Just when you thought the District’s public schools were facing enough hurdles these days. The Examiner reports that most of the Ward 3 public schools were without telephone service yesterday, in what appears to have been an error on the part of DCPS. The outages ocurred after DCPS gave the District’s Office of Finance a list of phone numbers they supposedly weren’t using anymore. The disconnects began March 8 under the city’s Zero Usage Project, which is designed to reallocate inactive phone numbers.

The story came out after a somewhat funny exchange of emails between high-ranking city officials.

Deputy Mayor for Education Victor Reinoso sent an e-mail March 15 to City Administrator Dan Tangherlini stating that Woodrow Wilson Senior High School and Eaton did not have phone service.

“Who can we contact to make sure this is handled in a way that doesn’t backfire?” Reinoso asked in the e-mail.

Tangherlini forwarded the e-mail to District technology officers asking for help fixing the problem.

On March 15, Dennis Gill, director of resource management in the Office of Finance and Resource Management responded, saying that D.C. Public Schools had identified 1,175 lines to cut, and later identified additional lines at Eaton to cut.

“After personally researching this issue, I can state without fear of contradiction that the numbers identified … were provided by DCPS (the only possible source) and this information provided to Verizon,” Gill wrote.

The whole story reads a bit like seven circles of hell D.C. government embarassment. Verizon says it will restore phone service as soon as possible.

Photo by AlbinoFlea