This morning, I wrote a post about Mayor Adrian Fenty’s 11 school site redevelopment plan. Charter advocates charge that they didn’t get proper first dibs on the buildings for their own use. Well here’s my thing: There are just so many damn schools out there. In this one area—less than a square mile—there are seven. And its very possible that some old, not operating schools are missing from my list.

Why should all of these sites remain schools? With so many alternatives for parents already in the neighborhood, why shouldn’t these locations be developed into housing or something else?

So I haven’t quite mastered Google Maps yet…but here’s a rundown of schools noted above:

(1) Cardozo High School: 1300 Clifton Street N.W.
(2) Garrison Elementary School: 1200 S St N.W.
(3) Garnett Patterson Middle School: 2001 10th St N.W. (Soon to be closed.)
(4) Shaw Junior High School: 925 Rhode Island Ave N.W.
(5) Meyer Elementary School: 2501 11th St N.W. (To be fair, this is slightly north of the map; but I think the edge is touching.) (Closed)
(6) Grimke Elementary School: 1925 Vermont Ave, N.W. (This one is up for redevelopment.) (Closed)
(7) Cleveland Elementary School: 1825 8th St N.W.

In late December, Mayor Adrian Fenty announced that he would like to redevelop 11 former school sites. Today, we’ll start to take a look at the location and history of these schools. For a little insight (minus any sentimentalizing, as you’ll see), I’ve talked with Hayden Wetzel, archivist at the Sumner School Museum and Archives.

School: Backus Middle School
Address: 5171 S. Dakota Ave, Northeast
Neighborhood: Riggs Park
Closest Metro: Fort Totten on the red and the green line is roughly a third of a mile away from Backus Middle School.

History: Wetzel was the P.T.A president of Backus in the early 1990s, when his son attended the school. “It was one of these schools that started with a lot of hoopla, but quickly descended into mediocrity,” he says, recalling the institution’s history. “I’ve read that when it opened, it was going to be a model school.” But Wetzel learned from early Backus community members that “the bloom had worn off very quickly,” he says. At first, Backus “looked very beautiful, but it had just become another troubled D.C. school.” When Wetzel served, the school also “went to uniforms—but they very soon went back to normal. The P.T.A.—we designed what we thought were rather attractive and informal t-shirts with the Backus logo that were for sale at the school office. School uniforms were never really mandatory—having a rule which could not be enforced was very emblematic of the general rules of the school system, and how poorly things were thought out.”

Overhead:

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Since this is a housing and development blog, I would be remiss to not mention the biggest bit of development news that broke while I was gone last week. 

On Dec. 22, Mayor Adrian Fenty announced that he would like to redevelop 11 closed-school sites. Among them: Backus Middle School, Grimke Elementary School, Hine Junior High School, Langston School, M.M. Washington High School, Randle Highlands Elementary School (historic 1911 school building only), Rudolph Elementary School, Slater School, Slowe Elementary School (unoccupied portion), Stevens Elementary School, and Young Elementary School. 

A couple things struck me about this list.

• Michelle Rhee shut down 23 schools at the end of last year. This move upset people—but Rhee’s got workin’ her broom, and she’s making “sweeping” reform, and no one can stop her. So yeah: those schools are now no longer. But some of the schools on Fenty’s list closed down long before last summer. I visited many of the shuttered institutions in June for an article on school artifacts, school culture, nostalgia—the works. Grimke doesn’t ring a bell. Niether do some others. I put all the names that did in bold (up above). 

• Here’s one surprise on the list: Stevens Elementary School, located at 21st and L Streets, the alma mater of first daughter Amy Carter and Washington Post columnist Colby King, and a school with a rich history. Up until last year, it was the oldest operating D.C. public school (built in 1868). And it first opened as a school for freed slaves’ children. A lot of people fussed about preserving the structure and highlighting its past. I figured it would be handled with kid gloves (perhaps used as a community gathering center for meetings and cultural events), and not thrust out to developers so soon.  But alas, it appears I know little.

• Um, yeah, there are some prime locations here: Stevens Elementary School is in the heart of the West End. Hine Junior High School is on Capitol Hill right by the Eastern Market Metro Station.  Grimke Elementary School—which I have surely walked by countless times and still didn’t seem familiar—is close to the intersection of Vermont Avenue and U Street. Bring on the fancy, high ceiling condos (errr “lofts”)!