With two boilers out as temperatures began to drop in the District this week, Calvin Coolidge Senior High School Parents and Teachers Association President Terry Goings held on to hope that the remaining boiler would limp through, despite a leak in its water pump.
Several work orders requesting service to Coolidge’s boilers have been filed over the years with D.C. Public Schools with little or no response, according to records provided by Goings. An engineer’s summary of the boilers filed Jan. 5 went so far as to declare “one boiler in operation, not enough.”
With no closure on previous work orders and no immediate fix in sight, it appeared it would have to be.
“Basically, if that goes down, we’re dead,” Goings said.
As Mayor Adrian Fenty proposes a school takeover that would give his office direct jurisdiction over DCPS’s crumbling schools, work orders have languished under a system that officials say is too bogged down by bureaucracy and lacks the manpower and resources to ensure that all students have even the most basic properly functioning facilities.
Right now, there are about 16,000 outstanding work orders for District schools, Deputy Director of Facilities Management Paul Taylor told The Examiner Tuesday. The system employs about 111 carpenters, plumbers and other trade workers to address problems across 142 school buildings and must do it all for what breaks down to a little less than a dollar per square foot, Taylor estimated.
“We’re way below all the standards,” Taylor said.
When something breaks, it’s up to DCPS to fix it, despite previous attempts by the D.C. Council to remove that power from the schools, including one made in October by Council Member Kwame Brown, D-At large. Under the current process, which is carried in a computer system, principals, head custodians and other school officials file work orders, which are then given priority according to the severity of the need and the safety of students, Taylor said.
Because there is no money available to keep a backup stock of spare parts, when a carpenter needs an item for a quick fix, he must also go through school contract procurement officers instead of running into a hardware store, Taylor said. Finding parts for some of the schools’s antiquated equipment can also be costly and time-consuming, he added.
“It’s just another step,” Taylor said. “It’s another layer.”
Furthermore, lack of across-the-board communication or uniformity with filing work orders can lead to ambiguity or double orders, Taylor said. He said he hopes an audit of the system’s 16,000 back orders can be completed in coming months.
Though he wasn’t familiar with Coolidge’s boiler problems, DCPS was juggling similar problems at about five other schools Tuesday, Taylor said.
“I will tell you we feel very bad if we have to close a school because it has no heat,” Taylor said.
Fenty’s plan would establish a separate Public Education Facilities Management and Construction Authority that would allow the schools to focus solely on education, Reinoso said in a statement Wednesday.
“As an independent authority, this entity will result in less bureaucracy and improved performance because the Authority will implement the modernization program quickly and efficiently, without bureaucratic ‘red tape’ and endless approvals processes,” Reinoso said.
At Coolidge, Goings hopes a Fenty takeover will speed fixture of the myriad problems he sees at the school. Taylor said he’s supportive if it adds greater accountability.
“What’s more important than the particular government structure over the facilities is closely aligning authority over resources with accountability with repairing resources,” Taylor said.
