4 Deaths, and Words, Words, Words

The bureaucrats can find their scripts in their own archives. Check out these words from Sharlynn Bobo, CFSA's director, at her confirmation hearing in November, when the four girls had been lying dead inside their home for about half a year:

"The District's child welfare system has come a very long way. It's nearly impossible to overstate the high degree of professionalism; hard work; tolerance for constant, rapid change; and sheer perseverance that CFSA staff has exerted" to achieve improvements such as "strengthening the critical gateway to the public child protection system by ensuring that . . . investigations are both timely and thorough."

The torrent of words stretches back through the years, long before Brittany and her sisters died, long before they were born. And still: Banita Jacks's ludicrous story about why her kids weren't attending school led to the revelation that the District has no clue about how many children are being home-schooled. The District doesn't really know how many children do not go to school, Victor Reinoso, the deputy mayor for education, told me.

In essence, school is voluntary in Washington. No one can claim to be shocked by this: When I arrived here in 1986 to cover the D.C. schools, one of the first questions I asked at the system's headquarters was what the truancy rate was. "We don't really track that," came the response.

Each new horror lets us pretend to discover the same flaws in the system that were supposedly bared by the last unacceptable tragedy. We get to be shocked all over again.

If not words, then what? Kathy Lopes, the Booker T. Washington Public Charter School social worker who rang the alarm about the Jacks kids only to run into the brick wall of bureaucracy, did what all of us must do. She acted on her own. She went to the house, banged on the door and then demanded that the rest of us pay attention.

Lopes wasn't at the hearing this week. She has not spoken to reporters. "She's too freaked out," Wells told me. "Even though she did what we would hope everyone would do, she's the type of person who still wonders what more she could have done."

That's the kind of person I want watching over my kids, and because that's what we would all want, that's what we must all be. Only then can we force officials to act before the next tragedy, to treat other people's children as if they were their own. The alternative is to drown in another ocean of words.

Join me at noon today for "Potomac Confidential"athttp://www.washingtonpost.com/liveonline.