By Colbert I. King
Saturday, March 31, 2007
"I just wanted to make sure you heard the news that is not making the news that two people were shot just a few blocks from J.C. Nalle [elementary school] last night. The first happened late in the afternoon Wednesday while children were playing across the street in Benning Terrace, and the man collapsed and died on the steps of Jones Memorial Church. The children at our school told me about seeing the bullet holes in his chest and head and seeing the helicopter take the man away."
-- a teacher at J.C. Nalle
Thursday, March 29
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, an education empire is being built even before the conquest is over.
When Mayor Adrian Fenty takes over the D.C. public schools, his deputy mayor for education, Victor Reinoso, will be at the top of the public education food chain. Although it will be a while before the switch in governance becomes official (since the change requires approval by the D.C. Council, which votes next week, and by Congress), Reinoso has already gathered trusted followers to help him once the takeover deed is done.
In a demonstration of his capacity to think and live large, Reinoso has assembled a staff of 11 at a cost to D.C. taxpayers of $1,137,291.
First there's Reinoso's own $175,000 salary, which exceeds that of D.C. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton and the chief judge of the D.C. Superior Court. Then there's the pay of his executive assistant, Tara Bridgett, who makes $69,741 a year.
Employees can be an unwieldy bunch. So Reinoso has a chief of staff to ride herd on the underlings. That post belongs to Eric Lerum. His annual salary: $110,000.
So much to do; such little time. Thus Reinoso has five special assistants.
They, and their D.C. government salaries, are:
1. Julia Lara, $115,000.
2. Mark Ouellette, $96,700.
3. Bonnie Cain, $92,700.
4. D'Wanna Lee, $92,700.
5. Abigail Smith, $81,250.
What, you may ask, do they do?
Chief of staff Lerum wrote the following to Marc Borbely of Fix Our Schools in response to Borbely's request for the staff and salary information cited above: "We do not have specific subject areas assigned only to certain staff members at this point." So, a little of this, a little of that.
The deputy mayor hired a director for the Office of Parent and Community Involvement. That's Jackie Pinckney-Hackett, who was a paid consultant to the D.C. public schools' special education call center. She draws a salary of $95,000 a year.
He also hired three policy analysts, one of whom has been designated "senior." The senior's job pays $82,424 and belongs to Amoretta Morris. The two other analysts, Claudia Lujan and Rebecca Katz, are paid $63,388 each, which is less than the salary of Reinoso's executive assistant but far more than the annual salary of a D.C. schoolteacher with a bachelor's degree ($42,370) or master's degree ($45,194), or a D.C. police officer at step 1 ($46,395).
A job with the deputy mayor for education is, in some cases, a vehicle for personal financial growth.
Only two of Reinoso's hires, special assistants Lara and Lee, took pay cuts when they joined the Fenty administration in January. Three others, Bridgett, Smith and Morris, are being paid the same salaries they received in their previous jobs.
Not so with respect to chief of staff Lerum; special assistants Ouellette and Cain; policy analysts Lujan and Katz; and Pinckney-Hackett, the director of parent and community involvement.
I imagine they sing daily to Reinoso, in the words of Gladys Knight: "You're the best thing that ever happened to me."
Consider the following table:
| Before | Now | |
| Eric Lerum | $85,000 | $110,000 |
| Bonnie Cain | $50,000 | $92,700 |
| Mark Ouellette | $92,500 | $96,700 |
| Claudia Lujan | $50,000 | $63,388 |
| Rebecca Katz | $52,500 | $63,388 |
Jackie Pinckney-Hackett | $125 an hour | $95,000 |
Good for them.
Too bad the same can't be said for teachers in D.C. classrooms, police officers wearing bulletproof vests on the city's mean streets or social workers patching together broken families and abused children. Consider what one Nalle teacher noted on Thursday:
"This afternoon, our principal received word that a body was discovered on the grounds of Fletcher-Johnson Elementary near the path where our children walk to school. She made an announcement on the loudspeaker instructing the children to walk a different route home. Fletcher is within view of our playground and the body apparently sat there most of the day before it was discovered while our children played across the street."
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