Parents
United for the D.C. Public Schools Releases Report:
Leaving Children Behind: The Underfunding of D.C. Public Schools
Building Repair and Capital Budget Needs
Parents
United for D.C. Public Schools today released a major report
describing the deplorable state of the D.C. public school buildings
and the potential impact of major budget cuts on plans for urgently
needed school repairs and school modernization. The report
was prepared for Parents United and an Advisory Committee of Civic
Leaders by the law firm of Sidley Austin Brown & Wood and
the Washington Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights.
Highlights
of the report
include the following:
• Five years
ago, following an assessment of each of the District’s school
facilities, it was widely recognized that the physical condition
of the District’s schools was disastrous. After decades of failing
either to build new schools or even to make the minimal repairs
necessary to maintain the existing buildings, students in our
Nation’s Capital attended public schools which impaired their
education and, at times, threatened their health and safety.
• To its credit,
the D.C. Public School system (“DCPS”) faced up to these longstanding
problems in a reasonable and rational way – in consultation with
experts and community members, it developed a Facility Master
Plan to modernize our schools over a 10-15 year period. Consistent
with the Master Plan, DCPS has completed modernization of four
schools and is nearing completion of the modernization of six
more schools.
• Just two
years into implementation of the Master Plan, funding cuts threaten
to halt this
modernization plan. The FY 2004 Budget and Financial Plan sent
by the Mayor and Council to Congress provides far less funding
than is needed to maintain, much less modernize, our city’s schools.
Most ominously, the Proposed Budget for FY 2007 proposes a paltry
$21 million in capital funds for DCPS and calls for no capital
funding whatsoever for FY 2008 and 2009. The Proposed Budget also
calls for a reduction in DCPS’s maintenance budget for FY 2004
from $44 million to $17 million.
• The dire
need to repair D.C. school facilities is an urgent priority for
our city. It should be addressed immediately by all responsible
local and federal government officials as part of the current
budget cycle and in future years.
Members of
the Parents United civic committee included: Maudine R. Cooper,
Ronald S. Flagg, James O. Gibson, James W. Jones, and Richard
W. Snowdon III.
In
commenting on the report,
Iris Toyer, Co-Chair of Parents United, said “Anyone who cares
about children should be outraged by the failure of our political
leaders to address this issue. It is shameful that the same political
leaders who today call for the expenditure of public funds for
private school vouchers have for years neglected such a basic
need of our city’s most precious resource – our children.”
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