Pleas Are Aired at First Meeting on Closures

Chancellor Says She Will Preserve Successful Programs

After weeks of lessons about Beethoven and Handel, Iris Tate, a music teacher at Meyer Elementary, took 44 students from the Northwest school to the Kennedy Center yesterday for a performance of the National Symphony Orchestra.

The students were enthralled by the program, Tate said, speaking at a community meeting last night to discuss a proposal by D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee to close 23 schools.

Meyer, which sits next to a public housing complex in Ward 1, is one of the schools. Its students would go to Marie H. Reed Community Learning Center in Adams Morgan or Tubman Elementary in Columbia Heights.

"How do I know if the music program will stay?" Tate asked.

More than 100 parents, teachers and others attended the first of nine meetings to be held by school officials to discuss the proposal, which includes plans to move three special education programs and to create academic programs such as art magnet schools and early childhood learning centers. Rhee said last night that her proposals aren't necessarily final and that she was seeking input.

Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D) has said he will decide in late January which schools to close after getting a final recommendation from Rhee. But at least one D.C. Council member wants the legislative body to have input. Marion Barry (D-Ward 8) said in a statement last night that he plans to introduce legislation today mandating that the council approve any closings.

Emotions ran high at times during the meeting. More than 50 parents from Bruce-Monroe Elementary marched from the Northwest school to the meeting at Tubman, clutching signs that begged Rhee not to close the school.

"We made AYP last year," read one, a reference to adequate yearly progress, a benchmark for meeting math and reading standards. Most schools in the 49,600-student system did not achieve that goal.

Rhee addressed the Bruce-Monroe crowd directly, pledging that successful academic programs would not be eliminated. Her words were translated into Spanish, the language spoken by most of the school's parents.

"We are going to continue on with the things that are working at Bruce-Monroe," Rhee said.

The crowd later broke into small groups by school and fanned out into Tubman's library and classrooms, filling out slips of paper that asked for their top concerns.

Tanya Gantt, 30, a single mother of five, said she trusted neighbors to walk her children the two blocks from the Garfield Terrace housing complex in the Columbia Heights neighborhood to Meyer. But she said she wouldn't want neighbors walking her children any farther.

"Who's going to take my children to school?" Gantt asked.

Rhee said the school system spends too much maintaining half-empty school buildings. That money could be spent on academics, she added.

"You should be able to see and feel every tax dollar you put in, in the quality of our education programs," she said.

Several more community meetings on the proposed closures will be held across the city in the coming weeks. Rhee and Fenty also will hold a public hearing on the plan Jan. 17.

Meanwhile, a nonprofit group called D.C. Children First, whose board members include former mayor Anthony A. Williams and two former D.C. Council members, announced yesterday that it had started running 30-second radio ads in support of Fenty's changes. The spots come less than a week after unions representing school employees waged a radio ad campaign criticizing Fenty and Rhee's approach as lacking community input.