Within a week of starting her job at the Columbia Heights Educational Campus in Northwest D.C., Kiesha Lewis saw a rat sprint under her office door and into a wall.
She shared the space with a colleague who was unbothered by the rodents. Lewis bought sticky rat traps and the coworker put them in corners of the office. He would often ensure the room was free of rodents before Lewis, the middle school community development coordinator, arrived.
When that coworker left the school this spring, Lewis worked from the one part of the large middle and high school campus where she never saw an animal or droppings: the front of the cafeteria…