Reply to DC Auditor Report on Duke Ellington

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]

Have you been involved in a DCPS school renovation project?

The school community leadership and members are part of the SIT -- they give opinions, ask questions but at the end of the day they have no power. In this sense the DE Ellington is no more or no less responsible than the SIT members at Murch, lafayette, Janney, Wilson, Ballou or Dunbar.

But the SIT doesn't make decisions. They point out problems with the design - e.g. the first one for Ellington forgot rooms for costume changes and a arts-related things taht DGS forgot to include despite the fact that it existed in the old building.

The "Taj Mahal' features of the design came from DGS. This all happened back when the director was 're-envisioning' school spaces for the city and hoping to change academic culture through architecture and design. The roof feature, underground parking and other luxurious stuff came from DGS, not the school.

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There is a significant difference in the way that the DE renovation has been handled compared to other schools. At other schools, when cost over-runs were discovered, the school was forced to accept less within the same budget. At DE, the budget keeps increasing -- and word on the street is that it's soon going to $210 million.

It's circumstantial evidence, but it's highly suggestive that DE plays by a different set of rules than the rest of DCPS. Also, while just about every renovation has had overruns, the scale at DE is unlike anything seen anywhere in DCPS. The scale prompts suspicion that the initial estimates were low-balled because the people doing them knew that once construction started there would be no stopping.[/quote]

Whether initially low-balled or not, there's something fundamentally screwy, if not corrupt, about spending $210 million for a school renovation to serve 500 students.  This is way more than is spent on school construction with much larger student populations and, as a PP pointed out, in the ballpark of what one of the world's most conspicuous luxury hotels has spent for a total renovation in the heart of historic Paris!  [/quote]

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