J.O. Wilson Elementary School

School Improvement Team

660 K Street NE

Washington, DC 20002

www.jowilsondcps.org

Tuesday, May 28, 2024

Perkins Eastman D.C.

Chiaramonte-DAVIS

D.C. Public Schools

Department of General Services

The J.O. Wilson School Improvement Team wishes to reiterate our priorities to Perkins Eastman and DCPS in the design of our new school. We understand that tradeoffs must be made to accommodate our preferences within the constraints of the overall square footage of the building and the requirements of the education specifications. We hope that these priorities will be reflected in the design, given that we have been told repeatedly that DCPS seeks to capture the unique qualities and values of our community in the new building. These are our priorities:

1. J.O. Wilson is a growing school.

All of our other priorities build on top of this core need: Our school must be big enough to accommodate our student body.

Our enrollment is currently at 477 students and has been growing. We’ve exceeded our expected enrollment for each of the last five years. We are already at full enrollment for the 2024-25 school year, despite our anticipated move into a swing space. And we expect our enrollment will only increase further the moment we settle into a modernized building, as has historically happened at other modernized DCPS schools.

Given these facts, J.O. Wilson cannot grow to a capacity of 535 students with fewer classrooms than we have currently. And we cannot return from our swing space in 2026 to a building that doesn’t accommodate all of the classrooms we have in 2024.

We understand that Perkins Eastman or the DCPS building team does not control the ed specs, and that J.O. must resolve this with DCPS central. But we hope that the design process can remain flexible to give us time to try to correct this, so that we are not yet locking into place an insufficient number of classrooms to the detriment of J.O. Wilson for decades to come.

2. J.O. Wilson has a proud emphasis on the arts, and performing arts in particular. First and foremost, this should be reflected in our performance space. We want that space to be enhanced in quality, not reduced in size. That means the cafeteria must be large enough to accommodate major community events like our spring musical, school-wide assemblies and 5th grade commencement.

During our spring musical May 17-18, we fit 260 seats for the audience on the cafeteria floor. In addition, the first 15-20 feet in front of the stage must be curtained off because the stage has no backstage, dressing room, AV or prop storage space. Wash and spotlights are also positioned on the cafeteria floor.

We want the cafeteria to be designed with this performance function in mind, taking that use into account in the acoustics, mechanicals and technology built into the cafeteria. HPO must recognize that any preservation of the cafeteria and stage must be balanced with the modern-day use of the space. Additionally, there is no guarantee that the cafeteria and stage have not been altered since the school was first built (a modest renovation to the school occurred in the last two decades).

We would like our emphasis on the arts to be reflected in other ways throughout the building, possibly by converting the “makerspace” to a gallery or rehearsal studio; by ensuring that the “heart” of our school is also a welcoming community lobby for performances; by considering adjacencies between the performance space and arts classrooms; and by considering art pieces or murals that celebrate the arts as a subject.

3. The “heart” of J.O. Wilson is our community commons.

Some of the most cherished events at our school bring students, teachers and families together outside of the classroom – for grade-level celebrations, mentoring groups, teacher appreciation meals, arts shows, PTA gatherings and more. Such events currently take place in our “commons.” We need a space in our new school that also serves this function.

If the library is envisioned as this space, we would like it to be designed with this community gathering function in mind. Can larger groups like an entire grade band meet there? Can we hold a PTA meeting there with 30 to 40 parents? Will there be seating space for such gatherings? Can the reading room be designed so that it’s flexible to host library classes, intimate mentoring groups and larger community gatherings? Perhaps bookshelves could be moveable to accommodate different uses of the space.

4. The entrance to the school must honor the past but signal the modernization. While we understand that HPO believes the school is an important contributor to our understanding of the Civil Rights era, the entrance represents a unique opportunity for the design team to create a monumental signaling of a new era for J.O. Wilson and our families. While we do not pretend to be designers, this might be achieved by a more playful plaza in front of the school, a commissioned art piece, murals, or the use of glass.

5. Other spaces in the proposed design are less important to us.

To accommodate our preferences, we understand that other spaces may need to be reduced or repurposed. Please consider that the following spaces are not a priority for us: a. The makerspace: We do not anticipate using a makerspace as that function. We would prefer that space be repurposed to serve our arts focus, serving as a rehearsal studio, an art gallery space or other practice space.

b. The discovery commons: We do not believe we would get much use out of these larger open lounge spaces and would prefer that this square footage be devoted to classroom

space, resources rooms, or smaller, more intimate nooks where an individual teacher or service provider could meet with students one-on-one.

c. The specials office: Our specials teachers do not need an additional office, beyond their own classrooms.

d. The specials lab: This space is more valuable to us as a traditional classroom. But, to reiterate, if the DCPS ed specs allocate each modernized school a modern lab space, separate from the roster of classrooms, we believe that J.O. Wilson deserves to receive that too.

Lastly, at some point in the near future, it will be important for the design team to walk through the design with teachers, administrators, and parents to ensure that all the envisioned spaces will work for the needs of all key stakeholders. While the feedback in this letter is a starting point, it cannot be the end. This design review meeting would go through the utilization of the spaces and not furnishings and fixtures, etc. We cannot wait until the design development meeting two months from now when the designs will be almost complete before this more detailed design review happens.

Thank you for considering this.

The J.O. Wilson School Improvement Team