The rhetoric surrounding Mayor Anthony A. Williams’ proposal to take over control of D.C. Public Schools has become quite disturbing.

While the mayor trumpets "a real sense that momentum is going our way" behind his proposal, based largely on the business community’s support, all of the major organizations of parents who have children enrolled in the city’s public schools say they oppose the mayor’s plan.

There’s something wrong here.

There’s a lot wrong here.

And the major newspapers in this city, having editorially hitched themselves to the bandwagon that’s pushing elimination of the elected school board, haven’t even bothered to tell their readers what the children’s parents are saying.

Mayor Williams, who has repeatedly pledged to help this city’s children, gave us pause last week when he visited Ballou Senior High School students during the school day in what his office promoted as a "photo op." A press release issued Jan. 10 by the mayor’s office described the event as "the first in a series of visits of District schools over the next several weeks to promote the mayor’s school reform initiative."

The mayor should be ashamed of himself for interrupting educational instruction for political purposes. We hope this isn’t an example of what we can expect if the mayor were running the schools.

The business community’s alleged support for the mayor’s plan is curious, to say the least. The D.C. Chamber of Commerce, which trotted out new president Elizabeth Lisboa-Farrow to be part of the mayor’s announcement and then almost immediately issued a press release supporting the mayor’s plan, hasn’t bothered to poll its membership on this matter before speaking in their name (we know — we’re a member). And the Greater Washington Board of Trade, with its largely suburban membership, should hardly carry great weight in matters of local D.C. governance.

We have serious questions about the propriety of the business community weighing in at all on matters of school governance. The business community really has no business telling D.C. residents whether an elected or appointed board – or the mayor — should run their children’s public schools.

The business community does have a legitimate interest in whether those schools produce an educated and educable workforce. Many millions of Americans who fit that bill have graduated from public schools under the control of elected school boards. There’s no good reason it can’t happen here.

So what’s really going on here?

Big-time politics and profits. It’s not about the children.

It’s about power and control, not accountability.

We suspect some members of the business community are already jockeying to be in the right position during the next several years when millions of dollars worth of construction contracts get handed out — for fixing deteriorated school buildings and for building the new schools now in the initial planning stages.

There’s a lot of money to be made in those deals.

The children? Yeah, tell us it’s about the children.

Copyright 2000, The Common Denominator