Teachers and Parents List Needs at Hearing

By Theola Labbé

source: Washington Post

Friday November 16, 2007

At Hart Middle School in Southeast, students have a shortage of science textbooks and sit in classrooms with peeling paint. There aren't enough guidance counselors at Dunbar in Northwest and other senior high schools. And some special education students at Ross Elementary in Northwest are not getting the help they need because a teaching position was eliminated.

 

More than 75 students, teachers, parents, school employees and others shared these stories about the school system's physical and academic shortcomings last night as part of a hearing on the fiscal 2009 school budget.

 

In a meeting room on the fifth floor of school system headquarters, speaker after speaker told Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee that schools need such things as music classes, clean bathrooms, mentors for new teachers and working kitchens to cook healthy lunches.

 

Rhee listened quietly to the three hours of testimony and said after the last witness that the speakers' concerns reflected the pleas she has heard since she took the job five months ago. She pledged to take the comments to heart as she works on her first budget for the 49,600-student system.

 

"We're working on a lot of these issues, and I just want to thank everyone for their input," Rhee said. "It will absolutely be taken into consideration as we are developing the budget and as we develop our plan longer term for where we want to be."

 

But the chancellor made it clear that the changes would take time.

 

"I don't think it's going to be possible to wave our hands and make it happen in one year," Rhee said.

 

By law, the school system must hold a hearing to solicit public input before submitting a budget request to the mayor. Rhee scheduled last night's hearing after almost 100 school activists reminded her in an Oct 29 letter of the legal guidelines.

 

Pamela D. Graham, the chief financial officer assigned to D.C. schools, said last night that the approved budget for fiscal 2008 is $948 million, which includes federal funds. The city's portion of the school budget has remained stagnant for several years, she said.

 

Graham said after the hearing that the school system is working on submitting its budget request to the mayor in early January.

 

Joshua Spriggs, 18, a senior at Eastern High School on Capitol Hill, pleaded with Rhee to fund more guidance counselors to fix scheduling and transcript issues. He said he has to repeat an English class this year, after he passed it in summer school, because the school system had no record of his summer school credits.

 

"At first I was mad when they told me that," Spriggs said. Then, he said, he gave up. "I was like, okay, there's no point in getting upset. I guess I took it and passed it once; I'll have to do it again."

 

Carol A. Bogash, director of education for the Washington Performing Arts Society, echoed the sentiments of several parents as she testified for the need for more music education. She said 37 percent of the city's schools do not have any music teachers, and she said she hoped that would change.

 

"D.C. needs a comprehensive music program for every child," Bogash said.

 

Several parents testified that the school system faces strong competition from charter schools, which have an estimated 22,000 students enrolled this year. The key to getting those students back into the school system is to fund the education and music and art programs that parents are looking for, said Sheila Carson Carr, an advisory neighborhood commissioner whose daughter graduated last year from a D.C. public school.

 

"We will keep the students by offering the parents what they want," Carr said.