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In Ward 3, a Wide-Open Race to Succeed Landberg

A former PTA president, an English professor and a lawyer are vying to succeed retiring Ward 3 school board member Erika Landberg and represent the 11 schools in the neighborhoods west of Rock Creek Park.

Landberg is stepping down after eight years on the Board of Education, leaving three political novices to battle for that seat in the first contested school board race in Ward 3 in more than a decade.

In the prosperous, mostly white neighborhoods of Ward 3, only one household in five has children, and many parents send them to private schools. But Ward 3 residents turn out to vote in large numbers, and the public school parent-teacher associations often lead the city in fund-raising and involvement.

Candidate Howard Grimmett, 62, was PTA president at Deal Junior High and Wilson High School in the 1980s when his children were in school. Grimmett, a former mathematics and physical science teacher, still tutors students at Wilson and has been active in Parents United and the D.C. Committee on Public Education. He was the director of civil rights at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration until he retired last year.

As a Board of Education member, Grimmett said, he would push for more teacher training and staff development, more classroom aides and a greater role for local universities in the District's schools.

"I would like to see the school system be able to educate children well across all socioeconomic groups," Grimmett said. "It does a respectable job of educating children who get a lot of support and encouragement. We don't do a very good job when it comes to other groups -- the lower-income people in the city, those with language differences and those with disabilities."

Grimmett, who is married to a D.C. public school teacher, is backed by Landberg and former Ward 3 school board member Wanda Washburn.

Don Reeves, 44, is the father of a 3-year-old and a first-grader at Murch Elementary School. He also is a member of Murch's restructuring team, which works with parents and teachers to improve the school. He is an English professor at Prince George's Community College and wrote a book 25 years ago about his experiences as a student leader in the New York City schools. He ran for mayor in 1994.

Reeves said that he would vote against any teacher furloughs and work to introduce a new teacher evaluation process so principals could more easily reward good teachers and remove unqualified ones. He wants school-by-school budgets and improved communication between Ward 3 PTAs and restructuring teams.

Reeves said he would have the board contract with an outside auditor to obtain an accurate student enrollment count and personnel audit.

"This job fair deception has been going on for 20 years," Reeves said of the District's uncertainty about the number of employees in its school system. "I have a vested interest in the D.C. public schools, where I will be involved over the next 15 years."

Reeves is supported by Barbara Somson, a Murch parent who successfully ran Democrat Kathy Patterson's Ward 3 D.C. Council campaign two years ago and is the president of the Ad Hoc Parents Coalition.

David S. Yassky, 32, said most of his support is coming from young families, like his own, who want to live in Ward 3 and make the schools work rather than send their children to private school or move. Yassky, a lawyer with O'Melveny & Myers who specializes in corporate transactions, has a 2-year-old daughter whom he is planning to enroll at Hearst Elementary.

Yassky stresses his management experience, including a stint as a budget analyst in the New York City Office of Management and Budget. He also worked for several years as chief counsel to the crime subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee in Congress and was instrumental in the passage of the the Brady bill and the assault weapons ban.

"I've got a real track record of actually getting things done," Yassky said. "That's what the school board needs: someone who will get results, not give excuses. No matter what kind of disaster there is in the schools, no one is held accountable. I would insist that people are made responsible and held accountable."

As a board member, Yassky said his priorities would be restoring fiscal order. He would give schools or clusters of schools budgets and allow them to spend the money the way the principal, teachers and parents choose.

Yassky said he also would recruit a "construction czar" from the private sector to oversee facilities repairs.

"The real issue for the Ward 3 schools is to get the Board of Education and the administration out of the way," Yassky said. "The Ward 3 schools are quite good because of the extraordinary efforts of the teachers, parents and principals. We should give them the freedom to spend their own resources."

Repairing facilities, raising academic standards and turning over more control to individual schools are all critical issues for Ward 3, according to Landberg, the outgoing board member.

The new board member will inherit the difficult task of getting the needs of Ward 3 schools addressed at a time when problems in schools in the city's less-affluent neighborhoods may appear more pressing.

"The newest school in Ward 3 is Wilson High School, and it was built in 1935," Landberg said. "Many of the schools are small and inadequate. Four of them don't have any kind of gym or multipurpose room. We need several new roofs and boilers."

Landberg has been part of the slim majority on the board that supports Superintendent Franklin L. Smith, but Grimmett, Yassky and Reeves are calling for Smith to step down when his contract expires in June.

A Ward 3 candidate forum will be held at 7 tonight at Eaton Elementary School. Three more forums are scheduled: at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday at Chevy Chase Community Center; at 7 p.m. Oct. 21 at Deal Junior High School; and at 7 p.m Oct. 22 at the Ward 3 Democrats forum at St. Luke's United Methodist Church.