Deputy Mayor for Education & Department of General Services Recommend Awarding Former Webb School to KIPP DC
Recommendation Asks Council to Award Surplus Building to Growing Public Charter School
(WASHINGTON, D.C.) – The Office of the Deputy Mayor for Education (DME) and the Department of General Services (DGS) will recommend to the D.C. Council of the District of Columbia to award the former Webb Elementary School at 1375 Mt. Olivet Road NE to KIPP DC Public Charter Schools. KIPP DC will operate three programs for Pre-K through 8th grade at the site, which is located in Ward 5.
“KIPP DC demonstrates everyday what great public schools can achieve. This is a strong recommendation, and I look forward to seeing what KIPP DC can accomplish at the Webb School,” said Mayor Vincent C. Gray. “My administration has made every effort to make vacant school buildings available to high-quality public charter schools. Despite a tragic fire that destroyed part of the building just a few months ago, we were able to move forward with a solicitation and now an award.”
“We are very excited to open our first campus in Northeast D.C. and to offer a high-quality education to an additional 1,000 students,” said KIPP DC Founder and CEO Susan Schaeffler. “Access to facilities has been the biggest barrier to our expansion efforts, so we are incredibly grateful for the chance to renovate and utilize the Webb Elementary School site.”
Currently, KIPP DC operates 10 programs at three locations in the District. A long-term lease of the Webb school will allow KIPP DC to expand its high-quality offerings to students and families across the city. KIPP DC's programs are ranked Tier 1 under the Public Charter School Board’s Performance Management Framework.
“Given the unfortunate circumstances after the fire, it was an incredible effort on the part of DGS to move forward with awarding the Webb School. I am grateful to DGS Director Brian Hanlon and his team for all of their efforts to reactivate this building,” Deputy Mayor for Education De’Shawn Wright said. “Webb is in an area of the District in need of high-quality public school options. Mayor Gray’s administration is committed to continuing to award vacant and surplus public school buildings to quality operators.”
DGS, in partnership with the Office of the Deputy Mayor for Education, released a solicitation for Webb Elementary in July 2012. DGS also recently released solicitations for the Young Elementary School and J.F. Cook Elementary School buildings and expects to award those in mid-November.
6 comments:
I don't get the correlation Robby pls explain
Per http://www.hessedu.com/project.php?ID=9 DC spent $30M rebuilding Wheatley Education Campus K-8 just like Kipp. As a tax payer I'm appalled that we would invest so much time and treasure in a building and then basically write it off as a failing school.
I'm not in the loop too much but last I heard Wheatley was steadily improving. Can anyone shed some info on that topic?
Wheatley has made amazing growth and improvements. They were highlight in DCPS for making some of the highest levels of growth on standardized testing. It is a disappointment to me that this KIPP charter is going up in the neighborhood because I am sure Wheatley is going to loose a lot of the population they have come so far with. I truly wish more efforts were being put into the public school system than all of these charters, especially KIPP. They are successful because they are able to keep the kids that will be successful and release the students they won't be successful with. The supports are not there for behavior challenges, ELL students or special education students. Public school face these challenges every day and are not able to pick and choose who we keep. This ends up making it so the public schools population are the challenging and "bad" kids or kids whose parents are not involved and KIPP keeps the high performers and children with involved families. The education system is very disappointing to me...where is the support to better the puic school system?
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