Reply to Funding for Shepherd's Renovation

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=jsteele]Does anyone know why the gym and cafeteria were not included in the renovation that is currently underway? This seems like another renovation shambles. [b]Why would you renovate a school and not address the issues with these two facilities? [/b]

Brandon Todd is not looking too spiffy either. His explanation that he voted in favor of a budget that cut money from Shepherd because he wanted to vote in favor of money for Coolidge and MacFarland -- two schools which the Shepherd Park community is doing everything it can to avoid -- is not going to win him any Shepherd Park votes. I'm sure there is an interesting back story here that is not strictly explained by relative renovation needs.
[/quote]

NP.  My take on the renovations:

1) At the time the initial renovation plans were conceived, it was noted that the current cafeteria presented a fire hazard, in that students and staff with mobility issues would have trouble exiting the area in the event of an emergency.  Multiple other issues abound as noted by PPs re: storage issues, rodents, too small to adequately accommodate the student body, etc.  My ECE kid, for example, eats lunch at 10:50.

2) The gym is not ADA-compliant, and is generally in poor condition.  For example, apparently the PTA raised funds a few years ago to install a temporary floor.

3) Shepherd's modernization was always supposed to happen in several phases.  At some point, the phases got reshuffled, and the gym and cafeteria renovations got pushed back to the third phase.  In the interim, other design elements were added.  Also, unanticipated problems had to be addressed (e.g., pipes, sprinkler system replaced), cost overruns accumulated, and the third phase was eventually cut.  Even so, the overall budget grew.  Lots of mismanagement--for example, last summer, no work was done because apparently someone forgot to apply for the correct permits for work to begin.

4) In March, Mayor Bowser added a recommendation for $12.4 mil to be added to the budget for Shepherd's gym and cafeteria.  Last week, Councilmember Grosso removed this item from the budget and reallocated it to other schools.  AFAIK, Shepherd was the only school that had renovation funds removed from the Mayor's budget.  Grosso is now on the record in the below article stating that he felt that the $12.4 allocated to Shepherd "did not make any sense."

http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/news/city-desk/article/20780187/dc-council-tries-to-fix-broken-school-modernization-program

5) The Committee on Education cites an "objective" formula that takes into account a number of factors in assigning a weight to each school's need for renovation.  In justifying their low ranking of Shepherd, they state that Shepherd has already had some work done, which moved Shepherd down the list in terms of priority.  In other words, Shepherd was penalized in their ranking for being in the midst of their renovation.  Shepherd is now ranked 84th of 111 schools ranked.

6) It appears that at least some elements of the Committee's formula calculation are wrong.  For example, they rank Shepherd's enrollment growth as a 3, indicating that 5-yr enrollment growth is between -1.7% and 0.1%.  This does not seem accurate.  Shepherd's population has grown in recent years--waitlists are long in the early grades, and they've added a PK3 class (with in-boundary students waitlisted).  The Committee also apparently didn't take into account future projections--next year, Shepherd will be adding a second PK3 class to meet demand, along with a third 1st grade class (a bubble cohort).  Here's a link to the Council's doc which lists the rankings for all 111 schools:

https://chpspo.files.wordpress.com/2016/05/grosso-cip-rankings-2016.pdf

I'm not on the SIT so I could be off on some of the details, so I hope I didn't misrepresent anything--but this is how I understand what's transpired.[/quote]

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