Pledging oversight on crowded Ward 3 schools, Mendelson comes out against council vote on old Hardy site without public hearing

Facing a group of outraged education activists, DC Council Chairman Phil Mendelson this week criticized the mayor for submitting emergency legislation to extend a private school’s lease of a District-owned site many want converted into a public school. If scheduled for a vote, the emergency bill would offer no chance for a public hearing on the contentious topic prior to council action.

But Mendelson stopped short of lending support for creating a new public education campus at the old Hardy school site at 1550 Foxhall Road NW, currently occupied by The Lab School, which serves students who need learning accommodations. Instead, he repeatedly said he would like a hearing on the permanent version of the mayor’s proposed legislation, adding that he’s reluctant to evict The Lab School.

“I’m of the view that we should not act as an emergency, but that we should have a hearing on it,” Mendelson said. “I have been supportive of that disposition. … But I think that there should be an opportunity for comment.”

The future of the old Hardy school has become a charged debate amid severe overcrowding in recent years at Ward 3 public schools, and the issue recently spawned a new group called Keep Old Hardy Public. Many parents and residents have urged the city to consider establishing a public school at the site to ease enrollment pressures at nearby elementary schools. Others who don’t foresee the site handling a full-size elementary school believe the building could be used as an early education facility or for another public school use.

In a March 6 letter to colleagues, Ward 3 Council member Mary Cheh denounced Mayor Muriel Bowser’s proposal to dispose of the property and extend Lab’s lease beyond 2023.

Bowser simultaneously introduced emergency legislation and an identical permanent bill. The emergency version can pass the DC Council with nine votes without a committee hearing, while residents would be able to testify on non-emergency legislation.

On Wednesday, at-large Council member David Grosso, who chairs the Education Committee, announced he opposes consideration of the bill as an emergency measure. “Councilmember Grosso opposes moving the legislation without a public hearing,” his spokesperson wrote in an email on Thursday. Council member Elissa Silverman’s office also said she opposes the emergency — one vote away from preventing passage without prior review by the Committee on Business and Economic Development, where the permanent version was referred.

At Monday’s meeting of the Ward 3-Wilson Feeder Education Network at the Tenley-Friendship Neighborhood Library, several residents made impassioned pleas to Mendelson.

Nick Keenan, a Palisades resident, noted that Lab’s elementary division moved to the building in 2008, signing successive five-year leases. (The school’s main campus at 4759 Reservoir Road NW serves middle and high school students.) He said at the meeting that the District has no permanent commitment to The Lab School, which serves students with language-based learning differences.

Fewer than 100 of the Lab School’s 400-plus students live in the District.

“My question is, Why are we putting the DC children last?” Keenan said.

After a pause, Mendelson said that he would prefer to not displace Lab from the site, which housed a public DC school from 1933 to 1996 before being leased to a series of private schools. He added old Hardy might not offer the best solution for addressing overcrowding anyway.

“What I’m hearing implicit in your question is we should help DC students by kicking The Lab School out, and I don’t think that is the only answer,” Mendelson said.

Jack Wells, a member of the Palisades Citizens Association, interjected, saying the school could serve the same students from a campus in Montgomery County or Northern Virginia. “They don’t have to be in Ward 3, where we have so few physical resources available to educate children,” he told Mendelson.

Neighborhood schools stretched beyond capacity

Mendelson’s appearance came after a report last month that recommended the District build two new elementary schools, a new middle school, and a new high school to deal with projected growth. Completed by the Wilson High School Feeder Pattern Community Working Group, the report said eight schools that feed into Wilson High are currently “exceeding permanent capacity.”

Its recommendations include using the old Hardy building and levying fees on developers to fund school upgrades; a suggestion for merging Hardy Middle School and Deal Middle School to ease overcrowding at the latter wasn’t deemed viable by most of the working group. (Hardy Middle School kept its name when it moved from Foxhall Road to its current site on Wisconsin Avenue, which is why the Foxhall campus is known as “old Hardy.”)

“I think it’s legitimate to say that the problem of enrollment increase is more urgent — more urgent than we are recognizing,” Mendelson said at Monday’s meeting. “But I don’t think that you can point to any solution that’s going to solve the problem as quickly as the urgency [requires].”

He said that the enrollment crunch requires the District to consider “more urgent” solutions to address overcrowding in the near term — though he didn’t specify concrete solutions.

He said the council’s Committee of the Whole — which shares jurisdiction over DC Public Schools with the Education Committee — will engage in deeper oversight of the issue. At one point, Mendelson pledged to fully fund schools such as Wilson High in Tenleytown, where critics say the mayor’s funding falls short due to growing annual enrollment.

In view of current overcrowding and temporary classrooms at several Ward 3 campuses, one resident urged that officials address the school-related ramifications while implementing the mayor’s plan to address the shortage of affordable housing by adding 36,000 new units across DC over the next six years. New units in Ward 3 could mean even more families would enter neighborhood schools, and advocates noted that the DC Public Education Master Facilities Plan already projects an increase of roughly 2,500 students at Wilson feeder schools.  

Horace Mann Elementary School in Wesley Heights is at 108 percent capacity, as are Deal and Wilson, according to statistics in the working group’s report. In Cleveland Park, John Eaton Elementary, which is slated to be modernized by the 2021-22 school year, is operating at 123 percent capacity, the report said.

“It’s clear that there is an enrollment crisis, and there’s not an easy answer to it,” Mendelson said at the meeting.

The council chairman also offered candid assessments of mayoral control of schools. With the council’s approval, then-Mayor Adrian Fenty in 2007 controversially stripped the elected education board of much of its authority, taking management of public schools under his administration.

Mendelson voted as a council member against Fenty’s proposal, and he said this week that the existing system isn’t “perfect.” He believes the Office of the State Superintendent for Education should have greater autonomy. But he’s reluctant to revisit the governance model.

“It was a lot of BS that we got in 2007, but … if we were to actually look at restructuring, a lot of capital would be spent on that and basically we would waste another two to three years,” he said.

Residents press Mendelson on old Hardy, new facilities

Discussion of the overcrowding issue and the fate of the old Hardy site continued after the meeting disbanded, with a Spring Valley resident making clear that not everyone wants the Lab School to leave. Mike Tongour, the father of a ninth-grader at the Lab School, told Mendelson that he’s concerned that he and other supporters aren’t getting enough attention in the debate. Mendelson agreed.

“I support Lab School because it has been a lifesaver for my child, who has a variety of disabilities — learning differences, as we would call it,” he told The DC Line.

Supporters of making the old Hardy school public also followed up with Mendelson, engaging him in conversation on the sidewalk just outside the library for more than 20 minutes.

Wells referenced a list he had compiled of financial contributions made to public officials from members of The Lab School’s board, arguing the money has won it influence over lawmakers and the mayor.

“I think that’s too simplistic,” Mendelson replied.

Brian Doyle, the co-chair of the Ward 3-Wilson Feeder Education Network, referred to the recent working group’s recommendations. “I think you need to find four sites and build four schools,” he told Mendelson.

“I don’t see how that’s going to happen,” Mendelson said.

This post has been updated to clarify references to concerns about enrollment growth resulting from the construction of additional housing and to a suggestion for merging Deal and Hardy middle schools.