There’s something you wouldn’t expect to see in Tom Nida, chairman of D.C.’s Public Charter School Board.
At first glance, he’s a tall, white fellow with salt-and-pepper hair, frameless glasses and a generous mustache. We know he’s a banker by trade. But why has he devoted nearly a decade to give D.C. public school kids a better choice?
Tom Nida is a proud product of D.C. public schools. He graduated from Anacostia High; his forebears attended public schools going back to the 19th century.
So what? As the city’s schools begin to show signs of improvement, it’s worth taking a look back — and forward — at the racial makeup of the system.
Before desegregation in the 1950s, almost all white families sent their children to the public schools. Black families sent their kids to a separate public system. Ask people who went to those schools — black or white — and many will tell you they received a superior education.
Tom Nida and his buddies got great schooling at Anacostia; Charlene Drew Jarvis and her friends went to Dunbar and came away with a great education.
The question for Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee and any future leaders is whether they can create a public school system that is truly integrated and provides a quality education for every child.
“Absolutely,” Rhee says. “I think it’s possible.”
Having sent my kids to D.C. public schools, I know the tension and the tipping points for Caucasians. We are pleased to send our kids to the neighborhood elementary schools in upper Northwest or Capitol Hill. But middle school is problematic. Students from all over the city — read: black kids — come to Alice Deal and other middle schools. Same for Wilson Senior High. Many white parents choose to send their precious offspring to private schools or move to Maryland for a better public school system.
Now that school modernization czar Allen Lew is fixing our buildings and Rhee is starting to see results from her education reforms, will white parents begin to send Suzie and Johnny to public schools? Beats forking over $30,000 a year for privates.
That question was unasked as Rhee took heat Friday night at Hardy Middle School, but it animated the verbal mauling she endured. Hardy, on the edge of Georgetown, is renovated and giving a decent education, focused on the arts. Most of the students commute from across town; most are African-American.
Rhee wants to accentuate Hardy’s “local school” purpose. She wants families, mostly white, from Georgetown and Glover Park to send their kids there. Blacks see a conspiracy.
“Along the way,” Rhee says, “African Americans will get increasingly nervous. They see it as a zero-sum game: more whites in good schools, fewer blacks.
“It will be a tough slog.”
But it also holds the promise of creating a system where white kids and black kids can be safe and expect a quality education. It might not be the same education that Tom Nida got, but it can be just as good — or better.
E-mail Harry Jaffe at
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