Decrepit Facilities Belie Teams' Talent
By V. Dion Haynes
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, September 23, 2006
Arrelious Benn, a senior on the Dunbar Senior High School football team, is living every student athlete's dream: The all-Met wide receiver is so good that he is a prime reason his team was chosen to be featured on national television next month.
But he and other athletes worry that the school in the District's Shaw neighborhood will become a national disgrace should the telecast highlight conditions that athletes confront daily: The running track that encircles the football field has been condemned because of potholes. The carpet in the locker room is tattered and the showers moldy. The secondhand equipment in the weight room is rusty; the floor tiles are cracked and the benches so ripped that nearly as much foam padding as black vinyl cover is showing.
"It's an embarrassment," said Benn, 17, who last year caught 17 touchdown passes that helped the Crimson Tide win its third consecutive D.C. public school championship. "You see other high schools in Atlanta and other parts of the country, and their locker rooms look like a college."
A week after Superintendent Clifford B. Janey released a $2.3 billion, 15-year plan to upgrade school buildings and academics, a group including student athletes and parent activists is fighting to ensure that sports programs get their share of the funding.
The group has flooded his office with complaints about the conditions and demanded $350 million for citywide athletic facility repairs now -- not years in the future. Janey said every track, football field, baseball field and other sports facility would be upgraded as part of his master plan to modernize all schools. "Our kids deserve access to high-quality sports and athletic facilities," Janey said in an interview.
Renovations at Dunbar are slated to begin in 2011, when all the current students will be gone.
"I'd like to see the changes made as soon as possible -- not a month from now, not a year from now," said Linda Bussey, whose 17-year-old son, Nathan, is a Dunbar quarterback. She, along with other parents, coaches, community activists and students are scheduled to meet with Janey on Tuesday.
"The students have been waiting long enough," Bussey said.
Many other public schools across the city are in the same shape or worse. The deficiencies were caused by a complicated set of factors that have yet to be addressed: repeatedly shifting athletic department funds to the academic side to fill revenue gaps that resulted from declining enrollment systemwide; ignoring routine maintenance until small problems escalated into large, expensive ones; and hiring contractors who did shoddy work.
Dunbar, established in 1870 as the first college preparatory school for blacks in the nation, has a rich tradition of high scholastic and athletic achievement. But in recent years, the school, like most others in the system, has failed to meet academic targets. It is housed in a sprawling, relatively new 29-year-old building that, like most other schools in the system, is in desperate need of repair.
Ask the athletes what needs the most immediate attention and they'll point to the locker rooms -- several toilets don't work; soap, paper towels and toilet paper are often missing; and the showers spew mostly cold water. During the late 1990s, Superintendent Arlene Ackerman began deploying custodians and maintenance staff based on a school's enrollment instead of size -- a move that substantially reduced the number of workers assigned to care for buildings.
"Our bathroom smells like urine," said Reginald Ellis, 16, a junior who plays defensive tackle. Like most players, he wears a jersey that is several years old. "You see water mold."
Kierra Roulhac, 16, co-captain of the girls' track team, said the showers are so nasty that students refuse to use them. After physical education class or an early morning practice, most students opt to go to class without showering.
Last year, she said, 10 of the girls on the track team would shower at the nearby home of a teammate's grandmother. But the girl graduated, and the team is looking for another place to shower. Until then, Roulhac said, "I'll just spray perfume on myself."
DeAnna Brown, 16, who was all-Met on the track team and Gatorade's D.C. athlete of the year last school year, said the locker rooms lack dispensers for female hygiene products. The products are kept in a brown box in the office of the team's male coach, Marvin Parker.
"These students bring back the championships, and this is what they get?" Parker asked.
Kadijah Sall, 17, ran with her cross-country teammates on the sidewalk around the perimeter of the school on a recent afternoon, dodging pedestrians and debris. Their other "practice field" is the hallway of the five-story building. Neither is an ideal running surface, but each is safer than Dunbar's track. School system officials condemned the track four years ago because its potholes, puckers and sunken areas make it dangerous.
"You can get a twisted ankle," Sall said.
Parker said the track was improperly installed with one layer of coating instead of three. It also was damaged by two problems that were not fixed -- a faulty filtration system and a hole that opened when a maintenance worker accidentally ran over the surface with a riding mower, Dunbar Athletic Director Reginald A. Gordon said. Water worked its way into the hole, causing the track to pucker.
Gordon, watching the football team during a recent scrimmage, pointed out other problems: A chain-link fence surrounding the field has had numerous holes cut through it, allowing trespassers to enter at night. Sometimes, Gordon said, students find dog feces on the field, used condoms in the stands and broken glass on the track. Over the years, thieves made off with parts from the public-address system and several rows of metal bleachers.
Sports programs at the District's 141 public schools are operating on a systemwide budget of $1.9 million a year, down from $2.9 million during the mid-1990s, said Allen E. Chin, the school system's director of athletics. In addition to losing the $1 million, Chin said, the schools were required to pick up such costs as salaries for assistant coaches and leased buses to transport students to games.
Chin compiled a list of about 240 items that need to be fixed at about 40 schools, more than a fourth of the buildings in the system.
Among the problems: Coolidge Senior High in Northwest can no longer offer the high-jump event because of a sinkhole near the track. The swimming pools at H.D. Woodson Senior High in Northeast as well as Roosevelt and Wilson in Northwest are closed indefinitely for repairs. The pool at Cardozo Senior High in Northwest has been closed for 12 years.
When looking at the budget, education "should come first," Chin said. A good athletic program, though, "can encourage kids to stay in school," he added. "It keeps them off the street."
Given budget constraints and a mammoth effort to turn around 118 schools that failed to make academic benchmarks, the prospects for increasing funding for athletics are dim, said Thomas M. Brady, the system's business operations officer. "The resources of the District of Columbia public schools are directed to improving academics," he said.
School board member William Lockridge (District 4), said he intends to push for more money. "The board has to do a better job of selling [the need for more sports funding] to the mayor and city council," he said.
That job might get easier now that ESPNU, a sister network of ESPN, plans to televise Dunbar's game against Coolidge on Oct. 20. "We like to get footage of the campus, and we like to sit down with the coaching staff and the top stars to talk about the issues around each program," said Tilea Coleman, a spokeswoman for ESPN.
The Rev. Lionel Edmonds, president of the Washington Interfaith Network, which has been pressing the sports facility issue with the school system, said he hopes Janey will agree to make improvements at Dunbar in time for the telecast.
"You don't need a long-term strategy to get toilet paper in the restrooms, replace missing doors on the stalls and to fix the showers," he said. "We're talking about human dignity."
Staff writer Alan Goldenbach contributed to this report.
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