Hot air on D.C. school reform pollutes debate

WASHINGTON (Map, News) - You have to appreciate Gary Imhoff, for his passions, his intelligence and his limitations.

He and his wife, Dorothy Brizill, are the self-appointed, one-two punch of the anti-everything, reform movement in the capital city. They run DC Watch. She packs her days with press conferences and public hearings; he’s the inside man, running the DC Watch blog from home.

Imhoff and Brizill don’t like much of anything when it comes to governing our fair city. Hated former Mayor Tony Williams. Hate Adrian Fenty, the new man in charge. City council is a nest of bought-and-sold pols plotting in secret.

Lately Imhoff has been fulminating over Fenty’s plan to take control of the public schools. His blog — themail — is an echo chamber for nay sayers and critical reports.

Last week he called the current debate over schools a “phony crisis.” Lousy schools are a “long-standing problem,” he wrote and therefore: “There is no need for a rush.”

Spoken like a man who has no children in the schools and probably has never set foot in a DC public school. I attempted to determine his involvement in schools; he declined to respond to my questions.

Gary Imhoff is a type we parents of public school children know well. He represents a host of self-appointed experts and activists and academics and Home Rule ideologues who comment on and study our public schools. They are the professional talkers, bloviating for decades while schools failed our children.

Now comes the Silent Majority of public school parents. I am appointing myself their voice, though they spoke very loudly when they elected Fenty on a platform of accountability and school reform.

We are the parents who work two jobs. Many of us raise our children alone. We wake them and dress them and feed them and make lunches for them and drop them off at schools where we expect them to get a decent education. We don’t have time to testify before the city council or sit in our cozy home offices and blog that Fenty’s school crisis is “nonsense,” as Imhoff wrote last week.

Is the Fenty plan perfect? No, which is why the city council has held weekly hearings and will now entertain amendments. Here’s one: Expand the role of the ombudsman to hear and respond to parents. Perhaps it should hold weekly public hearings. It should have a hot line for problems ranging from bad bathrooms to abusive teachers to unusable playing fields.

Council Chairman Vince Gray has held hearings that began at 10 a.m. and didn’t end until long after midnight. He invited all comers. Experts have testified for and against. Public officials from around the nation have offered their thoughts. The professional talkers have blown off steam.

The final hearing is scheduled today. Fenty is supposed to speak at noon. The council should quickly amend and approve Fenty’s plan, so the reforms can be put in place for next fall.

Gary Imhoff and his few fellow zealots will rage against the reform.

No surprise.

Harry Jaffe has been covering the Washington area since 1985. E-mail him at hjaffe@washingtonian.com.

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