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'Keep your promise!' | DC Council to decide on future of Banneker HS, proposed Shaw MS Tuesday

Both school proposals focus on the same site along Rhode Island Avenue NW in Shaw.

WASHINGTON - The future of two proposed D.C. school buildings will be determined Tuesday at the Wilson building.

The DC Council will hold its second and final vote on the proposed city budget. The budget includes a measure to allocate funding toward the construction of a new Shaw Middle School, at the site of the old Shaw Junior High School, on Rhode Island Avenue.

Shaw residents say city leaders promised them a new middle school would be built at that location close to a decade ago. Shaw parents, like Suki Lucier, have long been critical of the far distance Shaw children have to travel to go to middle school classes.

"You get far enough away and it stops being a neighborhood school and so you stop reaping the benefits of that," she said. "Of seeing people that you know around the neighborhood and the families that you know and the accountability that comes with kids."

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However, the Shaw Middle School plan has proven to be controversial to other families in the city.

Last year, DC Mayor Muriel Bowser also announced Banneker High School would move to a new building at the same Rhode Island Avenue site.

Banneker High School Junior Diamonique Parks said the project is overdue.

"We do need to move," she said. "It's an old building and we have no space."

More than 100 Banneker students walked the hallways of the Wilson Building Friday afternoon, yelling "keep your promise," on the heels of the council's important vote.

However, the current budget proposal does not include money for the construction of a new Banneker High School. It only provides money for the modernization of the school at its current site along Euclid Street Northwest.

A spokesperson for the DC Council did say it was possible an amendment could be offered on the schools question prior to Tuesday's vote.

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