Charter Board Rejects Latin School Move

The D.C. Public Charter School Board late yesterday rejected a proposal to move the Washington Latin charter school from Upper Northwest to the Penn Quarter neighborhood of downtown Washington. However, the board said it will consider moving the school to Trinity University in Northeast.

The charter board's 5 to 0 vote came after more than a dozen parents of students at the year-old, academically intense school spoke for and against the proposed move, which was backed by Headmaster T.R. Ahlstrom. Turmoil over the proposal and other issues helped spark the resignation last month of four of the charter board's 12 members.

Former Ward 7 D.C. council member Kevin P. Chavous, who resigned as chairman of the school's board, said that Ahlstrom had refused to "cooperate or communicate" on financial and legal matters facing the school.

"The process of working with the Headmaster on the budget, which should have been easy and collaborative, was fraught and difficult . . . because Headmaster Ahlstrom did not appear to make developing a realistic budget a high priority," Chavous wrote in a memo that was circulated at the public hearing last night.

Members of the citywide charter school board also expressed concerns about whether the relocation made financial sense.

"The move to Eighth Street is too much, too soon, and too many dollars," Thomas A. Nida, chairman of the charter school board, said before the vote.

Board members did approve a "sense of support" resolution for a proposed move to Trinity University, although school officials did not present any details of such a move last night. Board members said they will consider any additional proposals at their scheduled meeting Aug. 20. The city's charter schools are to begin classes the first week of September.

Ahlstrom and several parents pushed the board to approve the move downtown because the present location in the Cathedral Heights neighborhood cannot accommodate this year's classes. The school has approval to increase enrollment from 179 last year to 320 in the fall, although Ahlstrom said 335 students have signed up.

"Our present school is too small," Ahlstrom said at the hearing. He has said that a downtown, Metrorail-accessible location would also enable the school to attract a more diverse student body.

Earlier yesterday, Ahlstrom sent a letter to parents encouraging them to attend last night's meeting, but some parents objected to what they saw as a racial undercurrent to his words.

"Washington Latin was not founded to provide yet another privilege to the privileged," he wrote.

Ahlstrom spoke last night about a student from Southeast who transferred to Latin from a failing public school. "It is not fair to him and to kids like him that we make him come to Cathedral Heights," the headmaster said.

The school, housed at Christ Church in the 3800 block of Massachusetts Avenue NW, is accessible on public transportation only by bus.

Melissa Turner, a parent, said that she supported the idea of locating the school downtown, but that she questioned the financial viability of moving it to the proposed location on Eighth Street NW. The rent on that location was to be $90,000 a month, triple the amount paid in Upper Northwest.

Parent Michael Miller, who has a son entering the eighth grade at Latin, opposed the move to Eighth Street.

"My opposition has nothing to do with the proposed location and everything to do with the terms and conditions of the proposed lease," Miller said.