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Uncertainty Aside, School Races Booked 27 in Running to Join D.C. Education Board

Nearly 30 candidates are vying for six seats on the 11-member D.C. Board of Education in an atmosphere of uncertainty as the city's financial control board considers whether to slash the panel's powers and fire Superintendent Franklin L. Smith.

In an unsettled year -- seven schools have been closed, six schools opened late because of fire code violations and school officials are struggling to complete basic tasks such as determining how many employees are in the system -- candidates, residents and city officials say the main issue in the Nov. 5 races is how the battered system is being led and managed.

"The overarching issue is accountability," said D.C. Council member Kathy Patterson (D-Ward 3), vice chairman of the council committee that oversees the city's 158 schools. "How does each [candidate] see holding managers accountable for their various responsibilities?"

With the board split 6 to 5 in recent years on key issues such as privatization of school management and Smith's future, the election holds significant potential for changes in personnel and policy. The board is charged with setting policy for public schools and providing oversight for the entire system -- including Smith -- although it is not involved in daily school management.

The biggest candidate pool -- 14 -- is for two at-large seats being vacated by Karen Shook, the current board president, and Valencia Mohammed. Erika Landberg (Ward 3) also is not running, and three candidates are trying to succeed her. School board races in the District are nonpartisan.

Three board members are seeking reelection: Wilma R. Harvey (Ward 1) faces one challenger, Angie K. Corley (Ward 5) has three opponents, and Bernard Gray (Ward 6) also faces three challengers.

Campaigning for board seats is heating up at a time when the city school system, with its crumbling buildings, high truancy rates and low average test scores, is on "the verge of collapse," as Shook said recently.

A financial control officer, Abdusalam Omer, was hired this summer to oversee the budget process, because it was in such disarray. Last week, he said he had no "comfort level" about the school system's budget figures, because nobody knows exactly how many people work in the system.

Problems large and small have bedeviled the system -- officials were even hit with a student walkout last month, when several dozen teenagers left a vocational program because their barbering and shampoo work stations had not been set up on time and because they were upset with a plan, devised by Smith, to bus them across town.

Meanwhile, officials expect an announcement soon from the control board on how it is going to intercede, and the board has, among other things, been reviewing how other public systems reformed their schools. Among the possibilities for change, according to sources: dismissing Smith before his contract expires in June -- or replacing him then -- and sharply curtailing the responsibilities of the school board.

Amid this crisis atmosphere, candidates are trying to whip up interest among residents who are weary of hearing bad news about the District and its schools.

"It's not a malaise, it's an 'Oh God, what's next?' feeling," said DeLabian Rice-Thurston, director of the education advocacy group Parents United.

Candidates are promising to accomplish a range of things, including repairing buildings, bringing computers to more classrooms and providing more scholarships to the brightest students. Others have said that more basic things need to be done first, such as establishing a reliable count of students and personnel in the system -- figures that have been controversial for years.

But many candidates agree that the biggest issue among voters is leadership, or a perceived lack of it. There is, however, a difference of opinion on exactly where the problem lies.

For example, Harvey, a two-term incumbent in Ward 1 who is being challenged by Lenwood O. Johnson, said Smith is the problem. "Everybody asks about that, about when he is going to go," said Harvey, who supports Smith's immediate ouster.

Johnson, chairman of the Columbia Heights Advisory Neighborhood Commission, said he, too, thinks Smith shouldn't be kept on. But the real problem, Johnson said, lies with the school board and its failure to properly oversee school officials.

"It's hard to campaign, because people have lost faith in the school board," said Johnson, 36, an editor at a publishing company. As a reflection of how thankless a task it has become to run for the school board, Johnson said the question he is asked most frequently is why he would do it at all. His answer: "Well, I do it because I think I can help fix the system, which is badly broken."

Rice-Thurston said that far too much attention is being paid to Smith and whether he will remain superintendent. "I'm sorry that that is an issue, because in a way it doesn't have as much to do with how our children can have better achievement than some people might think," she said.

Voters, Rice-Thurston said, should be asking candidates about the proper role of a school board and how they would measure performance in the school system.

"What would you as a board member commit to doing to making our schools better?" she asked. "What do you see as the problems of our school system? How much do you know? Everybody knows they can do a better job than the incumbents -- but then they get in."

The control board has authority from Congress to slash the powers of the school board but not to eliminate the panel outright. Uncertainty over what the control board will do is making campaigning difficult for some candidates -- but not for all.

"Not for me," said at-large candidate Wanda Oates, 54, a health and physical education teacher for 31 years at Ballou Senior High School in Southeast Washington and the first woman to coach boys basketball in the city schools. "I think the power of the school board needs to be diminished, and the control board should take a more active role in school affairs because the school board presently is not doing its job."

But Wayne Curtin, 41, a Ward 6 candidate who is vice president of government relations for the Motorcycle Riders Foundation, said that the control board should decide quickly what it is going to do so that any changes it makes can become part of the campaign debate.

"How the school board gets restructured might make a difference to the voters as to who is most qualified for the position," he said. "It does make it a little more difficult [to campaign] when we are unsure what the school board's responsibilities are going to be."

THE CANDIDATES

AT LARGE

Sunday Abraham

Lois Adams

Robert Artisst

Jesse Battle

Robert Childs

Lawrence Gray

Daniel Harrison

Tonya Kinlow

Wanda Oates

Kim Perry

Romaine Thomas

Carlene Thompson

Joseph Webb

Antonio White

WARD 1

Wilma R. Harvey

Lenwood O. Johnson

WARD 3

Howard Grimmett

Don Reeves

David Yassky

WARD 5

Janice Denise

Smith Autrey

Angie K. Corley

Antonia Hillyard

Edward H. Wolterbeek

WARD 6

Benjamin Bonham

Wayne Curtin

Bernard Gray

Deborah Scott