“Stop the bus. The citizens are not on board,” says Jackie Pinckney-Hackett, a D.C. parent and one of one of eight plaintiffs seeking simple transparency from their secretive, govern-by-the-seat-of-your-running-shorts executive.
“This administration [of D.C. Mayor Adrian M. Fenty] is as transparent as black construction paper. However, it is clear that there are no plans for any meaningful parent, community or council involvement,” Mrs. Pinckney-Hackett wrote in a letter to the D.C. Council on Friday.
Along with the other plaintiffs representing themselves without counsel, she is appealing last week”s ruling by a D.C. Superior Court judge that upholds the legal right of Mr. Fenty and Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee, under the council-sanctioned school takeover plan, to withhold the school systems’ proposed budget until the document is presented to the council later this month.
Along with this unconscionable lack of disclosure is a proposal by Mrs. Rhee to close 23 schools, reorganize 27 others and turn over who knows how many to private management companies.
Meanwhile, Mrs. Pinckney-Hackett is imploring the council, which has been acting like a doormat after a snowstorm for Gen. Greenhorn”s muddy boots, to “do some sort of emergency legislation to restore the information previously made public to parents and the public regarding the budget process.”
Since firing off her missive to 13 council members, she has received only one response, and that was from Marion Barry.
In court testimony last week, Mr. Barry, Ward 8 Democrat, agreed with the frustrated plaintiffs that by the time the mayor”s budget gets to the council, it will be too late for parents, advocates and taxpayers to effect major changes.
“What parent wants to find out that things have been cut at their school at the council level? It”s like getting down midstream and trying to double back,” Mrs. Pinckney-Hackett said yesterday of the new budget process, which denies parents “meaningful participation.”
“This is something that really requires a judicial order; it should be something [the mayor and chancellor] want to give us,” she said.
Indeed. Government representatives are obligated to be open, honest and forthright. Every taxpayer, parent or not, has the right to ask and be informed how, why, where and by whom their money is being spent, especially in this era of privatization of government services with its inherent potential for misfeasance and corruption.
When the D.C. government has a weak oversight body — on which the mayor once served, and a questionable chief financial officer with unveiled shortcomings that allowed an estimated $50 million to be stolen under their noses for decades — it behooves all elected officials and bureaucrats to disclose as much as possible as often as possible.
How else to restore taxpayers’ confidence in the city”s financial operations than through increased transparency and due diligence? “What”s the big secret?” Mrs. Pinckney-Hackett asked of the mayor, whom she accused of “running a dictatorship, and we”re just here.” Under court order, the chancellor, through city attorneys, provided three pages listing initiatives for consideration but with no dollar estimates, Mrs. Pinckney-Hackett said.
In the past, the elected school board held public hearings about the proposed budget, detailed down to line items, before it was submitted to the executive and legislative branches for overall approval.
The mayor and council historically balked at that process and complained about their inability to micromanage the system”s coffers, even as their constituents held them accountable for the state of the city’s schools.
An early morning pseudo-hearing that lasted less than half an hour was held last month at hard-to-get-to H.D. Woodson High School in far Northeast.
The mayor and the deputy mayor for education, Victor A. Reinoso, listened to the testimony of nine witnesses, including Mrs. Pinckney-Hackett, but failed to provide any budget literature or engage in “two-way communication.” They also failed to accommodate working parents.
“It was just another dog-and-pony show. … While people were testifying, I watched Fenty and Reinoso talking to each other like they were two little boys in a classroom.”
It should be noted that Mrs. Pinckney-Hackett was the director of the office of parent and community involvement in the office of the deputy mayor for education before that position and others were cut. Now, she is a full-time education advocate.
We don”t know what this wacky reorganization will wreak, but D.C. taxpayers are discovering how much this mayoral takeover is costing them in dollars as well as in participation by the day.
“It”s like a bus without brakes that will keep going until it hits a dead end, but when it hits a dead end, how many more casualties will it have?” she asked.
The plaintiffs are awaiting a response to their appeal for city lawyers. She said the judge encouraged them to appeal because there are so many gray areas in the new law that they should bring “to the attention of the council for correction or amendment.”
“Even if the law is unclear, the mayor should be clear,” Mrs. Pinckney-Hackett said.
D.C. leaders appear to have forgotten that provisions in the federal No Child Left Behind Act require them to engage parents.
As Mrs. Pinckney-Hackett wrote: “If a result of this change in governance structure means parents and the community are not receiving the information previously made public, then, Houston, we have a problem.”
Certainly, the council’s intentions were not to diminish parent, community or council involvement in public education. Less is not more.
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