“I’ve visited Duke Ellington, Banneker,” Graham said. “I’m still seeing what’s there.”

On Dec. 3, Graham went to an after-school high school application fair at Brookland Middle School with her aunt, Janette Byrd, where she got to hear from eight different high schools about what they have to offer. Byrd said she was happy that high schools were coming to Brookland Middle School and recruiting students just a short walk from her home.

“I think it’s a wonderful opportunity for the kids and the parents to be a part of,” Byrd, manager of the nearby Woodridge Library, said.

Brookland Middle School hasn’t always been this engaged with the community. When the school opened in 2015, it drew parents and their children from across the city as the only standalone middle school in Ward 5. The resulting crush of new students in the school stretched the faculty to their limits, giving the school a bad rap in its own neighborhood.

Five years later, Brookland Middle School now has the second highest enrollment increase in all of D.C. Public Schools, and the highest of standalone middle schools. How it got there is a testament to the power of changing the narrative around a school and its students.

Wendy Hamilton began working at Brookland Middle School as a long-term substitute teacher in its first year. When the middle school opened, DCPS was expecting about 250 students, but by the time the year began 350 had enrolled.

“The first year was rough as any school would be,” Hamilton said. “By the end of that year they had nicknamed us ‘the Brookland Zoo.’”

From its first year to its second, Brookland Middle School lost about 100 students. Hamilton, a part-time pastor at Open Door Metropolitan Community Church in Montgomery County, was hired full-time as an enrollment counselor to help bring back students. She said initially she had a tough time convincing parents to re-enroll their kids at Brookland Middle School.

“This is just as much ministry as going into church.” Hamilton said. “It took us a year or two to regain the confidence, to shift the narrative around Brookland.”

“They had nicknamed us ‘the Brookland Zoo.’ That was discouraging because it felt like something that we could not control.” – Wendy Hamilton

The school’s improvement began in earnest in 2017, when Principal Kerry Richardson came to Brookland from Kelly Miller Middle School in Ward 7. Richardson said he immediately set to work getting to know his new neighborhood, even changing his dry cleaners to one not far from the middle school. When he began reaching out to the community, Richardson was troubled by the school’s poor reputation.

“I kept saying, ‘My students aren’t like that at all.’ So one of the first things I did was a changing of the narrative,’” Richardson said.

Richardson scaled back on some of the elective courses at Brookland, first billed as an arts-centered middle school, and decided to focus on the fundamentals.

“I really wanted to strengthen the core classes and have honor classes and pre-AP classes,” Richardson said.

At the same time, Richardson has also made himself accessible to parents. He describes himself as a “very visible” principal, keeping his door open to parents visiting the school and even taking them to tour a classroom during the school day, allowing parents a rare glimpse into what a middle school classroom is actually like.

Hamilton, the enrollment counselor normally in charge of recruiting new students from elementary schools, said Richardson has attended as many outreach events at D.C. elementary schools as he could.

“All I can say is, last year Mr. Richardson was like, ‘Give me the calendar of what events are going on and I will go with you,’” Hamilton said. “He’s very active and hands on in a way that I think also reassures parents.”

“That’s really what is was: telling our story.” – Kerry Richardson

Enrollment numbers rose after Richardson’s first year, and he continued to hire more staff to support students, including social/emotional support staff members for each grade level. Richardson said he wanted to bury the “Brookland Zoo” narrative that had plagued the school’s first early years.

“That’s really what it was: telling our story and our staff telling our story,” Richardson said. “We had to rebound from that and really rebrand ourselves.”

Last summer, everything changed. The middle school enrolled a record 365 students, far surpassing its projection of 311 students. With that increase came challenges, but it’s also brought its own form of success.

“I think for the students it’s exciting. It’s an opportunity to meet new people,” said Dakari Taylor-Watson, a counselor at the middle school. “For them, it’s excitement, it’s a method for them to expand and see who else is in the school.”

At the same time as the enrollment increase, Brookland Middle School has also implemented a new Structured Enrichment Model, or SEM, where teachers start clubs like woodworking and yoga that students participate in every other morning. The program is meant to give students an incentive to show up to school on time and also stretch their creativity and explore new interests.

“Because we’ve had an influx of students it’s caused the staff to be creative, structured but creative,” Taylor-Watson said. “We’re thinking more outside the box.”

Hamilton’s job has changed as the school once again reaches its upper limits of attendance. She now anticipates that the middle school will have to turn some kids from non-feeder schools away as the parents of elementary school students in Brookland increasingly choose their local middle school. But Hamilton said she’s happy to have that problem.

“I went from cold-calling to turning people away,” Hamilton said. “I have been shooting for that for three years.”

Richardson said the success has had a notable effect on the student body too. From last school year to now, Brookland Middle School saw a re-enrollment number of 92%, its highest since the school opened. These days, the principal is confident that the school is on track for a successful future.

“It’s been just a lot of phenomenal gains,” Richardson said. “I walk around and see the students, and it’s as they say, ‘We’re crushing it, Mr. Richardson.’”

Editor’s Note: A previous version of this story incorrectly identified Kerry Richardson.

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So community members decided to confront the issue. On March 26, members of the Brookland Middle School parent-teacher organization held a meeting where parents provided statements from students who confessed to feeling unsafe in their own neighborhoods.

“They were calling the cops on kids because they were laughing in the alleyway, I mean are you kidding me? That’s silly,” said Jhonna Turner, parent engagement program coordinator for the Washington Lawyers’ Committee.

After the meeting, Turner realized there was an opportunity to do something more. With support from the Washington Lawyers’ Committee, where her job is specifically designed to facilitate community organizing, she brought together local pastors, parents and other professionals to create the Village of Brookland organization.

Though the nonprofit is still in its early stages, the Village of Brookland will grow in the next year to support not just Brookland Middle School but every public school in the Brookland neighborhood. In a neighborhood where wealthy white residents are sending their kids to private or charter schools, Village of Brookland plans to provide resources to Brookland’s public schools and change narratives around the public school system in the neighborhood.

“We have older people, younger people, Brooklanders who’ve lived there their whole lives, people who have just moved in,” Turner said. “We’re just trying to make sure that all kids have equal resources and opportunities.”

“We’re just trying to make sure that all kids have equal resources and opportunities.”

In Philadelphia, a coalition of parent-teacher organizations has worked since 2012 to spread organizing ideas for school support and revitalize public schools in underserved neighborhoods in a manner similar to the Village of Brookland. In his role as education committee chair in Philadelphia’s Crosstown Coalition, Jeff Hornstein runs the Friends of Neighborhood Education group (FONE), where he has found ways to facilitate city-wide support for the public school system.

“There’s always power in networks,” Hornstein said. “When you’ve got schools, contiguous schools working together, you start to build more of a buzz.”

Philadelphia is different from Washington in that it’s still in the early stages of gentrification following its near-bankruptcy in the ‘80s. Even so, Hornstein acknowledges that there’s a fine line between getting newer, whiter residents to contribute to their local schools and gentrifying established communities out of their neighborhoods. He said he’s found that part of building equitable support for public schools meant getting well-meaning white people in Philadelphia neighborhoods to put their money, and kids, where their mouths were.

“It’s really about a narrative change. More resources, and change the narratives,” Hornstein said. “If you are truly a person who espouses equity and equal opportunity, does that argument stop at the schoolhouse door?”

In Brookland, Turner is up-front about the fact that the issue of support for public schools has a racial component. The students who were getting the police called on them were not white, while the people who were calling the police often were, Turner said. In a one-page flyer the Village of Brookland shares with community members, the organization describes its goal as putting “an end to separate and unequal schools in Brookland.”

The numbers appear to support the organization’s allegation of “separate and unequal” schools. Brookland Middle School is 94% black, while the neighborhood is only 64% black, according to U.S. Census data. Nearby Elsie Whitlow Stokes Community Freedom Public Charter School is 39% black, and Washington Yu Ying Academy, a charter school by Catholic University is 33% black.

“You have parents that chime in saying they’ve been living in the neighborhood their whole lives and they don’t feel comfortable in their neighborhood anymore,” Turner said. “It’s more than just providing resources in their school, it’s about the kids feeling more comfortable and more confident.”

“They’ve been living in the neighborhood their whole lives and they don’t feel comfortable in their neighborhood anymore.”

Ebony Lea is the CEO of A Fresh Start Therapy and lives in the Brookland area. Though she doesn’t have children, Lea began attending Village of Brookland meetings to get involved in supporting the neighborhood’s schools. She said \that as a resident and as someone who attended public schools in Washington, she understands the importance of supporting the next generation of students.

“Children grow up to be adults,” Lea said. “I think something we forget is that children need [positive] experiences in their schools.”

Lea feels it’s important for communities to provide extra support for their public schools when competing charter schools are frequently well-funded and well-supported by high-income parents. She said having a long-term public middle school is a major ingredient for families to maintain a generational connection to their neighborhood.

“The school’s really doing some positive things and we want to support them,” Lea said. “We want families to get to a point where after 20 years they can say, ‘My kids are going to Brookland Middle School.’”

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Ryan Barker, operating manager of Bourbon Coffee on Wisconsin Avenue, said there was only so much his store could do.

“When you can’t wash dishes and your hands that’s not good for food safety,” Barker said.

This is the second boil water advisory the area has endured in recent years. Last summer, a boil water advisory affected large portions of the city, including Tenleytown.

“We usually just play it by ear and open when we can,” Barker said.

On Friday, Bourbon Coffee, Starbucks and other local shops sold food and drinks that didn’t require water. Bourbon Coffee will remain closed until the advisory is lifted.

Current area under boil water advisory (Courtesy of DC Water)

Meanwhile, business is booming for stores selling water bottles. A store manager for Whole Foods declined to speak to this reporter Saturday, saying “This place is crazy town.”

At CVS, store manager Beth Johnson said the store had run out of gallon water jugs until Tuesday.

“We brought out everything we have there’s just no more gallons left,” Johnson said.

Many other beverages are still for sale at Whole Foods and CVS.

Ismael Alvarado, a manager at Cava in Tenleytown, said the store had to buy water bottles from nearby grocery stores to meet their needs. The store’s specialty drinks were made with bottled water, but the soda fountain was shut down until water returned.

Alvarado said the store sold out of its own water bottles by 11:45 Saturday morning. He said he’s concerned because the store won’t get a new shipment of bottles in until Monday, and the grocery stores are rapidly running out.

“I don’t know what we’re going to do for tomorrow,” Alvarado said.

The boil water advisory will likely be in effect at least through Sunday. Residents impacted should boil their water at home for at least three minutes before drinking it or cooking with it. The water is safe for laundry, showering or just washing your hands.

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“This is good for us, it’s good for the foundation, it’s good for major league baseball,” said Sean L. Gibson, executive director of the Josh Gibson Foundation.

Gibson is the great-grandson of his foundation’s namesake, who is widely considered one of the best sluggers of all time. Josh Gibson played for the Homestead Grays, a team based outside Pittsburgh before financial reasons in the 1930s brought their success to D.C., where they were renamed the Washington Homestead Grays.

Today, his great-grandon continues to honor the family legacy by serving “inner-city kids through the name of the great Negro League baseball player.” This work has occasionally brought him to Washington, where as recently as last summer two Little League teams played the first Pittsburgh Homestead Grays versus Washington Homestead Grays game at the Nationals Academy.

“I think our foundation has definitely brought a lot of awareness to the Homestead Grays,” GIbson said. “D.C. was our second home, so we would love to be a part of that D.C. tradition.”

In fact, Gibson credits the World Series with bringing greater attention to his work and the history of the Negro Leagues right before the centennial of the Leagues’ founding on Feb. 13, 2020.

“This would not be happening if the Nationals didn’t win a championship,” Gibson said. “Sometimes it takes something like this to bring the Negro Leagues back into the forefront.”

Roy Doswell, curator of the Negro Leagues Historical Museum in Kansas City, Missouri, said the importance of the Washington-Baltimore corridor for black baseball cannot be understated.

“I think it is important for Washington to recognize the Grays and not forget them because they were really good,” Doswell said.

In fact, Doswell calls the Grays the “gold standard of black baseball.” During their time playing in Griffith Stadium alone, the ballpark that also hosted the beleaguered Senators, the Grays won the 1940, 1943 and 1948 Negro Leagues World Series.

But Washington sports fans at home never got to see the World Series games. As Jackie Robinson and others lead the way on integration in the Major Leagues, interest in black baseball teams dwindled.

Doswell said “the success of these teams in the ‘40s” helped white MLB owners and fans realize just how good black players really were. And with that recognition came increased poaching of black players from the Negro Leagues into Major League baseball.

Rick Bush co-edited “Bittersweet Goodbye,” a book about the 1948 World Series that would ultimately be the last one played by the Negro Leagues. He said the interest he’s seen in his book, and the history of black baseball generally, has grown considerably as Washington residents wake up to the history of the sport in their own city.

“Most casual fans don’t even know that they existed, a die-hard fan might but most casual fans never really paid attention,” Bush said.

After the interest in his first book, Bush said he’s working on two more about the 1946 Newark Eagles and the 1935 Pittsburgh Crawfords, two other outstanding black teams.

Meanwhile, Sean Gibson hopes that more recognition is coming for the early heroes of black baseball, and with it, more support for the programs that he funds today. On Feb. 13, 2020, his organization and others hope to celebrate the centennial anniversary of the founding of the Negro Leagues.

“We would like to hopefully hear from the Nats,” Gibson said, “and we can maybe do something in D.C. next year for our centennial.”

For more information about the Josh Gibson Foundation and the work that they do, .

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Kyle Todd, the executive director of Rhode Island Avenue Main Street and a leader in the latest push for a Brookland BID, said he is excited about the opportunity laying dormant in the community.

“I feel pretty good that I get a chance to start getting out and start talking to people that could be a part of the BID,” Todd said. “I think we’ll see enthusiasm.”

A BID is an area legally designated by the D.C. Council that assesses a fee on businesses in the neighborhood to do additional cleaning, safety and promotional work beyond what the city can typically provide. NoMa, Georgetown and Adams Morgan all have their own BIDs that promote events like PorchFest and Taste of Georgetown.

The BID could be the culmination of an almost decade-long shift in the level of business activity seen in the Brookland neighborhood.

When Lavinia Wohlfarth was growing up in Brookland in the ‘60s, it was still a quiet parish under the shadow of institutions like Catholic University of America.

“It was sleepy, but still solidly middle-class,” Wohlfarth said.

Today the neighborhood’s movie theater is a CVS, and the bowling alley that served Brookland until a fire in 1950 is Atlantic Electric Supply Company, but Wohlfarth has spent the past 20 years preserving those buildings and promoting commerce on 12th Street, where the former theater is located.

As President of the Brookland Community Development Corporation, former vice chairwoman for Ward 5 of the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities and a gallerist on 9th Street for 30 years, Wohlfarth is experienced at organizing business owners in the area.

Wohlfarth’s work in the community has brought about important changes. She received a main street designation for 12th Street when the program was inaugurated in 2002. The designation helped clean up the area and attract more business.

It seems a bit like herding cats. We’re not very organized, generally.

Wohlfarth said a Brookland BID would look a little different than big-money downtown BIDs because of the uniquely residential character of the neighborhood.

“Listen I love rowhouses but that’s not what’s here,” Wohlfarth said. “Each one of them [the BIDs] can be different.”

Recently, she said volunteer trash-cleaning services spearheaded by Councilmember Kenyan R. McDuffie’s office have further contributed to community pride in Brookland.

“Brookland is like a small town in town,” Wohlfarth said. “It really is the case that the neighborhood is going upscale.”

These improvements brought change to the neighborhood incrementally, but it wasn’t until big developers like Jim Abdo brought in Bozzuto that the cash to run a BID really became available in the neighborhood.

“Communities have to be ready for a bid financially,” Wohlfarth said. “It’s not totally supported by the merchants but predominantly you have to have everybody on board.”

Some of the smaller business owners are waiting to see more clearly what benefits a BID will bring to them. Thomas Vedrody, general manager of Annie’s Ace Hardware in Brookland since the location opened in 2012, said he’s inherently skeptical of big changes to the neighborhood.

“It seems a bit like herding cats,“ Vedrody said. “We’re not very organized, generally.”

Vedrody said the community could benefit from increased cooperation, but only if the BID included small businesses and not just bigger developers.

“The vibrancy is brought by the people,” Vedrody said.

Wohlfarth, though, said a BID could help immediately with amenities like a “Safe Walk,” a well-lit path from Monroe Street Market to nearby 12th Street that would connect the two centers of commerce.

“That’s what a BID can do because they can go to the city and say we’re going to change the sidewalk and we’re going to make it better,” Wohlfarth said.

After years of living in a quiet bedroom community, Wohlfarth thinks there’s finally enough willpower from the businesses she’s talked to for a BID to come to the neighborhood she calls home.

“There’s always going to be opposition but I think we’ve reached a point where we can get this thing done,” Wolfarth said.

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Allan Lichtman, a distinguished professor of history at AU’s College of Arts & Sciences, is widely known for accurately predicting the outcome of eight of the last nine U.S. presidential elections. He and a colleague developed a model that uses 13 simple “keys,” or predictors, to determine how likely an incumbent party will fare with the electorate. 

In May, Lichtman used that model to , but with a caveat — that a realistic impeachment inquiry against the president could unleash scandal and give Trump’s Democratic challenger an edge in the 2020 campaign.

Now that an , a successful impeachment — which only acts as an indictment by the House — would most likely serve to calm political tensions, even if it did not result in a conviction by the Senate, Lichtman told 91���� on Tuesday.

“An impeachment of Donald Trump, if successful, [could] remove this incredibly polarizing figure — perhaps the most polarizing figure in all of U.S. history,” he said. “And even if he was acquitted, he would still be very much of a weakened figure.”

The same happened with America’s first impeached president, Andrew Johnson, Lichtman noted. 

Johnson faced the impeachment gauntlet in 1868, largely at the hands of a political caucus dubbed the “Radical Republicans,” according to Kendra Hinkle, a museum specialist at the in Greenville, Tennessee.

Hinkle said the country was in perhaps its most politically divisive state then, reeling from civil conflict and a presidential assasination. As the Johnson administration tried to implement its own agenda, it clashed with the Republican-controlled Congress, intensifying partisan discord. At the heart of that conflict, she said, was a power struggle between the executive and legislative branches of government.

“Fear was rampant, and each branch lived with uncertainty as to whether the other was trying to usurp the power of the other,” she said. “There needed to be a way to prove the balance of powers was still intact. In an odd way, the constitutional caveat of impeachment was a way for that to happen.”

Impeachment, even though it resulted in an acquittal by the Senate, had a dampening effect on Johnson’s political clout, she said. It rebalanced the powers and settled an ongoing debate.

The same could be said of the ongoing House investigation into Trump’s dealings with foreign heads of state, but only if the inquiry returns articles of impeachment, Lichtman said.

It is an essential step in triggering a scandal, which could unlock other keys to Democratic control of the White House, he added. Without it, his original prediction that Trump will remain in power likely stands.

“If Donald Trump is only the third president in U.S. history to be formally impeached by the U.S. House — remember, Nixon resigned before he got impeached — then that would nail down the scandal key,” Licthman said. “Without the scandal key, it’s very difficult to see enough keys turning against the Republicans to predict their defeat.”

But the professor had other suggestions for the four Democratic committees investigating Trump: Don’t narrow the focus and don’t move too fast.

Reports that lawmakers are between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky are troubling, he said

Similarly, he said, American history should be a guiding factor.

“The Watergate scandal blossomed into what, to that point in our history, was the worst scandal in American history,” he said. “We don’t know where the evidence may lead us this time. There may be much worse stuff, if Congress can get our hands on those conversations.”

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Chuck Harney, owner of Bike Rack DC, claims Bozzuto cost him thousands of dollars in operating expenses and lost sales. He claims if Bozzuto had been honest with him about the foot traffic he’d be seeing, he never would have opened a new location on their property.

“It really damaged us because we went into a lot of debt,” owner Chuck Harney said. “The area is dead.”

Bike Rack is one of two retail storefronts that closed this summer after years of poor business. The other, Fox Loves Tacos, closed just weeks before Bike Rack.

While Fox Loves Tacos owners Matt and Jenna Carr declined an interview, a response sent from the Little Red Fox email address, also owned by the Carrs, confirmed that the business is in an “unsettled dispute” with Bozzuto.

Bozzuto has not yet returned a request for comment.

Harney’s claims, and the obvious lack of pedestrians in this six-year-old development, raise questions about the efficacy of setting down an urbanized mixed-use development in what’s long been a sleepy, bedroom neighborhood.

Harney said the biggest reason he came to the development in the first place was because the developer promised a large grocery store in one of their planned phases. He claims marketing materials promised plenty of reason to believe there would be regular foot traffic in the building known as the Arts Walk across from the Brookland Metro station.

“They strung us along,” Harney said. “My hopes were with what they were going to put in that development.”

After two years of empty promises, Harney said Bozzuto finally admitted to him that no grocery store was going to come to the area.

Many of the other residents in the development acknowledge the lack of foot traffic, but they’re less concerned about it being an issue.

Most of the ground floor lots in the Arts Walk are small artist studios where artisans can work and sell a selection of their goods.

Katie Stack is one of the artisans who has been at Arts Walk the longest. Visitors to the Saturday farmer’s markets in the area have been purchasing Stack’s leather goods since 2013, and since she started at Arts Walk she’s already had to move studios once to give herself more space.

“It has done what I needed to do, which is get my business out of my dining room,” Stack said.

Stack says the pedestrian flow is definitely slow most days, but it works out for an artist who does most of her sales online and just needs a space to create.

“It has worked out fine for me,” Stack said, but “I don’t think it would work well as primarily retail.”

Topaz M. Terry, proprietor of BicycleWorks, moved into a studio on Arts Walk this summer. She says she’s mostly just glad to have a workspace that’s also accessible to the public, so she can build a customer base. Still, Terry is worried that Bozzuto isn’t doing enough to promote the Arts Walk development.

“The management company is not made up of artists so they’re not advertising in the way we would advertise,” Terry said. “Getting people to know it is here, that has to be someone who has that eagle eye view, balcony view of what’s happening, and we’re just on the ground.”

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