Mayor, chancellor celebrate latest round of modernizations as start of school year nears

Many DC students returning to school on Monday will find new classrooms, new programming space and new greenery on campuses across the District, thanks to $450 million worth of modernization projects completed over the summer. 

The projects included connecting two historic school buildings at Ward 2’s Hyde-Addison Elementary in Georgetown and constructing Ward 4’s new Ida B. Wells Middle School on the campus of Coolidge High in Takoma. Other DC Public Schools sites with new construction or extensive renovations include Maury Elementary and Jefferson Middle School Academy in Ward 6 and C.W. Harris Elementary, Houston Elementary and Kimball Elementary in Ward 7, although work will continue at several of those sites as their modernization projects shift to a new phase.

After celebrating the Ward 4 projects with two events on Saturday, Mayor Muriel Bowser and DCPS Chancellor Lewis Ferebee will kick off the school year on Monday with a 9 a.m. ribbon-cutting at Maury Elementary on Capitol Hill — and then mark the end of the first day with a similar event at Kimball Elementary in Fort Dupont.

As a prelude, Bowser and Ferebee visited Hyde-Addison on Wednesday morning. 

In his remarks, Ferebee highlighted the Hyde-Addison addition’s inclusion of naturally lit gymnasium and library facilities as examples of high-caliber spaces that can foster the “symbiotic relationship” between schools and their communities. “The learning space has to be a top-rate facility — a gold standard,” Ferebee said praising the team from the DC Department of General Services that oversaw construction. “Every amenity of this facility has been thought through with great detail.”

The $47 million Hyde-Addison project created a new school building with classrooms, administrative suites, a basketball court and stage, a full kitchen, and a kiln room. Extending 22 feet below ground, the new space connects the existing Hyde and Addison buildings, creating a cohesive feel.

In his remarks, Ward 2 DC Council member Jack Evans described the project as years in the making, emphasizing the long road required to come up with a design that had community support and then bringing it to fruition. “It was about six years ago that we finally came up with a plan,” he said. “Persistence pays off.”

The new Hyde-Addison building can accommodate 400 students, an increase aimed in part at accommodating children from the Burleith neighborhood as a way to ease crowding at Glover Park’s Stoddert Elementary, one of several neighboring schools operating above capacity. According to DCPS audits, student enrollment at Hyde-Addison has ranged from 308 to 334 in the six years before the school moved to temporary facilities during the two-year modernization project.

The mayor and chancellor will follow up Wednesday’s Hyde-Addison ribbon-cutting with a similar event on Saturday at 12:30 p.m. in Ward 4 to mark the completion of the two-year, $160 million project to create the new Ida B. Wells Middle School and modernize Coolidge High School. Set to welcome its first class of 150 sixth-graders on Monday, the facility is co-located with Coolidge on 5th Street NW.

The project added 300,000 square feet in all, including new space for Coolidge. The two schools feature a shared courtyard and dining area, a refurbished auditorium, a variety of public art pieces, and a renovated football field. An 11 a.m. celebration at Coolidge with Bowser and Ferebee precedes the Ida B. Wells ribbon-cutting.

“We’re excited that these are two great neighborhood options for students in this community from middle school to high school,” Ferebee said during a late July hard-hat tour that gave the chancellor and Chief Operating Officer Patrick Davis a chance to observe the ongoing construction at Wells, Coolidge and several other school sites.

Kimball Elementary‘s proximity to the expansive Fort Dupont Park inspired a focus on creating green spaces for students, with “biophilia” as the renovation’s theme, Davis said. The expanded campus now features an interior courtyard with a tricycle track, an outdoor teaching kitchen, and “learning terraces” throughout to offer students quiet spaces to get away from the noise of Minnesota Avenue SE.

Opening up green spaces was also a priority at Maury Elementary near Lincoln Park, according to Davis. DCPS demolished school buildings there dating back to the 1960s and increased total floor space while decreasing the footprint by building up, opening more of the property’s grounds for green space. The renovations also included new science and art classrooms to account for a growth in student enrollment.

At C.W. Harris and Houston, DCPS has renovated buildings from the ’60s, gutting the interiors and adding new space. Students from each school — who have been in trailers since the work started — now have access to the majority of their school building while renovation work continues.

In the case of Jefferson Middle, a historic school building that was under renovation this summer, 80 percent of the work was expected to be complete by the time students return to classes, Davis said during last month’s tour.

Underpinning all of the construction, Davis said, is the school system’s standardized education specifications, which provide a baseline of how much space must be available at a school for a given amount of enrollment. The information, he said, guides how DCPS distributes the District’s $1.6 billion capital budget for school modernizations.