A World of Sorrow, a World Away

The disconnect between the school governance drama and a community of children in pain could not be wider.

Downtown

Now that Mayor Adrian Fenty's takeover of the D.C. public schools has received the D.C. Council's initial blessing, what's next for the system? On the surface, not much. But behind the scenes, plenty. For the moment, keep these two items in mind: (1) Rudy Crew and (2) $600,000.

Crew is the Miami-Dade County school superintendent rumored to be a top choice to become chancellor under Fenty's education plan. The city's current superintendent, Clifford Janey, need not apply. He is as popular with the Fenty crowd as a cat in a dog pound.

Not so with Crew. Three years ago, he was heavily lobbied to run the D.C. schools. However, he was turned off by the system's messy governance structure and turned down the job.

Today, the D.C. school chief's job may be more to Crew's liking.

It helps that Fenty and the Federal City Council's Terry Golden are high on Crew, although he was fired by the New York school board in 1999 -- a deed deemed at the time to be a victory for Mayor Rudy Giuliani.

Crew, an African American, got his licks in last year; he declared in a May 26, 2006, Post Style article that he found Giuliani's "policies to be so racist and class-biased . . . I don't even know how I lasted three years. . . . He was barren, completely emotionally barren, on the issue of race." Hmmm.

Crew is in the middle of an expensive internecine legal fight with his Miami-Dade school board over governance issues, so he may be itching to move on. Anyway, remember the name.

The $600,000?

When the District was searching for a superintendent in 2004, then-Mayor Anthony Williams said the city might woo Crew with a compensation package as large as $600,000. Williams envisioned D.C. taxpayers contributing $350,000 in salary and bonuses, with the rest coming from business leaders. But Crew chose Miami and split the Washington scene faster than the speed of light.

If Crew is willing to come to the District, expect the $600,000 compensation package to materialize once again. It may be even sweeter. One D.C. lawmaker familiar with the business community's infatuation with Crew speculated that the package could reach $900,000.

Either way, taxpayers, loosen your wallets.