Dear Mayor Fenty: Congratulations! You staked the first six months of your nascent mayoral term on getting control of D.C.’s public schools. Today — after navigating city council hearings, surviving congressional shenanigans and legal challenges by a few disgruntled residents — the schools finally are in your hands.

Some might say taking over the schools is like becoming captain of the Titanic. Naysayers and critics are secretly expecting you to drown in the cesspool of nepotism and dysfunction that is the central school system bureaucracy. Some might be political leaders who have failed upward from the school board.

Let’s not forget that Council Members Marion Barry and Carol Schwartz both sat on the school board. Barry was president. Ditto Linda Cropp, who moved up to become council chair and your principal opponent for mayor. They are part of the problem, not the solution.

Every mayor has run on a platform of improving schools; in office every mayor has used the statutory separation between the city and the school system to say: “Not my problem.”
But improving the schools is not an impossible task. Keep in mind D.C. has fewer than 55,000 public school students. There are more students in a slice of Brooklyn, NY.

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You can do this. You can help these students. Permit me to offer a few suggestions, based on many years as a public school parent and member of a school governance team.

Customer service must be your guiding principle. Your customers are students and parents, not educators and bureaucrats. Here are 10 easy ways to keep us happy.

1. Pluck the lowest hanging fruit, starting with bathrooms and water fountains. Make sure toilets work, stalls have doors, water is clean and cool.

2. Deliver all books to all schools on time.

3. Make sure roofs don’t leak, furnaces function, air conditioners work.

4. Pay teachers. Many teachers have told me the school system owes them money. While you’re at it, reward the best teachers.

5. Nurture what works. D.C. schools are packed with good principals and fine teachers and successful programs like drama at Wilson High; auto mechanics at Ballou; jazz at Duke Ellington; building trades at Cardozo.

6. Install music programs in all elementary schools. Search store rooms for instruments that have been stashed for decades.

7. Make certain athletic programs are staffed and equipped. You and School Board President Robert Bobb and Council Chair Vince Gray agree on this. Just do it!

8. Promote literacy: Open schools up for night classes for parents.

9. Show up at schools every day of the week. Once a day, every day. Treat it like training for a triathlon. See first-graders read in the morning; lunch with middle school students; watch football players practice in the afternoon.

10. Preach the gospel of learning: Tell students and parents that going to school, studying and getting good grades still add up to their best chance for success in life.

You, after all, are the quintessential local student who made good.

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