D.C. school facilities officials have spent more than three times the $4 million estimated for emergency repairs to antiquated heating systems in the city’s public schools, The Examiner has learned.  

Mayor Adrian Fenty’s administration signed nearly $4 million in emergency repair contracts with two major firms and several subcontractors last fall to bring heat to the city’s schools.

But in a Tuesday letter to D.C. Council Chairman Vincent C. Gray, Fenty’s school facilities chief Allen Y. Lew said that taxpayers have been charged more than $12 million so far.

This comes on top of the $10 million spent last fall to patch up school boilers and heaters in time for winter.

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The problems uncovered at the schools were massive, Lew’s letter shows. Ninety-nine schools had cost overruns, some of them in the six figures, according to charts attached to Lew’s letter.

Lew spokesman Tony Robinson told The Examiner on Wednesday that problems with heaters turned out to be worse than expected.

“It was a tremendous amount of work,” he said.

Some critics say the Fenty administration does a poor job of anticipating expensive problems in the school system.

Marc Borbely, a school reform activist and former teacher, said a major problem is that Lew has worked for nearly seven months without a master plan.

“It’s too easy for them to add to projects,” Borbely told The Examiner. “They have a huge amount of money that they can spend however they want.”

Some of the costly overruns are in schools that are scheduled to be closed by the end of the year, Borbely said, which also raises questions about spending.

“They don’t have that pressure on them to make sure that every dollar is spent wisely,” he said.

bmyers@dcexaminer.com

dlevitz@dcexaminer.com