Washington DC is notorious for being home to some of America’s worst schools.  But at least many of them will be glitzy.

The DC public school system is now spending $400 million per year on school building “modernization.”

Here are some of the projects:

• • • $90 million for an expansion at MacArthur HS
    • $22 million to upgrade Deal Middle School
    • $60 million at Garfield ES
    • $54 million at Whitlock ES
    • $66 million at Dorothy I. Height ES
    • $15 million for a new early education wing at Miner Elementary

Are these schools going to have hot tubs and luxury suites?

We’ve come a long way from the one-room schoolhouses that actually taught kids math, reading, and history.

What explains these outrageously expensive construction costs? Our suspicion is super-generous union-only contracts.  The DC government admits that one factor that inflates these construction costs is they must conform with expensive and idiotic “net-zero” fossil fuel standards.

We’re sure these green policies will help Johnny learn to read.

Ironically, one way the non-elite private schools in DC that serve low income students often keep costs low is by taking over buildings and schools that have been abandoned by the DC government and are in complete disrepair. Yet these schools typically do a better job teaching the kids.

Imagine if progressives in DC and in Congress would even allocate a fraction of this $400 million a year to scholarship programs that could serve better thousands of low-income and mostly black children.

Shame.