so if rhee is sending her older kid to deal

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:00:55: Thanks, impressive.

What do you think attracts so many OA rising high schoolers to Walls rather than Wilson? Is it that Walls allows them to continue their studies in Spanish at GW? (I'm guessing that Wilson can not accommodate Spanish studies at that level.)

:055 here. I think most of the kids *are* going to Wilson. However, the kids who stayed through the middle school are a pretty tight knit bunch: particularly the prek - 8 group. So in some ways, there may be a bit of group-think. Also remember that this is a group that has chosen a small school environment over the much larger environment at Deal, so Walls is particularly attractive. All anecdotal. Naturally.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:. . . . Fenty isn't as economically and administratively incompetent as Marion Barry was, but he is every bit as corrupt. Gray at least is aboveboard. God I miss Tony Williams.

LOL. Harry Thomas? Chris Smith? Eric Payne? Any of these names ring a bell? (If not, try Google.) Gray's managed to jam quite a bit of Barry-esque sleaze into his relatively short time on the Council. These guys are both "ethically challenged" -- that's no reason to pick between them. But pick Gray and you lose not just Rhee, but superstars like Cathy Lanier and Gabe Klein, too, and quite likely get incompetents in their place.

Listen, I get that Fenty's a jerk. And I'd rather have Tony Williams, too, but he's not on the ballot. Supporting Vince Gray just because he's not Fenty is chopping your nose to spite your face.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:. . . . Fenty isn't as economically and administratively incompetent as Marion Barry was, but he is every bit as corrupt. Gray at least is aboveboard. God I miss Tony Williams.

LOL. Harry Thomas? Chris Smith? Eric Payne? Any of these names ring a bell? (If not, try Google.) Gray's managed to jam quite a bit of Barry-esque sleaze into his relatively short time on the Council. These guys are both "ethically challenged" -- that's no reason to pick between them. But pick Gray and you lose not just Rhee, but superstars like Cathy Lanier and Gabe Klein, too, and quite likely get incompetents in their place.

Listen, I get that Fenty's a jerk. And I'd rather have Tony Williams, too, but he's not on the ballot. Supporting Vince Gray just because he's not Fenty is chopping your nose to spite your face.

Wow, I don't think you have all your facts right. Harry Thomas made it on the council by using his late father's name who was also on the city coucil. Fenty endorsed Harry Thomas Jr. and they were the best buds until Fenty and Rhee closed half the middle schools in Ward 5. Prior to that, Thomas was just like Bowser, a rubber stamp for all of Fenty's policies.

You have a way of calling names, but the biggest sleaze is Fenty himself, as he surrounds himself by the Sinclairs and the Peaceaholics. Yeah right. And there are no coucil members named Chris Smith and Eric Payne. Why don't you use google and get the name of the 13 city council men and women, no Smiths and no Paynes. They are Evans, Brown, Brown, Gray, Bowser, Wells, Cheh, Mendelson, Alexander, Barry, Catania, Thomas and Graham

[Anonymous]

Would be happy to lose Rhee. No big loss

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Fenty's about-face on mayoral control of the public schools is worse than described above. The day after he won the Democratic primary, which effectively made him mayor, he announced he was FOR taking control of the schools. This after campaigning that he was against that. Talk about slippery, calculated moves! Also, he did not follow the letter of the law when he hired Rhee. He did not run her resume by the city council. They learned of the hire in the papers. I tell you Fenty is one arrogant son of a gun. I'm undecided, don't know enough about Gray, but between Fenty and Rhee I have wanted to vomit on multiple occasions over the past several years.

If this is true, he is not only a corrupt thief, but a liar as well.

[Anonymous]

It's true.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:14:16 I was there and she had support among some faculty members. My sense is it was not a majority who did not like her. Ditto the parents. The way it was handled was atrocious. But that's Rhee. I cannot believe she did a similar thing to Patrick Pope at Hardy, for different reasons.

I can vouch for this -- was there and have insight into staff. Some did and some did not like her. For some, it was not a question of 'like'--just the best interests of the school and kids (and staff also split in different directions on what that would be). Support for firing her was nowhere near as 'unanimous' as presented however. And the way it was handled was atrocious. Many staff were most uncomfortable with that. If there was 'cause' backed by transparency AND due process, it would have been different -- but with the way it actually went down, it was hard not to feel complicit in a scene out of MacBeth if you were there at the time... I personally thought it was shameful. And it is a scene that has been repeated many, many times.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:But pick Gray and you lose not just Rhee, but superstars like Cathy Lanier and Gabe Klein, too...

To me, that looks like a ringing endorsement for Gray.

[Anonymous]

19:19 One great irony in all this is that early on Marta proposed having English-only and Spanish-only classrooms and changing between the two and the teachers rejected that idea. I thought it was a terrific idea. Interesting historical footnote given what's happened with the current principal. (As for "liking" Marta versus doing what's best for students, I think a lot of what happened at the faculty level was more about personalities than having the community front and center. It was the ugliest experience. Shudder, shudder. Okay, end of analysis!)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:14:16 I was there and she had support among some faculty members. My sense is it was not a majority who did not like her. Ditto the parents. The way it was handled was atrocious. But that's Rhee. I cannot believe she did a similar thing to Patrick Pope at Hardy, for different reasons.

I didn't know of any faculty members who had a positive view of her; I heard of teachers in tears at faculty meetings.....

[Anonymous]

I did.

[Anonymous]

then if you were teaching there in those days, surely you saw the confrontations....

[Anonymous]

Marta is an interesting, intelligent, dedicated lady. She is also a sometimes very insensitive whack job with some real effectiveness and organization issues. I think her leaving was a positive step.

[Anonymous]

Except she did not 'leave'. She was ousted in an ugly way. She also had a lot going for her record--like a Blue Ribbon Award (that's a pretty big deal; has Oyster won one lately?) There were lots of falsehoods and flak thrown in the air around her ouster--like somehow Oyster's achievement gap was criminal, when it is pretty minimal compared to some other schools in the District (not saying an achievement gap is good--but if you are going to apply that criterion, apply it evenly). What bothered me was the process. And that she was terminated effective two weeks or so before she would get some pension access and other ugly stuff like that. It was cruel, it was grotesque, and I think it left a lot of bad karma in its wake. I think there were far more even-handed ways to move Marta along if needed--like true criterion beyond 'I feel..." and a transparent review board. I think all teachers and admin deserve that, but DCPS is basically at-will these days. Don't expect dividends in staff loyalty in that environment however--even from the ones who were cheering Marta's departure. They might not have realized that the one-time process they thought they were cheering is the 'new way of doing business' that would be hanging over their necks each day at work. Sad.

[Anonymous]

20:45 I know teachers who had a positive view of her. Some teach in the middle school!