Yet another capital budgeting planning failure: calls to renovate Eliot-Hine Junior High School in DC

In the 1920s and 1930s, DC built K-12 education campuses, usually featuring a high school, junior high, and elementary school in close proximity.


Greater Greater Washington has an entry ("Eliot-Hine, a DC middle school, is falling apart") about what a physical wreck Eliot-Hine Junior High School and calls for fast tracking renovations to the school.

According to the piece, when the two schools were combined the enrollment was 348.  Now it is 188.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It is a WASTE OF MONEY TO INVEST IN A SCHOOL WITH SUCH A NEGLIGIBLE ENROLLMENT.

Close/Mothball the school.  Hold it in the property inventory for a later time when there might be demand which would justify reopening the school.

Redistribute the students to other schools, which will in turn strengthen those schools, which likely are significantly underenrolled.

DCPS junior high schools may lack the capacity to absorb students from a closed Eliot-Hine.  Note that a commenter on the GGW entry rightly points out that no city school should be allowed to be in such a poor state.  And s/he states--I don't know myself--that the public junior highs lack the capacity to absorb 188 students from closing Eliot-Hine.

I wouldn't be surprised if that is the case, because the city has closed maybe as many as one dozen junior highs, or lost them to charters, like the ex-Paul Junior High, which is now a charter school, in the recent past--note that the lack of junior highs causes an enrollment drop in public high schools.

My solution:

(1) If the commenter is correct that there isn't excess capacity

(2) Then I recommend closing the unneeded recently rebuilt Dunbar High School ("DC wastes $122 million on new high school: evidence of failures in capital improvements planning and budgeting," 2013; "DC high school that wasn't needed and built at a cost of $122 million wins sustainability award," 2015)

(3)  Redistribute the Dunbar students to Eastern, McKinley, and Cardozo High Schools.

(4)  Reopen Dunbar as a junior high school, with capacity for at least 500-600 students.

(5)  Close Eliot-Hine Junior High School.  Sadly, the exterior is beautiful and it is a building eligible for historic designation.  It was built at a time when the city had pride and treated municipal architecture seriously.