Better School Reform

What to Try Before A Mayoral Takeover

I appreciate Mayor Adrian Fenty's willingness to take a central role in improving public education in the District of Columbia and certainly share his desire to make our schools not just better but great. When Mayor Anthony Williams proposed taking control of the schools two years ago, I also believed he meant well.

Interestingly, Adrian Fenty, then a member of the D.C. Council, opposed that takeover, as did I. He has changed his mind. I have not.

I am concerned that we would be dismantling the Board of Education just as we elected a dynamic president and added elected members and mayoral appointees -- all of whom are impressive and have promised strong oversight. We have a superintendent -- found through a joint effort and national search two years ago -- who has laid a foundation for needed improvements. The D.C. Council has also put in place $200 million a year to modernize school facilities. We have assembled the components necessary to hasten reform.

Added to this mix is our new mayor, who obviously wants to be more involved in education. I am sure he would use his office to support the superintendent and school board and to coordinate the relevant city agencies. Why would we not give the assembled team a chance, at least for a limited time, to prove its mettle?

I don't want education to become just another of the myriad things for which the mayor is responsible. Running the schools is a full-time job, and the mayor already has a daunting task ahead of him with the many agencies that need fixing.

I fear that the plan for a mayoral takeover may push us to the brink -- which threatens citywide consequences, not just for the schools.

We all want our students to achieve more. I fully agree with the mayor and my council colleagues that the status quo cannot remain. We must put our schools on the road to success.

Toward that end, I will ask the mayor and the council to consider five recommendations that, taken together, should get us where we all want to go.

· First, the Board of Education should be given three years to achieve measurable improvements that indicate the system is turning around. If these people, working with the council and the mayor, cannot get the job done in three years, a complete takeover can and probably should occur. By then, hopefully, other agencies will have been fixed.

· Second, the mayor and the council should have line-item authority over school spending. The superintendent, with approval from the Board of Education, would submit his budget to the mayor for his changes. He would then submit it to the council, which would decide on the budget for the schools, just as it does for all other agencies.