Tensions ran high and personal insults flew freely at a D.C. City Council public hearing yesterday on Mayor Adrian Fenty’s proposed takeover of the District’s public school system.
D.C.’s public schools, under the direction of the Board of Education, have been notoriously bad for many years. Fenty made a mayoral takeover a major focus of his campaign last fall.
Over 80 witnesses were scheduled to offer testimony, including teachers, parents and a councilmember from New York City, where the City Council gave control of the public schools to Mayor Michael Bloomberg in 2000.
Charles Barron, the New York councilmember, firmly opposed mayoral control of D.C.’s public schools, and said that conditions in New York had deteriorated since 2000.
He said that private contractors, not students, were the main beneficiaries of Mayor Bloomberg’s school takeover.
“[Mayoral takeover] has a lot to do with contractors, real estate and economics, not education,” he said.
Judging by the sporadic applause, most of the chamber was against the takeover. Councilmember Vincent Gray stifled several outbursts after witnesses called for more community involvement and parental control.
“Y’all are not going to raise our children,” Jo Patterson, President of Parent Watch, said over the noise of the crowd.
Barron proposed that, instead of mayoral control, a 15-person panel of parents, representatives of the council and representatives of the mayor could take the place of the school board, and each school could have an 11-person council of parents with powers of hiring and firing to keep principals accountable.
“The worst thing you can do,” he said, “is give the mayor absolute power.”
