Field Transfer: Why?
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Who has priority access to public assets? asks DC education activist and blogger Valerie Jablow.
Updates: Valerie Jablow, a Duke Ellington parent and resident of Capitol Hill, wrote the three emails below to various city officials about the proposed transfer of Ellington Field from DCPS to DPR. (Click here for the Nov. 21 email from DPR inviting PTO leaders to the November 25 meeting that Ms. Jablow references below.) DC’s Department of Parks and Recreation’s new web page for the field transfer contains a link to its presentation at the December 2 ANC 2E meeting.
A presentation by DPR regarding Ellington Field is on the ANC 2E agenda for its Monday, December 2, meeting at Georgetown Visitation. On November 14, DPR director Delano Hunter emailed ANC 2E chair Rick Murphy and ANC 2E01 commissioner Kishan Putta the notice of intent to transfer the field from DCPS to DPR.
On Dec 2, 2019, Valerie Jablow wrote:
Dear Chancellor Ferebee, Dr. Alexander, Ms. Kim, Ms Robinson, and Ms. Parker,
I want to ask you to please respond to me:
Tonight, Monday 12/2 at 6:30 pm, ANC2E will host DPR at the ANC’s monthly meeting (Georgetown Visitation School 1524 35th Street NW). DPR will discuss its plans for transferring Duke Ellington School of the Arts Field from DCPS to DPR.
Here is my question for which I would like an answer as soon as possible:
Is anyone from DCPS planning to be there tonigh tat the ANC meeting, to answer questions from the public, including DCPS parents in attendance who have literally been left out of the loop regarding this transfer?
As you know, today is day 19 of the 30-day public notification period, which started on November 14 and whose end (by my calculation, next Friday 12/13) means the transfer is complete.
Today also marks a week since I sent my first email below, to which I got no response from anyone in DCPS. (I also got no response from anyone at DCPS regarding my other email below, which I sent last Tuesday 11/26.) As community engagement and trust are among the cornerstones of DCPS efforts under Chancellor Ferebee, I hope that this is an oversight and that you would not willingly ignore the repeated entreaties of a DCPS parent who has been entirely excluded from decision making on this matter and whose school now faces losing an asset dedicated to its children.
Indeed, there is apparently a petition out by dog users of the field to encourage its transfer to DPR, so the field can be used for dogs as well as people. This is the first time in my experience as a DCPS parent that my child and her school’s actual programming are being equated with the interests of dogs.
Because I am certain that your jobs do not entail ensuring that the interests of the children and schools under your purview as educators are equated with the interests and proclivities of dogs, I would appreciate a response to this email with all parties copied, as to whether DCPS will be represented tonight BY a DCPS staff member in attendance at the ANC meeting.
Thank you.
Valerie Jablow
On Nov 26, 2019, Valerie Jablow wrote:
Dear Chancellor Ferebee and Mayor Bowser,
As a 14-year DCPS stakeholder, and a DC taxpayer since 1991, I want to tell you about the extraordinary meeting last night that I attended. In it, DCPS parents representing various DCPS schools did what you both have not yet done with respect to Ellington Field: defend DCPS schools and their *right to exist* as public assets for the use of DCPS kids.
Let me explain:
At that meeting, DPR officials said that the meeting was a joint decision with DCPS—at which no DCPS officials were present. Because of that absence, parents continually asked why DCPS was not present; what assurances we would have that the field would be reserved first and foremost for DCPS students, as is now the case; and how opening up that field to the whole city (and to whatever paying groups wish to reserve it) would be a public benefit specific to DCPS students, per the mission of DCPS.
We got no good answers.
The meeting was very illuminating in other ways, too. For instance, I now know one reason for your silence, Chancellor Ferebee, in response to my urgent stakeholder request below: There is no written agreement in place for Duke HS to use its own field for its own programming going forward!
In fact, DPR said last night that once this process “moves forward” with capital improvement (I am quoting DPR’s Ely Ross BTW), a new arrangement of the field will be worked out for use by students (not necessarily or even ever DCPS students, much less those from Duke Ellington). No details were given about that new arrangement nor any assurance that the PROGRAMMING at my daughter’s high school that uses that field can continue beyond, well, whatever unspecified point in time that Mr. Ross was alluding to.
Thus, we parents last night asked for a written, legally binding agreement for priority use of Ellington Field for DCPS students. We got no commitment, despite an official from the deputy mayor’s office for education being there—the same office with oversight of both DPR and DCPS and reporting directly to you, Mayor Bowser. (Not clear to me why he was there, in fact—though we did ask that any subsequent meetings with the public on this subject include DCPS representatives, for which we also got no commitment.)
Then too, there is the timing of this:
Today marks 12 days into a 30-day notification process of this transfer of a DCPS asset to DPR (as outlined in the attached letter below)—and less than a week since most of us parents have even known about it. After that 30 days, the transfer will happen—poof! Indeed, despite your apparently joint effort through this calendar year to transfer Ellington Field to DPR (an effort, we were told, that included NONE of the DCPS schools represented last night), we taxpayers now have only ONE open (not invite!) community meeting (12/2, at the local ANC meeting) in which to express our thoughts before this transfer happens. (Happy holidays, indeed.)
As a result of the now year-long vacuum of information from you both to DCPS stakeholders on this; lack of DCPS stakeholder input; and an unnecessarily tight deadline, we parents asked DPR last night for an extension of time—90 days, as opposed to the minimum required by law of 30 days. But there was no commitment to that—and since DCPS was not represented, we have no assurance whatsoever that we will actually be given that time.
The upshot of all of this to me is that as far as Ellington Field goes, my child's school doesn’t count to you. And DCPS stakeholders don’t count to you.
What counts, apparently, is your joint, unwavering commitment to giving over Jelleff, a public field, to a private school and ensuring a nearby DCPS field, Ellington, is *made to stand in Jelleff's place*—without any recognition of the difference of purpose in those two fields nor of the DCPS students you are about to disenfranchise by giving over Ellington to DPR.
Indeed, this process has made clear to me that the public asset that is DCPS, held in trust by you both for all DCPS families, is being treated not as a cherished public resource for securing the education of its students, but as a grab bag of assets to be given away, handed over, and moved around as you see fit, to please whomever whenever.
In this case, that pleasing is the many people, both residents AND non-residents alike, who would like to have increased access to Ellington Field *because of* the lack of access to Jelleff. Handing Ellington over to DPR appears to solve that, albeit doing utterly nothing to secure the asset that you both oversee, DCPS, and the public trust therein.
Indeed, after I, a DCPS stakeholder, appealed yesterday in the most basic way (no bounced emails!) on a matter of some urgency regarding my child’s DCPS school, no one employed by DCPS copied or addressed on that email even replied with as much as “Hey, I’ll get back to you” or “Hey, we hear you” or “Hey, we don’t know but we’re working on it."
The meeting last night gave me a harsh lesson on the price of a reply to my emails: $950,000. That’s what Maret paid for that exclusive use of Jelleff.
Valerie Jablow
On Nov 25, 2019, Valerie Jablow wrote:
Hi Chancellor Ferebee,
I am writing with an urgent request: Can you please send me the official agreement that DCPS has apparently made with DPR to transfer the Ellington Field to DPR control?
The reason I ask is that last night, I received the email below about a meeting tonight regarding the future use of Ellington Field (which the head of the parents association at Duke Ellington high school, where my daughter is a freshman, kindly forwarded to me).
It appears that parents from three schools are being solicited by DPR to help work out the use of what had been one school’s resource, which is currently being used for that school's activities and programming.
While public engagement is always good, this solicitation is pretty amazing to me as a DCPS parent, given that I didn’t know this transfer was a done deal; who at DCPS is responsible for it; nor what its terms are—while parents are being invited to a meeting tonight ostensibly to discuss exactly how the Ellington Field will be used going forward, even as it is currently being used for activities that are part of Duke’s programming.
Indeed, as with a letter from council some weeks ago asking for this transfer, the letter of intent attached below doesn’t even mention the fact that Duke Ellington actually uses this field right now for school activities—as in, activities that are part of the school's official programming.
As you know, Ellington Field is being used in this manner because the prime use hours of another public field in that area, Jelleff, were signed away for 9 years by the mayor to a private school. The idea is that Ellington field can stand in for Jelleff for this purpose, for a publicly unknown length of time.
I hope that you as an educator can appreciate the irony that to ensure a private school is advantaged using a public asset, our city is ensuring that some DCPS schools are inevitably hampered in their athletics programming. I also hope that you can appreciate the further irony that as a solution to that private school advantaging, parents at those DCPS schools are being asked, in a presumed bid at public engagement, to work out the use of an asset of another DCPS school currently used for *that* school’s programming.
Thus, because it would be helpful to all parents tonight as they advocate for the programming at their own DCPS schools, please send me and the people copied here the official agreement that DCPS has apparently made with DPR to transfer the Ellington Field to DPR control. Thank you.
Valerie Jablow