This article highlights perhaps the single biggest challenge for charters: space.

"They're D.C. taxpayers, and they're sending their children to a public school, so they want them to have access to the same resources as other kids," she said.

Although the Franklin School was closed long before Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee announced plans to close a number of schools last year, it is part of the larger pool of former school buildings that charters have coveted but, in large part, have not received. Charters serve 38 percent of D.C. public school students, but just under a third of charter students attend classes in former public school buildings, according to an analysis by Friends of Choice in Urban Schools, a charter advocacy organization. Most of the rest have found space on the commercial market.

Of the 26 public schools whose closures have been announced since last year, seven are or will eventually be occupied by charters. One will be used by the University of the District of Columbia. Four have been filled by other branches of D.C. government, taking them over for, among other purposes, a temporary recreation center and offices for the Department of Public Works. Three will be turned over to developers and two to nonprofit groups. Five are in use as D.C. public schools. One will be torn down and the land turned into a park. The fates of three have not been decided.

Concerns about the process for deciding how the buildings are used led D.C. Council member Harry Thomas Jr. (D-Ward 5) to propose legislation this year that would catalogue city property online and set up an advisory committee to monitor what is done with empty buildings.

"There didn't seem to be a lot of transparency or inclusion" around the recently closed buildings, he said.

Charter advocates point to city law, which says charter schools have a "right to first offer" on excess school buildings.

"Why are charter schools being forced to take out expensive loans to go and convert commercial spaces, for example a warehouse, to send little children there?" asked Barnaby Towns, a spokesman for Friends of Choice in Urban Schools. He said it would be more prudent to take the public money that charters spend on facilities and channel it back to the city through leases on D.C. school properties.

And some charter advocates think there is room for accommodation.

"The space is there. How you organize it and allocate is the challenge," said Thomas A. Nida, chairman of the D.C. Public Charter School Board. He said that in the early days of the charter movement, in the 1990s, charters had relatively little trouble buying or leasing school buildings from the city.

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Finding frustration instead of a home

Charters are increasingly seeking space in former public school buildings, but the District has repeatedly rejected their applications

By Michael Birnbaum

Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, December 4, 2009

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/03/AR2009120304698.html

Walking through a vacant District school building Thursday, Mary Shaffner could visualize the peeling paint replaced by fresh blackboards. Dusty hardwood floors marred by bird droppings could be polished to a gleam. Teachers and students would once again fill the halls of the Franklin School.

But to the developers also attending Thursday's open house, a hotel or condominiums might be more attractive, and it's likely they'll get their way. Two applications from charter schools to use the building have been rejected, including one from Shaffner's Yu Ying Public Charter School. The city said the renovation costs were too high, and there's little indication a new application will be accepted this time around.

It's a drama that has occurred repeatedly in the District, and the 1869 Franklin School, at 13th and K streets NW, is just the latest instance. Because of the credit crunch, which makes it more difficult for charters to finance private projects, and space newly available thanks to the closure of more than two dozen D.C. public schools, charters are clamoring more than ever for public school buildings.