Walker-Jones Elementary School, immediately adjacent to the drug-ridden Sursum Corda housing project where 14-year-old Princess Hansen was executed earlier this year, is supposed to be a symbol of what educators can achieve if they're given the resources they need.
Chosen as one of the city's 17 transformation schools -- the worst-performing schools in the roughest neighborhoods -- Walker-Jones was supposed to receive a dramatic infusion of talent and money. A new principal would bring in her choice of teachers. Test scores would rise -- with not even a quarter of the students meeting standards, they could hardly go down -- and parents would see accountability in action.
But at Walker-Jones, the principal charged with this task is Wilma Durham, and if any transformation has occurred since she arrived in 2002, many teachers, parents and students say, it has been for the worse.
What they have seen, they say, is a principal who rules by intimidation, who has chased away dedicated teachers, who rejects offers of help from parents and community volunteers and who holds a phony doctorate from a diploma mill that has been shut down by the FBI.
Yet Durham "is not under any kind of evaluation or investigation," according to Lucy Young, a spokeswoman for the school system.
Durham's personnel file includes a copy of a 1998 diploma from Columbia State University awarding Wilma Elbouhnini -- Durham's married name and the name which she has recently asked her staff and students to use -- a PhD in education administration. An accompanying transcript details eight courses, including Cultural Diversity and Educational Technology; a dissertation topic, Effective Schools in an Urban Setting; and says Durham achieved a 3.9 GPA.
The U.S. Justice Department announced last year that Columbia State, a correspondence school based in Orange County, Calif., was "nothing more than a diploma mill that offered academic degrees from a non-existent school." The school had advertised itself in newspapers as a way to "get a college degree in 27 days." The school's founder, a former stage hypnotist named Ronald Pellar, pleaded guilty in January to nine counts of mail fraud and was sentenced last week to eight months in prison. The FBI raided Columbia State's offices in 1998, six weeks after Durham's degree was issued.
In a brief phone interview yesterday after three weeks of not returning calls, Durham refused to discuss her degree. "You can talk to my supervisors about that," she said before hanging up on me. Ten minutes later, Durham called to invite me to her office for an interview. When I arrived, she handed me a business card with her lawyer's number on it and answered my questions only with "No comment."
According to the lawyer, Vanessa Carpenter, who said she could not address any issue except the doctorate, Durham agreed to have her pay reduced last fall after a complaint about the phony degree was investigated by the school system. "She was a victim of fraud," Carpenter said. "She got bamboozled out of money for the courses. She said she was doing everything she thought she needed to do to get a legitimate degree."
Assistant U.S. Attorney Donald Gaffney, who prosecuted the case, told the Associated Press that many of those who bought degrees from Columbia State were not victims because "they wanted a fraudulent degree to show to employers for promotion."
Gloria Grantham, the assistant superintendent who supervises Walker-Jones, refused to talk about the school or its principal. She referred calls to the system's press office, where spokeswoman Young said: "We are not going to comment on these questions at all. It sounds like someone has a personal ax to grind."
"I'd like to know who these people are who are saying these things and I'd like to sue them for slander," Durham said yesterday. "If people would like to say negative, nasty things about me, I want them to sit right here in this office."
Personnel records indicate that the school system has known about Durham's phony doctorate for at least six months. Hired in 1998 as co-principal of Ballou Senior High School, Durham was listed in system records and paid from then until last fall as a doctorate recipient.
At least three people at the school and in city government say they repeatedly informed headquarters about the degree over the past year. "I made those documents available to folks in the government, and I never heard a word," said Leo Pinson, then the city's Ward 6 Neighborhood Services Coordinator and now head of his own consulting firm.
Pinson expected that the school system would fire anyone who held a fraudulent credential. But last October, the human resources office wrote Durham that "an internal audit determined that you are incorrectly coded in the system . . . and therefore you are being erroneously paid at a higher salary." The letter said that because "this error is not of your doing, we will not be seeking a refund of the overpayment." The letter said Durham would be moved from the doctoral level salary of $115,226 to a master's-plus 45 hours of course work level of $113,751.
"We apologize for the inconvenience this situation may cause you," concludes the letter from Valarie Sheppard, director of employee services and staffing.
Durham's lawyer, Carpenter, said the principal nonetheless voluntarily repaid the extra pay.
Carpenter said Durham no longer uses the title "Dr." But Durham's office staff and others at Walker-Jones still refer to her as "Dr. Durham," and school system records still list her with that title.
"I don't even have to exert the energy to be outraged," D.C. Council member David Catania said when I told him about Durham's record. "Who made these decisions, and why haven't they been fired? It's about showing people the door."
It is rare in the information bunker that is the D.C. school system for teachers and administrators to speak out. Such a move is widely perceived as a career-ender. But more than a dozen current and former teachers, administrators and staffers at Walker-Jones were eager to talk about Durham.
Walker-Jones's 292 students continue to perform well below standards, according to the school's most recent No Child Left Behind report card. Only 25 percent of its students were found to be proficient in reading or math.
That failure alone does not distinguish Walker-Jones. Rather, those who have worked for Durham say it is the principal who stands out. Five teachers and two administrators said Durham enforces a "silent lunch" policy, forbidding either students or teachers to speak while in the cafeteria. Teachers said they have never before encountered a school in which they must fill out a permission slip before they may hold a birthday party in their classroom. And several teachers said Durham regularly makes inappropriate remarks over the public address system, including one recent morning after the Hansen killing when she announced to students: "The police are strangers, and you don't talk to strangers."
"During my half-hour meeting with Durham, two children were stabbed with pencils in two separate incidents," said Pinson. "Why is she still there? These kids deserve the best opportunity to succeed, and I don't know that they are getting it."
"I was so excited about teaching in a transformation school," says Karen Boone, who encouraged at least four friends to come work at Walker-Jones, only to find her position eliminated by Durham after a months-long dispute. Boone, who was the school's community coordinator, has filed a grievance against the principal. Last year alone, according to school records, Durham excessed the assistant principal, librarian and at least three teachers, eliminating their positions in a school where parents and teachers agree the children need more attention, not less.
"She was a go-getter, and I was excited to have a job," recalls Paula Hiles, whom Durham hired to teach at Walker-Jones last year. Hiles says the experience quickly soured after the principal accused her of passing messages to students from another teacher whom Durham had ousted.
"All I'd done was say 'Hey' to the kids," Hiles says. "But from then on, it was not a good year. She was rude to any teachers she suspected of doing something against her. In my final review, I was told I did not belong at Walker-Jones, that I should teach in upper Northwest. That meant I should only teach white kids. I'd worked for high-risk kids for 20 years, and this was the worst year of my life."
Hiles now works in retail management. She has been promoted twice in six months.
An administrator who left Walker-Jones said his experience under Durham "made me question why I was in education." He said he was not permitted to see the school budget or staffing lists though his job required him to supervise those areas. The administrator, who is now winning accolades elsewhere in the system, asked not to be named for fear of retribution by his superiors.
Teachers and administrators say they have repeatedly complained to the principal's supervisors, but nothing has changed.
"The sad thing is that in these children's lives, no one stays," says Boone. "You wouldn't put her anywhere west of the park. But you put her in Sursum Corda, where those children have such great needs."
