Clifford Janey is shocked. Shocked!
The showers and bathrooms at Dunbar High School don’t work! This OUTRAGES him, D.C.’s school superintendent told a small meeting of Dunbar teachers and athletes. He promised “emergency repairs.”
Where has this alleged superintendent been all summer and fall? Apparently, he was nowhere near schools across the city as they festered with fouled-up facilities, from stinking bathrooms to floors speckled with paint chips, to rooms without radiators. When was the last time Janey set foot in a D.C. school building?
Parents across the city stepped through the doors of their local schools this week in the fall ritual of “back-to-school” nights. We saw what our children must endure as they attempt to learn.
Things were looking swell at Wilson Senior High Wednesday night until I descended to the gym. On a few landings, my shoes crunched through paint chips that had flaked from the walls. Gathered in the gym with other parents, I heard veteran coach Horace Fleming explain the need for students to wear gym uniforms. One parent asked if her daughter could shower after class. Coach Fleming hung his head.
“They are not very inviting,” he said. “They are not kept clean. That’s the truth of it.”
He pointed to the ceiling.
“Look at the dirt on that thing,” said Fleming, pointing up at the circular air vent. It was ringed with soot. “This is supposed to be a place for health and cleanliness.”
Why, then, a parent asked, is it so dirty?
“I guess the funds haven’t reached us yet,” he said. “Or they don’t care enough to clean it.”
Neither Janey nor his many predecessors have cared enough to keep the schools cleanand stocked with basics. This became clear to at-large City Council Member Kwame Brown when he went to back-to-school night at Langdon Elementary School, where his two children are in school.
“It was a positive experience,” he told me, “but the facilities have issues.”
Peeling paint and no library, for starters. “It’s under construction,” he says.
The beauty of having a council member with kids in a public school is that he feels parents’ pain, and he can do something about it. On Tuesday, Kwame Brown intends to introduce legislation that will transfer building maintenance from DCPS to the city’s Office of Property Management, where the mayor and the city council can order and oversee the work.
“Our toilets in the Wilson Building work, we have light bulbs in the sockets, our paint stays on the walls and ceilings,” Brown says. “Our children should have nothing less.”
So let the city keep the school buildings running and let the superintendent try to run the academics side. “We need to put someone in charge of keeping the schools clean and in better shape, period,” says Brown. “How do we make changes now? We can’t wait until 2010, when it fits Janey’s schedule.”
Finally — a council member with kids who can feel our rage.
Janey sure can’t.
Harry Jaffe has been covering the Washington area since 1985. E-mail him at [email protected].
