Last Thursday, Eastern Senior High School’s marching band paraded through the streets of Capitol Hill, west to Lincoln Park and then back on East Capitol Street. There was no actual event going on. The band was just practicing.

“Honestly, we do it a lot,” says staff band leader James Perry. “A lot of the times, the cars don’t mind. We never get any honks. They roll down the window and bop along.”

Although it’s the dead of summer, Eastern’s band convened every weekday last week, according to Perry. The reason: next Saturday, August 2, the group is expected to play in a parade for the Pro Football Hall of Fame Enshrinement Festival in Canton, Ohio.

The key word here is “expected.”

This year, six people will be inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Two of them are known for their time with the Washington Redskins: cornerback Darrell Green, and wide receiver Art Monk.

In April, the Eastern band was contacted by a parade coordinator, and asked to apply “to represent D.C.” as part of the festivities, says Perry. After the group was selected to play in the parade, Eastern students began raising money holding car washes and selling candy in school. The band does not plan to stay over in Canton. They’re just fund-raising for the bus ride, which amounts to $3,900. Roughly 65 to 70 musicians, as well as six dancers and six flag girls, will be going. Each student is responsible for raising $70 for his or her passage, says Perry.

The group was relying on paychecks from students’ jobs with the Department of Employment Services’ Summer Youth Program. But, when the District’s payment system failed, many were left with insufficient funds to cover their shares. As of the last count, the group had $500 total. Read the rest of this entry »

This just in (via e-mail from the NewsHour PR dept.):

Friends,

When we decided to follow rookie superintendent Michelle Rhee one year ago, we had a feeling that we’d have a good story on our hands. After all, 37-year-old Rhee was new to Washington, a Korean-American in a predominantly African-American city who had never been a superintendent before (or even a school principal!).

She was also the 7th leader in 10 years to try and turn around Washington’s failing schools-and she was the first to do so under the charge of the city’s mayor, with no school board to answer to. But even we were surprised at what unfolded as Rhee fired more than 15% of her office staff, removed 36 principals and 22 assistant principals, and announced plans to close 23 underenrolled schools, all before the last day of school.

Now she’s promising to radically change 27 more schools before opening day at the end of August, and finish negotiations with the teachers’ union on a new contract that she says will be unlike anything the country’s seen before.

Tonight on The NewsHour, we’ll sit down with Rhee—and her critics—to reflect on the year.

Thoughts on the other five episodes? Missed ‘em? Find them here.

Yesterday, I joked that Councilmember Tommy Wells appeared to celebrate the death of an elementary school. It was a reference to an item posted on the Ward 6 councilmember’s website.

The Wells’ item detailed the closing of Anthony Bowen Elementary School and the efforts of the school and the community in easing their transition to Amidon Elementary School and Jefferson Junior High. In other words, one school is now being closed and its students are being forced to split into two different schools.

Last Friday, Bowen students and tons of other interested parties marched from their old school to Amidon. The Wells’ item describes the scene this way:

“A crowd of nearly 400 people marched from Bowen to Amidon, with children and adults wearing matching blue and white tee shirts identifying the occasion and major sponsors. Most waved small American flags. Leading the parade, wearing their traditional red and white uniforms and plummed white headdresses was the 12 member 3rd U.S. Army Infantry Regiment (The Old Guard) ‘Fife and Drum Corps.’ based at nearby Fort McNair military base. Officers from the First District MPD escorted the group and provided a safe walking route with traffic controls. While drivers waiting to cross could have been annoyed by the long wait, many drivers were seen smiling at the sight.”

Wells’ office was not happy with my jab and called me to let me know. They saw this scene as an impressive show by a community trying to make the best of a tough deal. The change in schools is going to be difficult but at least everyone seems to be engaged in easing the transition.

But. No parade and free T-shirt is going to answer many of the questions parents may have about their kids’ new school.

Read the rest of this entry »

That they adored Miley Cyrus. Take Exhibit A: a poem by a Merritt Middle School (now-closed) student discovered last Friday. It will soon be entered into the bowels of the Sumner School Museum and Archives.

I Love Hannah Montana

I love Hannah Montana
My favorite episode features her
And her brother Jacksanna
You get the best of both worlds
Because Miley Cyrus get the life of two girls

With Miley around everything’s so silly
Especially when she’s with her best friend Lily
When she’s on the road
It’s all singing and dancing
And when she’s in the house,
She’s smiling and prancing

Read the rest of this entry »

On Friday, I had the opportunity to visit some of the closing DCPS schools. I also had the opportunity to pass by numerous still-open institutions.

And that’s what sort of struck me: just the sheer number of schools and their proximity to each other. People blame the slide in DCPS enrollment on the “charter movement” and changing demographics/population loss in the city. But when I think about all those empty classrooms and half-filled halls, I will also now recall departing Merritt Middle School, immediately passing another elementary school, and then, still mere seconds later, seeing Kelly Miller Middle School. (Map here).

For the record: Merritt kids will actually be heading north to Ron Brown next year. (Map here.)

My first stop of the day, Bowen Elementary School, is similarly close to its recieving school Amidon Elementary School. (Map here.)

Garnet-Patterson Middle School and Shaw Junior High School, which will merge in a few years at the Shaw site, are also within spitting distance of each other. (Map here. Don’t let your eyes follow the map’s directions; the buildings are actually within three blocks of one another.)

Many have pointed out that new school boundaries force together feuding teenage street crews. Much has also been said about the loss of schools as neighborhood institutions, gathering points, and tradition cultivators and holders. But if you look at the reality, blending schools are often already in the same small vicinity.

New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine is expected to announce today that Clifford Janey is his pick for the Newark School District “after months of meetings and at least a dozen interviews with prospective candidates,” according to the Star-Ledger. The district has been under state control since ‘95 and Janey will have to be approved by the New Jersey Board of Education.

The scuttle in Jersey about Janey’s time at DCPS is he received “mixed reviews” here. We’d like to say something snarky about that, but it’s about right, according to fomer LL James Jones, a close watcher of Janey’s over the years. This, from his “Requiem to a Superintendent” item:

Janey seems like a pretty nice guy. What he lacks in inspired rhetoric, he makes up for with clear-spoken luminosity. At least that’s what the city’s political class pointed out when he was hired about two years ago. Back then, you would have thought D.C. was about to get a taste of school-reform royalty, even if he wasn’t the first choice for the job.

Shortly after Janey’s hiring, the previous mayor, activists, and the D.C. Council delivered a united message: Give this guy a chance. Don’t run him out of town like other school reformers who tried to fix the city’s schools.

Just this past December, when Janey delivered the first-ever State of the D.C. Schools speech, he was greeted by a standing ovation. Even then Mayor-elect Adrian Fenty—who was already crafting a bill to take over the schools—rose to his feet.

But judging from the key defections from his inner circle and his abandonment by the city’s political leadership, Janey suddenly looks like yesterday’s hero.

Janey’s coffin nail, according to LL, was a lack of patience. Funny, that, when the oft-heard gripe about Michelle Rhee is she moves too fast. Will you people never be happy?

(photograph by Darrow Montgomery)

Ballou Senior High’s graduation ceremony for the Class of ‘08 was held last night on the football field. It was scheduled to start at 5 p.m. The start time got delayed by an hour. This meant a roughly three hour endurance test for mothers, grandmothers, brothers, sisters, cousins, etc. who had to sit on the metal bleachers and bake in the still-way-too-hot sun.

One relative of a graduate left before the ceremony started, hollering to a friend: “I’m the only motherfucker in a uniform” as she walked across the parking lot to the exits. I felt sorry for her. She was in black pants and a white shirt. She looked angry hot.

Another woman–who looked like someone’s awesome grandmother–wrapped head and neck in a towel and complained that she would definitely need a shower after the commencement was over. She said she had already taken four showers that day.

The lucky and the smart brought umbrellas and water. I did see a man cart a bunch of water bottles but where those bottles ended up I’m not sure. If there were free waters, they didn’t reach the top rows of the bleachers.

The only readily available water came from two men selling bottles out of a cooler in the parking lot. A dollar got you a bottle. The man with the wad of bills explained that he is a father just not a father of a Ballou student. He says he would be donating the cash to Ballou’s athletic department. But quickly told me he didn’t want to be interviewed and exploit his great deed for publicity.

For those that didn’t faint, didn’t visit the nurse stationed nearby, didn’t beg the cops to let them in their air-conditioned cruiser parked in the lot, they got to see a pretty moving graduation. The best speech by far: Principal Karen D. Smith’s hilarious send off. It was very clear that she knew these students well and that it was only in good humor that she expressed relief that they would be leaving Ballou.

And there was Barry. Maybe it was the sun that did him in. He did have to sit a good long while before he got his turn at the podium. He awarded the valedictorian a check for $1500. For the runner-up, he told the crowd, he had a check for “$750,000.” The crowd woke up for that. Barry didn’t bother correcting himself.

On a side note, Councilmember Barry: Please never again refer to your prize money as “Benjamins.”

At 9 a.m., Hart’s graduating 8th grade class of 2008 gathered in the hallways leading to the school’s small auditorium. Wearing their Sunday best, students snapped photos of each other, hugged their favorite teachers and generally basked in the one commodity the hallways had over the auditorium: air conditioning.

If the scene was chaotic, if the ceremony blew past its 9 a.m. start time, you could forgive the students and their parents for wanting to linger in the AC. The cool hallways were the only evidence of buff-and-scrub, Michelle Rhee’s shiny optimism and blunt accountability, and Mayor Fenty’s stubborn focus. Everything else about Hart’s graduation was depressingly old school.

As parents walked into the auditorium, they were handed a program. The program’s cover bore a picture of a gold cap, a crisp rolled-up diploma, two white rosees, and a quote—”Success Is Determined by the Choices You Make.” It all suggested Hart had its act together for at least the moment it took to design and print the program. After the processional, parents and students settled into the stifling room. And several things became immediately clear:

*There were not enough seats for everyone.

*Hart’s P.A. system might have been considered high-tech in the ’60s.

*It was too damn hot.

*The scheduled program that parents were now using as a fan wasn’t exactly an indicator of how things were going to go.

*It was too damn hot.

Audience members could hear every third word. If you were inclined to be against prayer in school, it was hard to muster any anger at hearing the opening benediction rendered as sort of oral Mad Libs in which sentences ended in muffled blanks and verbs and nouns were left up to you.

Soon enough, Ward 8 Councilmember-for-Life Marion S. Barry Jr. skipped possibly six places in the program to give a quick off-the-cuff speech that swerved between confessing his own missteps and encouraging the audience to call Fenty about the busted AC. At one point, he labored through a call-and-response with the crowd— getting them to shout back the 727 number they were supposed to dial to register their beef with the heat.

The P.A. was no help to the aging politico. Only phrases could be easily heard: “Work for it,” “But I got up,” and then the rousing finale: “Respect each other. Love each other. So I can’t stay long.”

Read the rest of this entry »

At Hart Middle School, the eight-graders went through their graduation rehearsal today. The rest of the day was spent on fighting and just hanging out. A bunch of cops–more than a half dozen–were stationed a half block away. Earlier today, there had been a huge off-campus fight.

When I asked the cops about the ruckus, they just muttered something about gangs as if it were the most boring subject in the world.

By 1 p.m., a few kids chose to kill the rest of the afternoon by sitting on Hart’s front steps. Best putdown overheard: “You are the dumbest kid that’s graduating.” The kid didn’t have much of a response. He actually seemed to agree with his friend’s assessment.