Better late than never, right? That seems to be the philosophy guiding D.C. Schools Superintendent Clifford Janey and School Board President Robert Bobb, who this week kick off a $75 million repair blitz in 70 of the city’s 142 schools. Writes the Examiner on the campaign:

Systems to be repaired include bathrooms, water fountains and lighting — all issues that have been identified as having the greatest impact on the students’ and teachers’ quality of life, Bobb said. “What we said was this was the one thing we hear about frequently,” Bobb said. “Bathrooms don’t work, water fountains are broken, lighting. Some of the schools need cleaning.”

Call us cynics, but we can’t help but think that this announcement is just a little too conveniently timed. School repairs and modernization have long been debated in District political and educational circles, so much so that in March 2006 the D.C. Council endorsed legislation that promised an additional $100 million a year for repairs, part of a plan to fully modernize the city’s public schools in 15 years. Since then, though, few repairs seem to have been made. Janey faced something short of an uprising in early February when a cold snap forced four schools to close and 36 others to undergo repairs for inadequate or non-existent heating. Things only got worse a week later, when news leaked that various schools suffered from elevated levels of lead in their water, a fact that Janey didn’t bother to share with parents. Both events have provoked parents and school advocates to ask if anything approaching modernization was being accomplished. Added to today’s news, it doesn’t seem like it.

And now seems like an interesting time to announce a blitz that amounts to little more than a few band-aids here and there. After all, Bobb and Janey are both facing the prospect of D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty taking over the city’s school system, effectively stripping them of the authority they enjoy now. Last week Bobb announced his ambitious alternative to a takeover, and some bricks and mortar here and there may make some parents and administrators more sympathetic to his cause.

We’re somewhat befuddled as to the molasses-like speed that improvements — even the most basic types, like school repairs — proceed. Why has it taken a full year since the council promised historic jumps in funding for modernization for repairs to get started? And why does it seem like they got started right around the time that both Bobb and Janey need to make the case that they should be left to run the schools? Most importantly, how is it possible that a publicly funded baseball stadium can be built in almost record speed while getting a bathroom fixed and lightbulb replaced in a public school takes multiple city agencies, a billion-dollar check from the council and an announcement of a “repair blitz”?