After D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty was elected with a mandate to reform the city’s chronically failing public education system, the District of Columbia City Council gave him extraordinary powers to get the job done, including authorization of an unprecedented takeover of the city’s school system last June.
The Washington Examiner supported those moves, but the mandate did not include cutting parents and taxpayers out of the school budgeting process. Regrettably, that’s what he and D.C. Public Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee are now trying to do. Despite being required by law to hold a series of public hearings before presenting the final school budget proposal to the District Council for approval, the March 20th deadline came and went this year with no such plan being made available. It’s been at least 20 years since that last happened. Instead of obeying the law, the mayor’s office wants to repeal it.
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Council members should refuse to go along. The law requiring the public discussion of the school budget was put on the books as a result of a 1987 initiative supported by 85 percent of the voters. District voters clearly not only wanted a say in budget decisions affecting their children, they demanded it at the ballot box. Instead of repealing this voter-approved provision, the council should be exercising its oversight role and demanding compliance by Fenty and Rhee. The law requires a school budget that gives “due consideration” to public testimony at hearings Rhee initially refused to hold. Her flimsy rationale was that DCPS should be treated the same as other city agencies, even though the law itself does not. Hundreds of angry parents and community members from across the city have since signed a petition expressing displeasure with this evasion. Rhee’s actions on this issue raise serious doubts about her previous statements welcoming community input and parental engagement.
At an April 15 briefing, Council Chairman Vincent Gray noted that although the city as a whole received a clean audit, “material weaknesses” were found in three agencies: the Office of Tax and Revenue, where employees were caught embezzling $ 50 million, the scandal-plagued Medicaid office, and DCPS – which will spend $773 million next year on 49,422 students. More transparency is needed in all three of these troubled agencies, not less. On May 13, the council will vote on the mayor’s repeal proposal. It should be defeated.
