An estimated 50,000 D.C. Public School students returned to class Monday, many to renovated facilities, unfamiliar territory, new administrators and new models for learning.
The troubled school system and its decrepit facilities have undergone drastic changes since June.
Rhee hired 46 new principals and assistant principals, 103 new literacy coaches and 62 new math coaches. Every school, she said, is staffed with at least one art, music and physical education teacher and one librarian. Many schools now feature staffing plans targeted to their student populations — some keyed on academics, some on behavior and wellness and others on arts enrichment.
There were 50 excess teachers as of Monday morning who had still not been placed in the classroom, said schools spokeswoman Mafara Hobson, and 28 vacancies that still needed to be filled. The attendance count for opening day was not available. DCPS claims to have fully supplied 99.9 percent of its 123 facilities.
“So far so good as far as I can tell,” said Ward 2 D.C. Councilman Jack Evans, who toured the Scott Montgomery Elementary School with Fenty, and found little more than a flooded bathroom.
Major renovation work on the schools was completed by the weekend, though some smaller projects will continue after school hours, D.C. officials said.
At Eliot-Hine Middle School, for example, city officials saw major construction work ongoing during a tour late last week. That was gone by Monday morning.
“They really pulled that together,” said Lisa Raymond, the District 3 representative on the State Board of Education.
While the focus of school officials was on the renovated facilities, some schools had little work done over the summer — Eastern High School, for example.
“There are still some very serious facility issues to deal with,” Raymond said.
The Washington Teachers Union, meanwhile, was keeping a close eye on Anacostia Senior High School, a union spokeswoman said. A group of teachers there had called on Rhee to delay their opening for a week due to the “compromised” physical quality of the school building.
The letter claimed that the school remained “devoid of the resources promised to its staff by the beginning of the instructional year.”
Rhee shuttered 23 schools at the close of the last school year, setting up a frantic effort to ready 26 “receiving schools” for thousands of new students. The city spent $200 million over the summer to modernize, renovate or touch up about 70 school buildings.
