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D.C. public schools may have to do without textbooks, warn officials
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(Andrew Harnik/Examiner)
D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty, right, D.C. Public Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee, center, and Schools Facilities Chief Allen Lew, left, deliver remarks on "The transition of D.C. public schools into the Mayor's Office" at Davis Elementary School in S.E. Washington, DC on Mon, July 30. D.C. public schools officials warned Monday that there might not be enough textbooks in D.C. public schools in the near future. District of Columbia Public School students already had been warned that they might not have air conditioning when they return to class Aug. 27. Now school leaders say there might not be enough textbooks to go around immediately, either. In the mayoral administration’s first update since taking over the city’s 55,000-student system in June, Mayor Adrian Fenty, Chancellor Michelle Rhee and Office of Facilities Modernization Director Allen Lew conceded Monday that getting the schools up and running by the first day of classes with everything in place will be out of their reach. With just four weeks to go, Lew said his staff will concentrate on fixing immediate problems that could affect learning, such as getting air conditioning to as many as an estimated 3,000 public school classrooms that currently have no systems or broken ones. But Lew said he was more concerned with ensuring that all classrooms have either a temporary or permanent heat source by mid-October. At least 70 schools had heating problems last winter, with more than 20 forced closures as a result. “Whether we have to operate with temporary units, we will have heat [by Oct. 15],” Lew said. Rhee said she was still trying to straighten out issues with textbooks delivered to the wrong schools and insufficient numbers of books arriving. “We’re working to fill as many of those gaps as we can,” Rhee said. |
