“I Think They’re Accustomed to Erasing History”: The District of Columbia Public School Closures of 2007

• In Event: Navigating the Politics of Education in the 20th and 21st Centuries

Abstract

This paper shares untold stories of one District of Columbia Public School community’s experience of their neighborhood school closure in 2008. Disregarded by politicians and policymakers, oral history narrators from the John F. Cook School (JFCS) community share their experience of the Public Education Reform Amendment Act (PERAA) of 2007, in the context of neighborhood gentrification and displacement. Using Hirsh’s (2012) concept of postmemory, this paper offers a reparative approach to traumatic events that the school community endured through generations. This study illuminates the enduring impacts of the school’s closure felt by JFCS members, similar to many school communities in DC and throughout the country, that have been disinvested and dismantled. Implications for community-based educational reform processes are discussed.

Author

• Danielle M. Carrier, University of Southern Mississippi