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To Robert Bobb, Adrian Fenty and Vincent Gray: Cooperate

WITHIN HOURS of the last vote being counted in the school board race, Robert C. Bobb, the newly elected D.C. Board of Education president and former city administrator, had laid down his marker against a possible effort by Mayor-elect Adrian M. Fenty (D) to take control of the schools. "I have a specific plan on how to get from Point A to Point B," Mr. Bobb said. "Mr. Fenty doesn't." Undeterred by Mr. Bobb's barbs, Mr. Fenty is moving full steam ahead on his plan to seize the reins of public education in the District. At the same time, D.C. Council Chairman-elect Vincent C. Gray (D) has assembled a transition team to help him focus on his chief campaign issue, the state of D.C. public schools.

The prospect of three top city leaders rushing off in different directions to tackle the central issue confronting the District -- with the likelihood of producing three competing plans even before they take the oath of office -- is disturbing. The last thing the city needs is distraction from the school system's real problems: low academic achievement, deteriorating buildings and students abandoning the system in droves.

Yet political bickering and posturing are exactly what the city will get if Mr. Bobb, Mr. Fenty and Mr. Gray don't recognize the larger responsibility they have to bring leadership and stability to a school system badly in need of both. Going head to head is not the way to provide direction. It is a formula for the kind of disruption and discord that will tie the city up in knots at the very moment leaders should be working together to forge a plan that can draw support from all parts of the community.

We have to wonder what School Superintendent Clifford B. Janey makes of all this. Having toiled for months to produce a master education plan that drives all aspects of instruction in the coming years, he now hears that the incoming school board president has his own plan for boosting student achievement and that the next mayor, and possibly the incoming council chairman, are laboring mightily to do much the same thing. What's more, Mr. Janey sees a food fight developing over who is going to be his boss. Why should any superintendent (or parent, for that matter) want to put up with that nonsense?

It's time for these three leaders to set aside their agendas and come together to find common ground on which they can stand with the superintendent and the school board. After all, the things that matter are the children of the District and the quality education they deserve but are not receiving. All the rest is

hubris.