Following Kris Hammond’s comment about LAYC coming to the JF Cooke School, 30 P Street NW — see this comment from Bloomingdale resident Rene Wallis:
A Complicated Discussion: LAYC or KIPP at J.F. Cooke
I want to address the posts on wondering what motivated DC to award J.F. Cooke to LAYC, and appreciate that the good news – we are discussing building something real here for DC kids – both LAYC and KIPP have something to offer. It makes me hopeful.
Potentially DC made the decision to provide Cooke to LAYC because of the shortage of schools that can serve adolescents with intensive needs. Some possible drivers: DC spends $70 million on special education costs for 3,00 kids, and much of that cash is traveling with our children to private schools in Maryland. DC is mandated to serve kids with disabilities; some of the LAYC kids might be able to stay in DC and not climb in a bus, with a bus driver and attendant, each and every day. Another policy goal is for DC schools to help kids in adolescence get it together so they can avoid adult lives of unemployment, addiction, crime, violence – all of the negatives that can result from not having the academic and social skills to find a constructive place in society.
LAYC wants to reach out to those kids and provide them with special help, and we need those services. On the other hand, LAYC’s population isn’t easy to embrace, and its program doesn’t have the community amenity benefits that KIPP would bring.
LAYC also doesn’t have the PR savvy and community organizing skills of KIPP. That might be because LAYC may not have the kind of cash that KIPP has to fund pre-development work. LAYC is a well-respected DC nonprofit, but it doesn’t have the national profile of a KIPP school, or a national network to back it up. So it is good to support local leadership (LAYC) but it’s nice to have national heft (KIPP).
DC needs KIPP. We have a lot of kids who are doing well and when it comes to public high schools and chartered schools, we have a bottle neck. Read “A Hope Unseen” about the DC boy who goes from Ballou HS to Princeton. Go to any of the big DC highs schools and walk around. It’s something sad to experience. A friend of mine works for Higher Achievement Program, an intensive remedial program for kids grade 7-9, and she told me HAP can’t expand in DC because there are not enough high school slots to place their students when they are ready.
Whoever made the decision between KIPP and LAYC had a Solomon’s choice.
I have kids who could benefit from both schools. I have a foster son who came to me with lots of issues and is now back on track and ready to be mainstreamed out of a private school that serves high-need kids. But there are few options for him in the DC high school world – his gains would be lost at Roosevelt, Dunbar, Coolidge, and Cordozo, the public high schools that surround us. High quality charter schools are in short supply for older teens. He would benefit from KIPP, if he could get in.
On the other side, I have a foster daughter who is a teen mom. She needs a specialized program to help her stay on track. Unfortunately, she was passed along for years and needs intensive remedial attention. DC has two schools geared for kids like her, and other older kids who have woken up to the reality that they need to kick in gear. LAYC would add another choice. A school that combines housing with education would be tremendous benefit to teen moms who don’t have a stable family – birth or foster.
Thanks for giving me the chance to weigh in.
Rene Wallis
Bates Area Civic Association 
Thanks for your interesting insights. Both organizations are well-respected. LAYC is not as small as one may think — according to public records, they brought in around $17 million in contributions in FY2007.
It may have something to do with the DC law, but I think many in the community still are left wondering: why only either KIPP or LAYC?
Interesting on LAYC’s funding, which is important to consider- thanks Braden.
KIPP and LAYC are the only two factoring in to the discussion because charter schools get first rights to bid on surplussed public schools. This gets complicated, of course, when organizations that do operate as charter schools during week days obtain properties which they want to utilize for multiple purposes. Needless to say, it’s the residential aspect of LAYC that has neighbors up in arms. And witness the huge church (MBC) that has moved into our neighborhood at 1st and P, under the guise of partnering with the charter school by day, CAPCS.
The city needs to get its policy towards charter schools straightened out if they are to receive preferential rights…