On Monday, March 11, Prince George’s County Public School (PGCPS) leaders met in person with the Dora Kennedy French Immersion (DKFI) community for the first time for a town hall meeting about plans to move the school from its current location off Edmonston Road and Greenbelt Road, in what was Greenbelt’s original high school building. The community learned they were being moved from their building when the News Review reported it on February 1. Since then, PGCPS held a virtual meeting in which participants were not able to speak, telling the DKFI community that the only option available for their school was a move to the former Kenmoor Middle School in Landover (vacated last year when that school got a new building). On Monday they announced their new plan to move DKFI back to its former location, sharing the Robert Goddard school building in Lanham with the Montessori school. The administration presented the move as solving problems for DKFI and the system but parents objected to a second plan created without their input.
Apologies
PGCPS Chief Operating Officer Charoscar Coleman presided over the town hall, and said the administrative team had come to “do the work to repair and restore the relationship between the administration and the Dora Kennedy community” and to “collaboratively move forward.” Coleman opened by apologizing for the “distraction” caused by the “hot mic moment” (see the February 15 issue).
PGCPS Director of the Blueprint Schools Program Shawn Matlock also apologized for his comments made during the “hot mic.” Matlock had said of DKFI and Robert Goddard Montessori (RGMS) schools that “they hate each other!” On Monday, he explained he is prone to hyperbole and knows the families and administrations of the schools do not have “any animosity toward each other.” He also apologized for saying that DKFI was not a school and explained that he was thinking in terms of brick-and-mortar schools and financing. “You are a school,” he told the families, teachers and administrators gathered on Monday.
History
Coleman said that 10 years ago DKFI’s current building was slated for demolition, but PGCPS spent $5.7 million to make it habitable for the school. Prior to that, DKFI and RGMS were co-located at the Robert Goddard school off Good Luck Road in Lanham. PGCPS’ plan was to send DKFI to the Greenbelt building (vacated by Greenbelt Middle School) and send RGMS to Meadowbrook Elementary School in Bowie. It would move the schools to right-sized locations and open the Robert Goddard building as a middle-school-sized swing space for the county, he explained. (A swing space is a location to temporarily house displaced schools.) RGMS fought the plan and ultimately PGCPS reversed the decision to move them. “That hampered us as a school district,” said Coleman, who explained that PGCPS was left without a viable middle school swing space. It became a clear problem when Hyattsville Middle School had to spread over three locations in Berwyn Heights, Bowie and Lanham during the pandemic, he said. “That was not a good outcome for the families, the staff nor us in operations,” and it was “one of the first bad decisions I was referencing,” said Coleman, referring to the comment he made on February 12 about “doubling down on a bad decision.” The other bad decision would be moving DKFI to the only middle-school-sized swing space that remains in the entire school district: Kenmoor, which was vacated last year.
Need to Move DKFI
“We are going to have to move Dora Kennedy,” stated Coleman, definitively. Their building is over 10 years past its useful life, he said, stressing also that the administration had been working hard to find options for DKFI beyond the single option presented to the community previously, which was a move to Kenmoor.
Historic Site?
A feasibility study conducted 15 years ago determined DKFI’s current building should be torn down, shared Matlock. (Note: this study was conducted before DKFI was moved into the building.) He also shared that all capital funding for the next six years is already earmarked. “The final use of this facility will be two years of swing space for Springhill Lake Elementary School, after which non-historic portions will be decommissioned and/or the building transferred to the City of Greenbelt,” he shared in a slide presentation. Matlock said if the building wasn’t surplused back to Greenbelt, then PGCPS would demolish it and place it back in the portfolio as a site for a new school in the future, probably not for some 30 or more years. [Note: at its meeting on February 26 the Greenbelt City Council requested a historic site evaluation of the school building.]
Plan to Reunite
Robert Goddard is now a bigger school space, said Matlock, referring to 10 modular classrooms that have been added to the grounds. Matlock then presented a plan that would move DKFI permanently to Robert Goddard in 2026. Hyattsville Elementary School, previously scheduled to move to Robert Goddard as a swing space in 2026, will instead go to the St. Mark’s School from 2025 to 2027, which will be rented from the Archdiocese for the two years before Hyattsville Elementary receives its new school. Matlock spoke of upgraded windows, doors, Wi-Fi, a “full facelift,” a new sprinkler system and added classrooms, an elevator and plans to expand the Robert Goddard building further to fit DKFI in 2026.
DKFI’s Principal James Spence thanked the community. He spoke of visions and partnerships with NASA and the University of Maryland and appreciation for the Greenbelt community and what it has done for the school. Spence joked about the competitiveness between DKFI and RGMS and he thanked Principal Deatrice Womack for opening the doors of Robert Goddard and allowing him to see what the potential could be.
Womack explained that the building is split between two schools and common spaces such as the cafeteria are shared. She said a key component to sharing space is the scheduling of events and space usage, as well as arrival and dismissal procedures. “Two programs, one building – it can work. It can work,” said Womack, referring to all the schools RGMS has shared the building with, since half of it has been used as a swing space. “We’ve done it …. We did it and we did it with grace and with collaboration with each other,” she said. “Pretty much I’m here to say that we welcome you.”
Community Responds
Following the administrators’ comments and presentation, parents and community members were invited to speak. Many expressed deep dissatisfaction that a new plan had been made for DKFI again without input from the community, and before their opportunity to talk to administrators. Though one parent said she “couldn’t get out of the building fast enough,” many others asked why a plan for DKFI wasn’t part of the budget 10 years ago; whether their children would be housed in temporary buildings; if DKFI, which has been growing, could continue to do so; and whether they could maintain their identity in a shared space. Lee Wright, a former parent and current administrator at DKFI, who has been part of the school since it was at Rogers Heights, recalled that the second year co-located at Robert Goddard, DKFI returned from summer break to find their principal had been removed and the Montessori principal was to serve both, as one school. She said they were not allowed to make announcements over the PA in French and the program was “watered down.” Wright said she’d seen the huge difference in the program when they had their own space and a “sole French program.” “I don’t personally relish the thought of going back over to Robert Goddard because we kind of have a history of being treated like the bald stepchild,” said Wright. “I’m an advocate for us to be in our own space,” she told the administrators. “I understand that you can’t pull space out of thin air and everything costs a lot of money. I just hope that every avenue is truly explored, other buildings, other spaces.”
An article in next week’s paper will provide more on the community members’ testimony and responses to the move.
The author is the parent of two children who currently attend Dora Kennedy French Immersion.