Home Is Still Away From Home

New Report Scolds D.C. for Inaction at Cardozo, Which Lacks a Usable Gym

Dominic Aull thought it was pretty impressive when he led the Cardozo High School boys' basketball team to an unprecedented fourth straight D.C. Interscholastic Athletic Association title last year. The Clerks had done so without playing a single home game any of those four seasons.

Nor had they the previous 50 years.

"Been that long?" said Aull, a senior point guard. "But you know, man, look at our gym. We can't play in there."

Other than Cardozo students, few people have seen the gymnasium on the third floor of the 92-year-old building at the corner of 13th and Clifton streets NW in Columbia Heights, the oldest operating high school in the District.

The gym hasn't hosted a basketball game since 1954 because it is not regulation length or width and lacks any substantial sideline room. But the biggest reason is that the six rows of bleachers that hang above each baseline have emergency exits behind them that, when opened, lead directly to a 60-foot drop, according to Cardozo Athletic Director Bobby Richards. The doors have since been sealed.

The conditions of Cardozo's gym and other athletic facilities are among the most startling data of a report entitled "Unlevel Playing Fields," set to be released today by the Washington Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs. It is the fourth installment in a series of reports, and first since 2003, on the state of the athletic programs at District public schools.

Though the report praises the city for its efforts last summer to approve a $21.5 million project to upgrade the football fields at five schools (and accept a donation from Fannie Mae to fund a sixth school's field) with synthetic turf and other amenities, it scolds the District for not taking action at Cardozo, even after the school's plight was detailed in the first Unlevel Playing Fields report in 2001.

"It doesn't matter if they fixed five, six, seven or eight schools," said Rod Boggs, executive director of the Washington Lawyers' Committee. "As long as they have one school that looks like Cardozo, that's unacceptable. It's awful."

Cardozo's "home" basketball games have bounced around the city for a half-century, some at the old McKinley Tech school building, others at Lincoln Middle School and currently at Theodore Roosevelt, about a mile and a half north on 13th Street.

"That's not our home," said Clerks Coach William Davis, who was an All-Met for Cardozo before graduating in 1988. "That's someone else's gym. There's no purple [Cardozo's school color] there."

Cardozo's athletic teams still practice inside the gym, as well as the one located one floor directly below, which is nearly identical except that it lacks bleachers.

Even the school's volleyball team hasn't been able to host games the past two seasons, Richards said, because the gym isn't sufficiently lit. Only seven of the 21 light fixtures are working.

"It's amazing we've done so well under these conditions," said Richards, who has worked at the school since 1984. "Nobody would believe it. We've been kind of nomadic."

Cardozo was relocated from its original location at Ninth Street and Rhode Island Avenue NW in 1950, when District schools were integrated, and the school merged with all-white Central High at its current location.

Four years later, before the 1954-55 season, then-coach Frank Bolden decided he didn't like his team playing on a court that wasn't regulation length, or one where few fans could attend (rules had not yet been enacted banning spectators from the bleachers). Bolden said he sought other courts to play games, which began Cardozo's 54-year road trip.

"When you shoot from the corner [at Cardozo]," said Bolden, who turned 90 last month, "you're three feet closer than when you take the same shot on a regulation court. We recommended to [city officials] extend the [sideline] wall out, but there was always someone who said it couldn't be done."

That may change soon. Last June, after Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D) seized control of city schools and appointed Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee, he also created the Office of Public Education Facilities Modernization, headed by Allen Y. Lew, former chief of the D.C. Sports and Entertainment Commission.

In addition to Cardozo's main building being "gut rehabbed," Lew said he expects within two to three years an addition to the building to house a new gym near the 11th Street side of the school. It will be connected through the basement of the main building. Lew said the design plan is still being developed by architects and needs subsequent approval from both Fenty and Rhee.

The plan to renovate Cardozo "has been kicked around for a while," Lew said. "Some of these projects have been stalled for years and we're trying to get them jump-started.

"There's a lot of work that needs to be done there."