The Distrct of Columbia spends more per pupil on it’s public education system than 47 out of the 50 states, and yet it’s public education system ranks as one of the worst in the nation. If nothing else, this is testament to the idea that throwing money at public schools will not solve their problems. It also makes you wonder where the money is going if problems like this still exist:

To fix D.C. public schools — better yet, to make the school system a model for the nation — look no further than what the students say they need. Donell Kie, a sophomore at Ballou Senior High School, and fellow student leaders came up with a pretty good list that was shared Saturday at a D.C. Council hearing on school reform. Among the things that they wanted to see in every public school: “books when school starts,” “heat in winter,” “air conditioning in summer,” “healthy meals,” “water fountains that work,” “music and art classes,” “counselors who are able to help us” and “teachers who care about their students and can teach.” Speaking of having air conditioning in the summer, seeing as there are companies such as Universal HVAC that exist, there shouldn’t be any excuses as to why these students can enjoy this during the summer months. Having students work in unsuitable conditions isn’t going to help them progress. Perhaps the school should install evaporative cooling to keep students cool and comfortable. Being too hot can be really disruptive, so keeping them cool could increase their productivity. It could be the same in the winter; students wouldn’t be able to work in fridged temperatures, luckily there are companies similar to Green Horizon – see more at Https://greenhorizon.com/heating/ – to ensure that their heating is completely working.

These students aren’t just belly-aching about non-existent problems, they are expressing the harsh reality of what the D.C. Public School system is like. During the recent cold wave, when temperatures dipped into the single digits for days, schools in the District remained closed for days because of lack of heat:

This is just completely unacceptable, especially with the number of heating and air conditioning experts that could easily rectify this issue. With professionals like Indoor Comfort Specialists, these issues could be gone and students can get back to being educated.

For the fourth day in a row, D.C. school officials scrambled to keep routines as normal as possible as they tried to repair boilers that failed during the cold snap. This resulted in hot water problems and no heating. Nearly 1,800 students from four schools were reassigned to other facilities this week because of heating and water problems. The four schools were Woodson and Ludlow-Taylor Elementary, both in Northeast, and Johnson Junior High and Simon Elementary in Southeast. More than 30 other schools had boiler malfunctions this week that left rooms or sections of buildings cold. This could have created a lot of unnecessary interruption for the staff and pupils of these 30 schools. To ensure that this doesn’t happen again, they may want to have a read of some of these safety tips to avoid heating emergencies so that their boilers can efficiently provide warm heat for the buildings. However, school system leaders accused the city of not providing sufficient funds to maintain aging buildings. Parents blamed everyone.

Answer me this question, if the heat doesn’t work in the winter, if there’s no air conditioning like that available from sites similar to topwindowfans.com in the summer, and if the students don’t have books when the school year starts, then just what is the District of Columbia spending more that $ 16,000 per pupil per year on?