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Advisory Neighborhood Commission 6A has long been on record opposing a new charter school at 138 12th St. NE. Some commissioners say the building is too small, and the surrounding streets are too narrow to accommodate such a school. There is not even space for a playground. The school does have growing support on the ANC, however – and tensions among commissioners over the issue are palpable.
The AppleTree Institute for Education Innovation has successfully gone through most of the necessary steps to open the school. The one remaining obstacle is getting approval from the Public Charter School Board. And some members on the ANC want to do whatever they can to stop that from happening.
But Commissioners Mary Beatty, Kelvin Robinson and, to a lesser extent, Raphael Marshall support the school’s location at 12th and Constitution. They didn’t like proposed language about the ANC “vigorously” opposing it.
Commissioner David Holmes says the city’s zoning laws weren’t updated to deal with charter schools until the ANC brought up the problems with this particular school. And the city has since made rulings that would prohibit the establishment of a school in a building that small. (They’ve also since codified the requirement to give proper notice to ANCs.) But AppleTree’s permit application was already pending when those rulings came down, so they’re grandfathered in. As Holmes says, “There will be no other cases like this in the city. This is the one off. And my district is stuck with the one off.”
Holmes says there are more appropriate locations in the immediate neighborhood – but AppleTree already owns this site, and, as one audience member put it, “They’re not just going to walk away from this property.”
Holmes acknowledges that though he wishes they’d “find a good place to put the school, they are determined to locate it there.”
As it happens, Commissioner Bill Schultheiss is a transportation engineer whose firm specializes in assessing the safety of school sites. And he’s dead set against AppleTree establishing a school in this location, especially because the school is planning to serve toddlers. “It’s 2- and 3-year-olds,” he says. “They won’t just be let out the door of the car and allowed to walk in. They need to be escorted into the building.”
“We’re talking about 60 to 90 individual students,” he says. “There is no safe way to do that” on narrow residential streets with no plan for parking.
He accuses AppleTree of waiting for “disaster to set in” and then getting the city to come in and restrict parking on the street to create a drop-off / pick-up zone for kids. “The most troubling aspect from a professional standpoint,” he says, “is that they have no interest in the safety of their students.”
But Beatty supports the school. “It offers an alternative to parents,” she says. She thinks it’s appropriate for neighbors to speak out individually, but not for the ANC itself to take a position before the Public Charter School Board. She said the concerns about traffic and density seems very “NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard)” to her, and she has no reason to doubt the school director’s assertion that he expects most children will be walked to school, rather than driven. Robinson also wondered what the ANC stood to gain by intervening. He, like Beatty, stressed his support for charter schools.
But the other commissioners underscored that they, too, support charter schools – just not at this location. “These people are giving charter schools a bad name,” said Schultheiss.
Members of the community spoke with passion on both sides of the issue. One referred to the thousands of community volunteer hours and an estimated $100,000 in legal fees associated with the almost 5-year-long battle against the establishment of the school. Another asked the ANC to continue being their “champions” to stop the school. But another didn’t understand the opposition and thought there must be some other underlying motive for the attempt to block the school.
‘Lawlessness’ on H Street
Marshall warned of increasing “lawlessness” on H Street, especially the 1300 block. There have been repeated incidents of violence at the H Street Martini Lounge (1236 H St. NE), including a recent knife fight, and, he says, at Sticky Rice (1224 H St. NE). “That block is getting out of hand,” Marshall says.
He wanted to know what the ANC’s role should be in enforcing voluntary agreements. “Everyone is doing whatever they want, leaving their doors open, playing loud music, bright lights.”
Chair Joe Fengler took the long view, saying that the ANC can document violations of the voluntary agreement (VA) and create a record that can be presented to the Alcoholic Beverage Control Board the next time an establishment tries to renew its liquor license. Marshall said two years is too long to wait to address the problem. Fengler acknowledged that H Street is going through some “growing pains” and that his residents are always complaining about crime.
Beatty, who chairs the Alcoholic Beverage Licensing Committee, said the owner of Martini Lounge would be coming to the next committee meeting to give his version of the recent incident.
Commissioner Nick Alberti had an idea that caught the attention of the other commissioners. He told them about a city program for “reimbursable detail” – the city pays half the cost of hiring police officers, and the bar covers the other half. He said H Street establishments can band together to share the cost. The ANC can’t force them, Alberti said, but it could “facilitate discussion amongst the owners” and let them know this might be a smart idea, before the ANC starts making complaints and “things get confrontational.”
Fengler noted that the current VA template the ANC uses doesn’t have a requirement for businesses to have a security plan. He suggested that the next round of voluntary agreements have a trigger of some kind, where if the bar has a certain number of incidents in a certain period, there would be some kind of action against them. |
