Janney Elementary School

COMMITTEE FOR JANNEY MODERNIZATION  

Please consider adding your name to the petition below.

A Petition for Urgent Action FROM THE FAMILIES AND NEIGHBORS of Janney Elementary School 

Janney Elementary School delivers excellent schooling. But we desperately need a better school facility. City and DCPS leaders must act now to move Janney in to the first phase of school improvements. Neither our community nor our students can wait years for solutions to an overcrowded building.  The DCPS Capitol Improvement Plan must be updated and Janney should be modernized as soon as possible. We petition the city and public school leaders for prompt action and commit our voices, votes, and civic activism to supporting this essential change.  

Send email with 1) YOUR NAME, 2) WHETHER YOU ARE A CURRENT JANNEY PARENT,
AND 3) WHETHER YOU ARE A DC VOTER to janneymodernization@yahoo.com

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The Issue:

A Petition for Urgent Action from the Families and Neighbors Of Janney Elementary School 

Mayor Adrian Fenty, Chancellor Michelle Rhee, Council President Vincent Gray,
And Council Members Mary Cheh, Carol Schwartz, David Catania, Phil Mendelson,
and Kwame Brown 

Janney Elementary School delivers excellent schooling. But we desperately need a better school facility. The Mayor, Council, and DCPS leaders must act now to move Janney to the first phase of school modernizations and expansions. Janney is a high performance school in a woefully over-crowded building. With DCPS closing 23 schools, the Capitol Improvement Plan must be updated to serve the needs of the remaining schools.   

Janney Elementary has a “design capacity” of 364 students.  Current enrollment is just under 500.   The school has a proposed capacity of 550.  While many schools in DC are under-capacity; Janney is an exception.  Updating Janney School is essential to the continued and future vitality of our community.  Consider these facts: 

• The building was constructed in 1925 and has scarcely been upgraded in the past 88 years

• Bathrooms (only two and not ADA compliant), wiring, heating, and air conditioning all need revamping

• Because there are currently more than 100 students than the school can house, five classrooms are located in trailer units on the property

• The three story building does not provide essential accommodations for mobility challenged students or staff

• The only large space serves as gym, lunch room, assembly space, and for plays and musical productions.  The multi-activity room can never accommodate the entire student body at one time

• Due to space constraints, students must eat lunch within three separate lunch shifts of 20 minutes or less

Despite these constraints, the school delivers among the best and broadest instructional programs in DCPS.  Janney teachers and administrators are supportive of innovative teaching practices and implement curricular programs that serve the needs of a diverse student body. Reading and math test scores are impressive. In recognition of these important leadership roles played by Janney, the U.S. Department of Education awarded the school the “Blue Ribbon Award.” The website GreatSchools.org issued Janney a rating of 10 out of 10 with parent satisfaction given the highest possible five stars.   These consistent achievements are even more impressive in light of serious overcrowding. 

Today’s and tomorrow’s students cannot wait years for solutions to an overcrowded and outdated building.  Janney should be modernized in the earliest phase. It is simply unacceptable that the now outdated modernization timetable relegated Janney expansion to begin after 2013.    
 

TO ADD YOUR NAME TO THE PETITION, SEND AN EMAIL WITH 1) YOUR NAME,
2) WHETHER YOU ARE A CURRENT JANNEY PARENT,
AND 3) WHETHER YOU ARE A DC VOTER to janneymodernization@yahoo.com