As a parent, it takes a Herculean effort to tamp down the rage over the D.C. School Board. It’s been so useless and damaging to our children for so many years. But I am reaching for patience.
Today parents go to schools to talk to teachers about our children. Superintendent Clifford Janey and his bureaucrats wanted to reduce the parent-teacher conference time by two hours, so they could finagle a change in the school calendar that would satisfy a deal with the unions for teacher preparation time but also give the students the required 180 days of instruction.
Bottom line: Janey wanted to reduce the time that students spent in classrooms and parents talked to teachers.
“Sleight of hand,” School Board Member JoAnne Ginsberg said. At last week’s Board meeting, Janey presented the Board with the proposal to eat away at the teacher-conference time. The Board voted it down.
Finally, a win for the students and the parents!
I would not call this a huge endorsement for the School Board, but it’s worth taking a hard lookat the system before Adrian Fenty, our expected incoming mayor, follows through on his vow to take over the schools.
Ginsberg is an honest broker in this critical matter. She sent her two children to D.C. public elementary school. She served on the school’s PTA and Local School Restructuring Team (LSRT). She met Kathy Patterson on the steps of the Wilson Building years ago when both were parents protesting teacher furloughs. Patterson became a City Council member and chaired the education committee. Ginsberg served as her chief aide and advised both Patterson and Council Member Jack Evans on education.
When Tony Williams tried to take over the schools early in his first term, Patterson opposed it, Evans supported it.
“I wanted the mayor to take it over,” Ginsberg tells me.
Now she advises Fenty to consider a few facts and use the mayor’s existing power to change the schools, which she agrees is necessary right now. First, she says School Board president Peggy Cooper Cafritz has checked out. Citing personal reasons, Cafritz abandoned her post in May and returned for a few meetings in September. Second, Mayor Williams has never used his four appointees to affect change. Williams appointed Ginsberg in July 2005: Since then, he has met with her and her colleagues once, for 30 minutes — after they begged. As an activist mayor, Fenty can better exercise his will on the board.
“Adrian has the ear of the press and the citizens right now,” she says. “He should use the bully pulpit.”
To that I would suggest Fenty wait to see if Robert Bobb wins the school board presidency on Nov. 7. Bobb could be just the bully the school system needs.
Patience is not Fenty’s strong suit, but waiting to see if a Fenty-Bobb tag team can fix the schools might be worth the wait and put off a bruising takeover battle.
Harry Jaffe has been covering the Washington area since 1985. E-mailhim at [email protected].
