DC’s Comprehensive Plan–Or, The End Of The Road For Education Rights In DC? | educationdc

DC’s Comprehensive Plan–Or, The End Of The Road For Education Rights In DC? | educationdc

DC’s Comprehensive Plan–Or, The End Of The Road For Education Rights In DC?

[Ed. Note: DC’s office of planning has promulgated revisions to the city’s comprehensive plan. The deadline for public comment was last week–but ANCs have additional time to review and comment on the draft document, which is here in a redlined version.

The changes made to this planning document not only are long on celebration and short on historical detail, but the emphasis throughout appears to be on public private partnership agreements for everything public, whether using public facilities, modernizing them, or locating in them. (Really: check out what it says about public private partnerships to construct new police stations (section 1113.4) and to remodel and construct correctional facilities (section 1114.13).) If the mayor’s planners succeed in pushing this privatized utopia through, it will likely lead to a landscape for public education in which privatizers are further encouraged to get their piece of public action, a la what DPR seems to be currently doing with Jelleff and nearby Ellington field.

(NB: If you don’t have time to wade through the >1500 redlined pages of the draft comprehensive plan to get a flavor for this, you can get the shorthand version (including a 999-year lease!) on this current list of DPR public private partnership agreements for DC’s publicly owned recreational facilities. That list was provided to the council after the public hearing on Jelleff.)

Anyhoo, below are my comments on this draft document, with an emphasis on CONTINUE READING: DC’s Comprehensive Plan–Or, The End Of The Road For Education Rights In DC? | educationdc