If you didn’t, you are not alone. It’s been 50 years since the first ANC elections, but D.C. residents are unaware that these neighborhood commissions administer community grants.������

While a lot of confusion remains about the role and power of ANCs in the District, the community grant program can have visible impact, if you’re lucky enough to live in a neighborhood that offers them.����

��According to the Office of Advisory Neighborhood Commissions FY 2025 , the role of the ANCs is “to advise the District government on matters of public policy,” which range from planning and social service programs to health, safety, and sanitation.����

The ANCs provide advice and recommendations to the D.C. Council, the mayor, and various agencies, boards, and commissions of government. Some ANCs also award grants to help their communities.��

“ANCs do a tremendous amount of work,” says Executive Director, Kent Boese. “We are in a much better city because of them.”��

The OANC oversees each of the District’s individual neighborhood commissions. When it comes to grants, both the OANC and the ANC receive the applications.����

The OANC reviews the grant for fiscal compliance and makes a recommendation on if they feel it would be an appropriate expense. The ANC can then decide if it still wants to support it, Boese said. ��

For community members who want to apply for a grant, there are rules, of course. Grants can be as much as $3,000 and are available to organizations, not individuals, based on D.C.����

Organizations can’t receive more than one grant in a year.��

Can’t duplicate a city service.��

Also, for a group to receive a grant, it can’t be for a program that duplicates a city service. Boese said that line is clear, but there is nuance.����

“For example, the city has a program where you can ask for free tools during the fall for community clean-up. However, the city doesn’t operate a program for that during the winter,” he said. A grant for a winter program would be allowed, but the ANC would need to retain ownership of the tools, he said.��

Additionally, grants can’t be used for things such as food, must benefit the community (not a person or organization), and must be for a future event, Boese said. ��

Ward 1 resident Wendy Singleton, a board member and logistics coordinator for , has helped her organization get an ANC grant for the past five years. The organization, founded by Ransom Miller III, has used the money to support their annual Thanksgiving food distribution. This event, celebrating its 30th year, helps Project Giveback support over 5,000 families with bulk food distribution throughout the city.

“It’s not a hard process,” she said. “You have to get in early. The ANCs want to make sure their constituents are being served.”��

��Not all commissioners offer grants.��

Since the ANC’s have final say if an organization or event gets funded, single member district representatives can sponsor a proposal for an organization that is based outside of their ANC. This is important because not all ANCs offer grants.����

For example, Anna Krebs, commissioner and treasurer of ANC 6B06, represents one of those districts.����

“6B does not currently have grants available, but it is something that we are actively working on,” she said. ��

She said her neighborhood commission is working with the OANC to see what kinds of grants have been approved for other neighborhoods.����

Before becoming an ANC commissioner, Krebs said she hadn’t heard of the grants either. However, she added that she does see the value of them.

��“Part of why we want to bring back grants is so we can put money back into the community,” she said.����

So who decides if an ANC will offer grants or not? According to Boese, that’s up to the ANCs as well.��

��“It is important when reading the Code to pay attention to the words ‘may’ and ‘shall.’ ‘May’ means that a Commission is allowed, but not required, to do something. ‘Shall’ means that a Commission must so something,” Boese said.��

Boese is referring to section 1–309.13(l)(1) of the D.C. Code, which says “Expenditures may be in the form of grants by the Commission for public purposes within the Commission.”��

Some commissions have elected to start creating programs themselves, rather than issue reimbursements to organizations, Boese said.��

According to the OANC Annual Report for FY24, ANCs receive an approved allotment in the D.C. budget by the mayor. For the last two years, that amount was $915,688, which comes to $1.327 per District resident based on the 2020 census.����

The OANC can also recommend that the Office of the Chief Financial Officer withhold a portion of an ANC’s allocation if that commission has spent money for something that is not allowed (e.g. a committee luncheon) or is not in accordance with the procedures for spending money (e.g. the expenditure is not recorded in the minutes, or the check does not have two signatures). It is the OCFO that makes the quarterly allotments to the ANCs.��

ANC budgets are restricted to two main uses: administration and community support. Admin can be office supplies, business cards, signs, advertising, or rent for office space or community meetings. The commissioners themselves are not paid, however.��

A common theme is a lack of awareness. “Even if people don’t get involved, they should know we exist,” Krebs said.����

Singleton said she found out about the grants from a member of her church.����

“They don’t publicize,” she said. “You need to be active in the ANC, and you need to go to meetings.”����

Boese said his office is working to fix the lack of awareness of the grant program. In addition to improving individual websites, his office is working on an initiative in conjunction with local libraries to bring more attention to the commissions, and the work they do, before next year’s election.����

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They were lucky – the hallway was empty when the explosion occurred, but students, teachers, and staff at Whittier are still facing a constant struggle while trying to learn and work in unsafe conditions.

Angela Anderson, president of Whittier Elementary’s Parent Teacher Organization, said that a firefighter told her, “Listen, this will not stop happening. And you’re lucky someone wasn’t here because the pressure in these old steam systems, it’s so strong that it can sever a body part.”

Anderson said that the Department of General Services, which handles maintenance across DCPS, sends someone out to take a photo of the issue and then mark the service ticket as resolved even if it is not.

“Who is holding DGS accountable?” Anderson asked. “Who is coming behind them and doing that final check to see if it’s been done?”

DGS did not respond to email requests for comment.

In an email statement, D.C. Council Chairman Phil Mendelson said, “Work orders are key to any maintenance program. If DGS can’t manage its work orders then its maintenance program is going to fail. DGS’ approach to maintenance is completely inefficient. The mismanagement of the work orders is fundamental to that problem.�� What we’re also seeing is that inadequate and poor maintenance is, in the end, costing the city millions of dollars.“

Loose and falling bricks along the exterior of the building, a leaking roof with clear water damage, faulty HVAC systems in cold classrooms, backed up sewage, and unusable bathrooms across the school’s entire third floor are just a handful of what teachers and parents say some of the hazards at Whittier, located at 6201 5th St NW.

Alicia Bolton, whose two children attend Whittier, detailed a host of hazardous conditions at the school, adding that those issues were “scratching the surface.”

Since the radiator incident, the most notable risk to school safety and public health has been a rat infestation, evidenced by droppings found scattered across school supplies and floors.

“We had a rodent issue,” said Bolton. “I think it’s been become more pronounced in the last few weeks, because I don’t know what city agencies [are] responsible for picking up the trash, but they haven’t done it in at least about three weeks or so.”

Bolton has both a third grader and a kindergartener at Whittier Elementary. Her daughter had told her one day that there had been a dead rat in the middle of her third-grade classroom, which her teacher had to dispose of before starting class.

“That is that is disgusting,” Bolton said. “It is atrocious, and the city should be ashamed of itself.”

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, , by coming into contact with or “breathing in air contaminated with fresh mouse or rat urine, droppings, or nesting materials from an infected rodent.”

Bolton noted numerous delayed repairs and construction, including an elevator that is currently not working and causes “major concerns for safety,” as well as a “more blatant violation of the law with respect to students with disabilities who can’t get around.”

A student who recently required crutches had to be carried upstairs by a teacher, sometimes multiple times a day, to get to and from class, Bolton said.

Anderson said that parents are not just upset about building code violations or��repairs, alone. “We are talking about violations that are illegal, illegal.”

The stench of backed up sewage, mold and mildew has made some classrooms unusable, leading teachers to use the lunchroom or other rooms to hold their classes, Bolton said.

“Those are the types of egregious issues that that we’ve been facing,” Bolton said.

Bolton and other members from the Whittier Parent Teacher Organization have reached out to Chancellor Lewis Ferebee of DCPS and said that the response has “just been pretty lackluster,” assuring parents that the school will be modernized in a few years.

Bolten said that schools like Whittier are “made up primarily of working-class families” and feels that schools attended by more affluent families would not be left in such a state of disrepair.

“And yet they expect us to believe that equity matters, and they care about our learners? I don’t think so. That’s not been proven to us.”

Bolton said that the system is “flawed, and it needs to be redone” and argued that the city’s , which uses a particular methodology to prioritize modernization across schools in the district, is “ineffective”.

Local ANC commissioners like Jocelynn Johnson and Janeese Lewis George have been responsive to parents and teachers at Whittier, decrying the state of public schools in the district.

Johnson has been an outspoken advocate for modernizing D.C. public schools like Whittier Elementary and has been appalled by what she considers to be the apparent lack of concern by DCPS officials and the city government.

Did you know students and teachers with disabilities still can’t get around , which is a violation of the ADA and IDEA? are aware & should be ashamed. Modernize Whittier Now!

— JGWhittierPTO (@JGWhittierPTO)

“I started getting flooded with a lot of emails going to DCPS and to the mayor’s office, and after the parent would talk about the horrible things that they talked about – about not having any ramp to go and get into the building, you know, in 2022; bathrooms that haven’t been accessible along the floor; to ceiling leaking in the building and stuff like that,” Johnson said.

In an email sent to ANC Commissioner Erin Palmer regarding a proposed resolution “Calling for Urgent School Building Repairs at Whittier Elementary School and Legislative Changes to Ensure Timely School Modernizations,” Deputy Mayor for Education Paul Kihn wrote that he does “recognize that there is ongoing preventative maintenance work and building condition work that needs to be done.”

Kihn wrote that the “full modernization of Whittier Elementary is scheduled to begin in the 2024-2025 school year” and that it “is scheduled to be completed by school year 2027.”

“This timeline was determined by criteria in the PACE Act (another subject of your resolution).�� We will continue to look at this timeline and take into account the feedback we are receiving from the community.”

But Johnson does not find this response reassuring.

“That’s not acceptable. Are you kidding me?” Johnson said. “Somebody’s going to get sick, and I don’t want to see that happen.”

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