Seeking 'Fresh Breath of Air' for D.C. Schools

Candidate for Board President Hopes to Put Civil Rights Background to Use

One in a series of profiles of candidates for president of the D.C. Board of Education

Just having received his bachelor's degree in philosophy and political science from Howard University, Timothy Jenkins traveled to rural Mississippi in the early 1960s to help establish Freedom Schools.

Operating in churches, houses and even barns, the Freedom Schools were aimed at educating and empowering black children displaced when local officials shuttered public schools to avoid federal integration orders.

Forty-five years later, Jenkins, a candidate for D.C. Board of Education president, said he considers himself to be in the middle of a modern-day civil rights struggle in the nation's capital. Students are trapped in a system in which the vast majority of schools are classified as failing. Many are in buildings that are falling apart and often without such basic human necessities as soap and toilet paper. Many are graduating from high school but unable to function in a college or work environment.

"One of the fundamental things the design of Freedom Schools was supposed to do was make sure students realize they are responsible for their education and to create a thirst for knowledge. That, in my opinion, is missing from the education system we have in Washington," said Jenkins, 67, an information technology consultant, who lives in the Shaw-Logan Circle area.

"We need a crusade for children, and that's what I'm trying to inspire," he added.

Taking a swipe at two of his rivals, former D.C. city administrator Robert C. Bobb and school board Vice President Carolyn N. Graham, Jenkins said: "We don't need retread bureaucrats and apologists for the status quo. We need a fresh breath of air in the system." Also running are Sunday Abraham, an education activist, and Laurent Ross, who was the first director of the D.C. Tuition Assistance Grant Program.

Jenkins's ideas -- including using technology to provide instruction from teachers around the world via the Internet and offering more training in construction and high-tech trades for noncollege-bound students -- stem from his careers in business and postsecondary education and his background in civil rights.

He was born in Philadelphia, the youngest of nine children. His father supported the family of 11 -- his mother was a homemaker -- on a modest income from a barbering business.

Growing up, Jenkins said, he heard inspiring stories about both grandfathers: His father's father in Courtland, Va., founded a teacher training and trade school for black students, was an African Methodist Episcopal Zion minister and established a bank for African Americans. His mother's father was the first black member of the Philadelphia school board.

"What my family impressed upon me was to live a life that has purposes above your own needs, to contribute to the needs of a community," he said.

Jenkins served as vice chairman of the University of the District of Columbia board and as 2001-02 interim president of UDC, an institution that, much like the D.C. school system, has had problems with finances and student achievement.

A recently released study commissioned by the D.C. school system said UDC had a poor record for graduating former D.C. public school students in five years. Although UDC enrolled 30 percent of the former D.C. public school students in the study, it graduated only 9 percent of them in five years. Conversely, Trinity University enrolled 3.6 percent of the students in the study and graduated 51 percent of them.

"It's not a surprise," Jenkins said. "We had to have [the D.C. public school graduates] spend freshman year repeating what they should have gotten in high school."

Charles J. Ogletree Jr., chairman of the UDC board from 2000 to 2005, credited Jenkins with increasing UDC's enrollment, improving facilities and helping the school obtain its first audit not to show major problems. Jenkins "was a superb board member and outstanding president," Ogletree said. "He was able to put his finger on problems and work incredibly hard" to fix them.

On a recent windy morning, Jenkins and his wife, Lauretta, stood outside Raymond Elementary School in Petworth distributing fliers and discussing his campaign with teachers and parents.

Cindy Hooper, a special education teacher, complained about a lack of necessary supplies and annual budget cuts that often force schools to let teachers go midyear.

Hooper also said she is worried about declining enrollment and the nearly two dozen underenrolled schools the board plans to close over the next 15 years. "We are in desperate need of new leadership," she said. "We need change."

Jenkins said the source of the system's problems is rising special education costs, particularly for 2,200 public school students sent to private schools because the system cannot accommodate them in-house. In 2005, D.C. spent $118 million on tuition for the students, an expense that has increased 65 percent since 2000.

"Special education needs to be revolutionized," Jenkins said. "We should take [some of the closed] schools and renovate them and use them for special education."

He wants the school system to keep tighter control of its budget to avoid the millions of dollars in cost overruns that occurred during the last large-scale reconstruction program. The school system, he said, should adopt a process used in the private sector that allocates payments to construction firms only after milestones and benchmarks have been reached.

He also supports Superintendent Clifford B. Janey's master facilities plan that calls for spending $2.3 billion to renovate more than 100 schools. But he wants the system to increase its administrative capacity so that officials can accelerate the construction schedule from 15 years to 10 years.

As bad as many of the school facilities in the District are, Jenkins said, they are superior to the condition of the Freedom Schools. Yet those barns, rundown country churches and outdoor areas produced a better education, he said.

"But the students were motivated. Our whole technique was to provide curiosity so the students can be leaders in their own education," he added. "That's what we need here."