What’s wrong with this picture? As part of his $1.8 billion budget for the next fiscal year, D.C. Mayor Vincent Gray proposes spending $442 million to renovate and build new public schools. At the same moment, DC Public Schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson is closing more than 10 percent of the existing schools due to underenrollment as parents bail out of the traditional system in favor of public charter schools.
The folly of spending hundreds of millions of dollars on new construction for a public school system that is being forced to downsize is self-evident. But it is compounded by the fact that the District still has no plan for disposing of the 10 schools that are currently vacant or the 15 additional ones that will be vacant soon.
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