No upper-echelon D.C. Public Schools representatives attended the Bell Multicultural High School senior graduation last week, according to a dismayed commencement speaker, D.C. Council Member Kwame Brown.
“At a time when we have the opportunity to commend our students for staying the course and pursuing the best education our city has to offer, I had hoped we would demonstrate our commitment to their futures, starting with our own presence,” Brown wrote in a letter to superintendent Clifford Janey.
No one from the D.C. Board of Education or the DCPS central administration was on hand Wednesday to recognize the 100 Class of 2006 graduates, Brown said. Neither Janey nor Board President Peggy Cooper Cafritz could be reached Sunday.
Brown, a product of the D.C. public schools and a graduate of Woodrow Wilson High School, was asked by Principal Maria Tukeva to hand diplomas to the 100 graduates after the designated public official who was scheduled to perform that duty did not show up.
Alexander Graham Bell Multicultural High School in Columbia Heights has changed from a vocational institution to an academically challenging inner-city high school. Sixty-four percent of the students are Hispanic, 15 percent are African-American, 10 percent are Asian or Pacific Islander, and 9 percent are African, with 2 percent coming from other backgrounds.
