Washington, D.C. city council approves school modernization bill
The city council of Washington, D.C. has approved a bill that will dedicate $100 million a year in sales tax revenues, or $1 billion over the next decade, for school modernization. In addition, the D.C. board of education (BOE) has pledged to close 3 million square feet of underused school space. School proponents say the pieces are now in place for the biggest transformation of the city's long-troubled school system since the district won home rule in the 1970s. The impetus for the finance bill was months of pressure from more than 1,000 parents, educators, and activists outraged when the city's mayor and the council agreed in 2004 to spend $500 million for a new major league baseball stadium. The price tag on the stadium has since increased. Over the past year, groups across the city banded together to form a single, powerful lobby focused on forcing city leaders to do for schoolchildren what they agreed to do for Major League Baseball. Polls show that education is by far the most important issue to D.C. voters, and one poll showed that even affluent white voters ranked public schools as their top priority. The city also has a huge budget surplus and fresh confidence in Clifford B. Janey, the superintendent of the school system, which has had an abysmal record on renovations. After years of deferred maintenance, many of the school system's 147 schools, averaging 73 years of age, have leaking roofs, poor bathroom facilities and plumbing, and ancient lighting and air-handling systems. The bill addresses concerns about providing school officials with such a large budget by creating a nine-member advisory board to oversee spending and raise alarms if the cash is wasted or misspent. It also requires school officials to lay out a strategy for efficiently spending the money by May 1 of this year. "Everybody from the mayor, to the city council to the school board has worked together to make this happen," says BOE President Peggy Cooper Cafritz. Although D.C. chief financial office Natwar M. Gandhi has insisted that the council will have to make offsetting cuts to other city programs to avoid creating a $100 million hole in future budgets, council member Jack Evans disagrees, saying he say expects city tax revenue to increase more than $100 million in this and subsequent years.
Meanwhile, D.C. council chair Linda W. Cropp also has introduced a bill to launch private redevelopment of some public facilities as a way to bring in corporate dollars and move projects more quickly through the pipeline. While this approach is being used increasingly for library renovations in other cities, it remains rare on school campuses. Under the public-private plan, private developers pay for and build public facilities, such as libraries, schools, and health clinics, in return for the right to build condominiums and commercial shops on top or along side the public buildings. The mayor's office sees public-private development as a means to increase the city's tax base and population. Skeptics include old-timers who believe public-private development is simply code for gentrification, drawing more rich, white people to what used to be a working-class black and Latino neighborhood. D.C. officials hope to mitigate public resistance to public-private development by soliciting community input on which sites to develop. Proponents also believe the tide of public sentiment may be changing. The D.C. board of education made a similar proposal last year. Former board member Robert A. Peck says private-public development is "the way to get someone else to borrow the big money and get a return on your valuable property." D.C. School Superintendent Clifford B. Janey, however, strikes a note of caution: "We want good public-private partnerships, not one-dimensional or self-serving [partnerships] that come at the expense of the schools' needs."
Washington PostBy Eric M. Weiss
[Link to full story]Washington PostBy Lori Montgomery
[Link to full story]Washington PostBy Debbi Wilgoren
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Editor's Note: Many resource articles on school design and construction are collected below on the website of the American School Board Journal's
annual Learning By Design
publication. COSA members and NSBA National Affiliate school districts also can view a legal overview of the private financing of school facilities.]
[Learning By Design]Inquiry & AnalysisBy Julie Underwood & John Stainbeck
[Link to full article]