Obstructing Preschool on Capitol Hill

Kevin, fresh from demonstrating that he is soooooooooo much cooler than I can ever hope to be, offers such a spot-on and funny take down of this week's WaPo article on one slightly hysterical mom's quest to get her two-year-old into the "right" preschool that I hate to add anything to it. But I gotta. You see, the mom in question, Petula Dvorak, indicates she lives on Capitol Hill where, apparently, she and other yuppie moms are encountering a shortage of preschool slots for their offspring. But Capitol Hill is exactly the neighborhood where NIMBY neighbors are trying to prevent the creation of additional preschool spaces that parents like Dvorak crave!

AppleTree Early Learning Charter School (full disclosure: I'm on AppleTree's board), which owns property on 12th Street NE near Lincoln Park and wants to build a charter preschool there (expanding on the high-quality charter preschool it already operates in my Southwest DC neighborhood) has been locked in a costly battle with so-called Northeast Neighbors for Responsible Growth, a group of neighborhood homeowners who do not want the school there. And emergency DC zoning commission enactedearlier this year would make it harder to open charters, private schools, preschools, or daycare programs in residential neighborhoods throughout the city. It sure would be nice to see moms like Dvorak spending a little less time trying to figure out how to game the system to get their kids in existing preschools and a little more time speaking out against restrictions that keep the supply of high-quality preschools on the Hill (and elsewhere in the DC metro area) artificially tight.