to turn Hardy Elementary School in Georgetown, a high performing feeder school that caters to children from every ward in the District, into a neighborhood school that serves only the wealthy and mostly white students from Georgetown, has also met stiff opposition. For developments on opposition to school reform without community input, check out long time DCPS advocate Candi Peterson’s blog The Washington Teacher.
While we are still waiting to hear the outcomes of the lawsuits on behalf of those Park and Recreation employees who staffed the early childhood programs in Wards 6, 7 & 8, before they were closed down, another lawsuit was won outright.
Remember the checkpoints in Trinidad? In the summer of 2008, the Northeast DC neighborhood began to take on the feeling of a police state, as motorists were stopped and asked to provide ID and prove that they had a “legitimate” reason to be in the neighborhood. Those checkpoints are gone now. Why? That would be because the Partnership for Civil Justice sued the District on behalf of four activists who simply refused to accept the infringements on their rights. You can read the details in the Washington Post article Federal Court Says D.C. Police Checkpoints Were Unconstitutional.
The point of all this and the Empowerment Circle that reminded me of these events is that organizing works. We have held Mayor Fenty accountable by firing him. Although the city council, complicit in the above crimes against the community, has not been held accountable, half of them will be up for re-election again in 2012. We’ve all agreed that we can expect little better treatment from presumptive mayor Vincent Gray, but we’re not going to wait for him and the council to disappoint us as many did with Mayor Fenty. Holding our elected official accountable is a process that must be consistent and ongoing.
To that end, Empower DC has planned a series of events designed . . . → Read More: Post Election Accountability and The Empower DC Outreach Tour
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