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Banneker HS students shout demands for a new school building during protest in Wilson Building

The DC Council will decide the future of Banneker High School and a possible Shaw Middle School during a budget vote on Tuesday

WASHINGTON - Banneker High School students took their fight for a new school building to the Wilson Building Friday afternoon.

More than 100 students walked the hallways of DC's main administrative building, yelling "keep your promise," on the heels of a city council vote that will impact the future of their school.

Last year, DC Mayor Muriel Bowser announced Banneker High School would move to a new building on Rhode Island Avenue Northwest, at the site of the old Shaw Junior High School, by 2021.

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."

The DC Council is expected to settle whether Banneker gets a new facility on Tuesday when its members make their final votes on the city's budget.

The issue has created division in the Wilson Building.

Some DC councilmembers have disagreed with Mayor Bowser's plans for Banneker, because city leaders also promised Shaw residents they would get a new middle school, at the same site, a decade ago.

The DC Council recently voted to give preliminary approval to a city budget that allocated money for a new Shaw Middle School on Rhode Island Avenue. But, the budget proposal did not include money for the construction of a new Banneker High School.

It only called for the modernization of Banneker at its current site along Euclid Street Northwest. DC Council Chairman Phil Mendelson also decided to shift $53 million dollars away from Banneker's modernization project. 

At the meeting, Councilmember David Grosso proposed an amendment that would have allowed Banneker to move to the Shaw site while providing the school more money for modernization. That measure failed 6-7.

The possibility still remains that city leaders could reach a compromise on the schools issue before Tuesday's vote.

On Friday, Mendelson circulated a revised budget that restored the $53 million that had been taken away from the Banneker modernization project. The document did not include language blocking the possibility of a new Banneker High School building.

Grosso tweeted Friday that Mendelson's new budget was a "major win for the Banneker community."

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