As the bevy of politicians and activists toured the brand new Wilson High Thursday morning — from the glass-topped atrium, through the pitch-perfect auditorium to the world-class gym — students in the gym broke into applause. If you had been in the old gym, with its filthy lockers, wobbly floors and fluorescent bulbs that beamed green light, you might understand their glee, or relief. Wilson is one of three D.C. high schools that opened to fresh construction this week. The Tenleytown school has a special place for me and many of my neighbors west of Rock Creek Park. Our kids took the wild but rewarding ride through the city’s largest public high school, which this fall might accept 1,700 students. Classrooms were ancient, teaching tools were scarce, some teachers were crummy. But students could get a fine education if they had a smidgen of grit, which can pay off by preparing a kid to navigate life after school.
Now Wilson is emerging from its lovely chaos. Principal Pete Cahall is in control. With the magnificent new structure, totally worth the $124 million, Wilson is poised to become one of the best high schools in the region.
Memo to middle-class families struggling to afford private school at $30,000 a year: Take a YouTube tour of the new Wilson. Better yet, visit the campus. Talk to Cahall. Check with alumni. Consider switching Suzy or Jamal from Sidwell Friends School to Wilson. What you save in tuition will help you pay for the Ivy League school that might accept your kid.
It took a community to create the new Wilson. Parent activists have been lobbying for a better school for decades. Among the grinning politicians walking and talking Thursday, you might have seen Wilson alum Jack Koczela, a retired real estate executive whose full-time, volunteer job has been to rehabilitate Wilson, where he sent his two children.
“We succeeded by sheer perseverance,” he told me.
Back in 2004, Koczela and many others, such as Ginny Callanen, started to draw up Wilson renovation plans. DCPS promised to rebuild, but never did. So they raised funds, formed the Wilson Management Corporation, studied options and floated the idea of turning Wilson into a charter school. That squeezed an agreement to rebuild from the city, along with some money. Koczela also spent years lobbying and testifying before Congress to get the feds to pay for new schools across the District. Their architect’s plans for a new Wilson figured into the actual renovation. “We hope it will be a monument for the next 50 years,” he says.
Some lament that Wilson, in white Ward 3, gets special treatment, along with other neighborhood schools. Balderdash. Wilson came after Eastern, Phelps, McKinley, Woodson and Luke Moore. Wilson is fully integrated, with more blacks than whites. Same for the nearby, rebuilt Alice Deal Middle School, which matches up against the best in the region, public or private. Yes, we have great elementary schools, too.
Why shouldn’t middle-class residents in Upper Caucasia — who contribute by far the most taxes to D.C. — get great public schools for their taxes?
In Wilson, they are finally getting some bang for their bucks.
Harry Jaffe’s column appears on Tuesday and Friday. He can be contacted at [email protected].
