The up escalator at the Superior Court of the District of Columbia wasn’t working Thursday.
One therefore had to walk the steep angle of the motionless contraption to find Room 215 where, as concerned citizen or news tourist, you could inspect a school system that isn’t working.
Fortunately, everything is not amiss in the capital: The lights in the courtroom of Superior Court Judge Kaye Christian operate–as do the beepers and cell phones of the many smug, well-tailored city bureaucrats sitting inside.
They were all there for a matter titled Parents United for D.C. Public Schools vs. Marion Barry, which was inspired by a school system that is collapsing, quite literally in some instances.
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Given the system’s predicaments, Christian gets to play not John Dewey, the eminent educator, but a sort of female Bob Vila. She’s a black-robed master electrician-plumber-plasterer but with a challenge more daunting than anything faced by homeowners on “This Old House.”
“The court would not like to see a repeat of 1994, with hearings right up until the first school bell rang,” Christian proclaimed midway through the languorous proceeding, just before announcing that she was shutting a particular school pending “abatement” of its structural failings.
“The defendants have had two years notice (about various fire code violations),” she thundered. “This school is not cleared.”
To a list of civic calamities including an inept mayor, bankruptcy, rising crime, polluted drinking water, widespread potholes, broken traffic and streets lights, and a condescending Congress, please add the guaranteed, or likely, closing of many public schools as the new academic year approaches.
In some instances, the reasons are budgetary. For example, the system’s two vocational schools will close because there’s no money. This comes despite the district, whose school population has plummeted to 80,000 students from 150,000 in less than 20 years, spending more per pupil than any of the nation’s 100 largest systems and then producing standardized test scores below the national norm.
Consider this: While the district spent $7,430 per pupil in 1994, Census Bureau figures for 1991-1992 show Chicago spending $6,036 and Evanston $7,250. The explanation? A bureaucracy so big, it would have made Nikita Khrushchev proud.
In other cases, the reasons are more mundane. Most of the 160 buildings are between 50 and 100 years old. Everywhere one finds leaky roofs, faulty wiring, inadequate fire escapes, gymnasiums left inoperable due to arson, broken generators, broken windows and thousands of corroding interior fire doors.
Then come the politics of a city that re-elected Barry, the ex-con. Education brings a division among five groups: the superintendent and his staff, the elected school board (whose members take home a nationally unprecedented $33,000 a year for a part-time job), the mayor, the City Council, and a financial control board forced on the district by Congress.
Everybody distrusts everybody else, helping to explain why many vacant buildings on prime land go unsold. Parties feud over how to divvy the potential spoils.
All the while, the district’s kids, with no political constituency, get short shrift.
The dueling adults were all represented in Room 215, along with fire inspectors (one attired in camouflage garb), as Christian received updated fire violation reports on a bunch of schools. She took out a brown file folder on each, asked city attorney Brenda Walls what her position was, then inquired of an inspector, then of plaintiffs’ lawyer Alfred Mamlet.
“If a leak could damage the floor, how could it not damage the ceiling?” she asked while perusing a report on Adams Elementary. An inspector said he did not find any “breaches” in the roof.
Mamlet said, “But there’s a hole so water can get in and get into the classrooms, right?
“Yeah,” the inspector replied. “But if you look up, you don’t see the next level.”
Rolling her eyes, the judge said, “I am not satisfied that any holes that resulted have been fixed. Adams is not clear.”
When they got to Paul Junior High School, Walls said everything had been taken care of. The judge then asked another inspector about the state of a steeple.
Well, he conceded, it is badly decomposed, with no windows, filled with rotting wood. “I tried to access it from the inside but couldn’t. A large wind could easily dislodge it, and it would end up in the front yard.”
“Not cleared,” concluded the judge.
She went to the next school, where arson in the gym would necessitate $500,000 in repairs, which also would include removal of asbestos. The city’s position was to simply barricade the gym and open the school. The judge went along.
But not at the next school, a high school where the judge was left confused by both Walls and the fire inspector in charge.
“Did you say you just plastered the wall and did not fix the actual leaks?” Christian asked the inspector.
“Yes,” was the response.
“Not cleared,” she concluded.
Finally, they got to a high school where the principal recommends barricading the entire third floor due to roof leaks but opening for business next month. The judge said no way, meaning those students probably will have to be moved to some other school.
In the end, she had jacked up to 16 the number of schools that apparently won’t open Sept. 3, meaning about 10,000 students will have to be moved somewhere.
“Man, that was all just b——-” said an inspector, muttering outside in the hallway, where the clock read 3:40 p.m., a mere 35 minutes slow.
School Supt. Franklin Smith, a thoughtful fellow with a hopeless task who got high marks as the boss in Dayton, followed not far behind. He whispered to his spokesperson that he had nothing he wanted to tell the TV crowd gathered outside the building, but then consented.
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“We have a major capital problem,” he declared as he voiced his frustrations–before getting into his city-paid, chauffeur-driven Buick Park Avenue.
Which brings us to Mayor Barry. He wasn’t there Thursday, presumably because he was looking for tanning lotion and a tennis racquet.
The Democratic mayor is heading to San Diego to throw parties and convince Republicans to bring business, notably tourism, to Washington.
While being interviewed live on an all-news radio station Friday morning, he deflected a question about the school mess.
“Let’s move on to San Diego,” Barry said, underscoring that “promoting Washington is my job.”
This is a great place to visit.
Rollins shows cheek
Ed Rollins, a longtime GOP political consultant, will be in San Diego, too, if ducking.
His just-published “Bare Knuckles and Back Rooms” savages many, including Ross Perot; failed California Senate candidate Michael Huffington and his social-climbing wife, Arianna; former Tribune editor James Squires; and many bigshot Republicans.
It’s an interesting, if too premeditatedly harsh, work. But the assurance of such bashing was the reason for an advance reportedly just a tad over $1 million.
But I like this better: The source says Rollins got $50,000 for spending several hours in a studio, reading portions for the tape version.