A new science-themed D.C. charter school plans to open its doors this fall across the street from a traditional school that serves the same grade levels and has the same academic focus, highlighting a lack of coordination that has drawn increasing scrutiny in recent months.
As charter schools flourish, they often are competing with neighborhood schools for the city’s students, and the two sectors barely communicate about their plans. The move by Harmony School of Excellence-D.C. into a building across the street from Langley Elementary came as a surprise even to Schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson, who learned about it on Twitter.
Henderson called Harmony’s move an inefficient use of taxpayer dollars and a sign of a choice that the city is going to have to make: Does the District want to plan for the coexistence of charter schools alongside a system of traditional neighborhood schools? Or does the city want to continue with a laissez-faire approach that Henderson said could give rise to a “cannibalistic environment” in which “somebody gets eaten”?
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1 comment:
Perhaps Kaya should look to the mirror for a solution. If DCPS did a good job of actually handing over closed DCPS facilities to charter schools (as the law instructs) then charters would move into them. Unfortunately DCPS does not do that, so charter schools are forced to lease facilities where they can find them. This is a DCPS problem of its own making.
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