By Carla Branch and Alex Hampl
alexandrianews.org
Jefferson Houston Elementary School, 1501 Cameron Street. (Photo: James Cullum)
For nearly a year, the Alexandria City Public School system and the Alexandria School Board have been considering a public/private partnership to pay for a new school on the Jefferson-Houston Elementary School site. On June 22, ACPS staff presented the concept to the Alexandria City Council, which directed ACPS to set up a series of community meetings to discuss the matter and provide additional information about the financing. On Sept. 13, the Alexandria School Board will hold the first community meeting to discuss the Jefferson-Houston project.
“Council told us to involve the community and we have always planned to do that,” said School Board Member Helen Morris, who lives in the Jefferson-Houston neighborhood and whose daughter is a kindergärtner at the school. “We didn’t want to hold those meetings over the summer when, at any given time, a third of the community is on vacation. September is the right time to hold our first meeting and it is planned for the week after school starts.”
Last week, Morris held a preliminary meeting with a number of developers and architects who live and/or work in the Jefferson-Houston community. “These are people who know this community and know about planning school facilities,” Morris said. “They offered their expertise to us and we wanted to meet with them and get their input before we hold our first community meeting.
“We don’t have any specific plans for redeveloping this site. We haven’t hired an architect. We have been working with C. B. Richard Ellis so that we could begin to understand what a public/private partnership would look like but, to date, we have paid them nothing,” Morris said.
The concept, which ACPS presented to Council in June, calls for developing 1.1 million square feet of office, commercial and residential space in addition to building a new school and a nadatorium on the 10.3-acre site. The 2.5 floor-to-area ratio would be sufficient to entice a developer to pay for most if not all of the cost of the new school facility.
The site contains the school, a HeadStart annex, the Oswald Durant Recreation Center, the Old Town pool and several athletic fields and parking. The value of the school building as of January, 2010, was $12 million and the value of the land, $42 million. The site is equidistant from the King Street and Braddock Road Metro stations, making it an attractive parcel for developers if Council approves increased density.
“We are committed to continuing the conversation with the community about the need for a new Jefferson Houston School,” said Dr. Morton Sherman, ACPS superintendent. “We have met with several civic associations, city commissions, the Jefferson-Houston PTA and with Jefferson-Houston neighbors. We look forward to the next dialogue in September.”
Neighborhood residents do not believe they have been consulted or informed about the project. One hundred and thirty-seven nearby residents signed a petition opposing the proposed development and delivered it to City Council on Aug. 12.
“The 137 signatories to the petition represent 111 households comprised of stakeholders in the community encompassing the Jefferson-Houston school site.
“Although members of the Alexandria School Board stated on June 22, 2010, that the School Board would engage the community regarding the redevelopment plan, to date, no substantive engagement has occurred. Consequently, some of the signatories to the enclosed petition, including me, would like to meet with each of you, individually or collectively, both before the tentatively planned Council meeting with the School Board in October and after that meeting,” said the letter written by Damon Colbert, which accompanied the petition.
The school was built in 1970 on an open classroom plan, which no longer meets the needs of the students. “The bottom line is that we need a new school and we are looking for the most cost-effective way to build one,” Morris said. “We have a new education plan for the school, which we implemented last year and we believe that we are headed in the right direction academically. We just need a facility that will allow that plan to be fully successful.”
Jefferson-Houston was the only Alexandria public school to be accredited with warning last year and did not make Adequate Yearly Progress under the federal No Child Left Behind Act. Last year, there were 229 students enrolled at Jefferson-Houston in grades K-6. Seventy-one percent of the students were African-American, 14% were Hispanic, 9% were white, 2% were Asian and 4% did not specify a race or ethnic origin.