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Native Intelligence
	Is the school board on its way out? (Published February 10, 2003) By DIANA WINTHROP

It is hardly a surprise that, after four years in office, Mayor Anthony Williams continues to display indecision regarding key appointments in his administration and to the Board of Education.

During regular press briefings, mayoral spokesman Tony Bullock has routinely been asked when the mayor plans to make his appointments. Bullock, who sounds slightly irritated and a wee bit defensive at the repetitiveness of the questions, says: "The mayor is reviewing the appointments" or "The appointees will continue as holdovers until decisions are made" or - my all-time favorite response - "The mayor can make the decisions when he is ready to make them."

Those responses do not speak well of a mayor who promised to do better in his second term and whose commitment to choose the "best" has been marred by a laundry list of appointees who lied on their resume, were political hacks or were just outright incompetent.

Most media attention has focused on the mayor's alleged appointment-related retaliation against members of the Board of Elections and Ethics, which ruled against his campaign in last fall's petition-forgery scandal, slapped him with a huge fine and, generally, made Williams look like a buffoon.

His indecision is even more interesting in the case of two distinguished scholars whom he selected to serve on the part-elected, part-appointed Board of Education.

Professor Roger Wilkins is the better known of the two, outside academic circles. He is the legendary civil rights activist and Pulitzer prize winning journalist, as well as a professor of history and American culture at George Mason University.

His school board colleague, Professor Charles Lawrence, is a well-known scholar and academic who teaches law at Georgetown University. Lawrence brings special insight to the board, through his experience as principal of an alternative elementary school in Boston's Roxbury neighborhood and, in sharp contrast to the other school board members, he is the only member who has children attending a D.C. public school. Even more important, Lawrence is not a rubber stamp for the mayor and has been known as one of Williams' harshest, though eloquent, critics on education issues.

Both of these individuals are a testimony to excellence and integrity in political appointments. These are men who the mayor should use as a standard when choosing all of his appointees.

While their appointments expired in December, the mayor's press spokesman seems oblivious to the mayor's tardiness in re-appointing or replacing them - even though education and literacy were touted by the mayor in his inaugural speech as the centerpiece of his second term.

The mayor's spokesman also didn't seem aware that Wilkins has written a letter to the mayor, asking not to be reappointed to the school board for a second term.

Wilkins told me that, at age 71, his commitment to children and education has not wavered. "Education is the central civil rights issue," Wilkins asserts, and he says the lack of a good education "destroys life's chances for thousands of children in this country."

As a D.C. resident who has dedicated his life to public service, Wilkins deserves the time he's requested to smell a few roses and, as he says, "examine my life and what I want to do with the dwindling amount I have left."

But sources tell me that Wilkins really doesn't want to serve on the school board without Professor Lawrence, who the mayor reportedly wants gone.

Despite the lofty credentials of both men, I'm not surprised. The mayor is not known as a man who handles criticism well. And Lawrence will not accept re-appointment unless he can have the job on his own terms. Lawrence wants the mayor to stop raiding the school budget, and to stop politicizing and micromanaging the school system.

Don't be surprised if Williams, with a straight face, uses the board positions as political payback, as he has many times with other positions. The mayor may even be readying a proposal to abolish the school board altogether - which voters made possible, without further public input, when they approved a home rule charter change three years ago that authorizes the city council to eliminate the school board as soon as 2004.

Does anyone doubt that the council, which has used the school board as a political whipping boy for years, will gladly rush to approve the board's demise?

***

It is virtually impossible not to mention the Washington Teachers Union (WTU) scandal when discussing the mayor and education these days.

Much media attention has been focused on the mayor's connection to Gwendolyn Hemphill, the mayor's re-election campaign co-chairman who served as assistant to former WTU President Barbara Bullock, and her husband Larry, who recently left his employment in the Executive Office of the Mayor when questions were raised about his knowledge of items inside his home that were paid for with WTU funds.

But less attention has been paid to an important change that occurred under the mayor's tenure in the governmental entity responsible for negotiating with the teachers' union. The mayor's office became the city's principal negotiator, replacing the school board and raising even more questions about the relationship between the mayor and former WTU representatives who are now under federal investigation for fraudulent financial transactions.

According to individuals investigating the money laundering and misuse of union funds, the financing of the mayor's referendum campaign in 2000 to change the structure of the formerly all-elected school board also is being reviewed.

***

It is even tougher not to mention the D.C. Democratic State Committee and its embattled chairman, Norm Neverson, when discussing the mayor, education and the WTU. A former teacher himself, Neverson is a longtime friend of Hemphill, who stepped down as executive director of the local Democratic Party as a result of the WTU scandal. Hemphill's lavish welcoming party for the mayor's chief of staff, Kelvin Robinson, is now among the expenses that investigators, reviewing the union's financial records, believe were improperly charged to the WTU. Robinson reportedly has said he had no idea who was paying for the party.

Neverson now is being criticized in some quarters for failing, when he had the opportunity at the Democratic State Committee's February meeting, to urge every state committee member who received money in any form from Hemphill to voluntarily talk to the FBI and other investigators reviewing the union's finances.

***

While the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) has taken over the day-to-day operations of the WTU, there are D.C. teachers who still complain that the national union is to blame for some of their problems.

By now most people know the financial problems of the WTU were not unknown to the national AFT board, which, some critics charge, ignored the problems. Some D.C. teachers continue to quietly look into decertification of the WTU in favor of switching to representation by the much larger National Education Association. Most of these teachers, I'm told, are not anti-union but, in fact, big union advocates who feel the AFT should not continue to be rewarded with dues from the local after failing to protect D.C. teachers.