Experience Could Help or Hurt Graham
De Facto Leader's Term Has Included Accomplishments but Also Plenty of Problems

By V. Dion Haynes
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, October 24, 2006

D.C. Board of Education Vice President Carolyn N. Graham's bid to become the board's president comes down to convincing voters that her experience on the board means she understands school system issues but is not part of the problem.

In addition to poor academic showings and decrepit facilities, the problems now include a bubbling scandal that almost led her to withdraw from the race.

Federal authorities are investigating whether there is a link between Brenda L. Belton, former executive director of the board's charter school office, and a contractor that billed the system for hundreds of thousands of dollars. Some board members say privately that Graham was a key supporter of Belton's when the allegations about her first surfaced.

"If I can point to one failure since I've been on the board, it's that," said Graham, referring to the investigation of the charter school office.

"This was quite a teaching for me," she added. "The board really must tighten up administrative and management oversight. I'm really going to focus on that."

With school board President Peggy Cooper Cafritz absent for much of the year because of a digestive disorder, Graham has been the de facto chairman. That leads school advocates to hold her responsible for much of what the board has or has not done.

Among the accomplishments Graham cites is her leadership in pushing the board to adopt a comprehensive HIV-AIDS policy that eventually will establish a range of programs and curricula aimed at preventing infection among students. She also chaired an ad hoc committee that issued a study on how the system could reduce its soaring special education costs.

And Graham led the board's four-month effort in the spring to close five under-enrolled schools, a process that previous boards avoided. "While Carolyn was the leader of the board, we were able to implement a decision without imploding like other boards of education around the country," said outgoing school board member Tommy Wells (District 3).

In a year when everyone from her opponents to Democratic mayoral nominee Adrian M. Fenty is calling for dramatic change, Graham is attempting to promote stability and continuity.

If elected, Graham wants to introduce the ideas outlined in the special education report, including bringing back 2,000 disabled public school students being taught in costly private schools. She also wants to spur systemwide innovation by converting 10 traditional public schools into charter schools, an idea that is controversial among board members.

"We have got to have some traction here," said Graham, who was appointed to the board by Mayor Anthony A. Williams (D) in 2004 and previously served as deputy mayor for children, youth, families and elders.

Graham almost ended her campaign last week after word surfaced that she had been linked to the scandal through a memo with her signature. The memo urged a city official to pay several vendors, including the contractor under investigation. The memo was written several months after the school board had been warned about possible problems with the contractor and Belton.

But Graham told The Washington Post last week that a staff member cut out her signature from another document and pasted it onto the memo at Belton's direction. She acknowledges, however, signing another memo addressed to the city's finance office with essentially the same request.

The incident led her to seriously consider, but reject, withdrawing from the race, in which she faces four opponents, including former city administrator Robert C. Bobb.

"I am not a quitter," Graham said. "I did nothing wrong."

Graham was born 60 years ago in rural Mahned, Miss., the eldest of four children. She was raised on the family farm, pitching in by milking cows. Her father left when she was 3 months old. Even today, her mother, Doris Silver, 79, looms large in Graham's eyes: Silver overcame ostracism stemming from a hand deformity and became a special education teacher in Baltimore, Graham said.

"She turned that persecution into an asset by working with special-needs children," Graham said.

In childhood, Graham took long walks in the woods, during which she felt the presence of God, she recalled. Years later, she said, she became a Christian and accepted "a call" into the ministry. Graham, who has nearly completed a doctorate in divinity, is now an associate minister at Israel Baptist Church in Northeast Washington, where she leads a ministry for unwed mothers in foster care and preaches.

"She's quite dynamic," said the Rev. Morris Shearin Sr., Israel's pastor.

Graham said her public service is an extension of her ministry. But the passion Graham has displayed in the pulpit has been largely absent from her presentations at candidates' forums. She acknowledges that she comes across as "policy-wonkish."

A key issue for Graham is dismal student achievement, which she wants to reverse in part through her plan to convert 10 traditional schools into charter schools. But at least partially under her watch, only 28 of 146 schools made adequate yearly progress on the system's new exam this year, down from 75 last year.

Graham wants to modify a plan introduced by Superintendent Clifford B. Janey and the Washington Teachers' Union to establish 10 "innovative schools." Janey and the union would select the schools, which would act semiautonomously in experimenting with new ideas aimed at improving achievement.

Under Graham's proposal, the school board would use its power as a chartering agency to turn the 10 schools into charter schools. The school system, she added, would hire the brightest and most creative educators from across the country to run the campuses.

But the teachers union says that idea would accelerate the demise of a system that has lost more than 10,000 students to charter schools. If 10 schools became charters, the system probably would lose at least 2,000 more students and millions of dollars in city funding. Graham's plan also clashes with Janey's call for a moratorium on new charter schools.

Despite the opposition, Graham is pushing ahead.

"We could use our chartering authority to jump-start reform in the 10 schools," Graham said. "We've got to think creatively about how to speed up the reform efforts."