In the fall, at the start of the school year, students in some D.C. schools often begin classes with no textbooks.
Now, many students have completed their school year but have no report cards.
“There is a delay,” a DCPS spokesman told me.
“It’s a postal issue,” said school board member JoAnne Ginsberg. “It is across the system.”
Or it might be a funds transfer issue. Or a computer issue. No one knows where to ascribe blame for the fact that a month after class ended for many students, they still have no grades.
“It’s not acceptable — period,” says Council Member Kathy Patterson, who chairs the education committee. “I’ll check into it.”
Check into this:
While the city council was debating a change to the District charter that would mandate students be assured of a quality education, the school system could not measure the quality of last semester’s grades.
While Superintendent Clifford Janey is thinking big thoughts about closing some schools and reconfiguring high schools to establish a Latin school here and a technology school there, his system could not get transcripts out for some high school graduates who needed them for college acceptance.
Take Alex Jhirad, who graduated from Wilson High in June. During the school year, he went through the arduous process of applying to colleges. He was accepted at a few but chose his favorite, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
To assure his acceptance, UNC asked for senior year transcripts, which must be sent by the school system. This is routine, nationwide. Except for DCPS. As the deadline for transcripts approached, UNC still had not received Jhirad’s grades and he was about to lose his place. His mother went into action.
“I’ve been running into a wall,” Anna Jhirad told me.
Wilson officials told her there was a problem with the new DCPS computer system. She called DCPS and was told about a planned maintenance shutdown. Not their fault. On Wednesday, she planted herself back at Wilson — and got the transcript.
“I wouldn’t leave the school without it,” she said. “I can’t believe the schools couldn’t get this done. You can’t jeopardize your seniors. It’s their future.”
Says Patterson: “If even one young person loses a college placement because schools are unable to get report cards out, it is unacceptable.”
We have had to accept many unacceptable aspects of public schooling in the nation’s capital city. Roofs leak, violence threatens, books don’t arrive, teachers are forced to buy supplies. Dropout rates are horrendous.
But some things we expect, like the simple task of sending out report cards. It’s not as if we have a huge student population. New York and Los Angeles educate more than a million public school students. Here we have about 60,000, at last count, but DCPS has always had a hard time counting.
“The report cards are in the mail,” I was told by one school official.
Sure.
Harry Jaffe has been covering the Washington area since 1985. E-mail him at [email protected]
