Signs protesting a city government plan for a new school on Hardy Park land were cleared off a Park entrance fence sometime over this past weekend.

The signs, posted at Q and 45^th streets, near Foxhall Road, had been accumulating for months, with growing concern about the Park’s future.

“So far, I don’t believe anyone in the neighborhood has an idea of who is responsible for the missing signs,” Tom Wolfe, chairman of Friends of Hardy Park, said in an email Wednesday. “They served a unifying purpose among us and many were the work of local school children who were upset by the idea of losing a sizeable chunk of their greenspace.”

Asked for comment, Ward 3 Councilmember Mary Cheh said she went to the Park on Saturday for a celebration of the Park’s reopening after a $5.7-million renovation. The event was rained out. “That was about 3 p.m. and the signs were still there then,” she said in an email Wednesday. “I have no idea who removed them or when.”

Mayor Muriel Bowser did not respond to a request by Potomac Times for comment.

The Park conflict involves multiple moving parts, against a background of complaints about school overcrowding and traffic congestion.

In May 2020, Bowser’s budget showed plans to build a $56-million Foxhall elementary school at the Park site.

At the time, school officials said they envisioned an up-to 80,000-square-foot building that would enroll as many as 550 students. The budgeted cost, according to the city 2022-27 Capital Improvements Plan, has climbed to $61 million.

The Park sits next to a DC Public Schools building, currently occupied by The Lab School, a private school. Its long-term lease with the city was renewed Dec. 24, 2020, and Keep Old Hardy Public, a community group, posted a copy of the document in March 2021.

The Park renovation, by the Department of Parks and Recreation, included an upgraded playing field and playground equipment, along with a splash pad, a dog enclosure, and greenery installations.

Where exactly a new school building would go at the site has not been made clear. Meanwhile, Georgetown Day School’s former 575-student lower campus, located a half-block away and bought by the city in March 2021, is empty. The GDS MacArthur Boulevard campus, sold to consolidate operations in the Tenley area, had been marketed as move-in ready.

In a Sept. 29, 2021 statement about planning for the two sites, DCPS officials said there had been no final decisions. But the statement, sent to a project “working group”, noted that “MacArthur will now open no earlier than SY 23-24.  This adjustment will ensure that we have time for a robust engagement and planning process for a successful school opening, while providing significant advance notice to impacted families. 

“Foxhall is currently planned to open in SY 24-25. We will continue to keep the community informed as there are additional updates on the final decisions and opening timelines for either school.”