As Parents Fight School Closings, D.C. Chancellor Says Input Matters

- Her frustration, as a D.C. public schools parent of two daughters, with the bureaucracy in the schools. She complained that registering her children for school "was a nightmare."

- Her displeasure with a vestige of the city's financial control board days that puts the city's chief financial officer, and not Rhee, in charge of school budgets.

- Her speculation that despite all her initiatives, significant improvement might not occur for several years. Experts, she said, told her "realistically, you're not going to see gains until five years out. . . . I do think starting in the '08-09 school year, we'll start to see [test scores] moving in the right direction."

Rhee has been praised and criticized for her get-it-done-now approach. Observers say her style, in contrast with previous school leaders, is to guide public input rather than follow it.

For instance, Rhee is targeting nearly two dozen schools for closure, compared with 11 that closed in 1997 and five in 2006. Unlike former superintendent Clifford B. Janey, who proposed to close the bulk of under-enrolled schools over 10 years, Rhee wants to shutter all but a few by the summer.

Moreover, Rhee rebuffed pleas from some council members to cancel the 23 simultaneous hearings and schedule one citywide session.

"The improvement of public education in the District has to be respectful of all partners. The fact that it is not will guarantee failure," Nathan Saunders, vice president of the Washington Teachers' Union, said in an interview.

"One stakeholder cannot force success in this system by themselves," he added.

Lisa Raymond, a State Board of Education member from District 3, said she has heard from parents who were upset about not being able to influence the planning before the schools were named. "The criticism I've heard from parents is that the strategy of presenting a plan and asking for feedback, it backfired," she said. On major initiatives "that are going to have this kind of citywide impact, that is the time to build your allies," she added.

Enrollment in the school system, which lost about 20,000 students in five years, is down to about 49,600. Rhee said the 23 closings would save the system about $23 million, money that could be reinvested in boosting academics. But, based on what city auditors have said, those savings could be offset by a projected $115 million shortfall in the school system's budget.

Rhee said she is using feedback from parents and teachers at the 23 schools to develop "transition plans." These plans, she said, would include their preferences on programs that would be moved from the closed schools and steps administrators would take to ensure the safety of students in consolidated schools that have neighborhood rivalries.

The consolidated schools, she said, would be beefed up with better academic programs, more art and music classes and a full complement of support staff, such as social workers and counselors.

Commenting on her first months on the job, Rhee said she has introduced initiatives that eventually will "turn the tide." Asked in hindsight whether she would have handled the school closures differently, she said she could have informed council members of the closings before they learned about them in the media.

Nevertheless, she said, she's looking forward, not backward.

"I don't think there's any good way to do this . . . without people feeling frustrated," she said. "This is an incredibly emotional process."