Originally, the logic behind the public-private project (PPP) was that Janney Elementary School would receive more and better public facilities sooner if it partnered with a private developer and DCPL to redevelop the Wisconsin and Albemarle site. But as the RFP submissions indicated, the outcome is more likely to be fewer facilities later -- not only for the library, but for the school as well. In response to those submissions, the Janney LSRT (aka SIT) has attempted to draw a line in the sand -- it does not want to see more than 12,000 SF of Janney's land (the size of the teachers' parking lot) devoted to private development. But that position cedes too much.
1. The objective in undertaking this project shouldn't be "preservation of green space" but "provision of facilities." Just as Janney needs to double its interior instructional space to relieve overcrowding, so, too, does it need to expand its exterior programmatic space (PE field and playgrounds) to meet the need of its students as defined by DCPS's own educational specifications. Obviously, current specifications didn't exist when Janney was originally built, but DCPS's policy is to build to these specifications, where possible, whenever an older campus undergoes modernization. "Where possible" is the crucial qualifier here -- if a part of the campus is dedicated to another use (e.g. private residential development) prior to this renovation, "what's possible" changes. DCPS will work with whatever land is left over rather than the whole campus.
Even without a residential building in the mix, it will take careful planning to find a way to fit all of the requisite facilities on Janney's campus. Janney's entire lot is 3.29 acres and the exterior programmatic spaces called for in the ed specs would consume about 2 acres of land (not including buffers and passageways). The main school building is historic and it's set back from the street. This will probably mean that we can't raise the roof and we may not be able to build out toward Albemarle either. So the design challenge is to figure out how to put another building, approximately the size of the current one, on campus and still have 2 acres of usable land left over. To achieve this, existing land will have to be used more efficiently (e.g. the teacher's parking lot would not remain in its current form). Decrease the amount of land available (by devoting it to non-educational uses), and it will be physically impossible to provide all such facilities.
2. It doesn't make sense to compare what exists now to what a PPP will provide -- or to assume that the un- or under-utilized land on Janney's campus is surplus. It's land currently available (and necessary) for providing educational facilities. The relevant benchmark for assessing whether Janney is better off with a PPP is a DCPS renovation/expansion that uses the entire existing campus to meet current educational specifications.
3. Janney already has less land per student than 2/3 of all DCPS elementary schools. And that's before the school's capacity is increased to 550 students (approximately 65 more kids than are currently enrolled). It makes no sense to shrink the campus while expanding the student body.
4. Certainly, there are some DCPS elementary schools that are already worse off than Janney would be post-PPP. Most were built in the 19th century in already densely-populated areas like Capitol Hill, Dupont Circle, or downtown at a time when land was scarce and schools consisted primarily of large classrooms and desks. Do we want to turn back the clock or move forward?
5. There is, of course, one quite recent example of a land-starved DCPS elementary school campus. That's Oyster -- the product of a public-private partnership (with LCOR, in fact). The school lost over an acre of its land to an apartment building and, as a result, now has a tiny playground and no field or green space. What's more, Oyster was seriously overcrowded within two years of its reconstruction. Don't assume that DCPS won't enter into a PPP without ensuring that the project will meet the school's immediate and long-term facilities needs. History tells us otherwise and, thus far, DCPS has been only minimally engaged in this PPP process.
6. While Oyster was, arguably, the product of a desperate time that called for desperate measures, DCPS now has a dedicated funding source for school modernizations and a separate Office of Public Education Facilities Management, headed by Allen Lew who has an excellent track record on other facilities projects and who, in less than a year working with DCPS, has already achieved dramatic results. The city has the resources -- both financial and organizational -- to get this project done without sacrificing public land to private development.
7. Nor has DCPS demanded that other schools sacrifice land in order to merit remodernization. Key Elementary, in Palisades, was expanded and remodernized in 2003, at a time when it had only 200 students (vs. 485) on a campus that was almost as large as Janney's (3.17 acres) but the full campus was devoted to the school. Stoddert Elementary has twice as much land as Janney and half the students. Yet its excess land won't be devoted to apartments or condos -- instead, the city is using to build a rec center that will provide sports, arts, and performance space for the school as well as the community. Other successful schools in affluent parts of DC with more available land have not been required to give up part of their campus in order to secure the educational facilities to which they are entitled.
8. Those of you familiar with Lafayette Elementary's campus might also be reminded that, for some schools, campus size tells only part of the story. Adjacent location of recreational centers expands the sports and playground facilities available to the school. Our community's recreational facilities (at Fort Reno and Turtle Park) are too far away from Janney to serve as a resource for the school. That's why adequate playground and field space on campus is so important.
9. Janney's exterior facilities serve not only the school, but the community. In previous closures (e.g. of the old Hardy campus in Palisades), fields and playgrounds remained in the public domain even when the school building itself was leased and they remain in constant use by neighbors, sports clubs, other schools, etc. It would be ironic if the Council decided that the playground and sports facilities of underutilized schools now being closed could not be sold off but must revert to community use while simultaneously authorizing the sale or lease of land devoted to the same use at an overcrowded school. Yet that's where we're headed with this PPP.
10. Note that all of the comparisons made thus far have been to other DCPS elementary schools and to DCPS's own facilities standards. Thus the claim that people who want to preserve Janney's existing campus for educational use are unrealistic about what's possible in the city and/or have a suburban mentality is bunk. Janney's campus is just over 3 acres. When Montgomery County sets out to build a new elementary school, it looks for a 12 acre site. Even an older, close-in MoCo school like Bethesda Elementary has a 7.5 acre campus and serves 100 fewer students than Janney will post-expansion.
The argument that the site's proximity to a Metrorail station requires that it be devoted to high-density mixed-use development is equally disingenuous. First, the development adjacent to the Tenleytown station is already mixed-use -- residential, retail, office, and institutional uses are all represented in the immediate vicinity. And the block that houses Janney Elementary is already high-density -- there are 800 students and teachers there each weekday and 1000 parishioners each weekend. But, more importantly, if the policy objective is to decrease automobile-dependency by encouraging more people to live near public transit, then depriving Metro-accessible schools (and neighborhoods) of sports facilities and playgrounds is counterproductive. It tells families that the best way to ensure that their childrens' schools will have decent athletic and recreational facilities is to move away from transit hubs.
I've included a few google maps to illustrate what's at stake here. They're all set to the same scale for ease of comparison, but you can zoom in or out to study the sites.
Stoddert:
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Lafayette:
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Janney:
Remember that the Janney campus doesn't include the library building (upper right hand corner) and that the southern edge of the campus is sort of a lopsided V. To find the property line, start at the the driveway that runs between St. Ann's and the library and follow it down past the teachers' parking lot and then up again along the backyards of the neighboring houses on 42nd St.
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Oyster:
(The school is the square at the bottom left of the image; its playspace is along the top edge. The larger rectangle to its right was formerly campus land, but now belongs to a privately-owned corporate-suites type apartment building whose owners will soon enjoy a 20+ year property tax break because their PILOT was tied to the cost of repaying the school's construction bond rather than to the value of their own building.)
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