Seeds -- Not SEED -- in Kingman Park

If you drive down Oklahoma Avenue NE in the District, you will notice a proliferation of green yard signs proclaiming opposition to a charter school in Kingman Park. A federally owned parcel along the Anacostia River, Kingman Park is part parking lot, part grassy river frontage. Although not entirely idyllic, the site has the potential to become an urban oasis. It is adjacent to Kingman Island, where the city has proposed building a wetland nature center. Residents have warmed up to this idea and want to extend it, greening the parking lot and developing an innovative river education facility. A more ecologically sound, educationally beneficial plan would be hard to find. Besides, it is what area residents want.

Some powerful interests have other ideas.

The School for Educational Evolution and Development (SEED) wants a fenced, 15-acre campus for 600 students, and it went to the mayor and Congress to get it. At the request of D.C. Mayor Tony Williams, Congress agreed to give the land to the District for use as a publicly funded boarding school -- and SEED is the only such school in the city.

SEED, which operates a 320-student boarding school in the District, receives ample public and private funding. It has spent more than $39.5 million in D.C. tax dollars to produce 41 graduates. And while the school boasts that all 41 have gone to college, what goes unsaid is that the graduation rate for entering seventh-graders is only 58.6 percent.

More serious than this profligate use of public money is the question of what happens to SEED students who don't make it to graduation day. The school has an unusually high rate of suspension and expulsion. Even more students voluntarily leave after several years, often without receiving a single Carnegie unit toward high school graduation. Former SEED students have reported feeling traumatized and needing treatment for depression.

Williams claims that if SEED is blocked, the site will become a mail-sorting facility. Legislation to that effect has not surfaced, and the mayor's statement seems calculated to force residents into an untenable "either-or" situation and to divert attention from the community's positive vision for the park.

Washington's children are too precious to be the subjects of a dangerous educational experiment. City residents have the right to create more livable communities by expanding green space. Kingman Park should not be allowed to go to SEED.

-- Lee Glazer

lives in Ward 6 and is co-founder of the Save Our Schools Coalition.

saveourschoolsdc@yahoo.com