School's Overruns Offer Lesson for Repairs

School officials say the work should be managed within the system. "It makes sense that you have educators' insight," said Thomas M. Brady, chief business operations officer for the schools.

McKinley is not the only school renovation to come in over budget -- Barnard Elementary in Northwest increased from $9 million to roughly $24 million. But the controversy over McKinley has been sufficiently troublesome to draw the attention of D.C. Auditor Deborah K. Nichols, who said she is wrapping up an examination of why project costs climbed so high.

In 2000, when city and school officials decided to rebuild McKinley, the school had been closed for three years. Built in 1928, it had once enjoyed a strong reputation, but flagging attendance had led officials to padlock the building and send its students elsewhere.

Mayor Anthony A. Williams (D), whose campaign had included the concept of a technology high school, chose the McKinley site, saying the school would reopen in 2002. Plans for the politically charged project were ambitious, including not just opening a renovated school, but surrounding it with a technology campus filled with businesses offering students jobs and internships.

The renovation was budgeted by school officials at $52 million and put on a fast track.

Critics said that cost estimates were unrealistic from the beginning and that design problems further drove up the price tag. Cathy Reilly, head of a parent advocacy group, noted that interior walls were ripped out so classrooms could be slightly larger.

"There was no reason for this," said Reilly, who attended planning meetings for the project. "The decision to tear out the walls -- that led us down a path from which there was no return."

City officials wanted the Corps to hire from a roster of D.C. businesses that qualified as small or disadvantaged. The agency hired McKissack & McKissack, an architecture and engineering firm that fit that classification.

"We were under huge pressure" to use D.C. firms, said David Morrow, a Corps program manager who previously supervised the city's school construction program. In hindsight, he said, without that pressure "we probably would have used a larger contractor" for the job. "But having said that, I don't know if we would have had any fewer problems."

Many agree that putting the school on a fast timetable caused problems. The Corps, for example, asked McKissack to design a new school before school officials had developed the academic program, Morrow said. "We were really shooting at a moving target."

And McKissack Executive Vice President Sam Condit said drawing designs for a school that had yet to be fully conceived was a major problem.

"Our concerns over issuing incomplete documents were expressed many times, but we were always told that the schedule was more important," Condit said in a written statement.