Mayor Muriel Bowser cut the ribbon last week on Ward 1’s newly renovated Bancroft Elementary School, which reopened to students Monday after a $68 million makeover that took nearly two years.
The Aug. 17 ceremony kicked off a series of mayoral ribbon-cuttings at other modernized DC public schools — Murch Elementary in Ward 3, MacFarland Dual Language Middle School in Ward 4 and Boone Elementary School (formerly known as Orr Elementary) in Ward 8. A fifth project — a cafeteria-kitchen expansion and exterior site improvements at Ward 1’s Bruce Monroe Elementary School at Parkview — is slated for completion this fall.
The Bancroft campus — located at 1755 Newton St. NW in Mount Pleasant — now features modernized classrooms, a new media center and auditorium, outdoor gardens, a nature classroom and a full cooking kitchen, among other updates. The building — which integrates historic sections with extensive new construction — is also LEED Gold certified, with natural daylighting and a 67,000-gallon stormwater collection system.
The renovation project by the DC Department of General Services also helped unify the the previously disjointed layout of the school, which first opened in 1924 and added several wings over the decades. Today Bancroft offers dual-language instruction (English and Spanish) to students in pre-K through fifth grade, with the new campus also accommodating Briya Public Charter School, which provides early childhood and adult education classes.
Ward 1 DC Council member Brianne Nadeau highlighted the welcoming, light-filled environment on display throughout the new school, in contrast to the way the campus had evolved over the years with multiple additions.
“We’ve done right by the students. We’ve done right by the community here,” she said. “You walk in today and it’s accessible, it’s bright, it’s open, and it’s beautiful. And it still preserves the unique history of this space. Most importantly it’s so obvious that it’s a place for children to grow and learn.”
The Mount Pleasant campus had been closed for construction since November 2016, while students occupied temporary swing space at Sharpe Health School in Petworth. The renovation was part of the District’s ongoing $3 billion-plus initiative to modernize and improve functions at various public schools across the District.
At Bancroft’s ribbon-cutting, Bowser praised the local workers and businesses that helped complete the modernization. “We had over 490 District residents be a part of the team that has brought this modernized site here,” the mayor said, noting also that 49 percent of the work was performed by Certified Business Enterprises headquartered in the District.
The ceremony drew many families of Bancroft students from around Mount Pleasant.
“It’s fantastic,” resident Phillip Thompson said of the new campus, where his kids are attending pre-K and first grade. “I’m excited my kids will be able to take advantage of this for most of elementary school.”
Also in attendance were a few former Bancroft Elementary School teachers, such as Lorraine Smith, who taught several grades there between 1978 and 2010. “I always felt I was family here and with people in the neighborhood,” said Smith, who added that she’s still close with some of her students who are now parents themselves.
Ernest Franklin worked at Bancroft as a physical education teacher and IT coordinator from 1995 to 2015. “This [school] was my love,” he said.
Franklin recalled that he helped connect the school to the internet back in the 1990s. “When Bill Clinton was in office, he made this commitment to have every school on the internet. I was part of that initiative,” Franklin said. “Me and another colleague were here late at night and early in the morning.”
During that time, Franklin said, the U.S. Department of Justice donated 100 computers — which, upon unwrapping, he recalled, did not contain hard drives. Franklin used them to teach students about computer components and operations and how to reassemble them. “For many of the students, it was the first interaction they had with technology and computers,” he said. A few months ago, a former student approached Franklin at a restaurant and told Franklin that he was working in cybersecurity at the Pentagon.
In remarks at Thursday’s ribbon-cutting, DC Public Schools interim Chancellor Amanda Alexander recognized the contributions of city officials and community members in shepherding the project. She also recalled the start of her own 20-year education career as a student-teacher in a kindergarten classroom at Bancroft, noting the dramatic transformation of the campus with the new modernization.
“This building is so very different than the building I walked into 20 years ago,” she said. “But it was here that I began to learn what makes a school excellent. It’s not just how it looks on the outside, but it’s about what happens in the inside. Are students engaged in rigorous learning activities? Do educators feel supported and empowered? And do families feel welcome? I think the answer to all those questions for Bancroft Elementary School is a resounding ‘Yes.’”
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