Amorality
Dear Moralists:
The motto of the DC city government may as well be, “if you can’t
be prosecuted for it, do it.” The corollary to that proposition is:
“if it is illegal, do it anyway; you’ll get away with it.” Even if
what you do is discovered, you can divert the voters’ attention from
it. Just yell about statehood and accuse anybody who is concerned about
government corruption in DC of being a Republican.
That strategy was demonstrated last week as DC Vote, a city council
delegation led by Councilmembers David Catania and Michael Brown, and
Mayor Gray bumbled their way to New Hampshire. The trip was to speak to
a committee of the New Hampshire legislature to promote a resolution
supporting DC statehood. It is planned to be the opening of a
transcontinental tour promoting statehood to state legislatures. The New
Hampshire trip should have been planned like an international summit
meeting, but it wasn’t, and it failed spectacularly. The real work of
a summit is done beforehand by the staffers preparing the summit, and
the principals only appear for the ceremonial signing of the summit’s
agreement after everyone has already agreed on the conclusion. But that’s
not what happened in New Hampshire. DC officials made points testifying
in favor of the general proposition that everyone should have the right
to vote, but then got bogged down when confronted with the reality of
what the State of New Columbia would vote for. You can’t sell
statehood for DC by saying, “We in DC are contemptuous of all the
political positions that people in your state support, so welcome us
into the union.”
#####
Colbert King on DC government, http://tinyurl.com/7nrdvmh:
“Note, I didn’t say ‘immorality,’ which suggests a breach of
moral standards. I chose ‘amorality,’ which refers to the absence of
a moral code. That applies to our government.”
Washington Post editorials about corruption behind the DC council’s
vote to expand the DC Lottery into online gambling, http://tinyurl.com/7t42qy7,
and Jim Graham’s faulty memory, http://tinyurl.com/6wqlhnf
Closing more schools, laying off more teachers: IFF Public Policy and
Research Department, Quality Schools: Every Child, Every School, Every
Neighborhood: An Analysis of School Location and Performance in
Washington, DC, January 26, 2012, http://www.dcpswatch.com/xxxx/120126.pdf.
Gary Imhoff
gary@dcwatch.com
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Is It Closing Time
Again for More DC Public Schools?
Candi Peterson, saveourcounselors@gmail.com
The headlines from this week’s top education stories read: “Many
public schools in DC’s poorest area should be transformed or shut,
study says; more charters recommended” written by Bill Turque [now
retitled “DC School Study: Fears for Tiers Are Premature,” http://tinyurl.com/7s3v6mb);
and “School Closings Contemplated” by Washington Post writer
Mike Debonis [http://tinyurl.com/85qe8mp].
Fox Five TV news reported the DC School System study recommends making
major improvements or closing three dozen under performing public
schools or expanding high performing charter schools.
The Washington Teacher blog first reported on October 31, 2011, about
future plans to close additional DC public schools. The 21st Century
School Fund September/October newsletter stated: “The Deputy Mayor for
Education, with a 100,000 dollar grant from the Walton Family
Foundation, engaged IFF (Illinois Facility Fund) to study the capacity
and performance of DCPS and public charter schools. IFF has authored
reports in Denver, Chicago, Milwaukee, and St. Louis, using a defined
method to determine what they term ‘performing’ or ‘non-
performing’ seats. This analysis is being done with an eye to ‘right
sizing’ district schools which beyond consolidation could include
reconstitution and replacement with school management organizations.”
Like other major school systems, including those in NY, Chicago, and
Ohio, DC has been at the forefront of shutting down traditional public
schools. In 2008, twenty-three public schools were closed under former
DC Chancellor Michelle Rhee and then-mayor Adrian Fenty, which led to a
community outcry to save our public schools. Local education
stakeholders voices weren’t heeded by Rhee or Fenty, and only one
neighborhood elementary school, John Burroughs, was saved from the
chopping block.
Natalie Hopkinson wrote “Why School Choice Fails,” which appeared
in the December 4, 2011, NY Times [http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/05/opinion/why-school-choice-fails.html].
It is about how reform policies in Washington, DC, put in place by a
Republican-led congress in 1995, led to the birth of many of our charter
schools. Hopkinson wrote: “If a school was deemed failing, students
could transfer schools, opt to attend a charter school or receive a
voucher to attend a private school. The idea was to introduce
competition; good schools would survive; bad ones would disappear. It
effectively created a second education system, which now enrolls nearly
half the city’s public school students. The charters consistently
perform worse than the traditional schools, yet they are rarely closed.”
What comes as no surprise to anyone is that schools in Ward 8 were
identified as having the greatest need, according to the IFF study. The
study recommended turning around or closing the following public schools
in Ward 8: Simon, Patterson, Terrell-McGogney and Ferebee-Hope and
closing two bottom-rung charter schools, Center City Congress Heights
(pre-K to 8) and Imagine Southeast (pre-K to 5). Other schools were also
recommended for closure or turn around, including H.D. Woodson Senior
High School, a school in Ward 7 which had recently undergone renovation
that cost millions of dollars.
One of the things that I find disturbing about IFF’s report is the
recommendation for DC to consider expanding charter schools in the ten
targeted neighborhood clusters and call for the DC Public Charter School
Board to authorize about 6,500 new charter seats (current enrollment is
about 32,000) while utilizing former public school buildings as
incentives to get the public charter board to actively recruit the
highest performing charter school operators to replicate their school
models.
The writing should be on the wall for all of us to see. From where I
sit, this situation looks bleak for working, middle class families and
many of our teachers in some of our poorest communities. The loss of our
public schools is a disinvestment in our school communities and may lead
to higher classroom sizes, further declining enrollment in DC public
schools, and extinction of traditional public schools and fewer teaching
jobs. Now is not the time for parents, students, teachers, school staff,
and community members to sit back. We have to ask the hard questions,
organize and demand to have a voice as education stakeholders or we may
likely have a rerun of the 2008 school closures.
On November 8, 2011, I issued a call to action to DC teachers and
school personnel: “In the midst of upcoming contract negotiations,
there are big plans ahead to close our traditional public schools. Never
in our history has been there been a greater need for teachers and
school personnel to have an effective organizing union. Our very future
as educators and the future of our students will be determined by how
vigorously we, alongside parents and community members are willing to
fight to save our public schools.” Won’t you heed the call to get
involved before your local school is reconstituted and turned over to a
charter school, your job is lost, and your community no longer includes
you? Please attend Empower DC’s Exposing DC’s Equation for
Displacement: Information on DCPS closings and action plans will be
discussed on Saturday, February 4, from 11:00 a.m.-1:30 p.m. at 1419 V
Street, NW. For more information, contact: Daniel@empowerdc.org
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CLASSIFIEDS — EVENTS
Woman’s National Democratic Club Events,
January 31, February 2
Patricia Bitondo, pbitondo@aol.com
Tuesday, January 31, luncheon, Eleanor Clift and Nan Aron, A Question
of Integrity: Politics, Ethics and the Supreme Court. For more
information, go to https://salsa.wiredforchange.com/o/5880/p/salsa/event/common/public/?event_KEY=33802.
Thursday, February 2 luncheon. Zbigniew Brzezinski, Strategic
Vision: America and the Crisis of Global Power. The WNDC is one of
the earliest appearances of Zbigniew Brzezinski to discuss his new book Strategic
Vision, published January 24, and already hailed by David Ignatius
in the Washington Post. For more information, go to https://salsa.wiredforchange.com/o/5880/p/salsa/event/common/public/?event_KEY=33624.
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Rogers Marvel Architects, February 2
Stacy Adamson, sadamson@nbm.org
Spotlight on Design: Rogers Marvel Architects. The New York
City-based firm Rogers Marvel Architects blends technical skill with
civic consciousness within a variety of project scales. Founding
principals Robert Rogers, FAIA, and Jonathan Marvel, AIA, discuss the
firm’s work, including the winning design for Washington, DC’s
President’s Park South. $12 members and students; $20 nonmembers.
Prepaid registration required. Thursday, February 2, 6:30-8:00 p.m., at
the National Building Museum, 401 F Street, NW, Judiciary Square Metro
station. Register for events at http://www.nbm.org.
I am teaching an arts workshop designed for children aged five to ten
years at Pyramid Atlantic on Saturday, February 18, from 11:00 a.m.-1:00
p.m. Should you have any questions about the workshop, please feel free
to contact me, or check out my web site at http://afrikamaabney.webnode.com.
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