Reply to DC Auditor Report on Duke Ellington

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Turn it into a regular high school like Wilson with an ARTS focus as the side show.

[b]Arts at DE are no better than Wilson anyway.[/b]  What we really need in DC is some relief to the overcrowding at Deal and Wilson.

If we have to swallow the huge cost over run then let's make the HS work for many rather than the few 500 of which only half are DC residents.[/quote]

As someone with one child who will be at Duke Ellington and one at Wilson, I can tell you that this is patently false. Wilson has lots of talented singers, musicians, and actors, and those productions are good, but the children largely learned their skills and continue to hone them outside of Wilson, whereas the kids at Duke Ellington have 3+ hours PER DAY to work on their skills and their productions. Also, Wilson has no literary media program to speak of (their newspaper is good primarily because kids bring the skills to the paper, not because Wilson has time to hone those skills), no dance program to speak of, and their visual arts program is completely unfunded (had to have the PTA and parents donate money for any supplies at all this year).

There are many other factual errors in the many posts above, but I'll just correct this one and also the idea that the renovated building will have lots of empty space during the day. The academic day at DE in the new building will likely run from 8-2, with the arts block running from 2-5. Thus the academic won't be unused for much longer than the academic space at any other DCPS is unused (2pm vs. 3:15pm).

The arts part of the building, however, will largely be unused until 2pm, and I think moving the Fillmore arts programs into that space from 8:45-2 is a fantastic idea. I can guarantee, however, that this idea will be vehemently opposed by elementary school parents who will say that their children shouldn't be exposed to high school students.

These issues aside, I agree that this project is insanely expensive, the supposed costs for parking spaces clearly point to some sort of manipulation/fraud, and it seems clear that no one within city government is willing to step up and take responsibility / lay blame for the outrageous costs and the insane delays (I wonder if my child will ever even be in the new building.[/quote]

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