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EDITORIAL
Looking ahead
(Published December 1, 2003)

As a presidential election year, 2004 will again give D.C. residents an opportunity to showcase their status as second-class citizens to a national audience. But protests and gimmicks alone – as the past has shown – will not win the hearts and minds of fellow Americans, who largely see Washington, D.C., as a collection of monuments rather than a city of neighborhoods.

It’s an image of Washington that will not change unless the city’s political establishment, business community and residents get on the same page by uniting behind one vision for the city’s future.

Unfortunately, political and business leaders often unite against longtime D.C. residents to push their own self-serving, heavily promoted agendas, which seldom enrich more than a relatively few residents while costing the taxpayers dearly.

It’s a scenario that must change if Washington is ever going to become a truly livable, world-class capital city. The people of D.C. need to take charge of their own future.

Empowering the public starts with education and requires energy.

More citizen involvement – not less, as envisioned in the mayor’s proposal to take control – is needed to fix the District’s ailing schools. The public schools should be focused on producing active citizens who can be gainfully employed in their community to become part of the solution to the city’s many problems. That should require a diploma, not a degree – if the mayor and city council would start fulfilling their responsibility to foster a self-sustaining community that offers residents jobs, affordable housing and a safe environment in which to raise a family when they graduate from high school.

One incentive for qualified residents to seek elected positions on the Board of Education would be to restore the pay cut that the now-defunct financial control board imposed on the school board several years ago. How many residents can afford the time to serve on the school board for a measly $15,000 a year? If education is so important, then why is there such a disparity between school board salaries and the $100,000-plus being taken home annually by just about every Tom, Dick and Sally who holds a patronage position in the mayor’s administration?

Vesting proper authority in an elected Board of Education also would increase the incentive for serving on the board. An elected school board should not need to answer to anyone except the voters, though the current board must beg its funding from the council, the mayor and Congress. The school board needs a dedicated source of funding, beyond the residential property tax that Ward 2 Councilman Jack Evans recently proposed. Dedicating both residential and commercial real estate taxes to fund the public schools could result in two ancillary public benefits: (1) allowing the current tax rate to be reduced and (2) requiring the rest of the D.C. government to tighten its belt.

D.C. public schools should be a focal point for community purposes beyond the book-learning that happens during the day. They should be teeming with school events and neighborhood activities at night and on weekends – just as schools do in other communities. With proper funding for required personnel, schools could be the neighborhood gathering places that D.C. residents of all ages need to organize for the more effective exercise of their rights.