District of Columbia: Education Reform: Discussion Space

June 11, 2007

Parent Section - Improving Public Schools

The Mayor is traveling to each ward to talk with residents about what they think would make public education work better. You may not have been able to attend one of his Education Town Hall Meetings, but the Mayor still wants your input.

What would you respond to the following questions?

1. What should be the top 3 early action priorities for improving DCPS and public education?

2. How can we ensure that schools are safe and provide a good environment for learning in DCPS and other public schools?

3. How can parents, guardians, and community members be best involved in DCPS and public education?

Posted at 9:56:48 AM | Topics: Parents/Guardian Discussion

DC public schools routinely intimidate their staff, even Principals, with an ominous climate of retribution. DS 7s threaten Pros with twenty years in.
Teachers are routinely parked by Administration officers often spending whole days in the hallways of the Personnel office, not permitted to leave or even go to lunch. While Personnel offices are notorious bullies, this sort of heavy-handed culture is inexcusable in a reforming system. Personnel can still not sort out it's own records and require staff and faculty to produce pay stubs back six or seven years even though their own computer records showed major discrepancies, they would refuse to resolve these without "the Originals". DCPS operated an underclass of WAE Employees for years, offering no tenure, benefits or continuity, firing WAE teaching staff (Consultants) every year without any promise of future employment and then, to save money on unemployment, removed these specialists from the unemployment compensation rolls. It's all quite nasty, and probably actionable.

DCPS is run as an entitlement system, offering secure employment to members of specific clans. Anyone wanting to unsnarl the dependencies and relationships would need genealogy software.Hmmm,,, these family and quasi fqmily relationships are classic nepotism and cronyism and entirely illegal, but never investigated or resolved. People protect their cousins and their supervisor's cousins. And their sisters from their sorority. Every Saturday you could see DCPS Janitors washing their cars out back of the school, collecting double overtime. Some had TVs and Barbeques going. It was a scam to stick it to the man and the culture didn't change when we became the Man.

The Board of Education never had adequate controls. They would spend months hammering out a budget and the designated funds would immediately be "Reprogrammed" by administrators. When internal controls were instituted with a 50K cut off people simply budgeted in 49.9K increments. There was no penalty for this, and it took a few hours to completely obviate our elected authority. There was no disbursement audit to see where the funds were spent, and the Council never bothered with serious oversight. When the renovation projects went over budget, the same firms were hired again. (Who ever thought the US ARMY corps of engineers could supervise construction - they have neve, .ever, have completed a project on budget.) Contractors looted DCPS classrooms in renovation projects, and simply cut the locks off secure storage. The MPD deferred to DCPS Security who then required "original receipts" for all stolen properties or refused to file the report - ergo- no theft occurred and no restitution is required. MPD is wholly complicit is disguising these crimes, as though the DCPS was not a public institutiuon or had some sort of extraterritoriality rights. School buildings were sold off and the funds sent to the Mayor's General Fund. Mayor Williams himself took the DCPS BOE Headquarters building, Franklin School, rennovated at DCPS Expense as if it was his by emminent domain. DCPS main offices remain in tawdry offices paying premium rents. There is no accountability no oversight and no enforcement.
\And if you mention any of this you will be fired.

A thorough review of the abilities and performance records of school principals should be included in the current plan. Perhaps it is now. If a principal is not performing well as an administrator as well as an educator, they should be replaced with someone who wants to be a dynamic change agent for the school. If the principal does not want to change the school, the school will not change.

I have seen a dynamic principal reinvigorate an elementary school that had been losing students every year (Brent Elementary), by reaching out to involve the parents and the general community around her school. I would love to see this happen at the school we are inbounds for, but the principal there has literally told neighboring parents who have tried to become involved that â€œpeople â€˜like youâ€™ have a choice and can go elsewhereâ€. My choice is to work to make our public schools the top choice for parents in DC, not to ignore or hide problems. Please replace the principals who do not want to work with the inbounds community and inbounds community organizations to make their schools better. Who else are they going to work with if not the community? When people are truly held accountable for their actions or lack thereof, things can really change.

Good teachers and requiring higher standards are important. However, parent participation is extremely important. We need to consider linking welfare and other services payments to dependent children's academic work and health maintenance. This would definitely add the heat to parents who are not providing the type of guidance to their children. DC should not support bad parenting with welfare support--many of their children are the ones who cause harm and irreparable damage to students who are trying. Provide educational seminars for those parents--make it mandatory--then provide them 12 months toimprove and if not, get rid of them.

To hire certified as well as qualified teachers, that care. To raise the math and reading scores in our schools. To reincorporate the foreign language, arts and music beck into the DC Public School System.

We should hire DC police or a repetable security company to patrol the schools during school hours.

They can be best involved by ensuring that each child completes his homework everynight, what's done during the day has to be reinforced during the evening. Make sure each child is in school everyday and on time, become involved in your child's education, call the school, stop by unexpectedly, volunteer. Reinforce respect for everyone.

There is a great need of improvement for public schools, we keep getting promises but no help. With all the other improvements to the city the public schools should have been first and for most. Without the right education what will the kids have left.