WASHINGTON (Map, News) - A District community group will do the largest-ever probe into whether individual schools are getting the resources they need, but how much weight the audit will carry remains to be seen.

DC Voice, a local advocacy group composed of former educators and concerned parents, will greatly increase its efforts during its annual audit of the 55,000-student system through the Ready Schools initiative.

The goal will be to scrutinize how the mayor’s school takeover plans are working.

Mayor Adrian Fenty has pledged to encourage all schools to let DC Voice enter for the inspections and to cooperate with auditors.

But the mayor hasn’t yet committed to do anything concrete with the results.

The DC Voice audit is unique among the various reviews of school procedures, officials said.

“Other audits are contracted out by the agency that’s being audited, which is understandable from a business perspective,” Executive Director Jeff Smith said. “But our evaluation is independent and done with a focus on the teaching and learning in classrooms, not on the management of the system as a whole.”

For instance, the group will gauge how much training teachers and principals are receiving, whether schools have teachers in place before the first day of school and whether promised facilities improvements are being implemented.

Smith said this week more than 200 volunteers began visiting schools in the system to do the surveys.

In the past, DC Voice has conducted audits on 40 to 50 schools chosen according to demographics and performances. This time, though, the goal is to grade 139 schools.

Because of Fenty’s overhaul of the system, community members doing the audits will also ask more questions about such programs as English-language learning and the introduction of ninth-graders into all high schools.

Volunteers also will be asked to observe the cleanliness and safety level of the school buildings based on what they physically see during the site visits.

“We don’t go into the schools pointing fingers at the principal,” Program Director Erika Landberg said. “We’re really trying to ask them whether they have the supports in place that they need.”

Most striking in past audits, she said, has been the revelation that facility upgrades are not being made at levels promised.

In 2006, for one, only 16 percent of principals interviewed reported that all basic maintenance work has been completed.

dlevitz@dcexaminer.com