Staff Shortage Cited in Hearing on Bill to Manage D.C. School Repairs

D.C. public school officials said yesterday that a proposal to transfer maintenance of deteriorating school buildings to the city's property management agency would not diminish the backlog of 16,000 needed repairs, because there are too few workers.

The school system, which is responsible for the upkeep of 163 facilities, has only 147 maintenance workers, including 10 painters, eight plumbers, three exterminators and two welders, officials said. They also said the system has a shortage of janitors providing daily custodial services.

Cornell S. Brown Jr., executive director of facilities management for District schools, testified that nationally, public schools pay an average of $2.30 per square foot for routine maintenance services, such as carpentry and plumbing. The District spends less.

"We're spending $1 per square foot on a system that's been broken for years," said Brown, who worked for the school system in Maryland before coming to the District two years ago. "We are underfunded and understaffed. We're so far behind."

Brown's testimony came during a hearing of the D.C. Council's Committee on Government Operations on legislation that would transfer responsibility for day-to-day building maintenance to the mayor's Office of Property Management.

Brown said his office has a comprehensive plan that would add $50 million to the maintenance budget to "ensure that maintenance, operations, staffing and funding requirements" will be met within the next three years. Last summer, the system had to spend $500,000, or an average of $7 a square foot, to eliminate the backlog of work requests for six schools.

Council member Kwame R. Brown (D-At Large), who drafted the bill, said the condition of the schools has been a major source of frustration. At a hearing earlier this week, Brown said he mentioned that both of the sinks in the bathroom at his son's school were gone. They were replaced two days later, he said.

"It shouldn't take you to be a council member to get things fixed and moved to the top of the list," Brown said. "It is inhumane to let our kids go to schools in the conditions they're in. If it was like that in this [John A. Wilson] Building, we'd be in an uproar."

The debate at the hearing, led by committee Chairman Vincent B. Orange Sr. (D-Ward 5), focused on whether the property management office could do a better job maintaining the educational facilities.

This year, the council approved a $2.3 billion modernization plan that would rebuild or renovate 124 schools. The first wave of $250 million in annual funding will become available in the spring.

School and union officials said the $34 million spent on maintenance operations annually, including trash removal and grass-cutting contracts, and $27 million on custodial services, is not enough. For example, the 105,900-square-foot Stuart-Hobson Middle School has the same number of custodians as the 69,000-square-foot Watkins Elementary: two.

"Transferring facilities management functions outside of the school system is not the silver bullet to solve this problem," said Thomas E. Ratliff, president of Teamsters Local 639. "Regardless of where the functions are, the underlying and fundamental issues need to be addressed."

Carol J. Mitten, director of the city's property management office, said that if the maintenance duties were transferred to her shop, a funding increase and more staff would likely still be needed. She said that a timely response to maintenance problems must be found, or the District will be "in danger of squandering more than $2 billion."

"If facilities maintenance is not adequately funded now," Mitten said, "by the time the school modernization program is completed in 15 years . . . the cycle of capital investment will need to begin again."

To Kwame Brown's dismay, Mitten said that she had asked school officials for a breakdown of their operations, staff and budget last month but had yet to receive the information.

"This is toilet paper, doors and stalls and floors," Brown said. "This is a basic element, and no one has responded to you? And you wonder why our schools are substandard?"