EDUCATIONAL REFORM NOW
The greatest gift my mother and father gave me was the unconditional love and a set of good old-fashioned values. Values they live and didn’t just lecture about. Morality and values begin at home. If our city is going to improve the learning environment for its children, we must begin caring for our children at home. Children respond to the expectations of their environment. I learned quickly that education is the best vehicle to begin overturning a status quo that historically represses and marginalizes our students.
Finally, we are taking the most aggressive approach to tackle our state of emergency declared on education. Yes a new day has come with only the expectation of opposition. Whether it is a voice and a vote in Congress or on school governance, we Washingtonians are in a constant struggle to defend our democracy. With two groups competing for a successful bid to run our fragmented school system, everyone has a side of the story to tell. As to how we can effectuate change where our students and teachers are the primary beneficiaries, I have welcomed my undivided attention. Nine DC Council public hearings: countless hours; hundreds of public witnesses, including over 100 students and educators and over 10 neighborhood living and dining room education briefings, regular chats in the grocery store and at my children’s school that all address one of the two aspects of school reform: Facilities and Academics. Our most visible manifestation of tolerating things just the way they are cannot be ignored. Backlogged orders of much needed textbooks and plumbing repairs have become characteristic. The same dysfunctions I witnessed as a student whose father ran for school board in the mid 80’s, I hear from the residents and now face as a father with my own two children who attend DCPS at a very fundamental time in their educational careers: pre k and first grade. The quest to fix our schools began with a great launching pad: school modernization. I was one of three co-introducers of the measure that established a funding source solely dedicated to fixing our schools. More money is great however it does not resolve the lack of accountability for real-time results. Funding alone only leaves our families frustrated as to why their child’s classroom is still without heat. Through numerous attempts, even through introducing legislation last year to remove school modernization functions from the daily tasks of school administrators, I have sought all options to improve conditions now. Placing endless calls to facilitate a response to fixing schools I, along with my colleagues are just as perplexed with the same limitations. As a legislator, I can only approve the funding, cross my fingers and hope that the money is used to meet the greatest need. While no one can argue that our so-called learning environments are not deplorable, we do not have a comprehensive resolution to prevent another school year to beginning without same backlog as the previous year. I believe we can fix the fixable now and agree that the Office of School Modernization is necessary. Our educators and school administrators are not procurement officers, developers, real estate agents nor facility engineers. I believe that it is their job is to educate our children to read, write, add and subtract. My cousin, who is a teacher, is still without many of the tools and resources necessary to provide her students with an adequate education. The curriculum has been narrowed down into skeleton form. In the past few years, instructional time spent on music, language, physical education, art, science and social studies has been drastically diminished or deleted from the curriculum. DCPS has become so focused on test scores that other curriculum disciplines that contribute to a student’s academic development have been sacrificed. Quality teachers are disruptively snatched out of schools and transferred to other schools to the detriment of a students teaching environment. We currently have a Superintendent while on the one hand comes to us with a wealth of knowledge and experience understanding as to how to improve schools systems, but on the other hand has moved slowly and is perceived by parents and students as being unresponsive to everyone and accountable to no one. We cannot solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them. If we continue to do what we’ve always done, we’ll get what we’ve always gotten. DCPS has educated some of the country’s great leaders, including three councilmembers sitting on this dais voting on this measure and the Mayor who presented this measure that we are considering today. Despite the lack of resources and crumbling facilities, many graduates of the DCPS have gone on to attend some of the top ranking colleges and universities in this country. Many of our teachers have been selected to receive the National Teacher of the Year Award, but fewer parents decide to enroll their children in DCPS to have the same experience. Our students hear terrible things about themselves. They begin to believe there incapable of learning, when many of our children are doing the right thing everyday. They deserve our full support so that they can stay the course. Their stories often go unnoticed and unreported by the media. The broader society is losing sight of the fact that our children are an asset and not a liability to this city. Many of our children are in trouble because we as adults are in trouble. Many of our students might need a role model, but many more of our students need more then that… They need HOPE. The notion that our learning environment will eventually improve itself is null. While we question the fate of school governance, it is our children whose future is at stake. We are not here to push paper, push plans, proposals and bills as a knee-jerk reaction to the ever-railing condition of our educational system. We are here, at the table to clearly define how we can improve conditions we place our children to learn and grow. For decades we have told our children that you my have a chance IF you can find a way to focus in horrible conditions, with limited or outdated textbooks; and IF you can define student achievement on our own terms; IF you parents can help teach you basics between two jobs.
Vision without action is a daydream and action without vision is a nightmare. Education is our children’s passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to the people (us) who prepare for it today. You can either take action or you can hang back and hope for a miracle. Miracles are great but they are so unpredictable.
I do have some concerns on the plan's ability to improve student achievement. I have serious concerns regarding the vacancies of the ward 4 and 7 council seats. Waiting an additional thirty days seems to be the least we can do to allow those with the perception of no representation to be heard. In closing, as a legislator who has to speak for the children who do not have guardians that are paying attention to their educational needs and as a parent who has a personal investment in the most vulnerable time in my kids life; I’m living the DCPS experience.
So, after speaking to over 1,000 residents concerning this proposal, I finally asked my 5 year- old daughter Lauren who is now on spring break. "Should Daddy vote to allow someone else to take over the schools?” I asked. She answered, “You need to do something," she said. "At my school we have people who are who can’t read and we do not even have a library." So I am prepared to make sure that student achievement is at the top of the priority chain and I will personally make every effort possible to help improve our educational system that will yield measurable results.
-Kwame R. Brown
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Brown Votes ‘Yes’ for $250 Million School Facilities Construction, Approving $30 Million for Phelps Vocational School On April 3, the D.C. Council unanimously approved the "School Modernization Funds Submission Requirements Waiver Emergency Declaration Resolution of 2007, " to take action on the proposed Facilities Master Plan by waiving legal actions that the Board of Education and D.C. Public Schools have not yet met. The bill will provide access to funding for all imminent capital projects.
The Council's emergency action will allow DCPS to access $150 million in capital funds from the Budget Support Act and $100 million in FY 2007 pay-as-you-go-capital funding from the School Modernization Act. The Council will be able to exercise oversight of spending on these projects through its review of contracts. Councilmember Kwame Brown was elated to support the measure to ensure that school modernization funds are efficiently utilized to deliver measurable results for students and teachers. “Our commitment to improve our school facilities is best demonstrated in our efforts to move along the process to make sure that our welcomed with improved conditions next school year,” Brown said. A firm advocate for restoring vocational education in the District, Councilmember Brown last year introduced the accepted amendment to the “School Modernization Financing Act of 2005,” to earmark funds to reopen Phelps by Fall 2008. Today’s emergency actions approve $30 million funds to rebuild Phelps. “Renovating and reopening Phelps Vocational High School is a much-needed first step towards improving our entire educational infrastructure,” commented Brown. By releasing $250 million in school modernization funding, DCPS and the Board of Education will have sufficient funds to complete all imminent fiscal year 2007 school modernization projects without delay, which will include: · Randle Highlands Elementary construction;
· Addison Special Education Annex to Hyde construction;
· H.D. Cooke Elementary School construction;
· Wheatley Elementary School construction;
· Savoy Elementary School design and construction;
· H.D. Woodson Senior High School design and construction;
· Hilltop Campus Project/Phelps-Spingarn Senior High School design and construction;
· Planning and design for modernization at 28 D.C. Public Schools;
· Modernization of athletic facilities at McKinley Tech Senior High School, Coolidge Senior High School, Roosevelt Senior High School, Dunbar Senior High School, and Wilson Senior High School and General capital improvements for recreation, gymnasiums, auditoriums, public pools, co-locations, and special education initiatives.
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Brown Breaks Ground: Council Approves First-Ever $40 Million TIF for East of the River Councilmember Kwame Brown co-introduced the first-ever Tax Increment Financing (TIF) bill to finance an East of the River development project, Skyland Shopping Center, a proposed mixed-use opportunity that has lagged in completion and is greatly anticipated by Ward 7 and 8 residents. The “Skyland Project Retail Property Area Emergency Declaration Resolution of 2007”; and the “Skyland Project Retail Property Area Emergency Approval Resolution of 2007” authorizes the District to issue a 25-year note to NCRC in an aggregate principal amount of $40 million with an interest rate not greater than 8%. National Capital Revitalization Corporation’s (NCRC) would use the note as security to fund an investment in the Skyland Project. The emergency measure, approved unanimously by the D.C. Council, amends the resolution adopted by the Council in 2004. As stated in the legislation, prompt approval of a revised TIF authorization for the Skyland project will facilitate NCRC’s current discussions with potential equity partners and commercial tenants that are examining the Skyland project. “Today we’ve made history,” Brown declared. “To move both the first-ever TIF for the southeastern quadrant of the city and the second-largest TIF approved through the entire city, I am ecstatic! With approval of the funds, we can now spur economic development in a neighborhood that has fought all too long to see change in their communities. The new center will not only bring generate greater revenue but most importantly, serve our residents with the entertainment, housing and dining opportunities, bringing the first sit-down restaurant in Ward 7.” ********************************************************************************************************
COMMITTEE ON ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
Announces a Public Oversight Roundtable on
Status and Future of the Main Streets Program
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 18, 2007 AT 4:00PM
The Atlas Performing Arts Center
1333 H Street, N.E.
Washington, D.C. 20002 Councilmember Kwame R. Brown, Chair of the Committee on Economic Development, announces a Public Roundtable on “The Status and Future of the Main Streets Program”.
The Roundtable will be held on Wednesday, April 18, 2007 at 4pm at The Atlas Performing Arts Center, 1333 H Street N.E., Washington, D.C.
Those who wish to testify should contact Mr. John Adams at the Committee on Economic Development by email at jadams@dccouncil.us or by telephone (202) 727-6683 by 5pm on Tuesday, April 17, 2007. E-mail contacts should include the full name, title, and affiliation – if applicable – of the person(s) wishing to testify. Witnesses should bring 15 copies of their written testimony to the roundtable. Representatives of organizations will be allowed a maximum of five (5) minutes for oral presentation and individuals will be allowed a maximum of three (3) minutes for oral presentation.
If you are unable to attend the Roundtable, written statements are encouraged and will be made a part of the official record. Copies of written statements should be submitted to the Committee on Economic Development, 1350 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Suite 119, Washington, D.C. 20004 no later than 5:30pm Friday, April 27, 2007.
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