This is a really confusing thread, all the arguments seem quite disjointed. So is the consensus that Palisades parents should send their kids to Hardy? If so will Hardy then stop accepting OOB to cut down on class size and allow for inbounds kids to have reasonable size classrooms? Or do they have to put up with OOB?

Anonymous wrote:

I'm confused, Is Pope somehow getting implicated in what some wacko said at a meeting about a former Hardy student?

Does that fact that he is quoted making a totally benign statement about the former student at his graveside somehow taint him?

The 'wacko' was his chosen representative for that meeting.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Pope is gone. Why isn't Hardy viable? new principal, new school. Get 20 kids from Key and 20 kids from Mann, 40 from Stoddert. Then fewer OOB slots, the school can be yours in 2 to 3 years. Not a bad place in the meantime.

Its a 'first-mover' problem. Noone wants to be the first one to take a chance and risk the education (and perhaps safety, given the vitriol spewed toward IB parents in the post and elsewhere) of their child. There has to be an additional carrot to lure IB parents, like offering, well, IB.

Yet they didn't hesitate to take the risk of moving Pope out. Plus let's not forget the vitriol than IB parents focused on current Hardy parents and continue to [see above reference to safety].

Some peacemaking is needed and I don't know how it's going to happen.

Anonymous wrote:

jsteele wrote:
As for those parents who ordered a Hardy Pizza, hold the Pope, it should have been obvious that there was going to be a crash. They understood that the delivery driver had a record of reckless driving.

"Should have been obvious"? Please. You're grasping. I know you desperately want to blame the in-boundary parents but the facts just aren't there. No one is happy about the way Hardy turned out, and I'm sure everyone involved would love the chance to do it over. But before you go casting stones, consider the timeline:


Spring 2006 -- Candidate Fenty campaigns in Ward 3, promises that if elected Pope will be removed as principal at Hardy.
January 2007 -- Fenty sworn in as mayor
June 2007 -- Mayor given authority over schools
July 2007 -- Michelle Rhee confirmed as Chancellor
February 2009 -- Rhee meets with Key parents
December 2009 -- Rhee announces that Pope will be leaving Hardy in June 2010
September 2010 -- Fenty defeated in primary by Vincent Gray


The pizza order was placed long before the driver was hired. By the fall of 2009 Fenty was getting heat from his Ward 3 supporters to carry through on his promise from 3 1/2 years earlier. By then Fenty's re-election prospects were starting to dim and he realized that he needed to shore up support in Ward 3. I won't take anything away from Rhee's capability to cut corners and leave messes, but I believe it was Fenty who rushed things at Hardy, with disastrous results. If you talk to anyone who worked for the city in the Fenty years that was totally his MO, pushing his subordinates to rush things out before they were ready, usually with an ensuing fiasco.

It was a Fenty campaign promise? I've read a lot of press and comments about Hardy and that's the first time I heard that one.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Thank you. At least there is finally some recognition that the current Hardy IB parents who had nothing to do with the fiasco there are screwed.

I got the first inkling of the total disdain Pope had for IB parents in the fall of 2008 when he blew off a middle school meeting at Key and sent some woman who went on and on about some football player who had gone to Hardy. Even though my child was only in K at the time serious alarm bells went off.

I was at that meeting and it was worse than you remember. The woman was named Lucille Hester, and she went on about how her brother, Bob Hayes, had recently been inducted into the NFL Hall of Fame. Shortly thereafter it came out that she was an imposter -- she's no relation to Bob Hayes, and it appears that she falsified a number of documents from Hayes, including his will, which had set her up as CEO of the Bob Hayes Foundation. I seem to recall her getting into some legal trouble over the will, but I don't remember exactly.

You can read about the sordid mess here:

http://blogs.dallasobserver.com/sportatorium/2009/02/breaking_news_hall_of_fame_fra.php

Interestingly, an article about Bob Hayes' burial says this:
"Patrick Pope of the Bob Hayes Foundation Inc. said Hayes was a man who made few requests, but he did ask that Roosevelt's words be on his monument."

http://jacksonville.com/tu-online/stories/122107/met_227509261.shtml

I'm confused, Is Pope somehow getting implicated in what some wacko said at a meeting about a former Hardy student?

Does that fact that he is quoted making a totally benign statement about the former student at his graveside somehow taint him?

Anonymous wrote:
Pope is gone. Why isn't Hardy viable? new principal, new school. Get 20 kids from Key and 20 kids from Mann, 40 from Stoddert. Then fewer OOB slots, the school can be yours in 2 to 3 years. Not a bad place in the meantime.

Its a 'first-mover' problem. Noone wants to be the first one to take a chance and risk the education (and perhaps safety, given the vitriol spewed toward IB parents in the post and elsewhere) of their child. There has to be an additional carrot to lure IB parents, like offering, well, IB.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Every single one of the parents who met with Rhee or from their classes sends their child to private or charter school . The rest of us are now wondering where the hell to send our kids. For us it will be Latin or move out of DC.

That's not true, and the implication is not fair to those parents. As long as Pope was there Hardy was never going to be a viable option for in-boundary families, he just wouldn't allow it. Pope is gone, but Hardy still isn't a viable option. So we're basically where we were a few years ago. The diffference now is that there's some hope on the horizon for improvement.

Pope is gone. Why isn't Hardy viable? new principal, new school. Get 20 kids from Key and 20 kids from Mann, 40 from Stoddert. Then fewer OOB slots, the school can be yours in 2 to 3 years. Not a bad place in the meantime.

jsteele wrote:By February 2009, Key parents had to have known that Rhee was a bull in a china shop. ... I guess they should have been careful what they asked for.

Yes, it's all their fault. They should have had perfect knowledge of the future -- so they could have shorted the market in the 2008 financial collapse and all made fortunes so they could send their kids to private school, and all the unpleasantness would have been avoided.

I want to share with you something from the minutes of the infamous 2009 Rhee meeting with parents:
"She [Rhee] clarified that whereas in the past, Hardy required an application for all students, even in-boundary
students, which recently changed. Key students do not need to apply to Hardy. It is still not 100%
clear, however, whether in-boundary students will need to apply to the “arts intensive” program.
Chancellor Rhee will deliver guidance on that as soon as she can and will extend the arts application
deadline (currently March 13) until after she has announced her decision."

When Rhee said the policy had "recently changed," she meant that week. Even after that meeting, Pope and the Hardy staff continued to insist that nothing had changed, in-boundary families had to apply to Hardy just like everyone else.

Until Key parents started making noise, Key, Mann, Stoddert and Hyde effectively had no in-boundary middle school. Families could apply to Hardy, put in for the lottery at Deal or Latin, or go private.

Was it wrong for the Key parents to ask for a middle school that they could actually attend as a matter of right? If the incumbent principal refused to follow the Chancellor's instructions, was it wrong to remove him?

Anonymous wrote:
Every single one of the parents who met with Rhee or from their classes sends their child to private or charter school . The rest of us are now wondering where the hell to send our kids. For us it will be Latin or move out of DC.

That's not true, and the implication is not fair to those parents. As long as Pope was there Hardy was never going to be a viable option for in-boundary families, he just wouldn't allow it. Pope is gone, but Hardy still isn't a viable option. So we're basically where we were a few years ago. The diffference now is that there's some hope on the horizon for improvement.

Anonymous wrote:Thank you. At least there is finally some recognition that the current Hardy IB parents who had nothing to do with the fiasco there are screwed.

I got the first inkling of the total disdain Pope had for IB parents in the fall of 2008 when he blew off a middle school meeting at Key and sent some woman who went on and on about some football player who had gone to Hardy. Even though my child was only in K at the time serious alarm bells went off.

I was at that meeting and it was worse than you remember. The woman was named Lucille Hester, and she went on about how her brother, Bob Hayes, had recently been inducted into the NFL Hall of Fame. Shortly thereafter it came out that she was an imposter -- she's no relation to Bob Hayes, and it appears that she falsified a number of documents from Hayes, including his will, which had set her up as CEO of the Bob Hayes Foundation. I seem to recall her getting into some legal trouble over the will, but I don't remember exactly.

You can read about the sordid mess here:

http://blogs.dallasobserver.com/sportatorium/2009/02/breaking_news_hall_of_fame_fra.php

Interestingly, an article about Bob Hayes' burial says this:
"Patrick Pope of the Bob Hayes Foundation Inc. said Hayes was a man who made few requests, but he did ask that Roosevelt's words be on his monument."

http://jacksonville.com/tu-online/stories/122107/met_227509261.shtml

Anonymous wrote:

Spring 2006 -- Candidate Fenty campaigns in Ward 3, promises that if elected Pope will be removed as principal at Hardy.
January 2007 -- Fenty sworn in as mayor
June 2007 -- Mayor given authority over schools
July 2007 -- Michelle Rhee confirmed as Chancellor
February 2009 -- Rhee meets with Key parents
December 2009 -- Rhee announces that Pope will be leaving Hardy in June 2010
September 2010 -- Fenty defeated in primary by Vincent Gray


The pizza order was placed long before the driver was hired. By the fall of 2009 Fenty was getting heat from his Ward 3 supporters to carry through on his promise from 3 1/2 years earlier. By then Fenty's re-election prospects were starting to dim and he realized that he needed to shore up support in Ward 3. I won't take anything away from Rhee's capability to cut corners and leave messes, but I believe it was Fenty who rushed things at Hardy, with disastrous results. If you talk to anyone who worked for the city in the Fenty years that was totally his MO, pushing his subordinates to rush things out before they were ready, usually with an ensuing fiasco.

You will get no argument from me about Fenty's MO. I saw enough of it myself. But, a couple of things I'll note about your timeline. If you are correct, Fenty was making a commitment about Pope at the same time he was opposing mayoral control of the school system. How did anyone expect him to be able to keep his commitment? By February 2009, Key parents had to have known that Rhee was a bull in a china shop. She had already been on the cover of Time the previous November with her famous broom. It would be ironic if Fenty had Pope removed in order to help his reelection bid. That move ultimately was very detrimental and had the complete opposite effect. If nothing else, it illustrates why the school system should not be as politicized as DCPS has become.

As the saying goes, "Success has many fathers, but failure is an orphan." Since things at Hardy have not gone well, I can understand the desire of the families that pushed for Pope's removal to put the blame elsewhere. Had things gone better, those families probably would be happy to take credit. I guess they should have been careful what they asked for.

Thank you. At least there is finally some recognition that the current Hardy IB parents who had nothing to do with the fiasco there are screwed.

I got the first inkling of the total disdain Pope had for IB parents in the fall of 2008 when he blew off a middle school meeting at Key and sent some woman who went on and on about some football player who had gone to Hardy. Even though my child was only in K at the time serious alarm bells went off. But we weren't welcome at the table about how to handle the Pope problem because the 4th and 5th grade parents didn't want any distractions from their dealings with Rhee during their desparate search of a short-term solution.

Every single one of the parents who met with Rhee or from their classes sends their child to private or charter school . The rest of us are now wondering where the hell to send our kids. For us it will be Latin or move out of DC.

jsteele wrote:
As for those parents who ordered a Hardy Pizza, hold the Pope, it should have been obvious that there was going to be a crash. They understood that the delivery driver had a record of reckless driving.

"Should have been obvious"? Please. You're grasping. I know you desperately want to blame the in-boundary parents but the facts just aren't there. No one is happy about the way Hardy turned out, and I'm sure everyone involved would love the chance to do it over. But before you go casting stones, consider the timeline:


Spring 2006 -- Candidate Fenty campaigns in Ward 3, promises that if elected Pope will be removed as principal at Hardy.
January 2007 -- Fenty sworn in as mayor
June 2007 -- Mayor given authority over schools
July 2007 -- Michelle Rhee confirmed as Chancellor
February 2009 -- Rhee meets with Key parents
December 2009 -- Rhee announces that Pope will be leaving Hardy in June 2010
September 2010 -- Fenty defeated in primary by Vincent Gray


The pizza order was placed long before the driver was hired. By the fall of 2009 Fenty was getting heat from his Ward 3 supporters to carry through on his promise from 3 1/2 years earlier. By then Fenty's re-election prospects were starting to dim and he realized that he needed to shore up support in Ward 3. I won't take anything away from Rhee's capability to cut corners and leave messes, but I believe it was Fenty who rushed things at Hardy, with disastrous results. If you talk to anyone who worked for the city in the Fenty years that was totally his MO, pushing his subordinates to rush things out before they were ready, usually with an ensuing fiasco.

Anonymous wrote:The people agitating for a new middle school are a very distinct group from those who agitated for Pope's removal.

That's probably a fair point. Both groups get described as "Key parents" so they seem the same to me. But, it makes sense that it's different groups.

As for those parents who ordered a Hardy Pizza, hold the Pope, it should have been obvious that there was going to be a crash. They understood that the delivery driver had a record of reckless driving.

Anonymous wrote:If you live in the Palisades and want pizza, go to "Hardy Pizza". That is where it is served.

And if you don't like the way they make the pizza, or the attitude of the guy behind the counter, don't complain to the manager. Just pay a little more and drive a little further to eat somewhere else. You don't really belong there anyway..