One year after Mayor Adrian Fenty placed his ambitious plans to rescue D.C.’s schools from decades of neglect and dysfunction in the hands of a novice school leader, Fenty’s grade is still “incomplete,” experts and activists say.

Fenty and his chancellor, Michelle Rhee, met with the media Thursday to discuss the early returns of their reform plan. They said their efforts to increase the budget, the “blitz” repairs made to malfunctioning heating and cooling systems, and the slashing of more than 100 central office bureaucrats from the payroll showed that a new day was dawning.

“We’ve set a precedent for future mayors of D.C. and across the country,” Rhee said.

Others are not so sure.

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“You get no sense that serious thoughts are going into their actions,” said Iris Toyer, chairwoman of Parents United and the mother of a McKinley High School junior.

Toyer was one of several parent activists who sued Fenty and Rhee earlier this year to get them to release budget documents. She said she is glad that city leaders have increased the schools’ budget, but is worried about the bunker mentality of Fenty and Rhee.

There have been early stumbles in the Fenty regime. Within weeks of promising the public that his nearly $1 billion budget proposal was adequate, the mayor returned to the D.C. Council, hat in hand, to ask for an additional $81 million. Toyer said she’s still not sure where that money went.

And Rhee and her team have not been able to get ahead of the $300 million special education crisis. City officials have acknowledged repeatedly that they won’t be able to meet federal court-imposed deadlines on responding to the problems of mentally ill and disabled children. School officials have often been caught off guard by revelations of abuse and neglect in the system.

Rhee and Fenty also made little mention Thursday of the controversy stirred by their sudden announcement late last year that they would close more than 20 schools due to declining enrollment.

But Northwest businessman and community activist Jack Koczela said Fenty and Rhee have taken on tough problems that will pay dividends in the long run.

“Fenty and Rhee are changing things for the better,” he said. “Not overnight, but over a couple of years.”

Councilman Phil Mendelson, D-at large, was one of only two members to vote against Fenty’s takeover. He said he doesn’t regret that vote, but added that the “jury is still out.”

bmyers@dcexaminer.com