At Benning Elementary, School's Out Forever

Last June 12 was a day of unusual promise at Benning Elementary, a dingy, virtually windowless school near RFK Stadium with a leaky roof, occasional air conditioning and dismal test scores.

That day it became the first school visited by Michelle A. Rhee as chancellor, just hours after her surprise unveiling by Mayor Adrian M. Fenty.

In an elegant white jacket, she walked the dimly lighted corridors and soiled carpets with Fenty and a platoon of cameras, chatting up students and teachers, promising to fix what ailed Benning. Fenty (D) picked the Northeast Washington school for Rhee's debut, aides said, because it crystallized many of the technical and academic challenges she would face. Her brief tour created the most striking image of change on a momentous day in the city's history, the first in which the long-troubled school system was under mayoral control.

Today, exactly a year later, change has overtaken Benning, but not the kind that most parents, teachers and staff had sought. As summer break begins for 47,000 D.C. public school students, Benning is closing for good, one of 23 low-enrollment schools Rhee has decided to shutter. After a moment of such genuine hope, it is a bitter thing for many parents and staff members.

Some teachers worry about how their fifth-graders, who would have completed sixth grade at Benning, will fare with bigger kids -- and some bullies -- at Kelly Miller Middle School, which they are slated to attend. Parents of younger children are unhappy about the longer walks and major street crossings that will come with attendance at Smothers and Plummer elementary schools, designated to receive Benning youngsters.

"What can I say? My word means nothing," said Tamika Jackson, mother of a second-grader. Like many Benning parents interviewed, she said she is looking to charter schools as an alternative.

A year after Rhee's whirlwind tour, the leaky roof remains, as does most of the worn-out carpet that kindergartners sit on each day. Other things got better, teachers and staff say. For the first time on Principal Darwin Bobbitt's three-year watch, the school had math and reading coaches, as well as an art teacher. All classroom teachers got new computers. Although maintenance personnel weren't able to fix the school's cranky air conditioning, they were far more responsive when it went down, staff members said.

Bobbitt said Rhee infused the school system with a new energy from Day One.

"She was upfront," said Bobbitt of their first meeting last June. "She was open to helping you as long as you were open to moving children forward."

Rhee said she does not recall complaints about the roof, but tried to make what improvements she could. She said she does remember being impressed with Bobbitt, calling him a strong leader, and eventually offered him the principal's job this fall at Malcolm X Elementary in Southeast. As for the closing, she said it was unavoidable.

"We looked at all the options," she said.

Benning fit the primary criterion for closure: a dwindling enrollment of 178, down 25 percent from 2002. But the school's relatively remote location on a dead-end street at the top of a hill bordering Fort Chaplin Park caused Rhee to keep it off her initial list late last year, concerned that it would place too many students more than a half-mile's walk from Smothers and Plummer. Instead, Smothers was to close.

But in February Rhee reversed herself, primarily, she said, because of Benning's building. Although not particularly old for a D.C public school -- it opened in 1976 -- Benning came with an "open classroom" design popular in the 1970s. Intended to foster teacher collaboration and freedom of student movement, the format proved to be mostly a noisy and chaotic mistake.

A walk through Benning's cavernous second floor, where the four corners are taken up by third-, fourth-, fifth- and sixth-grade classes, underscores the awkwardness of the arrangement. Even though Benning is a relatively quiet and orderly school, in some ways reflecting Bobbitt's strong, understated manner, the lack of separation can be deeply distracting for students and teachers.

Rhee said redesigning the school with conventional classrooms was not feasible. In the end, she said, Smothers offered the better elementary school site. Benning took its place on the closure list.

"We were heartbroken that it was Benning," said Matt Moeller, who teaches fifth- and sixth-grade math.

Perhaps Rhee's most important contribution to Benning this year was the reaction her decision provoked. Bobbitt said he and the staff were determined that the school finish on a strong note by improving its test scores. Last year 17.1 percent of students tested read proficiently; 13.1 percent were proficient in math.

He and every teacher took on small groups of students to tutor for the 2008 D.C. Comprehensive Assessment System exams. Staff members wrote personal letters to kids encouraging them to do well.

"All of us put our hands into it," he said. "We weren't just running the clock out." He said he would be very surprised if Benning didn't at least reach "safe harbor" status under the No Child Left Behind Act, meaning that although the school didn't reach annual testing benchmarks, it made impressive gains. But by the time the scores are known in late summer, Benning will be gone.

Some faculty members try to look at the broader needs of the school system when they think about the closing. "Holistically, yes, I think it is right," said Moeller, who is taking an administrative job in the central office. "In the short term, I think it will be tough for the young ones, especially the first- and second-graders. They're going to have a tough time with the transition."

In the sweltering school gym this week, students who will not get to graduate from Benning had "promotion" ceremonies to commemorate their departure. "We are the first and last fifth-grade class to graduate from Benning Elementary," said Daysia Gilliam, one of the student speakers Monday.

Vanessa Gerideau, a young teacher who met Rhee that June day a year ago and was excited to learn that they both participated in the Teach for America program, fought back tears as she warned the fifth-graders to "stay away from the bullies" in middle school. Then she left them with this:

"Remember how brilliant all of you are and never, ever doubt your abilities."