Civic group wants Winston site for an application school
Three high-performing charter schools have submitted bids for the former Winston school in Ward 7. But a local community organization is urging DCPS to use the building to establish the first application-only middle or high school east of the Anacostia River.
The Martha H. Winston Elementary School. All photos by the author.
It’s difficult to predict what the Department of General Services will do with the former Martha H. Winston Elementary School in the Hillcrest neighborhood, given that 3 charter schools have applied for the site. In contrast, the Young and Hamilton schools, which were awarded to charters last month, drew only one bid for each property. Now yet another proposal for Winston has emerged. The Hillcrest Community Civic Association (HCCA) says that although it supports the concept of charter schools, it believes that Winston would be “a prime location” for a DCPS application-only school. Of the 3 charter school applicants, only DC Prep proposes to include a middle school as part of a pre-K-8th grade program at Winston. Rocketship Education and Eagle Academy would focus on pre-K through 5th grade or simply elementary school programs. It’s possible that a decision on the Winston school will be made public very soon. At the annual DC Association of Chartered Public Schools meeting on Tuesday, Deputy Mayor for Education Abigail Smith said that two school dispositions would be announced later this week or next, presumably referring to Winston and another former DCPS school, Shaed. Need for extensive renovation It’s surprising that this particular building has drawn so much interest. As the HCCA acknowledges, the nearly windowless school will need to undergo significant renovation to make it an attractive option for local families. Public charter schools often have fundraising resources that allow them to finance such projects. But it’s not clear that the District would invest the money necessary for an extensive renovation of the building, especially when officials are still attempting to reduce building costs by excessing unused and underused school buildings. Unlike Dunbar High School, which DCPS recently spent $122 million to rebuild, Winston is neither centrally located nor particularly accessible by Metro. The building is nearly a mile from the Naylor Road Metro station, across the District boundary in Maryland, and there are only a few bus lines nearby. The HCCA says in its proposal that it is “not fixed” on Winston as the appropriate location for an application-only school. Its more general point is that there’s an imbalance between the location of charter schools and the location of students in the District. Students crossing the river The HCCA points out that the 6 competitive DCPS application schools are all in Wards 1, 2 and 5: Benjamin Banneker High School, Columbia Heights Education Center, Ellington School of the Arts, Phelps Architecture Construction and Engineering High School, School Without Walls Senior High School, and McKinley Technology High School. Of these schools, only one, Columbia Heights EC, includes a middle school. The HCCA also notes that, as of 2010, 39% of the District’s students lived in Wards 7 and 8. Ward 2, which has two application schools, had only 4% of the District’s students. Ward 1 and Ward 5, each of which also has two application schools, had 9% and 12% of the students, respectively. According to data collected by HCCA from DCPS profiles, parents in Wards 7 and 8 are sending their students to application-only schools across the Anacostia in large numbers. Phelps, in Ward 5, draws 53% of its students from Wards 7 and 8, and 3 other schools—Banneker, Ellington, and McKinley—each draw over 30%. The HCCA says that enrollment trends in middle and high schools in Wards 7 and 8 have generally been flat or declining:
Source for both charts: Hillcrest Community Civic Association proposal.
In contrast, enrollment rates at DCPS application schools have been rising: