The eight-story “Tower of Power” is gone, and with it the escalators so balky that they made Metro’s seem reliable. So are the bleak stretches of windowless concrete that gave H.D. Woodson the look and feel of a penal institution rather than a high school in far Northeast Washington.
On Wednesday, District officials will cut the ribbon on a new $102 million Woodson, one bathed in natural light from expansive windows and a central atrium. Graphic panels running the length of the four-level main staircase will feature images touching on the school’s STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) curriculum and pay tribute to figures from Einstein and Edison to astronaut Mae Jemison and Euphemia Lofton Haynes, the first African American woman to earn a PhD in mathematics. Classrooms and laboratories that were either freezing or stifling in the old Woodson are now habitable and loaded with technology.
Officials hope that when students begin classes Aug. 22 after spending three years in temporary spaces — ninth-graders at Ron Brown Middle School on Meade Street in Northeast, the rest at the former Fletcher-Johnson Education Center on Benning Road in Southeast — the new surroundings will help lift spirits and aspirations.
“It says something to the students and to the community that the District is serious about preparing its youth for the new, technologically advanced job market,” said Principal Thomas Whittle. “They see hope.”
The reborn Woodson in Ward 7 is part of a long-awaited renewal for public high schools east of the Anacostia River. On Monday, the Academies at Anacostia — the renamed Anacostia High School, now operated by Friendship Public Charter School — will celebrate completion of the first phase of a major overhaul. The Vincent C. Gray administration recently announced that Ballou High School in Ward 8’s Congress Heights neighborhood will be completely rebuilt, rather than modernized as originally planned.
In Northwest Washington’s Ward 3, Woodrow Wilson High School will reopen this month after a $124 million modernization. Janney Elementary underwent an overhaul that includes a new science lab, media center and underground garage. All the school projects are the product of a $1.8 billion reconstruction and modernization of the city school system started in 2007.
The old Woodson High School, named for Northeast architect and civic leader Howard Dilworth Woodson, was a source of pride for its high standards and sports dominance. But the tower that loomed over the Deanwood neighborhood became an outsized symbol of the District government’s dysfunction. It was hailed as a state-of-the-art campus when it opened in 1972, but when money for maintenance didn’t materialize, water from broken pipes cascaded through the building, and students trudged to class up the long flights of stairs because the escalators were frequently broken. The swimming pool was so grimy that a coach scrawled the words “dirty” and “help” along the bottom.
“It was a real nightmare,” said Aona Jefferson, who spent 34 years as a Woodson teacher, assistant principal and principal.
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