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ELEcTIONS: How will city fill council seats? From Page 3
days after a vacancy occurs, unless there is a regularly scheduled election within 60 days to which it can be appended. District officials have argued for years that more flexibility in scheduling special elections would save the city money. But the Senate bill
was actually spurred by a completely unrelated controversy: a synagogue suing the city for scheduling a special election during the week of Passover. So under the new law, a special election for mayor could be set to coincide with the Nov. 6 general election if Gray were to resign by late August.
With the council chairmanship on the ballot that day, as well as two at-large council seats, four ward seats, an initiative to ban corporate contributions, and a separate measure to forbid officials convicted of felonies while in office from continuing to serve — and, oh yes, the presidency — it could be a pretty busy day at the polls.
ScHOOLS: ‘Marathon’ hearing airs concerns
Setting the Standard for Excellence in Pet Sitting and Dog Walking Since 1991
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From Page 1
strength of Ward 6 — you know you’re in a neighborhood with good, walkable options,” Wells said. “But charters don’t see themselves as neighborhood schools, so we’re consigned to a parallel system. One day we may be talking about only 10 or 20 percent of our children in public schools, because all the rest are in charters.” The marathon 10-hour hearing was called by Chairman Mendelson, who was recently thrust into the role of chairing the council’s Committee of the Whole, which has overseen education and a host of other issues during the past few years. Mendelson said he wanted to hear from citizens about their priorities for education for the remainder of the year. The new chairman has also said he wants to limit further shake-ups this year, but that he believes education is important enough to eventually merit its own council oversight committee and experienced staff to run it. The arrival of more than 50 witnesses underscored a point many of them made in testimony: Since the abolition of the school board and establishment of mayoralchancellor control, many parents feel their voices haven’t been heard. Several pleaded for specific schools to remain open. Sequnely Gray, a parent at the recently combined school of Bruce-Monroe Elementary at Parkview in Ward 1, said Bruce-Monroe was torn down amid promises it would be rebuilt. Instead, the children were moved to Parkview, and the Bruce-Monroe site turned into a park “that will become condos,” she predicted. “Our children are already displaced,” and now a new Districtwide study of “low-performing schools,” performed by the Illinois Facility Fund, lists the combined school as a candidate for closure or replacement by a charter school. “All we asked is to be at the table,” Gray said. A new mother from Southwest, Lucy Rojansky, said she simply wanted to know the fate of Amidon-Bowen Elementary, the last traditional public elementary left in that quadrant. She said she was encouraged by some reports that improvements are under way, but she’s been unable to get clear information on what the public school system is planning for the building or the school itself. “It’s right around the corner from my house, and I’d love to send my child there,” Rojansky said. Some had specific complaints regarding their children. Howard Wilson said he’d been called to the principal’s office at Bancroft Elementary in June, and told that because of his daughter’s “alleged tardiness,” she would have to return to her neighborhood school. Wilson cited multiple doorways and poor attendance records at Bancroft, and the fact that his fifth-grader took medication before school, which occasionally made her late. After repeated appeals to other school officials, he got the same answer — “return to her neighborhood school. We were never asked why my daughter was late.” Wells noted that the case is exactly the type the Office of Ombudsman — required under the school reform law but abolished after its first occupant, Tonya Kinlow, resigned — was designed to resolve. “We haven’t received any due process,” Wilson said. Others had broader concerns about racial disparities, saying students in the eastern part of the city haven’t fared well under school reform. “Education in D.C. is an apartheid system,” said Maria Jones, a Ward 5 parent. “Schools in [wards] 5, 7, 8 are consistently underfunded, and surrounded by aggressive charters trying to close them,” she said, while schools in the “wealthy wards”
have been identified as “worthy of investment.” “Parents scramble for places in schools west of the park,” Jones said, but this year many have been told that out-of-boundary placements are limited. She said she knew of “four kids with high grades denied entrance to Hardy” Middle School in Georgetown, while “schools in Afro-American neighborhoods are closed.” The January 2012 Illinois Facility Fund study, based largely on test scores, came under fire. The study recommends closing the “lowest performing” public schools and recruiting the “highest performing charter school operators” to run them. Suzanne Wells of the Capitol Hill Public Schools Parent Organization said there seems to be a rush to close public schools and open charters without coordination. In her neighborhood, she said, “four new charters were approved, while DCPS claims it needs to ‘rightsize.’ Two
❝If we no longer give families a choice of neighborhood schools, we need to talk about it.❞ — Education activist Mary Levy separate school systems are expensive to support.” Mary Levy, a longtime expert on school budgeting, said she supports charters, but fears the system of neighborhood schools is disappearing in favor of “citywide charters. If we no longer give families a choice of neighborhood schools, we need to talk about it,” she testified. Levy also said the council reneged on its promise to complete an evaluation of the school reform effort by this September, instead delaying the report until 2014. She predicted the results would not be pretty. “Reform works very well in wards 3 and 6, but the achievement gap — between black and white students, between whites and Latinos — has widened,” she said. Several charter advocates had their own complaints. Robert Cane, director of Friends of Choice in Urban Schools, said charters are still not treated equally despite “wildly successful” results in raising student achievement and an ever-increasing share — now 41 percent and rising — of total enrollment. Cane invited the council to be more involved in ensuring uniform funding for charter and traditional public school students, and making it easier for charters to use closed or underused public school buildings. Cane dismissed concerns about running two parallel systems, saying the big problem is that “we don’t have enough quality seats.” Declining enrollment at the less successful public schools increases the pressure to close them. Ward 1 Council member Jim Graham said he recently attended graduation at Cardozo High School, where an expensive modernization and expansion project is already under way. “We have this great high school, but when I attended graduation, they had 87 graduates,” he said. Enrollment data at traditional public schools shows the stark disparity. Wilson, Deal and virtually all public schools in Ward 3 are bursting at the seams, with enrollment exceeding capacity. But in other parts of the city, some senior highs can’t fill even half their seats. For example, according to audited enrollment figures for the past school year, Coolidge, with a capacity of 1,240, had 547 students; Roosevelt, capacity 1,060, had 497; Cardozo, capacity 1,100, had 477; and Dunbar, capacity 1,100, had 514.