In this episode, we’re getting ready to go Back to School! In our newest segment, Stacks in the City, Donna Arrendell sits down with Damian Carroll and Ramiro Hernandez from Vision to Learn, an organization that provides free eye exams and glasses to students in grades four through twelve. In our Get Lit segment, host Christopher Stevenson chats with Elaine Pelton, Assistant Manager at the Northeast Library and a children’s literacy expert. She shares her top reading recommendations for kids and their families. And finally, in All Things Local, Olubunmi Bakare speaks with Dr. Amber N. Wiley about her book Model Schools in the Model City: Race, Planning, and Education in the Nation’s Capital, which explores the history and evolution of education in Washington, DC, and how architecture and urban planning have been used in efforts to fight racism.
In this episode, we’re getting ready to go Back to School!
In our newest segment, Stacks in the City, Donna Arrendell sits down with Damian Carroll and Ramiro Hernandez from Vision to Learn, an organization that provides free eye exams and glasses to students in grades four through twelve.
In our Get Lit segment, host Chris Stevenson chats with Elaine Pelton, Assistant Manager at the Northeast Library and a children’s literacy expert. She shares her top reading recommendations for kids and their families.
And finally, in All Things Local, Olubunmi Bakare speaks with Dr. Amber N. Wiley about her book Model Schools in the Model City: Race, Planning, and Education in the Nation’s Capital, which explores the history and evolution of education in Washington, DC, and how architecture and urban planning have been used in efforts to fight racism.
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Olubunmi Bakare 0:02
You're listening to the DC Public Library podcast, where we bring you conversations from the nation's capital. We're recording from the Labs Recording Studio in the historic and newly modernized Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library in downtown Washington, DC. In this episode, we're getting ready to go back to school. First, in our newest segment, Stacks in the City, Donna Arrendell sits down with Damian Carroll and Ramiro Hernandez of Vision to Learn, an organization that provides free eye exams and glasses to students in grades four through 12. They talk about Vision to Learn's growing partnership with the DC Public Library and how their work is helping students to start the school year strong. Next, in our Get Lit segment, host Christopher Stevenson chats with Elaine Pelton, assistant manager at the Northeast Library and a children's literacy expert, she shares her top reading recommendations to help kids and their families step into the new year with confidence. And finally, in All Things Local, I speak with Dr. Amber N. Wiley about her book *Model Schools in the Model City: Race Planning the* and education in the nation's capital, which explores the history and evolution of education in Washington D.C.
Donna Arrendell 1:41
Hello and welcome to DC Public Library podcast. I'm Donna, the host of Stacks in the City, a segment that explores the people, partnerships, and programs that bring life to the DC Public Library. With back to school around the corner, we're shining a light, a bright light at that, on one of our most meaningful partnerships, Vision to Learn. Vision to Learn is a national nonprofit organization that helps kids literally see their future more clearly. They have provided nearly a quarter of a million children with glasses in more than 500 underserved communities nationwide. I'm thrilled to be joined by our guests and representatives from Vision to Learn, Damian Carroll, Chief of Staff and National Director, and Ramiro Hernandez, Program Director for Washington D.C. Welcome, Damian and Ramiro.
Ramiro Hernandez and Damian Carroll 2:54
Good morning, Donna. Thanks for having us. Good morning, Donna. Thank you for having. Good seeing you again.
Donna Arrendell 2:59
Good seeing you again to Ramiro, and it's great having both of you here with us at the library. All right, let's start at the beginning. How did Vision to Learn get started, and what brought the program to the nation's capital?
Damian Carroll 3:15
Yeah, so Vision to Learn was started by a philanthropist named Austin Butner, who found this is back in 2012 that there were kids in Los Angeles, and we later, of course, found all over the country who were going without the glasses that they needed to be able to see clearly at school, to see the board, to read a book, to participate fully in class, and he set out to solve this problem by bringing the services to the kids at school, bought a big RV mobile clinic, hired some optometrists, and just started visiting schools first in Los Angeles County to be able to see if we could meet the kids where they were every day, and it worked great. The students who were going without glasses got a quick eye exam, got the glasses right there at school at totally no charge, and they were then able to see at school. So a few years later, as we'd started to expand across the country, we really wanted to bring services to Washington D.C. We had some early partners who helped us to do that. In terms of funding, we got some funding from the Deerbrook Charitable Trust, a wonderful organization. The studio at Blue Meridian gave us a big grant that helped us to expand out here, and we worked with local champions, including Councilmember Trayon White Sr. including Chairman Phil Mendelson and the school district and Warby Parker, who is providing all of the glasses at no charge to the program, and we're off and running. We have two mobile clinics now in the city able to help school. Simultaneously,
Donna Arrendell 5:01
oh wow! Those mobile clinics, to all of our listeners, they are state of the art. When I had an opportunity of going inside of one of those mobile units, I was so impressed. I have, I have glasses, and I have sunglasses. But I tell you, I just wanted to sit in that chair and get an eye examination and get me some new glasses too. It was amazing. I was so impressed. All of the equipment was state of the art. Wonderful nurses and doctors that ride along in those mobiles, and they just-I mean-the kids get top-notch treatment in those mobile units. Yes, Ramiro, if you were telling this story to a parent at the library, what's the moment? What's the part of this program that you would highlight.
Ramiro Hernandez 6:03
So one experience that's always stayed with me is during one of our summer clinics, our doctor noticed something during a student's eye exam that raised concern. Now it wasn't just about needing the glasses; it was something that required immediate follow up with the specialists. Our entire team worked quickly with the site staff to contact families to make sure that they understood the urgency with getting the additional medical care. Later, we heard back from the site point of contact, who thanked our doctor and our team because the recommendation ultimately helped protect the child's eyesight. So it's moments like this that reminds us that eye exams aren't only for helping children to see the board. They could also identify serious eye health issues that might otherwise go unnoticed.
Donna Arrendell 6:52
I definitely agree. Early intervention for children catching those issues, eye issues early, is so important for their health and their vision and for success in school. So let's talk logistics. When Vision to Learn partners with the DCPL neighborhood branch, what does a typical day look like? So I'm picturing a van, eye exams, children choosing their frames, and then the glasses arriving at their homes, right? What should families expect? Tell us a little more about it.
Ramiro Hernandez 7:28
A family is going to expect a welcoming experience. Students receive a comprehensive exam from a licensed optometrist. If they need glasses, they go to pick the frames that they actually like to wear. Then we order the prescription lenses and return to deliver the glasses. It's simple, convenient, completely focused on making access easier,
Donna Arrendell 7:49
and it's a fun process. The kids love being able to pick out their own glasses in their favorite color. I got a chance to witness that firsthand when you first came to the Dorothy Height Vinning Library, and I had an opportunity to work with the children and schedule their appointments, and just watch the joy in their faces when they got to pick their glasses out. That that was just so much fun. I love it.
Ramiro Hernandez 8:21
Most of the time, what my staff likes to do is ask the child what their favorite color is, and then from there we pick out what frame they like. And we've seen if they pick out their favorite color, they're more inclined to wear the glasses, which is at the end of the day something we want the kids to do.
Donna Arrendell 8:37
What amplifies the impact of this partnership is how it removes barriers, cost, transportation, scheduling. So, from your vantage point, Romero and Damian, which barriers are the biggest, and how does your model help families overcome them.
Ramiro Hernandez 9:02
Yeah, I think you listed off a couple there. Some of the biggest barriers we see are transportation, time off of work, access to providers, insurances. In some cases, even knowing that your child needs an eye exam. Our model removes almost all of those barriers because we're already where the child are spending their days.
Donna Arrendell 9:25
Damian Or Ramiro, how does this work advance educational equity here in DC, and what outcomes or data points help you measure impact for this program?
Damian Carroll 9:41
Yeah, I could take that one, Ramiro. So, so first, Donna, I want to make sure that all of your listeners who have children who are covered by Medicaid know that Medicaid will cover an eye exam for them at no charge. A lot of families don't know that, and it's a barrier to their to their entry. To be worried about the cost, but in fact, if they find a local optometrist who accepts Medicaid, they will not be charged a copay. It's it's totally no charge to them. The families that we see are often unaware of that. You know, they have those those other barriers to care, but we want parents to be able to connect to optometrists if they need to, so just wanted to get that out there that Medicaid will cover that eye exam. The academic benefit of this program is proven now. We have a wonderful study that came out of Johns Hopkins University where they looked at students who were helped by the program in our Baltimore area, and they found that giving a pair of glasses to a child who needs them is equivalent to adding two to four months of learning time to their school year with just a single pair of glasses. And we also looked at students who were having the most trouble academically, or students in an IEP, a special education program. Those students gained four to six months of equivalent learning time from a pair of glasses. So it's it's an intervention that is easy to provide, but so impactful for students and has an immediate impact.
Donna Arrendell 11:14
Wow! Thank you so much, Damian. That is important information for our listeners to know that Medicaid is available and that it is accepted. Thank you so much. Looking ahead, what's on the horizon for Vision to Learn in DC? Anything families should watch for this fall, and not just on the horizon in DC, but even nationally. What's on the horizon for Vision to Learn?
Ramiro Hernandez and Damian Carroll 11:42
Yeah, so we're continuing to expand our partnerships across DC while making sure families can access care year-round, not just during the school year. During the summers, when school's out, we have summer library visits. Been a great example of meeting families that you know they're already there, and excited to keep building on that. Yeah, so I mentioned that we have two mobile clinics working now in DC. So that's it's really doubled our capacity in the area, and it is now, with the help of funding from Bloomberg Philanthropies, going to be possible for us to visit all the schools in DC every other year, so that students will be able to get an eye exam from us, and then if they don't see their doctor the next year, we'll be back the year after that. And this is just an incredible coverage, which means that no student is going to be going without the glasses that they need to succeed. Nationally, we are always looking for new opportunities to grow the program to help more students, we'll be launching this fall. For example, in Sarasota, Florida, and Madison, Wisconsin, these will be the 16th and 17th states that Vision to Learn has full-time programs in, and we continue to try to build awareness with policymakers, with educators, with health professionals about how important this program is for children's education and how solvable it is, and you know when we bring out local elected officials to see kids trying on their glasses for the first time, they get it immediately. They go, "Oh, this is holding kids back, and it's something that we could fix.
Donna Arrendell 13:21
Okay, so I have a scenario. What happens when the child comes home? Mommy, Daddy, I broke my glasses at recess. So, what's in place with Vision to Learn? How how would you solve that problem?
Ramiro Hernandez 13:37
Sure, sure. So, so that happens all the time, Donna. Of course, kids lose their glasses. I wore glasses as a child. I remember losing and and breaking my glasses, and and they worry about it because they think, oh, I've done something wrong. Maybe I'm going to hide this. We want kids to know that we understand and that we want them to get their glasses back right away. So we have a replacement warranty on all of the glasses if they are lost or broken. Their parent, a school nurse, a teacher will reach out to us through our website. Very simple form. We already have their prescription and their frame on record, so we can very quickly contact our partners at Warby Parker. They will create a brand new pair of glasses and send it right back out to the students so they can wear them again at school.
Donna Arrendell 14:25
Excellent, Warby Parker. See, we're talking about some glasses that have value. That is, that's amazing. So, for our listeners, and maybe for those who may have tuned in a little later, where should parents or caregivers go to get connected or schedule an appointment with Vision to Learn?
Ramiro Hernandez 14:49
Well, they can go to first to get information. They can visit us at vision2learn.org, which is the main website to learn about the program. Normally, the line. Libraries put out information on their website, so they've been great with us over the past couple summers of locating where we're going to be at. Normally, we're still taking library sites throughout the summer, so if they they can go to their local libraries, say, "Hey, we want to bring Vision to Learn in it, they'll get in contact with us. We'll go over the process and get that scheduled to get a visit at their library.
Donna Arrendell 15:26
And before we finish up, what ages do you serve? I want to make sure our listeners are aware of the age group that you serve.
Ramiro Hernandez 15:34
We see pre-K four to 12th grade, so four to 18 would be the range that we see. Yes.
Donna Arrendell 15:40
Wow, early intervention is so important. It's so great to hear that you do start at the pre-K because many of our schools in DCPS as well as in the DMV now have full-time pre-K programs. So that is important, and that is key to children being successful in school, so thank you so much for that availability for the little ones.
Damian Carroll 16:07
Exactly, and a lot of parents don't understand that really early on, students, children can have vision difficulties. You know, ideally, parents would start taking their job for an eye exam before they are three years old, and then every year after that, and that's a great way to catch both early issues that could stand in the way of children being able to learn to read, and also to catch important eye health conditions that are rare but could be could be serious if not detected early on.
Donna Arrendell 16:40
Damian and Romero, this has been a wonderful conversation. Thank you so much for the work that you're doing at Vision to Learn, and for joining us here at the DC Public Library today.
Damian Carroll 16:54
Thanks, Donna.
Ramiro Hernandez 16:55
Thank you,
Donna Arrendell 16:56
and to our listeners, thank you for joining us for this episode of Stacks in the City. Until next time, keep reading, keep learning, and keep discovering the stories that connect us all.
Chris Stevenson 17:15
It's that time of year when summer break is coming to a close, and children and some adults all across the district are heading back to school, from pre-K to graduate institutions. Students are preparing for the return, and in some cases, for their first times ever in a classroom. But school isn't just a topic for pupils. How many films can you think of that are geared specifically for adults that are about school. Indeed, one of my favorite films of all times is Heather's. Why? Surely parents have a vested interest, but otherwise, shouldn't we, as adults, have outgrown this topic? Maybe, but do any of us ever really outgrow our younger years? I don't know. I'm a book jockey, not a psychologist. But from my wrangling of literary collections, I do know tutelage and matriculation are recurring themes in the literary canon throughout history, from the Idaba text detailing school days in ancient Sumeria to the colloquia of the Hermeneumata Pseudodositheana from Rome, and later texts such as the Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius, Biographia Literaria by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the Diaries of Sylvia Plath, and Mean Girls the Musical. School remains with us as we continue beyond our green cold salad days and into the savory entree and softer, sweeter desserts. Decades of life's full course meal. Over the summer, I had the opportunity to read Suzy Eynon's novella *Terrestrial* with Parkland Turner's Page Turner's Book Club. Suzy Eynon is an important flash fiction writer and editor, having published widely and edited for Variant, Five South, and JMWW. She is a literary citizen extraordinaire. Her book *Terrestrial* is available in print through Malarkey Books and is also available on Libby. *Terrestrial* tells the story of a young girl Daisy who lives in the humdrum world of suburban high school life and crafts a reality of her own design. That description alone would have you think this is a young adult novel, but this isn't YA. Terrestrial is literary magic, science fiction secrecy, and conspiracies-or is it written in a style of psychological poetry? Through her own reality, she uncovers what she believes to be a conspiracy covering the existence of aliens and UFOs, and. All comes to a head when she experiences what could be a close encounter, but the story itself isn't really about green little men at all, but rather feeling alien around your own peers in high school. What occurred to us in the book club was that this uncomfortableness is an experience adults continue to have when they leave a scholastic setting, and perhaps that is why we love stories that take place at school, because it reminds us that our contemporary selves are no different. For we may outgrow our bodies and habits, but it was our souls then who are our souls now, even if it aged like the finest cheeses and wines. But for more than 100,000 kids who go back to school every year at Washington D.C. 250 public schools, 91 private schools and 20 universities. The terror is new and fresh. And while I was scouring the dusty tomes of literature, it occurred to me to ask, what literary resources does the library have for students in 2026, facing the gauntlet of chalkboards and textbooks. Simply a recreational reader of school-related media for youth, I don't know. So I have brought in one of the DC Public Library's foremost experts on developmental literacy, Aline Pelton. This is Get Lit, a segment dedicated to everything literary and book-related. I am your host, Christopher Stevenson. Elaine Pelton is the assistant manager at the Northeast Neighborhood Library in Ward Six. She has worked at numerous libraries across the city, including Petworth, Shaw, Southeast Shepard Park, Chevy Chase, Cleveland Park, and the MLK Library, and numerous libraries in Philadelphia. She is known for her vibrant and extremely popular story times, her internationally acclaimed viral dinosaur roaring and evil laugh contest, and most recently, her horror filmmaking workshops. She has taught numerous courses in early literacy, play, and is a reader's advisory virtuoso. Please join me in welcoming Elaine Pelton. Welcome, Elaine.
Elaine Pelton 22:36
Thanks, Chris. Wow, that was a that was a very deep introduction. I really appreciated that. That was that was a number of obscure archaic texts about school. I was not aware of. I'm going to have to look those up after.
Chris Stevenson 22:49
So, we're here to ask you about book recommendations concerning back to school. What do you recommend for little ones who are scared, or even their parents, of their very first day of school ever, or books for little ones to get them excited about going to school.
Elaine Pelton 23:07
There are so many fun books out there. You know, I'm not going to be able to go through all of them. One I would just think is really adorable, and I think could be perfect for children entering preschool for the first time is called "We Don't Eat Our Classmates" by Ryan T. Higgins, and this details the story of a little dinosaur named Penelope, who is going to school for the very first time, but she doesn't have a great first day because she doesn't understand all the rules. And so, one of the rules that the other kids seem to inherently understand is is that you don't eat each other. But Penelope does that because she's a dinosaur? So it's a really rough first day. She has to spit her classmates back out repeatedly. She goes home. She's very upset. She talks to her parents, and she realizes, yeah, this is a new environment for her. She doesn't know all the rules. So eventually, she does get it. She finds new ways to relate to her classmates through similar interests, and it's a great, really fun and funny story that kids can kind of laugh because, like, even if you kind of really mess up on your first day, you didn't eat your classmates. You're probably winning.
Chris Stevenson 24:10
Thank you. Oh, this is awesome. I'll have to look that up. Any other recommendations?
Elaine Pelton 24:14
I would say probably more just geared towards age kindergarten. I really love School's First Day of School by Adam Rex, who's a very funny writer, and illustrated by my very favorite children's book illustrator, Christian Robinson. So the illustrations are really fun, and it's from the school's perspective. So the school has never had students before; they've been just sort of hanging out with the janitor all summer, and he's like, you know, students are going to be coming, and school starts to get really, really anxious about whether the students are going to like him. You know whether he's going to like the students, and it is a little bit rough. You know he hears students the first day saying, "I don't like school, and school feels really bad. And then, you know, some things go wrong with the with I forget the wiring or something like that. So school kind of makes a mistake, and he. Feels sort of shamed, but again, by the end of the week, he's adjusted to the students. The students have adjusted to him, and he feels really good about this new environment. So it's it's kind of a fun flip on the anxiety of a new environment, kind of new rules, new things to expect from the school's perspective.
Chris Stevenson 25:19
So how about our middle grade readers, what are some books you would recommend someone a bit older? Something that might help them get in the swing of school.
Elaine Pelton 25:28
So one of the books I think would be just a lot of fun. Again, very fun and funny book that might be good for slightly older age group, like maybe kids you know seven or eight who aren't quite to that sort of tween developmental stage yet is a lot of fun. It's called Teacher's Pet by Anica Rissi, and this is a really fun, also and very funny book where their classroom has a group of tadpoles, and eventually they realize they can't raise all the tadpoles, so they just pick one to raise. But surprisingly, this tadpole starts to grow larger and larger and larger and larger, and ultimately looks very much like a hippopotamus. So really, they have a hippopotamus in the classroom, and as you can imagine, having a hippopotamus in like a second, third grade classroom, he doesn't blend well, he doesn't play well by the rules. He's very disruptive to the classroom. All of the kids figure this out. The teacher does not. The teacher is completely oblivious to the fact that this is hippopotamus and is completely disrupting the classroom in the school day. So this is a fun flip where the the kids have to sort of figure it out and kind of trick the teacher into basically accepting the fact that they gotta get rid of this hippo. So I think it's it's fun too because it also has a fun message where even even grownups don't necessarily always get get everything. Even grownups can make mistakes. So again, very fun and funny. And there's nothing like humor, you know, for alleviating you know anxiety and you know getting kids to feel a little bit more comfortable with new situations, so I do recommend that one. As far as for middle grade readers, definitely Merci Suarez changes gears by Meg Medina, who's local, won the Newbery in 2019, and it follows a very sort of strong-willed 12-year-old who's wanting to navigate middle school for the first time. She's a little bit out of her element. It's a very elite school. She doesn't come from a very elite background. It kind of opens with the awkwardness of picture day and her not kind of understanding what the norms are in this new environment. And she's also got a lot going on at home, so it's a really wonderful kind of coming of age story about a little girl navigating quite a lot of changes and struggles.
Chris Stevenson 27:50
So, how about for our tweens and teens?
Elaine Pelton 27:52
Again, so many. I would like to highlight one of my very favorite YA novels I've ever read, just called "Piecing Me Together" by Renee Watson, it's really poignant. It's really beautiful. It's funny, and I think on some level something anybody that's been through that stage of life can relate to. But it follows a very bright young woman who's from a neighborhood where there are not a lot of resources, and she realizes that she's gonna sort of have the future that she aspires to. She would like to be an artist. That she needs to go to a different school, so she gets a scholarship to again a very elite, mostly white school. This this young woman is black, and so it's a very very different environment from her environment at home. And she has to sort of learn to navigate that, and then she's eventually assigned a mentor for you know at risk teens, and she's not sure how she feels about being labeled an at risk teen. She didn't think she was, and they think that this mentor is going to be really great for her. That's a very successful young black woman, and then it turns out she and her mentor don't necessarily have as many things in common as people would have assumed, so there's a lot sort of navigating that relationship as well because of their different backgrounds. But again, she does piece herself together. She does remain whole to herself while navigating three very different worlds, and it's just a really beautiful, inspiring, poignant story. So I highly recommend that one.
Chris Stevenson 29:21
I love it. So first days are always exciting days. Do you have a memory of a first day at school?
Elaine Pelton 29:30
Yeah, I was trying to think about this. You know what might be interesting to share. I think I have a few. So I remember my first day of kindergarten, and really only I remember kind of like what occurred outside the school. But I remember that I was starting kindergarten. I was very excited, and there was a little girl outside the school getting dropped off by her mother, and she was in tears, and she could not stop crying. She was terrified. She was terrified to start. Kindergarten, and I think having been in preschool for some years, I you know I felt pretty good about it, and I remember just taking her hand and saying, you know, it's okay, we'll go in together, and we'll be friends, and we were we stayed friends all through kindergarten. Yeah, I also remember my first day of junior high school, and which I decided that I was really going to make a splash with my outfit. So I, I had this vision of wearing all gold. So this was in the '80s. So I had a gold cable knit sweater with a gold miniskirt with gold matching gold socks and a matching gold beret, and in retrospect, I'm really surprised that I made any friends at all. It was quite the look. All right, and I've got one more. All right, which is my first day of high school in Boulder, Colorado, my family moved from Arlington, Virginia, to Boulder, Colorado when I was 15 years old. So I went from a very small alternative high school program in Arlington to a very large mainstream public high school in Boulder, Colorado. And I remember two things that really hit me. One was like these students were huge. I mean, they were so much taller than the kids I went to high school with back home. I couldn't figure it out what they were feeding the kids in Colorado, but they were really massive. And the other thing that was a really big adjustment for me I'd never dealt with before was bills. We always just sort of went from classroom to classroom. We had three blocks. In this case, a bell would ring, and it didn't matter if the teacher was mid-sentence. Everybody would slam their bookshelf, get up, and move to the next classroom. And it was just I. It was so foreign for me, and I remember just being sort of cut up in this like, just sort of herd of students trying to get from classroom to classroom, and I used to just moo. I couldn't help it. I don't know if anybody heard me mooing ever, but I just really felt like cattle. And so again, it was you know mid high school another big adjustment, completely new environment, you know. So, but you know we we do it. We go through it, and you know, like you said, you know, life has changed.
Chris Stevenson 32:26
Well, thanks, Elaine. Is there anything that you would like to announce or promote right now?
Elaine Pelton 32:31
Oh, okay, yeah. Check out the Northeast Library web page for a very special event coming up in August. I think it's August 23. Anyway, we are having a toddler runway show. Okay, okay. So we want you to bring your toddlers. We want you to like dress them up in whatever they feel fly in, and we're gonna run those toddlers on a runway. We will be emceeing the events, so please do sign your toddler up. And even if you don't want to bring your toddler, you definitely want to like check this out. It's going to be hysterical. Never done a toddler runway show before. We'll see how it goes. But please check out that event coming up in August at the Northeast Neighborhood Library.
Chris Stevenson 33:14
And while you're on the website, do check out our events page all across the city at various libraries, there will be back-to-school events happening throughout August and also in September. I know Capitol View has a big one. Benning is a big bash, and Bellevue is supposed to be one of the hottest in the city. So when you get an opportunity, check out the Toddler Runway Show and the back-to-school events. Thank you for coming to speak to us, Elaine.
Donna Arrendell 33:48
Dust off your lunchboxes and sharpen your pencils because it is back to school time here in the district. As you check off items on your list, make sure you don't forget your most important school supply: your library card. This August, DC Public Library invites families to stop by a back-to-school event at your neighborhood library to sign up for your library card and celebrate the beginning of another school year, each event features free book bags, school supplies, games, hands-on crafts, face painting, free food, live music, and so much more. Representatives from local organizations will be on site offering resources that support learning and health. You might connect with a tutoring program, a youth mentoring group, a health provider, or a community service you didn't even know was available. Many events also offer free health screenings, haircuts, and hair braiding. And of course, don't forget to connect with friendly library staff who are ready and willing to help families explore homework resources and learn about programs for kids, teens, and all those that will be available all year around-it's the perfect moment to see just how much your library can help your student thrive. To find a back-to-school bash or community celebration near you, visit dclibrary.org forward slash back dash school, or visit your favorite neighborhood library.
Olubunmi Bakare 35:59
What I love about growing up and living in the district is that you're constantly surrounded by history. Walk down almost any street, and you'll find a marker quietly reminding you that this neighborhood, this corner, this block has shaped both local and national stories. Sometimes the buildings those markers describe are long gone. Only a photograph hints at what once stood there. But that isn't the case for many of the district's schools built in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In the latter half of the 1800s, city officials set out to create schools that would serve as national models, architectural showcases of what public education could look like in the nation's capital. Just behind Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library at 10th and 8th Street stands the Webster School, a red brick building partially covered in ivy. Built in 1881 and named after Congressman Daniel Webster, it originally served schoolchildren in the district. In the early 20th century, it operated as an Americanization school, supporting immigrants seeking citizenship and adjusting to life in the United States. Walk a few blocks northwest to 13th and K Street, and you'll find the Franklin School, built more than a decade earlier and named after Benjamin Franklin. At the time, it was considered an architectural marvel, a symbol of the city's grand ambitions for public education. Head northeast to New York Avenue and M Street, and you'll encounter another striking red brick landmark, the former M Street High School, constructed in 1891. Unlike the first two schools, which were built for white students, M Street High School was built for black students. Though not the first high school in the city, it holds a singular place in U.S. history as the first public high school constructed specifically for African Americans. Together, these buildings remind us that DC's educational story is inseparable from its architectural one. They show how the city expressed its values through design and how decisions about who these schools were built for reflected the social realities of their time. All of this brings us to today's conversation. We're exploring an exceptional book that uncovers this very history: model schools in the model city, race, planning, and education in the nation's capital. The book is a finalist for the 2026 Association for the Study of African American Life and History Book Award, and a finalist for the 2026 Association of American Publishers Prose Award in the Social Sciences. Joining us is its author, Dr. Amber N. Wiley, the Wick Cary Director of the Institute for Quality Communities, and an associate professor of planning, landscape architecture, and design at the University of Oklahoma, we'll be talking about what it meant for DC to be a model city, how federal oversight shaped education from Reconstruction to the New Deal, and how mid-century modernist and brutalist school architecture tells the story of civil rights in the district. This is our All Things Local segment, where we highlight DC's history, culture, communities, and the remarkable individuals who have shaped and are continuing to shape Washington D.C. I'm your host Olubumi Bakari, Dr. Wally. Welcome to All Things Local.
Dr Amber N. Wiley 39:48
Thank you so much, Olubumi, for having me here. It is truly a pleasure, and I I really just appreciate your lens, even on the book and thinking about. That that story, as you just described it.
Olubunmi Bakare 40:03
So let's start big. This idea of DC being the model city. What did that label mean?
Dr Amber N. Wiley 40:10
Yeah. So it's funny. A lot of people associate the term model city with other cities. There were other cities that had benefits from this legislation, Boston being one of them, New Haven, Connecticut, Tulsa, Oklahoma, not far from me. Also, I had model cities programs, Atlanta, all over the place. But I would say that Boston and New Havens are probably the most well known in terms of urban planning and urban history, but Washington D.C. as it is in many cases, is a place where those ideas were formulated and evolved even before something became legislation. And so, you know, I really try to include or even center Washington D.C. in this notion of a model city. When I'm talking about it in the book, it's really related to 1966 legislation that was passed to create a new kind of organization of self-help of community renewal across the United States, and so that legislation, you know, created the Model Cities Act, which allowed various states and cities, really the cities, to to take advantage of federal dollars to do improvement in neighborhoods, and a key proponent of that was full as you know, as much citizen participation as one can achieve, but I I do talk about the ways that even from the earliest planning that DCP was supposed to be exemplar in an ideal city,
Olubunmi Bakare 41:58
and and also in the the first chapter, you if I'm not mistaken-you referenced it. I think it was the mayor at the time who wanted the schools to also be a model for the United States. Can you speak to that a little bit?
Dr Amber N. Wiley 42:13
Yeah. So the mayor at the time was Mayor Wallach, who also had a school named after him. It no longer exists, but you have to imagine he's the mayor after the Civil War, and DC for a second there did not even really it was it was a question about whether or not it was going to be the capital of the country, right? It could be the capital of the Union, you know, while Richmond would be the capital of the Confederacy, but we we won we won the South back, and so now we're thinking about DC again as the capital of the the whole country at that time, and it still was in many people's minds, even foreign dignitaries, a backwater country locale, and Mayor Wallach really wanted to say we are big and bustling too. We are important, and so public school education wasn't actually readily available for anybody, black or white, before the Civil War, the advent of public education-I'll say-educational scholar James Anderson makes this point-really blooms after the Civil War, in part due to the efforts of Black Americans to educate themselves. If Black Americans are trying to educate themselves, you know, other folks probably need to be educating themselves too. And so, like the the South owes its proliferation of public education, primary schools, and things of that nature to the efforts of the Freedmen's Bureau, who was setting up the system, and white Americans were like, well, we need to. Well, if they're getting educated, then we need to be educated too. Early New England, and early, I mean, like 1830s, 1840s, New England educational advocates like Horace Mann and Henry Bernard had been promoting this notion of a common school-a school where anyone can go to regardless of your economic status, which you know, not necessarily regardless of your race, but regardless of your economic status-and Mayor Wallach ran with this common school notion. You know, a couple decades later, but still, schools for all, but he really wasn't concerned about the black public schools. But he wanted the schools for white children in the city to be the best there is. Like they, they didn't want Boston to say they had the best school system. They didn't want Cincinnati. Or St. Louis, which were actually bigger in terms of like population and industry, to say that they had the best school system, and so Mayor Wallach really, you know, in the midst of us trying to rebuild from the Civil War, was like DC is the best, and and it's the best because we have the best public schools and the best, you know, amenities and so on and so forth. So he was really very much intent on making sure the rest of the country knew that DC was as metropolitan, or even more, was up and coming, and you couldn't look down on it anymore.
Olubunmi Bakare 45:37
So you write about the era from Reconstruction through the New Deal, when the federal government controlled DC's affairs, including its public schools, what did that look like on the ground, and how did Black communities still manage to build such strong schools within that system?
Dr Amber N. Wiley 45:54
That's a great question. Again, there were many mechanisms of oversight. School board officials were appointed, so that's one thing, and it's that's one of the strange things. It was like the district courts, the judges could actually determine who's on the school board. Well, who appoints the judges, the the commissioner, who appoints the commissioners, like the president, like everything. Everything goes back to the higher bureaucracy, and so appointee, appointee, appointee, appointee, little to no accountability in a sense. Like if the schools weren't serving people's needs, then who do you, who do you, you can't vote anybody out. You can't vote people out. This off the school board, they're appointed, and so yeah, that was actually a real struggle. When the school systems are separated, though, there's at least autonomy and administration, and to a certain extent, the curriculum and the things that are being taught in the schools, so you know the superintendent of color schools could at least say, "I believe that we should be learning these things. And you, you and I had had a little brief exchange about like Anna Julia Cooper, and so there are people who are leading the schools, the high schools in particular, who are saying we need to be focused on this kind of curriculum or that kind of curriculum. The school board doesn't really have that much say so in those kind of matters. What the school board does have more say so in is oftentimes school siting and locations, which is highly contentious, and out of tradition, and not necessarily out of any kind of real official policy, the school board was about. I think they had. Well, we're going to make up a number right now because I can't remember the exact number. But let's say it's nine. That they would give six seats over to white folks, and maybe three seats over to black folks, and or you know three seats over to women, and maybe one of them be a black person. Like they have these customs, really, of proportionality that again were custom more than actual edict. In that, the folks who govern the school board, the commissioners, the judges, the court systems, whoever, could say, "Hey, we're doing fair representation here. The portion of black folks on the school board are equal to the proportion of black folks in the city, 30% If you're on a board and you're still a minority, you're not going to be able to overturn the larger. You know, you're you're always going to be on a losing side if your desires don't align with the majority desires. And so it was. It's like the irony of saying, "Hey, you have representation and it's proportional. What y'all mad about? It's like, okay, but every time we try to put something forward to make a decision, we get voted down. So that was part of the struggle. But the ways that everyday citizens would try to exert influence on the decisions that are made on the school board level and higher is by testifying before Congress, which is wild because who else is going to be responsive to your needs and desires? Again, school board is not elected; they're appointed, so they don't have to actually do anything that you ask them to do. And the folks who might be arguing on your behalf might not have you know a kind of a total majority ever, and so one of the craziest things for me was when I had to figure out when your everyday citizen was arguing about we need a bigger school, we need a gymnasium. We need more classrooms. Why are you building a new white school over here when we have this many black students over here? Is they had to go to Congress? They and so congressional records are freely available, and I would sift through hundreds, 1000s of congressional records when you know a black man from the Reno neighborhood is testifying before Congress about the need to keep the Reno school and not build a new white school in their neighborhood like that was wild to me. Like who has to do that? Who has to do that? Black Washingtonians from the 1900s on up, and it's um, it's funny. It's a blessing and a curse.
Dr Amber N. Wiley 50:49
It's a blessing in the sense that during the pandemic, when some of this research was happening, I could have access to the Congressional Record via you know Hassy Trust or Google Books because it's been digitized. Whereas, if it was any other city, those records would be in somebody's archive, and I would have to be there physically. So, blessing and a curse. Like y'all really had to go to Congress, and it's on. You know, it's in the Congressional Record for this session, and they're testifying before people who, you know, there are various committees. There's the committee on DC. There's the committee on like health and education. Like all these different committees, to try to get some help on the local level. It still blows my mind. It still blows my mind. I'm like, that's wild.
Olubunmi Bakare 51:37
Now the story eventually shifts from governance to architecture, and to some styles, people definitely have opinions about how do DC's modernist and brutalist school buildings help to tell the story of race, power, and evolving ideas about education and the built environment.
Dr Amber N. Wiley 51:57
Yes, so that's a great question. I will say this book started with Dunbar, and it started with my desire to visit this hallowed ground where all these prestigious black folks had taught or had graduated. You know, I had gone to school, and I was just gonna write a paper. I I think I was intrigued by the way, like a lot of folks were intrigued by like black excellence, quite frankly. And I was in grad school at GW at the time, and I was taking a seminar on on Washington where you could write about anything. And I was like, I want to understand the chemistry, the science, whatever behind black excellence in DC as it relates to this school that I've heard so much about, and and this is in the intro to the book, right? I roll up on Dunbar. This was 2006, which is absurd. Yes, that was 20 years ago was 2006, and I was like, "What is this building? Like, what is this high rise? So nine stories tall, high school, nine stories tall, minimal windows, just really a lot of brick, and not a lot of window, and institutional looking, and not in a good way. Institutional looking, as in there is a county jail, or actually a city jail in Oklahoma City that looks almost just like the way that Dunbar used to look. And I said, "Oh, there's absolutely no way this is in my head that you know black folks came up with this idea, like there, this was imposed upon us because of all the black excellence that was happening. So clearly, somebody came in and said, "Enough! I want to teach you a lesson through design. And so that version of Dunbar, which was created, dedicated, I would say, in 1977, is what we would call a brutalist school building, meaning that materiality takes precedent. It's sculptural. Brutalism comes from a French word, beton brut, which really means raw concrete. Raw concrete. Dunbar isn't well. That Dunbar wasn't necessarily concrete, but people found other materials to use to express the qualities of concrete. And you know, you're not dressing anything up per se. You're not make. You're not adding columns to a thing. This is the raw material here. Like it's, it's very artistic in a sense. It's very sculptural. It's supposed to be powerful and strong. A lot of people hate that kind of building. I would say architects at a particular time, 60s and 70s, they liked it. I mean, architects like to experiment with materials, anyways. But what's what's economically feasible? What's the best easy. Fastest and can still look good. Also, you know there is the notion of like post-war cities are crumbling and we need some some major pronouncement, something that that signals strength and permanence and monumentality. As much as folks might hate what we consider brutalist buildings. They do say all those things: power, strength, permanence, monumentality. Maybe just not in the way that folks are used to. And that style, at least I would say, the esthetic of brutalism permeated government buildings. We have a couple examples in the district, the Hoover Building, for instance, the government buildings, libraries on college campuses, schools of architecture. So I I went to Yale School of Architecture. I went to Yale College, but our architecture classes were all in the architecture building, and that was a that's a prime brutalist raw concrete on the inside, concrete on the outside. That building is wild, and it's beloved and hated. It's also the architecture of urban renewal, and in some cases, if you think about it that way, just urban renewal of the 60s and 70s. So there's also like a intrinsic reason why a lot of folks don't like it. I was shocked when I did my research and found out that this, as I initially thought, monstrosity of a building was actually designed by a black architecture firm, and that it was the part of community advocating for a replacement of the old Dunbar, being the the school building that had been built in 1916. I was shocked. It's it's one of those things, and I try to tell my students this: it's okay to be wrong sometimes because, yeah, the story that you find out, like the real story, could be even better than the thing that you imagined.
Dr Amber N. Wiley 57:06
Maybe even better, maybe more complicated, more complex, and push you further in in your analysis. So the fact that it was a black architecture firm, the fact that the firm was attached to Howard, like the the architects had taught at Howard, that they were Howard's architecture students who were involved in the planning of the school. I just I like I was completely flabbergasted, but the school is of a particular time and place, 1960s, 1970s. That was the prevailing institutional style and high style, in fact, right? Like that's super fancy, and also like a a switch flipped almost overnight when Charles Cassell got on the school board. Like when there was open elections for the school board, and Charles Cassell, who was a trained architect, becomes elected to the school board and public commissions, commissions of that size were hard for black architects to get. But here it comes, 1968, and we have an elected school board, and the folks who ran buildings and grounds for the school system before were like, we don't know any quality black architects who can design a school from the get go, or you know, when black architects were involved, they got to do the renovations or a small addition. I mean, these were prime commissions for black architects, and Charles Cassell was like, "Well, I've got a list of about 20 firms here in the city, and you need to be considering these folks, this is another thing I tell my students: you can be trained in architecture. You don't have to be an architect, even though Charles Cassell was. You can use your power of advocacy or your knowledge of the built environment to impact in any number of different spheres. So him being on the school board was key for these black architects to get commissions of a scale they had never gotten before, and I tell my students this: I'm like, okay, you might go into finance or whatever. You might be a banker on Wall Street. How are we going to use your influence to impact design for the better or to make more opportunities for other people? Charles Cassel definitely did that.
Olubunmi Bakare 59:20
I want to go back just a bit and talk about the planning for public schools in the late 19th and the early 20th century. Can you talk about how that was planned and some of the architects that designed these schools? Was there a difference in planning for black schools versus white schools were they equally planned and designed in the same way?
Dr Amber N. Wiley 59:49
That's a great question. So they were not equally planned, but they were equally designed, and I can't even say they were equally designed because. The dollar amount given over, like per student, you know, there's the ways that people calculate how much you're investing into a student by, oh, you know, the the school building costs $150,000 and it's serving 500 students versus the school building costs $150 and it's serving 200 students. The difference in those proportions is you're doing a lot more with less for the 500 students, even though on the face of it you can say we are investing equally in both. What are you talking about? We spent the same amount of money. DC wasn't even spending the same amount of money. They were still using this proportional, using basically centennial. Well, the census records every 10 years. We know the Great Migration happened. We know that after the Civil War ended, 10s of 1000s of Black folks poured into the city, and so all the official counting was incorrect. We were underrepresented in all the official records of how many Black folks are in DC, and so one, they're trying to you know rationalize proportion. 30% of the the total funds for public schools will go to Black schools, and 60% will go to white schools, even though our numbers for the Black school age children are old, and also there would be less money, say, allocated to school site. So we would get some of the the worst sites for school buildings. So it starts from that money that's allocated to the black school system to the money that is given over to the site, which again it impacts the different amenities that can go along with the school building, and then the money given over to the school building. There was a municipal architect in Washington D.C. And Snowden Ashford was his name, and I know he was mentioning the other one in the another one of your podcast too. I was like, she really just shouted out the municipal architect. That's wild. He was a professional. He had a pride in his practice, but he still had to deal with the fact that you know y'all giving me this itty bitty piece of land. I'm gonna design the school building as best I can, but there there's gonna be less of things inside the school in addition to less of things outside the school. So like the craft of the building was nice, but it never the buildings never serve the full potential. Like they never fulfilled their full potential because of the the funding issues and the siting issues. I'll also say, like even Sumner Sumner School in DC, it was amazing because Adolph Cluss, who is the same architect who did the Franklin School and did the Wallach School, designed that school building, and it served multiple purposes, and there were shortcuts taken when they needed to be taken because of just the difference in the allocations of funds. But I would say for most of the municipal architects, and even some of the private architects, there was a time when private architects were getting these commissioned, private white architects, they they don't want to build a bad school building because that reflects on their reputation. Period. So it really is a question of what can you do with the funds you have in maintain your reputation as a professional.
Olubunmi Bakare 1:03:39
So as I prepared for this conversation, I talked with Jaspreet Pahwa, who leads capital planning and construction here at the DC Public Library. Jaspreet mentioned how much community engagement influences the library's projects, from how spaces are used to what services neighborhoods need. From your perspective, how does community input shape the design of public spaces like schools and libraries? And do you see parallels between today's participatory design work and the planning eras you explore in your book?
Dr Amber N. Wiley 1:04:14
I would say absolutely yes. There was never a decade in the over 100 years of research that I looked at, where neighborhood residents, parents, students, pastors, fraternal and you know sorority organizations, chambers of commerce, the press were not involved with or had an opinion about what was happening in terms of school funding, school design, school siting and location, school amenities. We had something to say, and again. You know, like I said about testifying before Congress and all these things. Like now, whether or not those opinions were taken seriously by the school architects is one thing. Whether or not Congress cared enough to budget to address the needs is another thing. But I would say that we have always been active in making known our priorities and desires and things when it comes to the built environment. That's one of the things I've struggled with first as a student and also as a scholar with people like we don't know how to talk about blackness in the built environment or we don't have anyone who's written about black theories about design, right? Like we're still in that that era. We're maybe 30 years into really digging into that, and I'm like, black folks always talk about design, you know, because we use we live in buildings, we use buildings. Like everyone has an opinion, quite frankly, whether or not our input is considered, I think is the difference. Today, I would say yes. There are more formal ways of gaining community input into design. I run a center that actually is basically our community engagement center, where our students in the College of Architecture learn how to take what they get from conversations with different stakeholders in various cities and towns across Oklahoma and develop designs that respond to their needs. It's it's difficult though sometimes to translate that or like the question of how do I translate that? Do we have enough space? Do we have enough funds? You know, like so. Every single project is going to be different in terms of what you can actually achieve. There always have to be compromises, but at least I think we're in the point where folks are actively listening to the public and trying to figure out how to address those very site-specific and user-specific needs.
Olubunmi Bakare 1:07:12
All right, Dr. Wiley. Before I let you go, I have a little something I do here on All Things Local. I call it Fast Five. I'm going to ask you a few rapid-fire questions, and I want you to give me the first answer that comes to mind. Are you ready?
Dr Amber N. Wiley 1:07:27
Okay, I'll try to keep it PG.
Olubunmi Bakare 1:07:30
Early bird or night owl?
Dr Amber N. Wiley 1:07:32
Oh, night owl.
Olubunmi Bakare 1:07:34
Who is your favorite architect?
Dr Amber N. Wiley 1:07:36
I mean, it's going to be Charles Cassell because he's an architect, but he's also activist, and you know I talk about that a bit. But I'm like that man. If you see video recordings of him, he passed only just a few years ago. Like he had presence. He would. He wasn't just about building. I'm sorry. I know you said fast five. He he was about DC statehood. He was about he was about so much. I was like, aha, yes, he's a man.
Olubunmi Bakare 1:08:03
In your research, and I'm sure you've looked at a lot of school plans. Which historical design is your favorite?
Dr Amber N. Wiley 1:08:11
I mean, I love I love a Sumner. I love the Sumner building, maybe because I have spent now I've spent I think I've spent more time in that building than I have any of the other schools because some of them still exist as schools, and some of them have been demolished. But just the ability to have the offices and the classrooms and the cloakroom and the auditorium, and it's it's a gorgeous building functionally and aesthetically.
Olubunmi Bakare 1:08:42
If you could have saved one school building in the district from demolition, which one would it have been, and why?
Dr Amber N. Wiley 1:08:50
Y'all can't see my face right now, but I'll just tell you, I have my my hand in front of my face because I'm like, oh, all of them. I told you I have a greater appreciation for that 1977 Dunbar. I'm not. I'm not going to advocate for that one though. I'm going to advocate for the 1916 Dunbar. I am. Yeah, just the era in which it was built. It's the it's the thing that I had wanted to see and I never got to see. I'm like, oh yeah. I mean, it's also the one that my auntie went to when my other auntie taught it, you know, it's the what you know. So, yeah, I would say it's that one for sure.
Olubunmi Bakare 1:09:28
Okay, so if you could travel back in time to walk through any DC school on its opening day, which year and school are you choosing?
Dr Amber N. Wiley 1:09:39
Honestly, is going to be one of the more futuristic ones. It's either going to be the new Dunbar, 1977, or Howard Howard D. Woodson when it first opened, or Shaw. Ah, though it's going to be one of the brutalist ones.
Olubunmi Bakare 1:09:58
So, what is the best way? For our listeners to reach out to you with any questions?
Dr Amber N. Wiley 1:10:03
I do have a website www.amber n as in nicole, wiley.com a m b e r n w i l e y. Prof wiley@ou.edu that's p r o f w i l e y @ ou.edu. My Insta is also Prof Wiley, and I have LinkedIn. So those are the main means of communication for sure.
Olubunmi Bakare 1:10:35
Dr. Wiley, thank you for joining All Things Local. I really enjoyed this conversation. This has been another episode of the DC Public Library podcast. Discover everything the library has to offer at dclibrary.org. Stay connected with us online. Find us @ DCPL on X @ DC Public Library. BSky . Social on Blue Sky and @dcpubliclibrary on Instagram. Thanks for tuning in, and we'll catch you next time.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai