This story is part of WTOP’s 2026 Back to School coverage.

At Boone Elementary School in Southeast D.C. on Friday afternoon, crews painted classrooms, fixed doors, upgraded the parking lot and cut the grass.

The work is part of the city’s push to ensure campuses are prepared to welcome kids back to school when the new academic year begins Monday, and similar efforts are underway across D.C.

To prepare, D.C. Department of General Services Director Delano Hunter said, there’s a focus on small painting jobs and full modernizations and new schools. The city’s working around the clock to make sure buildings are ready. One day last week, Hunter said he started his day at 4:30 a.m. and turned his computer off around 12:30 a.m.

“At times, it feels like herding cats,” Hunter said.

The efforts are spread across multiple teams, including capital construction, facility maintenance and the contractual services group responsible for managing vendors’ work.

In some cases, the focus is general work order repairs, which Hunter said include fixing doors, locks, elevators and windows. As of Friday, Hunter said they’ve finished about 2,000 of those repairs, and have between 700 and 800 remaining.

They’ve also spent the summer replacing elevators, HVAC systems and turf fields. The agency is working on HVAC systems at 30 locations, Hunter said, and it’s work that will continue through the start of the new year.

In schools that have had “chronic issues,” such as Cardozo Education Campus and Phelps High School, Hunter said there are full HVAC replacements underway.

However, “not all will be done by day one, but we have contingencies like spot coolers in place,” Hunter said.

Crews focus on doing “a ton of work” between when school ends in June and resumes again in August, Hunter said. It’s a time period during which the priority is finishing work that could be considered disruptive during an ordinary school day.

“It’s always a race against the timeline,” Hunter said.

This fall, four “modernized” campuses — J.O. Wilson Elementary School, Tubman Elementary School, Malcolm X Elementary School, and Thomas Elementary School — are opening.

As of last week, the city has certificates of occupancy at all of its major new buildings.

“That’s a big milestone for us,” Hunter said. “It’s continuous work. It’s always tight, and we’re going to run through the tape on this.”

Preventive maintenance, dedicated funding for work order closures and small capital investments are essential for having reliable school facilities, Hunter said.

And even though things may inevitably break, “when things go down, we’re able to get them up a lot quicker,” Hunter said.

So, he said, families should be assured “that they have professionals that are committed to getting the job done, and when things don’t happen quite as we like them, we’re working around the clock to make them right.”

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