Mayor Adrian Fenty handily won control of the District of Columbia’s failing schools, but a growing number of school experts and city officials — even his staunch supporters — wonder whether he knows what he has gotten himself into.
“The question is not just understanding the problems, but understanding how to fix them,” said Mary Levy, an attorney who monitors the schools for the Washington Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights. “I see no evidence — yet, at any rate — that he understands how to fix them. I hope I’m wrong.”
District Council Member Tommy Wells, D-Ward 6, is a former member of the Board of Education. He supported Fenty’stakeover plan, but he said he hopes that the mayor understands that taking over is only the tiniest of first steps.
“It’s not just making the trains run on time,” Wells said. “What we need is something radically different.”
The problems in the schools are immense:
» There are more than 13,000 uncompleted work orders to fix crumbling school buildings.
» Schools lack basic supplies, from desks to toilet paper.
» Many students don’t graduate; many who go to college do not do well.
» Test scores are abysmal.
» Three-quarters of the schools have tested positive for elevated levels of lead in drinking water.
» The special-education department is more than $20 million over its budget, and the inspector general is investigating ghost payrolls and overpayments in the department.
» The schools have been rated a high risk for federal funds because of shoddy accounting.
“The system suffers from a general managerial malaise,” Levy said. “The system also suffers from a general culture of fear and negativity, both internal and external.”
The incompetence, waste and fraud in the traditional schools have created an exodus to the city’s 55 charter schools, where enrollment has swelled to nearly 20,000 — more than a quarter of D.C. students.
Levy said she is worried that this flight will further weaken the school system and make things even worse for D.C.’s children.
Fenty said he is aware that “there are steep, steep problems in our schools.” But he said he’s up to the challenge.
“We’re going to come in, right on day one, and make some changes,” he told The Examiner.
Fenty has called for a forensic audit, which would look for criminality and waste in the schools. He’s also promised to put the schools on a “zero budget” that would require each department to prove that it needs every dollar, every year, rather than just getting an allocation based on previous budgets.
Wells said that isn’t very impressive.
“It can’t be he’ll just improve it or he’ll just do a better job,” Wells said. “It’s got to be that he will introduce measures early on that are different: That the people of the city can say, ‘Oh, that’s why we gave the schools to the mayor.’ ”
Under investigation
The District’s charter schools and its personnel are now the subject of at least four investigations:
» Jos-Arz Therapeutic Public Charter School, which collapsed last summer, taking millions of public funds with it
» New School for Enterprise and Development, shuttered last year after its executives were accused of inflating grades and enrollment
» Brenda Belton, the former executive director of the Board of Education’s charter school office, who allegedly used a series of companies to line her pockets and the pockets of friends and families
» Young America Works, where an ex-teacher has accused the school of carrying on its rosters students who never showed up
D.C. Public Schools
» 11,598 employees
» 3,800 teachers
» $554,251,894 annual personnel budget
» 51,461 students
