Addressing basic repairs in all 142 D.C. public school buildings will cost an additional $120 million in the coming year, on top of the roughly $80 million already spent to rehab dozens of facilities and upgrade a handful of athletic fields, city officials said Wednesday.
The $120 million will finance essential and long-neglected repairs at roughly 70 schools — including fixing roofs and bathrooms and clearing health- and fire-code violations. It will also be used to ensure heat and air conditioning systems are installed and working in every classroom.
“Why these things haven’t been addressed in years past is unexplainable and inexcusable,” Mayor Adrian Fenty said during a news conference outside Coolidge Senior High School, home to a freshly turfed and painted football field. “So we’re going to address them, and it’s going to cost probably about that much.”
Fenty is seeking to immediately draw $12 million from reserves, a request that must be approved by the D.C. Council when it returns from summer recess. The remaining dollars will be reprogrammed, according to sources in Fenty’s office: $45 million from the DCPS small capital projects budget, $5 million from finished school projects that went unspent, and the rest from the schools’ fiscal 2008 pay-as-you-go capital budget.
All told, the District expects to spend $200 million over the coming school year for the so-called “blitz” and targeted repair programs now under way at roughly 70 schools, the athletic-field modernization at six high schools, the heating and air conditioning work citywide and the upcoming “school stabilization effort” at all remaining facilities.
“There’s a noticeable difference, literally more work done in these schools just in the past six to eight weeks than has probably happened in the last 20 years,” Fenty said.
DCPS Facilities Chief Allen Lew said the “most critical, quality-of-life” work will continue through next summer, but he pledged it would not interfere with classroom operations. The efforts will go on despite the impending closure and consolidation of schools, an announcement that could come as early as January, schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee said.
