Longtime D.C. School Woes Eclipsed Board's Triumphs

"The teams gave more power to local schools," said Erika Landberg, who was on the board from 1988 until 1996 and is with DC VOICE, a community group that emphasizes a more informed, active public voice in education.

Newly elected council member Tommy Wells (D-Ward 6), who was on the school board for five years beginning in 2002, noted as a major accomplishment a resolution he sponsored that requires students to have immunizations before starting school. The system historically had low immunization rates but now has one of the highest, he said.

The school board also passed a strict truancy policy in 2004. Working with the court system and community groups, it established a task force that was able to cut the truancy rate in elementary schools by 50 percent during the 2004-05 school year.

But Toyer said it is hard for board members to point to major progress on the most critical issues -- academic achievement, graduation rates, dilapidated buildings -- because important policies passed by the board don't quickly bear fruit.

"The test scores aren't going to go up all of a sudden," said Toyer, who has a ninth-grader at McKinley Technology High School and is chairman of Parents United for the D.C. Public Schools.

Despite its accomplishments, the board could not turn around the reputation of a school system that increasingly drew the public's anger. That reputation wasn't helped two years ago when the board waited until June to approve new reading and math textbooks for the coming school year. Many students didn't get books until December.

Concerning school facilities, which became a rallying cry for students and parents who complained about peeling paint, broken windows and unkempt restrooms, the board took a back seat. Instead, school activists pushed the council to approve $2.3 billion in modernization funds last year.

Meanwhile, as hundreds of parents transferred their children to public charter schools, many encountered yet another example of the board's weak oversight. Although the board had oversight for 16 charter schools, a 2005 report by the federal Government Accountability Office concluded that it didn't regularly review information from its charter school office and allowed problems at some of the schools "to go unresolved for too long." Last year, the board voted to relinquish its chartering authority, citing the demands of overseeing the traditional school system and charter schools.

A 2004 report by the Council of Great City Schools said the board devoted more time to "operational detail" than student achievement and did not set annual measurable goals for itself or the superintendent.

Although a takeover seems inevitable, even some supporters of Fenty's plan are concerned about the impact that reducing the board's power would have on the public. "In 1996, when the control board took over and took away power of the elected board . . . the community very much felt shut out," Landberg said. It was that feeling of isolation that led residents to form DC VOICE, she said. "Democracy is messy, but I think the public needs a point of access, and not just to make complaints, either."

Until he resigned recently and became executive director of DC VOICE, Jeff Smith was the elected board member for District 1. He said he gave up his seat because the mission of the new board would not allow him to have a direct impact on educating children.

"What I see being proposed is really a perfunctory body, almost a procedural board," Smith said. "I was elected to be an active participant in education in the city, and that's no longer part of the job description in the D.C. Board of Education."

Staff writer V. Dion Haynes and researcher Meg Smith contributed to this report.