‘Don’t Wing the Swing’ Signs Protest Hyde-Addison Plans

A strong indication that a community really, really, cares about an issue is that homemade signs start to appear about it in the neighborhood. In Georgetown this weekend, there were virtually no signs (except one next door to this reporter’s home) about the presidential election just three weeks away. But signs expressing outrage at the decision by DC Public Schools to transfer toddlers and elementary-school children at Hyde-Addison School to a school in another ward for two years were popping up all around Wisconsin Avenue and O Street.

Where the children should go to school during a shutdown of Hyde-Addison for renovations starting in 2017 has been the subject of a dispute for more than a year. Naturally, the students and parents want to move to Hardy School a few blocks away, where space is expected to become available over the summer.

Ward 2 Council member Jack Evans supported the Hardy School swing site. But DC Public School Deputy Mayor Jennifer Niles seems to be set on sending the children to Meyer School in Ward 1. She announced the decision last week in a letter to parents before a Citizens Association of Georgetown meeting and school tour scheduled for tomorrow, Oct. 18. That meeting has been postponed.

“It’s a terrible choice!” wrote federal government attorney and Georgetown resident Topher Mathews in his neighborhood blog, the Georgetown Metropolitan. “For one thing Meyer School is about 4 miles away, across the heart of the city and in another ward. Georgetown kids as young as three will be put on buses to drive through downtown traffic to attend their ‘local’ school for two years if not more. Even by DCPS’s own optimistic estimates, the kids could be stuck in a bus over an hour each day. It will cost children hundreds of hours of time every year traveling on a bus from the Hyde-Addison campus.”

Meyer School has been said by former students to be falling apart, noted Mathews. And, he points out, there’s a significant likelihood that it won’t be available by next August since the renovations of Duke Ellington School may not be completed on time.

A Georgetown story reported last week that Deputy Mayor Niles “strongly recommends Meyer.” Alternatively, she might consider a location at the University of the District of Columbia, but that would require further delays and the installation of trailers.

“Niles is fixated on the Meyer option but she won’t explain why,” wrote Mathews. “She should be fired.”

Meanwhile, expect more signs in Georgetown like “Don’t Wing the Swing.”