Michelle Rhee heard the chatter 15 years ago, that as a Korean-American she doesn’t belong teaching in an all-black school. So it will come as little surprise, she acknowledged, if similar criticism is leveled against her as chancellor of the predominately black D.C. Public Schools.
But Rhee, mother of two elementary school-age daughters, said parents everywhere have the same aspirations for their children to receive the best instruction and succeed.
“When I taught in Baltimore, when I first showed up I would say the community there was a little taken aback to see a Korean woman in their schools, which were 100 percent African-American,” she said Tuesday, referring to her three-year stint at the Harlem Park Community School.
“But very quickly that community realized I was singularly focused on ensuring that their kids have the best opportunities in life and I would focus on the academic achievement of those kids. So they very quickly got over the differences in the color of our skin and they focused on that. And I believe it’s just a matter of time before that dynamic takes place here in the District.”
Mayor Adrian Fenty chose the 37-year-old, who founded a nonprofit teacher-training organization, to manage the day-to-day operations of a 55,000-student school system that is 85 percent black. She is the city’s first non-black school leader in decades.
As the mayor and his aides looked for their first chancellor, Fenty said, there was one prerequisite, “that we hire the best person we could find for the job.”
Questions about Rhee should focus on her experience, or lack thereof, former Northeast Advisory Neighborhood Commissioner Kathy Henderson said. She spent 10 years as a nonprofitchief executive officer and three years as a teacher, but no time running a school system.
But the race issue is sure to crop up, Henderson said — unfortunately.
“We are in many ways a city still polarized by race and disparity, and you see that most poignantly in the school system,” she said.
