(Life) Lessons And Tests From A First-Year Teacher is confused about what to do when a student bites them: "Today i was bit by one of my students...it was sort of inevitable, but damn, hurt nonetheless. and with the classroom not being my own, with few structures in place, i'm not quite sure what to do about it--i'm not sure that the teacher even knew it happened; i didn't want to make it even worse (he wound up biting someone higher up on the pecking order of the summer institute right after, so that sparked a lot of attention)..."

Read More "Our Morning Roundup: Where Is Pickles?" »

In case you missed it: here's all you need to know about yesterday morning's federal court hearing on CFSA: In CFSA Case, Nickles Plays Defense; Judge Hogan Critical Of CFSA Director Selection Process.

Dee Does the District decides to not open up about getting terminated by DCPS. But this doesn't stop her from opening up about getting terminated by DCPS:

"I’ve decided to forego a big post in regards to my termination due to pending legal action and for my own personal privacy. Although I am deeply disappointed and incensed by the sweeping terminations, I feel relieved in a sense to be out of this broken system. I already have a number of upcoming interviews lined up at charters and in Northern Virginia and I’m looking forward to moving on to a school to values me and treats me like a human being."

Read More "Our Morning Roundup: Goodbye Used Car Lots" »

It's high school graduation season here in the nation's capital which means two things: ridiculous crowds outside Constitution Hall all day, every day; and the publication of Education Week's graduation issue.  It's the latter that is causing greater concern because contained in the June 11 edition are the results of the magazine's ten-year analysis of public high school graduation rates across the country.  And unfortunately, D.C. Public Schools ranked 50th out of 51 states and territories.  According to the poll, 48.8 percent of public school students in the city graduated in 2006.  So what do we do now?

Read More "Are D.C. Public Schools a Lost Cause?" »

The Anti-Real World DC blog is gonna have to do better than this post:

"Deja vu? More like deja poo. See, I've already lived in a city that had a Real World house. I've already had to deal with reengineering my social life around 7 douchebags who fail to represent anything more than the sad part of America that can't figure out how to have a life that isn't documented for other peole who can't figure out how to have a life. Was it frustrating? Absolutely. Annoying? Oh yeah. Did it improve or destroy my life and/or city? Nawwww. The last time I lived in a city with a RW house (I can't believe I have a "last time," it's so sad), the house was on the otherside of the city from me and the most imposition I had was having to go to a different Starbucks a few time..."

Your indifference will not sustain your blog. Good luck.

Read More "Our Morning Roundup: Real World D.C. Edition" »

Young & Hungry gets Carole Greenwood to open up on her post-Comet-post-Buck's future. Seriously did every blog post need to describe her as bitchy? It sounds like she has a lot on her plate. Pun intended!

Written in Caps lists the five worst things about living in D.C. On the list: noise, crowds, traffic, garbage, and "personal detachment." So what makes these things different than every other big city? I'll add one specific D.C. thing to the list: the coffee shops here that close at 8 (I'm talking to you Sticky Fingers). It's summer. Stay open late. Jeez.

Read More "Our Morning Roundup: Last Days Of School Edition" »

Why.I.Hate.DC hates on crime:

"Memo to everyone: DC is not a safe place. That home that sold at 14th and Fairmont for $499,999 was not a good deal. In all of these recent shootings, and Oh, I forgot about the murder outside the Mt. Vernon Square metro--the police have been close enough to hear the shots and respond immediately. Still no arrests in any of these homicides. I'm not about to criticize the officers on the scene, but clearly there is a failing at some level of administration here. Obviously. You don't need someone who rarely updates a blog to tell you that.

My speculation is that things are only going to get worse as summer drags on, with the economy still in the pisser, and gang rivalry flaring up. You can tell me that violent crime is down and all of that (and maybe it is), but we'll see how those statistics work out once it's August. I've lived here long enough (in the grand scheme of things, not very long) to know that we haven't done anything magical to put a lid on crime in DC."

In case you don't trust bloggers who rarely update their blogs, how about the latest crime news from Borderstan. Crime is all the blog appears to be reporting on lately. And while we're hating on ourselves, 14th & You would like cleaner streets like they have in London.

Read More "Our Morning Roundup: Angst Edition" »

D.C. Public Schools students are used to doing without certain resources, but students at Bell Multicultural High School and Lincoln Middle School yesterday did without a rather essential one: water. A water line break left the schools with minimal running water starting in the mid-morning. Students were kept in class during the outage.

The two schools, together the "Columbia Heights Education Campus," are among the newest facilities in the school system. Without working toilets, students were escorted by administrators, teachers, and security guards to use restrooms at the nearby Target and Capital City Charter School.

Candi Peterson, a school counselor (not at Bell or Lincoln) and union activist, blogged about the incident this morning, and Jennifer Calloway, a DCPS spokesperson, confirms this afternoon that there was a "major inconvenience" for the schools.

Calloway explains in an e-mail that "protecting valuable instruction time and the lack of notice for parents to arrange alternative childcare prompted our decision to keep school open." Everything, she reports, is back to normal today.

Peterson complains that "[d]espite not having...optimal sanitary conditions, lunch was still served to students on schedule which was a cause for alarm for some especially given recent outbreaks of the swine flu and other potential viruses." Calloway says that because "food was already prepared before the water was turned off, sanitation protocol was not affected."

"Our first priority," she writes, "is always the safety and well-being of our students."

On Friday, I attended Positive Nature's organized conference on vulnerable children and families. The event, held among several conference rooms at the convention center, was also put together with the Department of Mental Health and the DC Children & Youth Investment Trust Corporation. The bigwigs from CFSA, DMH, DYRS and DCPS showed up and gave upbeat speeches.

The speeches may constitute wishful thinking considering that these agencies are under the microscope either by Colbert King or the courts. The court monitor's report issued last week on CFSA was not pretty. Judging from the breakout sessions, social workers and advocates have a lot to learn from the children they are paid to protect and nurture.

Read More "Children Speak Out On CFSA, DCPS" »

In case you missed it: the latest court hearing in the CFSA case is going on in U.S. District Court this morning. Here's a preview from youth advocates...

We're Not In New Hampshire Anymore questions these new neighborhood names popping up on Craigslist and elsewhere: "Scanning Craigslist for an apartment today, I ran into this listing.  SOFLO, for south of Florida Ave?  After NoMa and Tivoli Heights and the Atlas District and Borderstan and the whole shebang?  Please."

The 42 has pictures from last Saturday's farmer's market in Mount P---the first of the season. We hear that the market was oddly heavy on meats and potted plants/herbs and light on produce.

The New Teacher on the Block has a great rant titled "DCPS Bus Attendants Need To Get Their S**t Together."

And Now, Anacostia praises some demolition of a vacant apartment building on Galen Street.

Pop Cesspool says black Play-Doh will make you feel really alone. Picture is priceless.

So comes the news of a second charter school closing--this time MEI Futures Academy. The school which offers room and board and schooling for teen mothers during the week has had its licensed revoked by the school board and will close in June. The school isn't quite two years old.  Two nights ago, the charter board brought down its ax.

The Post's Bill Turque broke the story. (He gets my vote as one of the top beat reporters in the city). Turque wrote that MEI, located in the Lamont Riggs neighborhood, failed at all levels:

"A boarding and day school for teen mothers ages 14 to 21 with a pre-K and kindergarten program for children three to five, MEI had struggled to establish an acceptable curriculum, officials said, adding that none of its high school students were on track for a diploma. Last year, not one of the 15 tenth graders who took the DC-CAS standardized test achieved proficiency levels in either reading or math. Enrollment has dwindled to just 31 students from 66 in fall 2007."

Letitia Dowling, MEI's principal, talked to City Desk this afternoon. Dowling was installed as principal after an administration shakeup in February. But by then, the revocation process had begun. She didn't have much of a chance to turn things around.

Read More "Charter School Board Needs To Deal With At-Risk Youths" »

In early December, AG Peter Nickles decided to pick a fight with an attorney handling a special education case. Nickles's office filed a lawsuit against the attorney after the man had filed a claim for his attorney's fees. Here's what we wrote in December:

Attorney John A. Straus had the audacity to ask for his legal fees to be paid. The Straus legal narrative went like this: In the summer, he wanted a psych evaluation for one of his clients. The District granted that his client could get a private evaluation and that the city would pay for it. In it’s letter, the District left out the part about paying Straus’ attorney’s fees. So Straus filed a due-process complaint.

This was enough to tick off Nickles. So he sued Straus over attorney's fees the city incurred while handling his complaint. Nickles told the Post this lawsuit “is likely the first in a series of actions to push back against what he described as a ‘very aggressive plaintiff’s bar’ in the District that has flooded the system with special education actions.”

Now, a federal judge has ruled against Nickles. According to the Examiner, U.S. District Court Judge Richard Roberts tossed out Nickles lawsuit and rebuked him in his written opinion:

“It is beyond ironic that D.C.’s attorney general complains with great flourish ... about lawyers who help parents secure disabled children’s rights, when his client, the [schools] has been found repeatedly in this court to have violated the children’s rights,” Roberts wrote in a footnote to the 10-page decision. “It is particularly unclear how the attorney general’s choice to sue in federal court ... and not sue in the more streamlined and far less costly small claims branch of our D.C. Superior Court furthers his interest in saving taxpayer money.”

Maybe Nickles will think twice about going after special-ed lawyers. He might want to help fix DCPS first.

This morning, LL was all over Fenty's announced District gov job cuts. Our aggressive political scribe reported: "Of the remaining 776 employees the mayor is proposing to lay off, 250 are in DCPS—mostly teachers aides and support staff, Tangherlini says." This may not seem like scary news, but it is.

I know what your thinking: teachers aides and support staff seem like easy cuts. What the hell do teacher aides do? What does support staff mean? Let me guess what they do: they help handle over-crowded classrooms, offer tutoring, lesson planning and generally help teachers get through the day. I'm not sure about support staff. But it could mean social workers, guidance counselors, secretaries, and librarians.

Do we really want to cut funding for these jobs? These cuts are coming on the heels of all those school closures last year. Catania made the argument today on the Politics Hour that enrollment is down at DCPS and that more and more kids are going into charter schools. But for every successful charter school, there are stories like City Lights Public Charter which recently had to close its doors before the school year even finished.

Read More "Fenty’s Proposed Layoffs Should Avoid DCPS" »

The New Teacher On The Block was really pissed off that Fenty kept the schools open yesterday. Apparently, the mayor didn't factor in the slippery streets and that kids will use any excuse to play hooky (see the drop-out rate):

"I mean, I was slipping and sliding on 395 this morning, for goodness sakes. Once I got to the neighborhood street next to my school, I slid all the way up the road. NONE of my students showed up today. 1 of Ms. P's kids came, and we dually hosted 5 kids in her classrom, because almost all the teachers were out as well (read: both pre-k teachers, the kindergarten teacher, both 1st grade teachers, both 2nd grade teachers, both 3rd grade teachers, 1 4th grade teacher, and 1 fifth grade teacher)."

Dee Does the District, another teacher/blogger, agrees that opening the schools yesterday was a stupid move.

Read More "Our Morning Roundup: Teachers Hate Snow Edition" »

The teacher's lounge has turned into a showroom. Everything wears a Post-It with a price in blue ink. The conference table is selling for $150. The fridge is going for $50. The microwave is a steal at $5. Today is the last day for the City Lights Public Charter School.

Everything must go. Including that microwave.

"This stuff needs a home," explains operations manager Nick Battle. "Everything is at a good deal."

In late January, City Lights, a school for at-risk youth, announced it was closing. There were problems with enrollment and with funding. Now, all the kids have moved on to other schools. All that's left are a few teachers, Battle, the school's principal, and the beloved cook to sort through what's trash, what should be donated to other schools, and what can be sold.

In the hallway by the entrance, there is a box of locks. In the main office, there are more boxes. One box contains extension cords and a modem. In a nearby classroom, empty binders are stacked in threes. Principal Brenda Richards arrived at 9:30 a.m.

There were donuts.

"There's no money for a goodbye party," Richards says, sitting in the main office (she doesn't seem to have an office anymore). It's close to 11 a.m. "That was it---donuts."

Read More "The Last Morning At City Lights Public Charter School" »