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Dunbar Senior High School didn’t have the best year last year.
A female student reported a sexual assault by several male classmates in a stairwell. The charges were dropped, but eyebrows remained raised over the high school’s vacant, out-of-the-way spaces that seemed ripe for trouble.
Chancellor Kaya Henderson herself noticed students roaming the halls, leading her to oust the school operators installed by Michelle Rhee, and reinstated Dunbar’s prior principal, Stephen Jackson.
And today, officials prepared to break ground on “the new Paul Laurence Dunbar Senior High School.”
It’s been in the works for quite some time. Originally opened in 1916, Dunbar was the country’s first high school for black students. Mayor Vincent Gray is a graduate.
The current building went up in 1977 — sans walls to separate the classrooms. Walls did go up two years ago, but the campus was dark, and under-enrolled by about 300 students.
In August, Gray announced that the firm Smoot/Gilbane Joint Venture would design and build a new facility, “the next step to begin to return Dunbar Senior High School to its days of glory,” Gray said. The Washington Post compared the new design to the campus of Sidwell Friends School, a private Quaker school favored by presidents and socialites.
Gray, with Department of General Services Interim Director Brian Hanlon, plan to break ground at the Ward 5 school at 11:30 a.m. Earlier this week, they were present when construction began at Cardozo Senior High School in Ward 1.
Officials say the “new Dunbar” will promote education by providing a healthy, comfortable learning environment accompanied by state-of-the-art technology.
