SchoolNotes

Councilmember Jack Evans office informed us that funding for the new $7 million annex at Scott Montgomery Elementary at 5th & P Streets NW was just approved Thursday. The annex will house classrooms for early child development and a cafetorium with an indoor basketball court. The current drawings released yesterday are still preliminary, but it's very exciting to see this project moving forward. Those who walk past the school have noticed all the contractors going in and outside of the builidng. I'm told that the interior of the current building has been given a major upgrade. There were landscapers out Friday doing a lot of work to the grounds — they were even giving attention to the treeboxes on the perimeter of the school on P and 5th Streets. This will be a tremendous development both for local students and the neighborhood. The building is expected to have a LEED Silver certification, whether it will have a green roof is uncertain at this point.

The project should be completed relatively quickly since the project's contract term only extends to March 2009. We should thus expect to see a ground breaking soon. The building sits behind the current building with plenty of direct accessibility from 5th Street that fact and previous conversations with school administrators suggest that they do not anticipate this disrupting regular school programs once school begins for the fall.

This project allows KIPP DC to go forward with substantial facility improvements at Montgomery Elementary that were envisioned in a public private development partnership as part of a dynamic co-location agreement. The expansion will include: a 7,000 sq ft gym; a 2,200 sq ft multi-purpose room; 3,000 additional square feet of classroom. KIPP has contracted with Jair Lynch for program management and Turner Construction Company to design and build the project.

Special city contractors were busy landscaping around the school all day on Friday. All of the exterior doorways have also recently been repainted, blue. The ground floor of the existing building was also being re-tiled this week.