Raise your hand if you’re fed up.
Each day, D.C. Public Schools officials find new ways to display their incompetence and disregard for children.
You’d think declining student test scores, first-quarter budget cuts affecting classroom instruction, and a facilities improvement plan that will see many of us collecting Social Security before it’s completed would be enough.
Now, The Examiner’s Michael Neibauer reports that young professionals promised education stipends for working in DCPS have yet to receive their money. Central office administrators cite budget pressures.
What pressures? DCPS has a $1.5 billion budget, and a dwindling student population.
Perhaps school officials can find money in that Central Investment Fund, which has been the focus of reporting by The Examiner’s Bill Myers. Superintendent Clifford Janey may have used moneyfrom that fund for lunches with union representatives and politicians. And D.C. Board of Education employee Brenda Belton may have enriched herself and her friends using the account.
Meanwhile, Peggy Cooper Cafritz, outgoing board president, appears in denial. She has blasted Steve Kapani, the financial analyst for the board’s charter school office who disclosed the alleged misuse of funds. But Cafritz has come within a sound bite of defending Belton, who is at the center of investigations involving the FBI and the D.C. inspector general.
The board recently fired Belton; Kapani is on administrative leave.
Some board members now want to relieve themselves of duty. They say they should pay less attention to charter schools and more to DCPS. Cafrtiz says the panel could contract with a university or nonprofit to monitor charter schools.
Am I missing something?
Didn’t Belton allegedly contract with so-called private companies and individuals to monitor charter schools, write reports, and provide phantom training sessions? Aren’t there allegations that some of the “contractors” actually may have been one company with aliases or multiple personalities?
What part of this mess and the board’s failure to perform its fiduciary responsibilities doesn’t Cafritz understand?
The board is right to get out of the charter certification business. Allowing it to determine what schools are opened or closed thwarts the basic foundation of education choice. The authority to grant charters in the District should rest only with the State Education Office.
Democratic mayoral nominee Adrian Fenty, who has talked about a takeover, hasn’t mentioned charter schools or the federally funded voucher program in any of his discussions. Does he want control of the entire public education apparatus and agenda, or just the board and Janey?
The system’s failure to pay fellows, the possible misuse of a fund earmarked for poor children, and the scandal in the charter school office underscore the education crisis.
My solution: Fire the whole lot. Then, give every child a voucher payable to any public or private elementary and secondary school.
Are you with me?
CLARIFICATION
On Sept. 21, 2006, and Oct. 5, 2006, a column by Jonetta Rose Barras described the District’s chief technology officer as “serial District law violator (Sept. 21)” and a “serial law violator (Oct. 5)” In neither column was there any support for this phrase and it should have been removed from the column. The Examiner regrets the failure to do so.
Jonetta Rose Barras is the political analyst for WAMU radio’s D.C. “Politics Hour with Kojo and Jonetta.” She can be reached at [email protected].
