City Year Corps Serves Emery Elementary School

On Saturday, Ted McGinn once again led the City Year Corps and parent volunteers (86 strong) to rejuvenate Emery Elementary School (1720 First Street NE). Some volunteers (not this one!) started work at 8:30 a.m. I assisted with installing a green watering system in one of the garden beds.


The work done for the community by City Year is greatly appreciated, so I'm taking a moment to highlight an e-mail Ted recently sent me and several other community leaders. He is promoting the idea of making JF Cook Elementary School (now slated to close) available for the use of City Year. The e-mail follows, it is definitely worth careful consideration.



Hi Everyone,

City Year needs to move out of their current location by Nov 08. As some of you may know City Year's first headquarters was in Ward 5 at Q and Eckington Place Ne. At that time they had only 32 Crops members and no Young Heroes program. Since 2000 City Year has grown and was forced to seek a larger space to handle that growth outside of our Ward. So what has City Year done for DC.Since 2000, City Year Washington, DC corps members have:
- Made a difference in the lives of 42,569 children
- Served more than 550,000 hours in the Washington, DC community
- Led 6,689 volunteers in service

Click here to learn more about the history of City Year.Since 2000 City Year has held 12 service days at Emery, 4 that included community wide clean-ups and work on the Harry Thomas Rec. Center. They run the Young Heroes program for 3 years at Emery, working with 6th,7th and 8th grade students.City Year is looking for a new headquarters that has enough room to handle its growth. Next year they will have 85 Crops members and over 100 Young Heroes.

City Year's new Executive Director Jeff Franco is interested in looking at JF Cook Elementary School at 40 P street NW as a possible location. He is looking for a site near Metro bus and rail because that is how City Year moves. City Year is ready to meet with the ANC, Civic Associations, CM Thomas and DCPS to determine if this would be a good move for all the stakeholders. City Year has looked at Gage-Eckington, and because of its dependence Metro that location might not meet their needs as well as Cook. This is only the first round of contact about this possibility, feel free to contact Jeff Franco at JFranco@cityyear.org

we all work together ted mcginn

Dunbar High School Deserves Maintenance

Caution: This entry contains graphic bathroom photos (no foot-tapping though).

Tonight I briefly spoke to the Dunbar High School Parent Teacher Student Association (Dunbar PTSA). Dunbar is located within the boundaries of my district. I told the audience that we faced walls where we didn't want them (barriers between the community and the school) even as we lacked walls where we needed them (within the school itself).

Most classrooms at Dunbar have no walls separating classes, it is a failed 1970s education experiment. I half-joked that the PTSA should act fast to obtain walls or build a new school building before some historical preservationist group sought to preserve the school as an architectual wonder. A woman spoke up and said they are ready for the preservationists.

The PTSA is currently circulating a petition, which I signed. In addition to the need for walls was a need for renovation of the bathrooms. They are not being picky about this....

I visited the restroom on the way out and found one commode out of service, no toilet paper, no soap, a disabled paper towel dispenser, and graffiti--the triple crown of bathroom disorder (okay, given that I listed five, pick your favorite three).

Councilman Marion Barry Embraces Mayor Fenty's Education Agenda

A lucid column today from Marc Fisher of the Washington Post on D.C.'s current third rail of politics:

When D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty and schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee proposed shutting down 23 of Washington's most egregiously underenrolled schools, knee-jerk politicians predictably behaved like those unscrupulous drivers who shout about whiplash after somebody glances their fender.

Ward 8 Council member Marion Barry, still the reigning champion of winning time on the TV news, issued one outraged statement after another, showed up at every protest and, as late as Thursday, was on the tube railing against Rhee: "The chancellor's just being bullheaded. Stop it! Stop it! Stop it!"

Less than 24 hours later, a different Barry shook the mayor's hand and stepped before the cameras at a news conference announcing the final list of schools to be closed. "This is a historic day," the Mayor for Life said with a big smile. "Mayor Fenty took the bold action of making education number one." The closings -- the very same closings Barry had spent the previous two months slamming at every turn -- were suddenly an essential, empowering act of excellence.

So there you have it. One day Councilman Barry is leading a crowd in an anti-Mayor Fenty/Chancellor Michelle Rhee chant (as seen in the video above), the next week he is by their side in full support of their school reform plans.

The Examiner's Harry Jaffe lays it on thick:

[Four-term former mayor] Marion Barry bears the ultimate responsibility for the disgraceful state of many D.C. public schools. It has taken decades of neglect to bring a once-proud school system to its knees. Barry is the architect of that neglect.

Parents are rightly concerned about dramatic reform, and they ought to be involved in the process. People ought to apply rigorous scrutiny to the Fenty-Rhee plan. But in the end, rather than make impassioned arguments in a manner that would promoted resolution, it appeared to many that several activists sought to promote division and speculate on Fenty's unseemly hidden motives. The activists seemed to relish the fight, actually changing Rhee's mind was secondary.

Mayor Fenty was elected with a mandate to take control of the public school system. He and the chancellor ought to be given the opportunity to succeed, because ultimately they should be held responsible for the outcome.

Meetings with Local Principals Produce Results

I recently met with the principals of Dunbar High School and Emery Elementary School, both of which are located within 5C-02.

Dunbar principal Dr. Harriet Kargbo and I reached a concensus: the school and the community must work together for the mutual benefit of both. The quality of local schools impacts housing values and kids who aren't in school during classroom hours are not only truant but often end up getting into trouble, such as vandalism.

On the other hand, tutors from the community are needed (please contact me if you are interested in volunteering). Dunbar is being judged solely on the performance of its 10th graders, the only ones taking standardized tests designed to measure achievement by the entire school. SAT scores are lagging behind the national average, which affects college prospects and scholarship opportunities, regardless of what students have actually learned.

A 5c-02 resident is concerned that the recreational facility at Dunbar was closed to the community years ago, leaving the area without an outlet for children. Dr. Kargbo informed me that the facility exclusion was necessary in order to host the school's mandatory JROTC program (children may opt out at the behest of parents). She told me that JROTC is not necessarily about the military, but more about character and leadership.

I told Dr. Kargbo that JROTC was a great program, which probably very few people in the community were aware of, which led me to my next point-- Dunbar needs a website so that both the community and parents can be properly informed. Dr. Kargbo agreed, and a website is in the works. Currently, if one visits http://www.sportscombine.com/ and types in Dunbar, sports information is available but that's it.

Dunbar's most pressing need is something that many of us take for granted in our work life: walls. Dunbar High School is the only high school in D.C. that still has a building with the 1977 experiment of no classroom walls, only partitions. Imagine trying to listen to your teacher lecture on history while another teacher queries students on the other side of a partition about math problems. Dr. Kargbo led on a tour of the facility-- it is a nightmare for students with attention deficit disorder (who incidentally do have the opportunity to transfer to another school, but there is red tape). Dunbar is slated to get walls in 2009.

I also met with Emery Elementary School principal Ronald Taylor within the context of the "audit" of D.C. public schools currently being implemented by the D.C. organization D.C. Voice. The details of the meeting are confidential, but the gist is that Emery's needs are largely being met. Much of Emery's current favorable conditions are a result of Taylor's persistence and Emery's proximity to the DCPS central office.

Dunbar High School Needs Community Support

Yesterday's Washington Post article about Dunbar High School, "Rose-Colored Views of an All-Black School," caught my eye not because of its focus on (the lack of) racial integration, but rather for its passing revelation of Dunbar's achievement numbers.

At Dunbar High, according to the article, "[j]ust 29 percent scored as proficient or better in reading; in math, the figure was 27 percent." According to this site, Dunbar's ACT scores averaged 14.2 in 2005. That score does not compare favorably with the average nationwide score of 20 (on a scale of 36) (source here).

Meanwhile, at least two weeks ago, I called Dunbar High School and no one answered, so I left a message. I stated my name, and reminded the listener that I was an ANC commissioner and that the Dunbar was located within my district. I requested a call back on the question of whether Dunbar had a chess club. If not, I was interested in starting one, I said.

I received no call back, which was unfortunately not surprising. Dunbar seems to operate within its own orbit, the community in another. Meanwhile, I am wondering how I even have time to launch a chess club. It's merely an idea that I hope will be given a try, the rationale being that not everyone can (or desires to) be a football star. I believe that young people tend to experience improved overall health (and higher grades) when they participate in organized after-school activities.

No doubt Dunbar has may extracurricular activities, but there is no school website, so it's all speculation about whether there is an unserved niche. I wonder how can a parent make an informed decision between Dunbar and a charter school, when there is no website informing parents of Dunbar's well-regarded pre-engineering program. I suppose it all begins with returning phone calls.

New Chancellor Aims to Change Culture of DC Public School System

Michelle Rhee, the new Chancellor of the always-troubled D.C. Public School System shared her solutions for DCPS at the Ward Five Education Town Hall Meeting held earlier this evening at McKinley Technology High School and hosted by Councilman Harry Thomas, Jr. A Washington Post article offers a detailed analysis of the situation: "The system is among the highest-spending and worst-performing in the nation."

Rhee should be held to a very high standard, for at least the reason that her $275,000 salary (article) must be justified. After hearing Rhee's speech and her responses to questions, I am cautiously optimistic that finally some progress will be made. Her theme: "We need a wholesale culture shift in this District." Amen.

Rhee vowed to instill a system of accountability, beginning with the DCPS Central Office, and is convinced that the answers can be found at some location other than 825 North Capitol Street N.E. Rhee said that what she has found so far at the Central Office is "beyond disturbing." She walked around the building asking employees "What do you do," and several could not describe what duties their jobs entailed. Calls from students and parents are being "treated as a nuisance" when in fact "these are our customers." The Central Office culture has resulted in principals calling 14 times for toilets to be fixed, rather than having time to serve the students and teachers.

When 5C-02 resident Ted McGinn, who served as a panelist, asked a question about the per-pupil funding mechanism and whether Rhee would work to increase funding, her response exhibited strong fiscal responsibility instincts. She spoke of a "need to streamline the Central Office so we can push more money down" to the schools. She added that "before I ask the Council for any money, I need to make sure that every single tax dollar is well utilized." That analysis is being done by consultants. In the meantime, there is a restriction on the hiring of any Central Office employees.

Why did it take so long for the District of Columbia to take this approach? It is long overdue. As a Commissioner with many schools packed in his single member district (more than the other 11 ANC 5C districts put together), I am encouraged that Rhee appears determined to change the course of DCPS. Time will tell whether rhetoric translates into results.

* * *

Prior to the forum, Mayor Adrian Fenty, Councilman Thomas, and scores of residents gathered to acknowledge the development of the new sports field at McKinley Tech. I had the opportunity to meet the new principal, David Pinder, and later chatted with the former principal Dan Gohl, who has been a true asset to the community. Commissioners John Salatti and Alison Defoe attended, and the ever-resourceful Michael Henderson recorded the scene (click photo to enlarge).

(Rhee photo credit: Preston Keres/Washington Post; Commissioners photo credit: Michael Henderson / Edgewood Civic Association).