On the first day of school Monday, D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee did the Sarah Palin, “Mama Griz” thing.
She arose at 6:30 a.m., checked her e-mail, rustled her two daughters awake, fed them some grub, took the older one to her first day at Alice Deal Middle School, arranged for the younger one to get to Oyster Elementary, picked both up from school and took them back to her office. They started their homework; she finished orchestrating the first day of school for D.C.’s 40,000 students.
“There were glitches,” she says, “but good glitches.”
When she arrived at J.O. Wilson Elementary near Union Station, so many kids showed up not enrolled for kindergarten that the school was short a teacher.
“We are blowing the kindergarten numbers out of the water,” she says. “Enrollment is up 8 percent.”
Teachers ordered 220,000 books; the system fulfilled all but a few hundred. Four years ago schools shut down for lack of books.
All but five of last year’s graduating class at Lafayette Elementary chose to attend Alice Deal. That’s impressive, seeing as half the class chose private school or moved out of D.C. when my last daughter graduated from Lafayette seven years ago.
“People are keeping their kids in the system,” she says.
The Fenty vs. Gray mayoral election IS about Michelle Rhee — and school builder Allen Lew. It’s about the schools, stupid.
It’s not about crime. The nation’s capital is a safer place than it was two years ago, a decade ago, certainly better than back in 1990, when D.C. was Marion Barry’s Murder Capital.
It’s not about economic development, either. Mayor Adrian Fenty and his economic development team have done as well as possible in a time of tight credit and general recession. I didn’t see Vince Gray use his council chair to employ more folks in his home territory of Ward 7. So call it a draw.
Both candidates promise better health care, better housing, better care for the homeless. Both carry cronies in their baggage.
So it does come down to the schools and Michelle Rhee. She stays with Fenty; she goes with Gray. Period.
To those who criticize her style and comb test scorers to find signs of her failure, which are few, I serve up the cancer analogy: How many times have we declared war on cancer in this country? Is is cured? Can anyone fix a school system in three years in which the cancers of nepotism, low expectations and lousy teachers have consigned generations to illiteracy and failure?
Nope.
Fenty is flawed in many ways. But he is the first D.C. mayor to take on the schools because he knew they were awful and he knew that fixing them would give all residents a better chance at success in life.
Michelle Rhee needs four more years, at least, and if that means holding your nose and voting for Fenty, do it.
Rhee ended back to school day cooking dinner for her kids, helping them with homework, tucking them in, like a good Mama Griz.
Harry Jaffe’s column appears on Tuesday and Friday. He can be contacted at [email protected].
