Unfettered Power
Dear Power Brokers:
Mayor Fenty aims to get unfettered power — unchecked by the city
council, laws, and labor agreements — to hire and fire government
employees at will. Ximena Hartsock was doing her part by firing child
care workers in the Department of Parks and Recreation, against one city
law respecting the requirements for privatizing government jobs and
another aimed specifically at stopping the firing of DPR child care
workers. (For more about Hartsock, see Jonetta Rose Barras’ message
below.) On a parallel track, Chancellor Rhee is doing Fenty’s will in
the school system. In order to fire teachers and other school system
workers without hindrance, Fenty and Rhee have demonized teachers and
are lying about the cause of the firings.
The firings were not necessitated by cuts in the school budget made
by the city council. In fact, DCPS’s budget this year was fifteen
million dollars more than last year’s, for fewer students, and, as
Denise Wiktor points out below, DCPS has shed three major areas of
expense over the past few years. No, the necessity of the firings was
caused by Rhee herself, when she hired hundreds of new teachers that she
knew she wouldn’t need. That enabled her to issue a Reduction in Force
order and to fire hundreds of teachers and other school employees who
were not part of her clique and loyal to her, and whom she wanted to get
rid of without the inconvenience of obeying the union agreement and city
laws regulating firing decisions. Firing decisions, at least of
teachers, were made on a highly subjective basis, and we know even less
about how decisions were made about which support and custodial staffers
to fire.
Fenty and Rhee are breaking the unions and breaking the will of the
city council. They are doing this by persuading some gullible portion of
the public that they actually have a good government motivation, and
that they are continuing the goal of Mayor Sharon Pratt Dixon Kelly,
sweeping the government clean of poor workers. As you may remember,
Mayor Marion Barry engaged in a deliberate policy of inflating the
government workforce and making the government the employer of last
resort, and, as a result, by the end of the 1980’s there were too many
employees in the city government, many of them with no real job to do.
When she ran for office, Kelly promised to clean out government, not
with a broom but with a shovel. She may not have been very successful at
that during her one term, but over the intervening decades, under Barry’s
fourth term, under Mayor Williams, and under the governance of the
Control Board, the government workforce was cut to a reasonable size.
Rhee, who posed with a broom on the cover of Time Magazine,
recalls Kelly, and she uses the same rhetoric about teachers as Kelly
used about government workers — they’re lazy, they’re worthless,
we should get rid of them. What was once a good government movement —
stop cheating the taxpayers by hiring redundant, unnecessary, and
incompetent government workers — is now a movement simply to
accumulate unilateral power in the hands of the mayor and his
chancellor.
Gary Imhoff
themail@dcwatch.com
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The taxicab industry scandal involving his office may have caused
Councilmember Jim Graham to drop one bill to force a medallion system on
the city’s cabs, but it has not shamed him enough to cause him to drop
the idea. Instead, he has scheduled a public oversight roundtable of his
committee to promote the idea of the government’s setting an
artificial limit on the number of workers in the cab industry. “The
Impact of the Increasing Size of the District of Columbia’s Taxicab
Industry on the Health of the Industry and the Quality of Service,”
will be held on Monday, October 26, at 10:00 a.m. in Room 412 of the
Wilson Building.
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Ximena Hartsock
Jonetta Rose Barras, rosebook1@aol.com
Some residents, the Washington Post editorial board, and DC
Attorney General Peter Nickles want to blame the DC council’s decision
not to confirm Ximena Hartsock to the permanent position of director of
the Department of Parks and Recreation on racism, sexism, and any other
“ism.” But they are ignoring the facts. The real culprit in Hartsock’s
demise is Mayor Adrian M. Fenty and the nominee’s own naivete, direct
subject-matter inexperience, and failure to adhere to legal and
professional standards.
Read the whole article at The Barras Report, http://jrbarras.com./site/?p=787.
[Let me second that recommendation to read the whole article,
especially if you’ve only read the press release dictated by Peter
Nickles and published by Fenty’s public relations firm at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/06/AR2009100603070.html.
The administration’s line exploits some racist throwaway comments from
Councilmember Barry at Hartsock’s confirmation hearing to smear the
council’s disapproval of her nomination as a racist and sexist move.
Instead, as Barras details, the council’s disapproval resulted from
her deliberate defiance of two District laws and her refusal to provide
the council with information about the firings at her agency. Barras has
the facts of the case. — Gary Imhoff]
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In August of 2007 it was announced that DCPS has received 42 million
dollars in reimbursement for e-rate money from the federal government,
representing five back years. (E-rate money is reimbursements from the
federal government for expenditures by schools and libraries for certain
technology, such as new computers, software, etc.). The company that did
the work put out a press release, but promptly removed it at the
complaint of OCTO. The money was to be distributed to DCPS in two years:
20 million dollars before FY 09 and 22 million in FY 09. This does not
include e-rate reimbursements for the last couple of years. I understand
that about 16 million of that was to be used to pay back bills from
Verizon, but where is the rest of the money? In examining the 2009
budget for the schools and OCTO, it did not appear.
In addition, Rhee has successfully shifted many of the IT duties of
the public schools to OCTO, with no transfer of funds; she has shifted
legal counsel to the Office of the Attorney General, with no
inter-agency transfer of funds; and the mayor has created a separate
school construction division run by Alan Lew. So, in reality, the
schools have less costs, fewer students, and the same money as three
years ago. So why are teachers being laid off? As a parent of a DCPS
child going to a school that was totally gutted and rebuilt and is in
its second year after renovation, I have to wonder why there is no money
to fix the showers that don’t work in the gym. The school is fabulous,
but it is only one school. I have to agree with Chairman Gray that
something is not adding up as far as the DCPS budget goes.
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More Teacher Layoffs, an Open Letter to
Michelle Rhee
Marvin Tucker, mgtucker@hotmail.com
Mrs. Rhee, I understand you are letting more teachers go on or around
October 15. As a parent, I know our school system can’t let any more
teachers leave our schools. Our children can’t stand for this to
happen to them to interrupt their education. As you know, I went to a
number of football games on Friday to see if the students were safe. I
found out the police did not do a good job; one site (Spingarn) had ten
officers, at Eastern there were none, only an off-duty park police
officer there to see his brothers’ team play. I don’t know why
people are playing games with our children.
Let me give you some other reasons why we can trust the mayor’s
staff and department heads: a) the personnel at Hawk One who worked at
the schools will not get paid, but did not know this was coming. b)
There was no security in place for Monday. c) The new company is asking
the former officers of Hawk One to take a hiring test without giving
them any information to study for it. Is this right? d) There is no
contract in place for Bedford or Friendship. How are you paying them? e)
There are thirty-one master teachers making about $90,000 dollars a year
who were just brought on with less than one year in the class room. f)
How can a husband and wife run Anacostia when run works for DCPS and the
other works for Friendship? g) How can Anacostia let teachers go when
they have four principals for about five hundred students, and they make
more money than the teachers and the assistant principal who was let go.
h) How many teachers have passed the test and have been licensed to
teach in the school system?
Mrs. Rhee, I hope that you explain to parents and tax payers what is
going on, I would like to know. The is so much more to this story; I
look forward to hearing from you. Give me a call at 609-5256.
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I was appalled at not just Michelle Rhee’s abrupt firing of
hundreds of DCPS employees, but the outrageous manner in which it was
conducted. To send police officers in to escort them out as if they were
criminals, instead of giving employees appropriate notice and time to
clean out their offices or desks and say good-by to coworkers and
prepare their classes for their departure is beyond the pale. Ms. Rhee
obviously does not care about other human beings and was never taught
how to show the most minimum modicum of courtesy and consideration for
other people. If this is the way she was raised, I would not want her
teaching or overseeing the teaching of our children. It is doubly
outrageous that it is our government and our governmental officials whom
we are paying that operate in this manner.
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Jim Graham and Calvin Woodland
Kathy Henderson, khenderson029@aol.com
I admire both Mr. Graham and Mr. Woodland for overcoming addictions
and working as productive citizens. Mr. Graham advocates ferociously for
Ward 1 citizens and gets a lion’s share of resources for his
constituents. I have consistently observed Mr. Woodland faithfully
execute his duties in a loyal and conscientious manner. Mr. Graham
believed in Mr. Woodland and gave him a chance, underscoring and
bolstering his status as a productive citizen. Jim Graham gave up
alcohol and the voters of Ward 1 gave him a chance and he continues to
be accountable to his constituents and truly concerned about his ward.
Their stories serve as a beacon of inspiration to anyone that has
ever fallen on hard times or simply fallen down. I have nudged
Councilmember Graham and Mr. Woodland for months to share their
excellent story of renewed hope and redemption to my neighbors in Ward
5. It is no secret that substance abuse is a burden that continues to
plague my community with dysfunction and episodic violence, despite the
high number of law-abiding productive citizens living in the Langston
Terrace, Carver Terrace, and Trinidad communities. Mr. Graham agreed to
attend the ANC 5B10 September 28, community meeting to share his
powerful story, however, my illness necessitated rescheduling this
meeting. I sure hope I can persuade him to set another date and bring
Mr. Woodland with him.
Finally, the recidivism rate among ex-offenders in this city is well
over fifty percent, according to the Court Services and Offender
Supervision Agency. By all accounts, Mr. Woodland has put his volatile
past well behind him and is a law-abiding citizen. I think there is
tremendous value in hearing from him how he has overcome so many burdens
to lead a better life; this is far more useful than simply reprinting
his prior criminal history.
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Smoke-Alarm Battery Exchange, until October 11
Rachel Machacek, rachel@acehardwaredc.com
Local Ace Hardware stores are giving away 9-volt batteries in
exchange for old ones during Fire Prevention Week (October 5-11). The
exchange is free and no purchase is required.
Participating stores in DC are Logan Hardware, 1416 P Street, NW;
Glover Park Hardware, 2251 Wisconsin Avenue, NW; Tenleytown Ace
Hardware, 4500 Wisconsin Avenue, NW; and 5th Street Ace Hardware, 1055
5th Street, NW. Visit acehardwaredc.com for more details.
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CLASSIFIEDS — EVENTS
Department of Parks and Recreation Events,
October 11
John Stokes, john.astokes@dc.gov
October 11, 10:00 a.m.-5:00 p.m., DPR Headquarters, 3149 16th Street,
NW. DC Hispanic Heritage Sports and Health Festival. The Mayor’s
Office on Latino Affairs (OLA) in collaboration with the DC Department
of Parks and Recreation will host the first DC Hispanic Heritage Sports
and Health Festival, as a part of Binational Health Week. The goal of
this free event is to reach out to the Hispanic community regarding
health and wellness issues. La Clinical Del Pueblo, along with other
health care organizations, will be providing free health screenings.
Free sports clinics for youth kickball, soccer, and basketball. The
Latin American Youth Center will offer free youth tennis clinics as
well. For more information call Kathy Zarate, DPR Partnerships
Coordinator at 258-6021.
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Underground Buildings, October 15
Sara Kabakoff, skabakoff@nbm.org
October 15, 12:30-1:30 p.m., Building for the 21st Century:
Conserving Energy by Using the Earth Itself. Loretta Hall, author of Underground
Buildings: More than Meets the Eye and a certified green building
technical professional, uses modern examples to show that
earth-sheltered buildings are comfortable, spacious, and surprisingly
common. Registration required. Walk-in registration based on
availability. At the National Building Museum, 401 F Street, NW,
Judiciary Square Metro station. Register for events at http://www.nbm.org.
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CLASSIFIEDS — DONATIONS
AARP DC Community Food Drive, October 22
Grier Mendel, gmendel@aarp.org
Please participate in the AARP DC Community Food Drive on Thursday,
October 22, 9:00 a.m.-6:00 p.m., and help us feed hungry Washingtonians.
Area food pantries, and the families who rely on them, are asking for
our help. At a time of desperate need, contributions are down and demand
is going through the roof. According to the Capital Area Food Bank, half
of DC’s children under age eighteen are at risk of hunger, and a third
of seniors are at risk or suffering from hunger. With your generous
donation, we can do much to help the Capital Area Food Bank shore up its
supply of nonperishable food items, and better meet the needs of
struggling families and the food pantries that service them. AARP DC has
set up food drop-off points across the city, at one Safeway or Giant
store in each of the eight wards. Visit http://www.aarp.org/dc
or call 434-7722 for the site nearest you and for a list of high
priority food items. No glass containers please! This food drive is a
critical part of AARP’s effort to Create the Good. Find out more at http://www.createthegood.org
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