City Could See 5,000 Additional Students Within 4 Years

Demographic experts yesterday projected that new housing construction in the District could result in as many as 5,000 additional school-age children in the city by 2010, a potential boom in a system that has lost about 20,000 students over a decade.

But whether those children attend traditional public schools, charter schools or other alternatives depends on the condition of the D.C. public schools, which need vast improvements in academic programs and facilities, the experts said at a forum yesterday.

"Our ability to attract people to come and stay in the District depends on our ability to have good schools," Ellen M. McCarthy, director of the D.C. Office of Planning, told about 200 education and community advocates at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The group gathered to discuss the study "Housing in the Nation's Capital," prepared by the Fannie Mae Foundation and the Urban Institute.

The study said improved schools are key to the city's goal of attracting 100,000 more residents by 2020. Thus far, new development has consisted largely of condominiums that have drawn residents without children. But the experts called for city and school officials to work together to attract and retain families.

City officials are including housing for families in their plans to redevelop Sursum Corda in Northwest Washington, Lincoln Heights in Northeast and Barry Farm in Southeast.

Because only 20 percent of D.C. households have children in the public schools, the system must reinvent schools as neighborhood hubs with evening and weekend programs geared to neighbors, said Juanita B. Wade, executive director of the D.C. Education Compact, a school reform organization.

"We've got to build interest in the other 80 percent" of the D.C. population, Wade said. "We should see schools as a place to take aerobics and nutrition classes. They can be a place where the elderly can come use the library."

Thomas M. Brady, the system's chief business operations officer, said Superintendent Clifford B. Janey's master facilities plan addresses the potential influx of students through upgraded schools in the vicinity of the new developments. For example, he said, the plan calls for a new school for students in pre-kindergarten to grade 12 near Sursum Corda.

The school, slated to replace Walker-Jones Educational Center, would be "adjacent to a parks and recreation center facility, which would be connected to the school," Brady said in an interview. It also would include "a library to serve the community and a health clinic."

But officials from charter schools, which enroll about 25 percent of the city's public school students, said they will be competing for the 5,000 students. The charter officials urged the school system to help them expand by streamlining the process for leasing vacant and underused school buildings to them.

The process "is incredibly slow, cumbersome and unreliable," Karl Jentoft, co-chief executive officer of the Neighborhood Development Co., which helps charter schools find facilities, said of the independently operated publicly funded schools. "It's a process that is tough to navigate."