A Civics Lesson for D.C. Students to Skip

Let's hope D.C. public school students are too busy with their studies to pay much attention to the officials overseeing their school system. Goodness knows those adults are teaching lessons that students should never learn.

The first instruction, ably conveyed by the deputy mayor for education, Victor Reinoso, is that it's not what you know but whom you know.

For those unfamiliar, Reinoso handed in an assignment with his name on it. The assignment, however, contained a great deal of another person's work, specifically: language lifted verbatim from an education plan developed in a North Carolina school district. Reinoso included some of that material without attribution in an education plan that he drafted for Mayor Adrian Fenty. Reinoso even copied the other district's "vision statement," passing it off in the Fenty draft as his own.

That would get most students a failing grade; not so with Reinoso.

True, when caught by an eagle-eyed reader, Reinoso owned up to copying the document and took responsibility for the misdeed. And it's true, too, that Fenty, who has made "accountability" the watchword of his young administration, did not try to minimize Reinoso's lightfingeredness. Fenty called it a "serious issue" and declared to The Post that "this is not how it should have happened."

And then? And then?

Nothing. That's right, nothing.

Reinoso, you see, is wired to highly influential city interests. Thus he enjoys benefits that lesser-connected city workers don't have. So Reinoso -- short on knowledge, but high on well-placed friends -- got over like a fat rat, to use an old neighborhood expression.

Lesson No. 2 was taught by school board President Robert Bobb, to wit: If you can't get what you want upfront, just try the back door. Actually, in Bobb's case there's a third lesson: Don't let your fastest move be too slow.

Unless you've been on Mars for the past five months, you know that Bobb cares for the mayor's school takeover plan the way you might swoon over a heart attack.

The school board president took his fight against Fenty's takeover everywhere he could find a ring, and he managed to lose every round. Once soundly defeated in the D.C. Council, Bobb made nice to Fenty and graciously announced that he would work with the mayor for the sake of the children.

Then Bobb went behind Fenty's back to Capitol Hill.