DC Schools capital planning: a legacy of waste

The Washington Post reports ("Bowser proposes money for stand-alone middle school for Shaw students") that DC plans to build two new schools, a high school in Ward 3 and a middle school in Ward 1.

When I talk with people from other cities about how DC continues to build new schools when a majority are underenrolled, they're shocked because by contrast those cities find it difficult to raise the money they need for necessary capital improvements.

There's tons of planning all the time for the city's schools, so much I can't even claim to be clear about the process: local school transformation teams; charter schools; charter schools being able to be approved without taking into account enrollment demand and demographics ("Applying CEQA urban decay concept to DC charter school approval process," 2014), public schools capital planning, Allen Lew ("Allen Lew got it done," Washington City Paper), etc.

The 21st Century School Fund is a nonprofit that has done some work on master planning for DC Public Schools.

But there isn't a good master plan, a single document, covering schools.  Allen Lew's claim to fame was focusing on sub-systems within schools, not master planning for the entire school district and its facilities, e.g., HVAC, roofs, etc. ("D.C. schools chancellor recommends overhaul of capital planning process," Post).  From the article:

D.C. Schools chancellor Kaya Henderson is calling for an overhaul of the process for mapping out school modernizations in the coming years, saying that the renovations have become overly political and prohibitively expensive. 

 “My very honest assessment is that the whole CIP process is jacked up,” she said, referring to the Capital Improvement Plan, a six-year capital budget and construction plan that outlines the timing for school modernizations... 

She proposed developing a task force within the next year that would come up with a way to develop the capital plan according to some “very transparent” and “logical” criteria rather than “how loudly your community screams.” 

She said the criteria should include the building’s condition and school enrollment, with more crowded schools getting higher priority. She suggested that the number of “at-risk” students could also be a factor. 

Adding to the pressure is the cost of construction, which Henderson said has grown 30 percent, limiting the number of projects the school district can take on in a given year. “We have got to get some discipline around what kind of schools we are building,” she said.

Things haven't improved in the seven years since that article was published.

I've written a bunch about how DC doesn't have a public process for capital planning.  There is an office as part of the mayor's office, and in the Chief Financial Officer's agency, but there isn't a public process of setting priorities that is exclusive to capital projects.  Instead it's subsumed in the annual budget process.

-- "Another example of the need for more formal and open capital budgeting planning practices (in DC)," 2019
-- "Capital/civic asset planning, budgeting and management processes," 2015

This is left over from when DC was a department of the federal government, which handles capital planning the same way.  (It turns out that in the 1930s, the Executive Branch tried to create a capital planning process, but Congress disagreed.)

By contrast, most cities and counties have a capital budgeting process separate from the annual budget process, and usually it is updated every year or every two years, on a six year cycle.

I have criticized DC's schools capital planning process, because except for Wilson High School, virtually all the high schools are underenrolled.  But the city keeps tearing down schools and building new ones--and winning "sustainability awards" in the process.

-- "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 rebuilt at a cost of $122 million wins sustainability award," 2015

This comes up again, as the Post reports that the city will build a new high school in Ward 3, and a new junior high school in Ward 1.

WRT the high school capacity demand in W3, years ago I suggested that: 

(1) Ellington School for the Arts, in the old Western High School, and not accessible by Metrorail even though it is a city-wide school, should instead be moved to either Coolidge or Roosevelt High Schools in Ward 4 as both are underenrolled and both are Metrorail accessible.

(2) Allowing Western High School to be able to be repurposed as a local high school

(3) Creating a single W4 high school with adequate enrollment capable of supporting a full range of classes.

By not doing that W4 still has two underenrolled high schools and W3 "needs" another high school.

Although part of the demand for Wilson can be shifted some to other city high schools, like Cardozo in Columbia Heights, which is also underenrolled.

2.  Separately, DC built a new Banneker High School on the grounds of the old Shaw Junior High.  If instead they would have rehabilitated Banneker High School in its Columbia Heights location, Shaw Junior High School could be reopened.  But the new plan calls for a new middle school on the site of the old Banneker High School.

-- "Banneker vs. "Shaw middle school" matter as another illustration of failures from the lack of public capital planning processes in DC," 2019  

Instead the city has or will build three new schools: (1) Banneker; (2) a new high school for Ward 3; (3) a new junior high for Ward 1.

The big problem: not planning and resident demand for new schools, which is more an emotional process.  As former Chancellor Henderson implied, if there were a public capital budgeting process, based on logical, transparent criteria, it would be possible, maybe, to rationalize school planning.

But DC, comparatively, is wealthy so it can waste money left and right.

But given the reality that there isn't a growing student population in the city, building so many new schools (Woodson, Dunbar, Banneker, etc.) is incredibly wasteful.

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Separately, I've written about how sometimes, underenrolled schools should be kept open as a part of planning for healthy neighborhoods.

-- "Reprint: Rethinking community planning around maintaining neighborhood civic assets and anchors," 2020/2011
-- "The bilingual Key Elementary School in Arlington County as another example of the "upsidedownness" of community planning," 2019

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When I first got involved in urban revitalization around 2000, early in that process, there was a schools planning initiative for Spingarn High School and related schools on that campus, which included a technical school and an elementary school in Ward 7, which was adjacent to the H Street NE neighborhood, where I lived when I first got involved.

The school system contracted with Roy Strickland and his program at the University of Michigan Architecture School, to come up with a transformational plan.  Which he did.  And was abandoned a couple years later.

-- "The City Of Learning‚: School Design and Planning as Urban Revitalization in New Jersey, Berkeley, and Washington, D.C.," Urban and Regional Research Collaborative Working Paper, University of Michigan, 2003

There is no overarching approach to schools master planning.  And the charter schools are approved independently.

It's really "flawed up."

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There was a similar groundswell to build a new middle school in W4.  One junior high, Paul, was one of the first schools in the city to be turned into an independent charter school.  Another, Rabaut, had been shut down decades before, but in the intervening years had been sold off to charter schools.

So W4 was left without a middle school, and this hurt the pipeline for the public high schools, Roosevelt and Coolidge, because after elementary school, there was no DCPS middle school to go to.  By the time enrolling in high school came along, the students were mostly fully ensconced in the charter schools.

Anyway, their proposal was to use up most of the land of the Takoma Recreation Center, my neighborhood park.  I said, why build a new middle school when the ward is full of underenrolled schools as well as parking lots (like at Fort Totten Metrorail Station) that could be repurposed.

Fortunately, they shifted their proposal, to instead use some of the underutilized Coolidge High School.