So, you’re sitting at your computer. You remember the sights and smells of holidays past: Seafood gumbo cooking in the pot; collard greens that almost melt in your mouth; cornbread stuffing; the baked Virginia ham topped with pineapple, which wasn’t your favorite. You never took to pork.
The thing you wish for most each year is your grandmother’s stuffed squid. No one in the family knows how to make it. You regret that you didn’t ask her for the recipe while she was alive, burning up the kitchen and making it nearly impossible for anyone to pull away from the table.
You miss those days; the old folks — Rose, Harold, Norma. Claudia and the others — are all gone. There is only your mother and she is miles away, unable to travel. Still you’re thankful.
You begin to consider the menu for your meal when suddenly, without notice, your reverie is interrupted. Voices from the D.C. Council’s hearing on Chancellor Michelle Rhee’s education plan explode in your head — in Dolby sound. This has been happening for days. Each time you attempt to focus on some other topic — President-elect Barack Obama’s economic team; the huge welfare check being proposed for the auto industry; the council’s decision to block Mayor Adrian M. Fenty’s effort to place construction of recreation centers in the more capable hands of Allen Lew, whatever — the whining complaints of education advocates pierce the air. (No, you won’t call names; they know who they are.)
There is just no pleasing some people. You know, you should be the last person to talk. Still, sometimes you want to ask what part of reform don’t they understand.
They come to the microphone and talk about how they have been involved in education for 26 years or 30 years. You would like to remind them that the education many children in the District received during those years was substandard at best. A whole bunch graduated as functional illiterates; the city maintains an unacceptable unemployment rate even when the economy is booming.
Council members, who also don’t seem to understand the urgency of the problem, encourage the advocates’ rantings. They say they support radical changes but when plans for improvements are proffered, they want to tinker for days, complain about being given 48 hours to read 80 pages, or chatter about some perceived slight by the mayor.
Taxpayers are shelling out more than $250,000 a year for the chancellor to lead; for the chancellor to dramatically improve schools; and for student test scores, among other things, to reflect those improvements.
Left to some advocates and some council members, it’ll be another 20 years before the schools are reformed. What do they care about children?
Wait, you tell yourself. Weren’t you talking about the holiday and how wonderful it is to have family and friends around the table? Weren’t you supposed to be wishing everyone Happy Thanksgiving?
