 Why are you seeking election to
the Washington DC School Board?
Dynamic leadership is required to convince students, teachers,
administrators, board members, and the public that a serious change in
DCPS culture is required and attainable to assure institutional
survival, which rewards initiative, creativity, accomplishment, and
accountability. Denial and business as usual are not options.
We must reconnect discipline and
education with work and rewards. The mastery of tests must become the
floor, not the ceiling of achievement. We must discover means to
collaborate with young people to channel their misdirected rage and
rescue them from random trauma toward healthy long-term goals.
The public must reclaim its
schools with tender authority. I consider it a matter of urgency,
therefore, that less self-promoting interests reassert control over
D.C.'s public education, before it collapses into a den of private
venders by default because of general social and political
indifference.
The public schools of our city cry
out for public leadership that is equal to the state-of-art demands of
managing a multibillion dollar enterprise for the good of its students
instead of those with a financial or economic stake in its operations.
What are your qualifications
for the position you seek?
My four decades of public/private professional experience in
education, civil rights, and institutional management to creatively lead
DCPS's reinvention as an innovation-driven educational enterprise. The
range of my experience uniquely mirrors the complexity of school board
work.
I am a street fighter with a
doctoral degree. A product of inner-city public schools and a veteran of
the civil rights movement, my education and professional life have
prepared me to appreciate the tangible and intangible elements of
effective teaching and learning as an art; solve complex policy issues
for restructuring failing large scale operations, physical facilities
and personnel systems; manage a multi member board both productively and
collegially; and interface effectively with other centers of authority
both within government and the community based on shared
responsibilities as well as different perspectives.
A graduate of K-12 public schools;
B.A. from Howard University--Phi Beta Kappa, Magnum Cum Laude, National
Merit Scholarship, Varsity Track & Cross-Country; and with a Juris
Doctor from Yale Law School with the Thurman Arnold Prize and the
Rabinowitz & Beinecke Scholarship, I have been professionally
engaged in all phases of education and educational management.
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What is your opinion of mayoral
candidate Adrian M. Fenty's position that the elected Washington DC
School Board be converted to an appointed advisory panel?
After three costly, time consuming governance battles in the
past decade without measurable improvement, I will move to accelerate
efforts on school safety, vocational education, and modernization
contract and audit controls to prevent fraud and waste during my short
2-year term as a parallel course to whatever mayoral plan emerges.
This will avoid sacrificing badly
needed emergency improvements during the time required for a mayoral
Charter amendment. Without the benefit of a clear proposal, the Boston
model's strong-mayor statutory provisions might be preferable, because
it still protects democratic participation in school board selection,
unlike that of New York. In Boston the school board is more than
advisory.
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