School closings affect rec center for at-risk youth

WASHINGTON - When D.C. School Chancellor Michelle Rhee ordered the school building located at 3012 Georgia Ave. to be closed, classes weren't the only thing that were going to be shut down. The Bruce-Monroe Recreation Center will also be closed on Thursday, June 12, the last day of school.

The center offers after school programs to about 12 to 30 at-risk youth until 9 p.m., Monday through Friday. It has been around since the 1970s, but was closed in the late 90s and later reopened in November 2007 after a series of shootings plagued the surrounding Columbia Heights neighborhood.

"It's really become a safe haven for these youth," says Maia Shanklin, of the Peaceaholics, an organization that works with youth at the center. She says many of the young people, mostly males, were engaged in gang activity before attending the center.

The building, a window-less eye sore to many passers by, is described by Darren Jones, a life-long resident of the neighborhood and the current president of the Pleasant Plains Civic Association, as a haven, not just for the youth, but for the entire neighborhood.

"We were having kids robbing adults. We were having kids breaking up the park on Hobart Place. And since the rec center has opened we don't have those problems anymore."

Jones wrote a letter to Rhee, D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty, D.C. Council Member Jim Graham (Ward 1) and other city officials pleading with them to find a solution.

"Closing the center during the summer would be a disaster," he writes. "We have been able to identify the approximately one dozen kids who have caused the greatest problems in our community and give them structure and adult guidance through programs at the center."

Some of the programs include adult-supervised field trips to sporting events, dinner outings and basketball.

Graham says the closing of the building is a temporary situation and it will reopen in 2011 as a mixed-use facility.

"We're trying to figure out an alternative space to keep this available so that we could use it, particularly this summer, but I don't know how successful we are going to be," says Graham. "It would be a real loss to the neighborhood if this program was extinguished for lack of space."

Graham says he is looking into relocating the program to nearby Banneker Recreation Center, but many of the youth find it difficult to travel between neighborhoods because of gang beefs that threaten their safety. Currently, the fate of the center still remains uncertain.

Rhee and Deputy Mayor Reinoso's offices were contacted for comments, but they did not respond.

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