Candidates United on Need for Change as Fenty Weighs Takeover
By V. Dion Haynes
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, October 8, 2006
In 1968, District citizens for the first time elected a Board of Education -- a groundbreaking event that moved the city from total federal control and laid the foundation for voters to select the mayor and council members.
Next month, D.C. voters will elect a school board that could be part of history again. Democratic mayoral nominee Adrian M. Fenty is considering a plan to take charge of the school system, possibly converting the board into an appointed advisory panel.
Any revision of the board's composition would have to be approved by the D.C. Council, because voters adopted a charter change in 2000 giving the council broad authority over change. It is unclear whether the council would support a mayoral takeover, because Fenty has not provided many details on what he proposes to do if he is elected mayor in the general election.
More than a power struggle is at stake. The schools are in desperate straits, struggling with low test scores, declining enrollment and decrepit buildings. The board, after years of decline in the classrooms, has become discredited in the eyes of many voters who express little hope that it can remedy the problems.
The crisis of confidence occurs as the nine-member board prepares for up to six new faces, including a new president. Fifteen people are running for three seats -- five for president, five in District 3 and five in District 4. All are promising reforms. In addition, the next mayor will have two appointments to the board, and a third seat could open up.
Over the past decade, the power base of the school board has decreased significantly, largely symptomatic of a multitude of problems.
Only 28 of 146 schools made academic targets on the last student assessment -- a number that dropped from 75 the previous year under a different test.
The system has lost nearly 15,000 students to charter schools and to private schools participating in the federal government's experimental voucher program. If trends continue, according to a recent study, taxpayer-funded and independently operated charter schools will represent the majority of public schools in the city by 2014.
That prompts some to wonder whether the school board is fading into irrelevancy.
"I think the school board has been diminished quite a bit," said Calvin Lockridge, who served on the board from 1977 to 1990 and is the uncle of current school board member William Lockridge (District 4). "I would not run for the school board today. I don't think they have any power."
With all the uncertainty, the matchup for school board president is shaping up as the race to watch. The best known of several candidates are the board's vice president, Carolyn N. Graham, and Robert C. Bobb, who recently resigned as city administrator.
Both say they will be agents of change. Graham said she hopes to return 2,000 special education students in private schools to the public schools, saving millions of dollars. Bobb said he wants to provide more early childhood intervention programs to prepare children for their school careers.
Voters from all four school board districts -- each covers two wards -- will elect a new president to replace Peggy Cooper Cafritz. Voters in Wards 5 and 6 will choose a District 3 replacement for Tommy Wells, who won the Democratic primary for Sharon Ambrose's Ward 6 seat on the council. And voters in Wards 7 and 8 will decide whether to reelect Lockridge to his seat.
The new mayor will appoint two at-large members to fill the seats of Robin B. Martin and Carrie L. Thornhill, whose terms will be up at the end of the year. If voters elect Graham, also an appointed member, to be president, the mayor would have to fill her vacancy, too.
All the candidates say they would pressure Superintendent Clifford B. Janey to fulfill plans for improving student achievement and renovating school buildings. "They think his timeline is too long," said Abigail Smith, coordinator for EdAction, a grass-roots organization that fields candidates for the school board election. "They want to make sure his goals are implemented and implemented on a faster timeline."
An innate challenge lies ahead for the 15 candidates: playing up their ability to introduce change amid some mammoth obstacles as the board's future existence is in doubt.
Besides having to answer directly to the council and Congress, the elected school board has watched as its authority steadily eroded.
The first strike came in 1995, when the federally appointed D.C. financial control board replaced the elected school board with a handpicked board of trustees.
The elected board resumed when the financial control board went out of existence in 2001, but the school system's budget remained under the authority of the city's chief financial officer.
Mayor Anthony A. Williams (D) failed in 2000 and 2004 in his attempts to take over the school system. However, through council vote and a referendum in 2000 he was granted temporary power to appoint two board members to two-year terms and two to four-year terms. The law expires in 2008, when voters are to start electing all nine members again.
The city also shifted some state-level roles -- including oversight of the funding formula and verification of student enrollment -- from the school system to Williams's new State Education Office.
In 2003, a federal judge hearing a class-action suit filed by parents of disabled students agreed to shift control of the $60 million-a-year special education transportation program from the school system to an independent administrator. Spurred on by the fatal shooting of a student inside Ballou Senior High School in Southeast Washington, the council moved school security last year from the system to the police department.
And last week, council member Kwame R. Brown (D-At Large) introduced legislation to put school maintenance workers and custodians under the authority of the city's Office of Property Management. The move was prompted by complaints that many schools were unable to perform such routine tasks as replacing toilet paper in bathrooms or changing burned-out light bulbs.
"Enough is enough," Brown said in an interview. "Every child deserves at least the basics."
Education experts praise the board for approving tough new standards in reading, math, science and social studies, as well as agreeing to eliminate 3 million square feet of excess space by closing and consolidating about two dozen underenrolled schools. They also credit the board for smoothing over some of the discord, both among members and between the board and the council.
But Mary Levy, director of the Public Education Reform Project for the Washington Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs, criticizes the school board for failing to properly monitor charter schools under its jurisdiction as well as its charter school oversight office.
Brenda L. Belton, who headed the office, is the target of a federal investigation for allegedly misusing federal funds. The school board is considering giving up its role as a charter authorizer.
Levy blames the board for failing to properly monitor spending, which led to the U.S. Education Department's action to designate the system a "high risk" for mismanaging federal funds. The designation prompted a bill in Congress to shift the system's state powers to another agency.
No school board candidate, not even incumbents, is campaigning to stay the course.
"You'd be hard-pressed to find a candidate," said Smith, of EdAction, "who says that business as usual is the right thing."
Coming tomorrow for D.C. voters: the first in a series of profiles of candidates for president of the D.C. Board of Education.
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