DC Schools should make everyone mad

Well, here we are weeks from another school year beginning, and the Washington Post reports that, just like this time every year, DC schools – which get about 20% of their funding from federal revenues; re:your tax receipts – aren’t ready to teach students;

One month before school starts, District officials said yesterday that half of D.C. public schools do not have all their required textbooks and half of the school buildings will not have any air conditioning on the first day of school — conditions as traditional in the city as back-to-school shopping for a new box of crayons.

Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee said an investigation found that some schools received incorrect book shipments and others have not received any books.

An investigation? You need an investigation to know you received the wrong (or no) textbooks? I’ll bet you needed some rocket scientist to investigate, too.

At a news conference yesterday, Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D) promised that this would be the last year of such textbook debacles and said the city is updating school heating and air-conditioning systems.

Different mayor, same old story. Fenty took control of the DC school system last Spring promising this stuff would come to an end. Yet, here we are.

During the meeting with reporters, beads of sweat formed on Fenty’s head and dripped onto his suit jacket as he stood in a Head Start classroom at Davis Elementary School in Southeast Washington. The room, where a wad of bright pink bubble gum decorated a ceiling covered by peeling paint, was one of five classrooms with air conditioning out of 40 in the 64-year-old building, Principal Joyce Thompson said.

So what has the school district been doing all summer?

The District spends about $12,000 per student (about 1/4 is from federal spending). Hell, for that much money, they should just forego educating kids and just start paying them $5.77/hour to sit at home and watch TV ($12,000 works out to $5.77/hour for 52 weeks and a 40 hour work week).

Since truancy is a big problem in DC schools (25% of students are absent without an excuse 20 days or more a year) you might as well just pay them to stay home. Apparently, the schools don’t care about the students, the parents don’t care, the city doesn’t care. Maybe it’s time for the American taxpayer to demand accountability from the District since it’s us throwing our money down a black hole that turns out illiterate pinheads at $144,000 a pop.

We’d better do something quick, the Washington Examiner says that $200 million bucks isn’t enough to rebuild the school system’s infrastructure, according to Fenty – that’s another $3100/student.

David Lipscomb at the Washington Times reports that things are worse than in a third world country;

The problem was discovered last week and probably will not be fixed before the start of school on Aug. 27, said Miss Rhee, adding that the extent of the mistakes will be known within a week.

Getting textbooks on time has historically been a problem in the District, one which Miss Rhee’s predecessor, Superintendent Clifford B. Janey, tried to prevent by installing a $3 million automated validation system.

Additionally, Miss Rhee has issued a hiring freeze in the school system’s central office while the office is “streamlined.” Miss Rhee cited the need to outline job responsibilities after several employees could not tell her their job descriptions.

“The vast majority of answers I got was ‘I do whatever Mr. So-and-so tells me to do,’ ” Miss Rhee said. “There’s not a clear sense of the individual personal responsibilities for ensuring specific outcomes.”

$3 million for a tracking system that doesn’t track – school district employees that don’t know their job’s description. Yeah, I know alot of you just shrigged and said to yourselves, “Well, that’s government.” It’s time we stopped shrugging and making excuses and started storming the schools.

The problems of this country stem from our poor and degraded schools – and the administrators who syphon every penny for more administration instead of spending money on education. I’ll bet you cash money that Clifford Janey wouldn’t spend three million bucks to organize his own home – yet, instead of making people do their jobs, he bought a machine and a system that’s apparently as useless as the people he hired.

That’s the problem – Americans used to resist technology as a solution to every problem. Now we’re just too lazy to resist – and we blame technology for our own sloth and incompetence. Maybe if we made people earn their damn salaries instead of letting them making lame excuses about damned technology.

Category: Economy, Politics, Society