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

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A press release from local education research and advocacy group DC Voice:

Washington, DC- DC VOICE invites all members of the community to join us for a corner wave celebration and breakfast on Thursday, June 12th to mark the last day of school and issue a call to parents and community members to participate on issues affecting public education. This event will be held at 14th and U Street, NW, from 8 to 9 am. Also making its first appearance will be our new mascot- the DC VOICE ostrich, which symbolizes the need for parents and community members to get their heads out of the sand and become involved in public education.

Ostriches are flightless, run when they are threatened, and bury their heads in the sand. Many feel that the Washington, community has run and hidden enough from their role in improving schools and left the difficult task of reform to the government. But many citizens believe that education reform is not the government’s job alone.

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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.”

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Learn-a-palooza is coming! If you missed its maiden voyage last year, you can check it out Saturday, May 10. It’s a daylong Everything for Dummies workshop fair, where you can learn or teach just about anything. Here are my top five offerings this year:

1. How to Find Gay Men in the City: A Fag Hag’s Guide to DC (5 p.m., Potter’s House, 1658 Columbia Rd. NW)

2. How to Teach Philosophy to 1st - 3rd Grade Students (4 p.m., Potter’s House)

3. How to Get Out of a Speeding Ticket (1 p.m., Affinity Lab, 2451 18th St. NW 2nd Floor)

4. Driving on Waste Veggie Oil (12 p.m., Hoopla DC, 2314 18^th Street NW)

5. Stretching Your Own Canvas (3:30 p.m., D.C. Arts Center, 2438 18^th St. NW)

There are also lots of workshops on eco-living and financial management. Notably absent from the current list are yoga and bike maintenance workshops, which were all but promised in the propaganda and kind of seem like a no-brainer for this kind of DIY anarchist up-with-community blowout. Ten to one they appear on the list before the big day.

There will, however, be workshops for the hipster-challenged on “How to Dance at a Party” and “How to Build a Facebook Application.”

You can sign up on their website to teach a workshop on anything you want. No, really: anything.

Word is the Young Women’s Christian Association’s (YWCA) Gallery Place Fitness and Aquatics Center, located at 624 Ninth Street NW, will be shutting its doors on May 19th. The YWCA of the District of Columbia, which has been in operation since 1905, has run into financial troubles.

According to the organization’s Web site, the mission of the YWCA is ” to eliminate racism and empower women and their families with career education and training, health and wellness, and child and youth development programs that foster independence, economic stability, and overall well-being.”

Though its social programs have often been an integral part of our city, the Capital Area YWCA is perhaps best known for supplying a place for District residents to work out on the cheap.

Besides maintaining a gym and pool, the Gallery Place Fitness and Aquatic Center offers classes like boxing, yoga, and karate. Amanda Anderson, who recently joined the Y so she she could get in shape by swimming laps in its four-lane pool, says she’ll miss the casual atmosphere and friendly people there.

“The place seems to be full of real people,” she says.

A just-penned YWCA press release states that ” An increase in fitness competitors and escalating costs related to pool operations were factors in the closure.”

In 2006 the YWCA formed a task force that sought ways of keeping Gallery Place Fitness and Aquatics Center open and sustainable. “Many of the suggestions were implemented including a modest dues increase, but the bottom line remained in the red,” says the press release.

The good news is, the approximately 1,000 members that have made the gym part of their fitness regimen won’t have to pay for May, and the YWCA is planning on hooking these jilted patrons up with “special rates at other fitness centers in the area.”

—Rend Smith

WTOP is reporting that a few councilmembers are pushing to have defibrillators in the schools. Councilmembers Thomas and Bowser plan to introduce legislation today; they’d like a study on the issue as well. Now let me adopt the thoughts of a hysterical parent:

But just imagine what the kids will do to these machines! Kids could get ahold of these things and shock themselves! It could turn into a new kind of drug! Remember when kids were choking themselves! It was on “Oprah!” This could be a new game! I don’t want my kid on “Oprah!”

Fire extinguishers have long been exploited for hilarity. Fire alarms get punched all the time. What will happen when kids get ahold of the defibrillators? What will happen when teachers refuse to use them on a kid?

*apologies for the terrible headline.

For this week’s Show & Tell, I spoke to a group of local writers, educators, and nonprofit  staffers working to start up a creative writing center for District youth, ages 6 to 18. The 19 volunteers have a lot of ideas for the project, but their Capitol Letters Writing Center is still very much a work-in-progress: Currently, they’ve got no location, no students, and no money. Why don’t we help them out!

Reader: The future of the Capitol Letters Writing Center is in your hands! Help its volunteers decide where to locate their center, what sort of proto-nonprofit optimism Kool-Aid to drink , and whether or not to face their white guilt!

This past Sunday’s New York Times Magazine featured a conversation about education philanthropy with several education and charity experts. Among them was Joel Klein, who has been chancellor of the New York City school system since 2002. Klein also figures prominently in the D.C. education world since he recommended District chancellor Michelle Rhee for her job. Apparently, he’s still standing behind his selection because he mentioned her in the Times piece. The premise of the conversation is to discuss how an ignorant, but benevolent billionaire could properly invest his money in education.

“I would look for the most promising individuals and make heavy investments in them. Let’s say you choose Michelle Rhee, the new schools chancellor in D.C. That school system has long been one of the worst-performing in the country, and Michelle wants to really overhaul it. I think our philanthropist could make an eight-year bet on her. It’s the same kind of thing I would have wanted to have happen to us when we started six years ago in New York. To start, I’d give her a couple of million to do some planning. Then I’d ask her to sit down and show me what strategic investments she thinks a philanthropist could make in D.C. that the system itself, for whatever reason, is not going to make. And I would try to make three or four of these strategic bets around the country, on individuals who I thought had the talent, the longevity and the political support to make significant change feasible.”

Michelle Rhee’s central administration has thus far seemed to operate like a fortress atop a hill. It’s visible to all, but secured. Only certain people can come in and know what’s going on. Time and time again, activists have lined up to protest Rhee’s actions. Still, the inner sanctum is protected. But yesterday came news that a key figure in DCPS has left the building.

The Washington Examiner broke the story: Pamela D. Graham, head of the DCPS budget office, has resigned. D.C. Financial Chief Natwar Gandhi immediately named Noah Wepman, an education program director with city administrator Dan Tangherlini, as a temporary replacement. According to a mid-February brief in the Post, Rhee planned to submit her budget today to Mayor Adrian Fenty. He is then scheduled to submit the budget to the D.C. Council on March 20. I’m sending a request into the Office of the Chief Financial Officer to see if that’s still happening. Stay tuned.

Finally: Foggy Bottom’s answer to Late Night Shots. A trio of sophomores from The George Washington University have created a photo blog dedicated to the G.W. nightlife scene. The G-Scene, run by Josh Sasouness, Torrey Ripinsky, and David Spier, documents G.W. after-hours through candid photography and even more candid sexual innuendo! (Full disclosure: As a G.W. student, I personally delivered David Spier’s laundry to his freshman dorm while working part-time for laundry service Soapy Joe’s).

The site celebrated its kick-off last Thursday with a party at Lotus Lounge. Hey, do you guys think you can use your fake I.D.’s to buy me some beer?

From the editors:

If your picture is not on the site…you are wishing it would be…and if your picture is up on the site…you’re wishing you would have smiled better…or worn more clothes. This site is just a comic strip of the life at GW…if you can’t laugh at that..then you have no sense of humor. Everyone can talk all they want but at the end of the day this site makes celebrities out of kids who think they’re already celebrities. This site is immature, at best, but you know what…you check this site once a day, at least. So who are you kidding?

This message is one part disclaimer, one part humor, one part satire, and one part social commentary, and one part fuck you.

This quote, via The Hatchet, from freshman Lindsey Pace, pretty much sums it up: “To be honest, G-scene is lame,” Pace said on her way into Lotus. “It’s kind of high-school.” (emphasis mine).

Perhaps too often I’ve been an advocate of lax grammatical standards in the format-busting medium of the Web, but my kids still need to learn how to spell. That’s why we want to send them to a better school by means of the Out-of-Boundary application process. Well, if you’re going to be grading my kids, allow me to return the favor…


—Brian Nelson

In this week’s Show & Tell, I profile Moe Harris, international flair bartender and local barkeep molder at Arlington’s Professional Bartending School. Harris is constantly in motion-and usually spinning bottles above his head-but I managed to catch up with him last week at Rhino Bar, where he was competing in the D.C.’s Fastest Bartender Contest. Turns out Harris isn’t just show; he’s also really, really fast.

Harris knows how to throw together any drink you can think of, but his drink of choice is a simple Miller Light. Before the competition, he had a few of those, peeling the labels off the bottles as he drank. He also had a few celebratory shots with his wife, Rhino Bar staff, past students, and fellow flair bartenders. He still won. Harris took first place second at the preliminary trial; catch him at Rhino Bar in the finals on Sunday, March 9.

Now that the school closure hearings are over, what’s an education activist to do? File a lawsuit about the DCPS budget, that’s what. School advocate Marc Borbely and several other parents, activists, and ANC officials are asking Chancellor Michelle Rhee to release her FY09 budget. They say that Rhee is required to make her budget public at each stage of the review process. The first hearing on the budget is set for Tuesday. So far, there’s no budget to look at…so there should be no hearing yet, they’re arguing.

On Monday, a letter was sent to Rhee on behalf of a large group of students, teachers, PTA members, and the like. “We write because we learned on Friday from your chief of staff that you do not expect to submit your proposed budget to the mayor until the end of February or early March,” it says.

The plaintiffs came before a judge this morning, according to Borbely. The judge has not made a decision yet, and the hearing is going to be continued at D.C. Superior Court at 3 p.m. later today, he says.