Cardozo High School, with its sweeping views of the rest of the city, has long been an imposing presence atop a hill in Columbia Heights. But like many of the District’s other public schools, the 1916 structure originally known as Central High School has long been in disrepair.

That will soon change. Mayor Vince Gray and other city officials joined together this morning to break ground on what is expected to be a year-and-a-half long modernization of the high school, part of the District’s broader 15-year, $3.5 billion campaign to fix its aging and long-ignored schools.

Starting next month, students will be relocated to a nearby elementary school and workers will start gutting the inside of the building and adding a new regulation gym where none existed before. The majority of the work will be done by Sigal Construction, which recently completed the renovation of Wilson High School in Tenleytown. Work is expected to wrap up in August 2013, and the new school will be expected to hold 1,100 students; currently, it has around 600.

The modernization campaign kicked off in earnest in 2007 under the leadership of Mayor Adrian Fenty and Allen Lew, who now serves as City Administrator. According to the Office or Educational Facilities Modernization, from 2007 to 2010, 13 schools and 33 athletic fields and playgrounds were fully modernized; 11 more schools were scheduled for partial or full overhauls for 2011. Particularly noteworthy modernizations have included Eastern High School on Capitol Hill and H.D. Woodson in Ward 7.

Despite positive reviews, the modernization campaign hasn’t escaped criticism. According to a Post interview with Lew earlier this year, 12 of the 16 overhauls he oversaw for Fenty went over budget. A report published in May by the D.C. Auditor similarly found that Lew had defied existing contracting rules and made any accounting of expenditures surprisingly difficult.

The same fate may dog Cardozo’s modernization — the work on the main building is expected to cost $77 million, but the new gym will add $24 million, if not more, to the final tab.