Mayor Adrian Fenty and his chief education aides on Friday said all 134 D.C. Public Schools will be fully staffed and completely supplied as 4,000 teachers and 50,000 students arrive today for the first day of classes.
The return of students closes an often chaotic summer for Fenty, his facilities team and DCPS administration. It also marks the second school opening with Fenty at the helm of DCPS and its $800 million budget.
Some 70 school buildings underwent nearly $200 million in renovations since June, led by Allen Lew, executive director of the Office of Public Education Facilities Modernization. Twenty-three schools were closed and 26 buildings were reconfigured to accept thousands of additional students in a new pre-K through 8 format, what the mayor deemed an “unbelievable logistical challenge.”
“Obviously everything is not fixed,” Fenty said outside Moten at Wilkinson Elementary School in Southeast, one of the schools that will receive the former students of a closed school. “That would be impossible given some of these problems are 35, 40 years old.”
The work continued late last week at several facilities, and some teachers would not be allowed in their classrooms until the weekend. But all 123 school buildings, Fenty promised, would open on time.
“We are not sleeping at the wheel,” Lew said. “Many of these schools are in such decrepit condition, you wouldn’t even know where to start.”
Not everyone is satisfied.
A group calling itself “Concerned teachers of Anacostia Senior High School” called on Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee to delay opening their school until after Labor Day given the ongoing work and poor conditions there, they wrote in a letter to her.
“We believe that the students in Ward 8 are just as entitled as the students in other wards to a school environment that is safe, and where sufficient collaboration has occurred among the staff members that yields an optimum instructional ethos,” the teachers wrote.
And D.C. Council Chairman Vincent Gray ripped the renovation effort last week, claiming repairs were rushed, plans were ignored and contractors were left to fend for themselves with little oversight.
As of Friday, only Oyster-Adams Bilingual School was still waiting for its supply order to arrive, Rhee said. There were 68 teachers who had still not been placed and 28 vacancies to fill. Schedules for seventh through 12th graders were mailed last week.
Robert Bobb, chairman of the State Board of Education, said he wants to see how the schools implement new policies and standards adopted by the board.
“Given the fact that we had good test results for last year, I’m optimistic the trend will continue with hard work,” Bobb said Friday.
The school year starts on a tense note for teachers, who appear no closer to a new contract than they were when the summer began.
Rhee continues to push her proposal to eliminate tenure and seniority for teachers, in exchange for a higher salary and a future with the
school system tied to their students’ academic performance. The Washington Teachers Union is split on the issue.
The two sides are “rounding out our negotiations,” Rhee said Thursday. If the talks fail, she said, “we’ll be moving in a different direction and we’ll be making an announcement about that soon.” There has been no threat of a strike from the union.
“We are going to hold the adults in this system accountable for student achievement,” Rhee said.
