This Is No Time to Be Timid

Three years into Washington's experiment with charter schools, after they had sucked away 15 percent of the students from regular public schools, I asked then-Superintendent Paul Vance what he had changed to compete with the charters.

His one-word answer: "Nothing."

Seven years later, enrollment in the D.C. public school system has dwindled to the point that half its buildings are underused, and the new superintendent, Clifford Janey, is doing something: Yesterday, he announced the shuttering of six schools, with lots more to come in the next two years.

This is not exactly the robust competition that boosters of charter schools had in mind. The idea, courtesy of conservatives who view America as one vast retail mall, was to model school choice after a supermarket: Build better brands, and the old brands will improve themselves to keep their customers.

But schools aren't boxes of cereal. Parents who had the gumption to find a good charter pulled their kids out of the regular D.C. public schools, leaving behind many of the children who are most difficult to serve.

Now, with 3 million square feet of excess space in a city that hungers for somewhere to put new housing and businesses, the school system would seem to be sitting pretty. Surely, it could sell off its excess space and use the money to bring other sorry buildings into the 21st century, or at least the 20th.

Alas, yesterday's announcement heralded the most timid possible approach. "No condominiums," Janey promised. He wants to use the schools he's closing for city offices and social services -- worthy ideals, to be sure, but nothing that would give kids a substantially better education.

Janey's plan for this fall would also open space for seven charters in other D.C. school buildings. The new public schools slogan: Proudly Flying the Flag of Surrender.

The schools Janey chose to close -- the school board will vote the whole package up or down by the end of June -- are the most obvious cases. Fletcher-Johnson Educational Center in Southeast is a relic of education's Era of Really Bad Ideas, a 1970s building constructed largely without interior walls on the theory that children learn best when lumped en masse into a huge bus terminal of a structure. The open classroom proved to be really good at producing closed minds. Good riddance to it.

Walker-Jones Elementary, two blocks from the system's fancy headquarters on North Capitol Street, is a typically depressing D.C. school that dug its own grave, systematically rejecting offers of help from parents and volunteers. Like two other schools targeted for closing, it sits in an area where redevelopment is bringing in a more affluent mix of residents -- people who will one day need good public schools.

But if this round of closings avoids upsetting the city's more affluent parents -- no schools are slated for closing west of Rock Creek Park or on Capitol Hill -- the picks also guarantee a pointless new round of battles over race and class. Five schools chosen for closing are more than 98 percent black. Four of the six are east of the Anacostia River, where 40 percent of the city's school-age population lives.

"We didn't want closings to be on one side of the city," said school board member William Lockridge, who represents voters east of the river. "If citizens feel we're being slighted, then we're going to have something to say about that. This is not a done deal."

The school board president, Peggy Cooper Cafritz, says the pain and the gain will be spread more equally around the city when the list of closings is complete two years from now.

Credit Janey for closing schools that need to be shut down and for standing up to those who would have him mindlessly divide the closings equally by neighborhood, just to avoid headaches over race. But why take on the trouble if you're not going to win substantial new resources? Sure, some schools will get an extra reading or math teacher as the staff of a closed school joins a nearby facility. But Janey went out of his way to say that the principals of the shuttered schools will remain principals, no teachers will lose their jobs and even the building staff will stay on the payroll.

Only the D.C. schools could come up with a downsizing that involves no personnel cuts and excludes the possibility of selling off unused properties, but still carries the potential to stoke the embers of the city's racial and class tensions.

E-mail:marcfisher@washpost.com