Hello Again,While the citizens of
Washington
DC started their holiday vacations this
week, while no one was watching and in broad daylight the Washington DC City
Council voted itself a pay raise.
And
not a small pay raise either.
A pay raise
of epic proportions.
If you're not from Washington
DC I hope will forgive me for tackling this
local issue, I am after all "The Small Voice In the Nation's Capital" and I'm sure that DC is not the only city government that has
screwed its constituents while they weren't looking. At least they could have kissed us first or
sent complementary K-Y.
While the city council members bitch and moan about it
having been since 1999 that they have received a pay increase and certain more
bellicose council members have complained that while the city council position
was originally designed to be a part-time gig, it has turned into much more and
warrants the increase. I look around and see chronic and systemic
ineptitude with the exception of the ability to hire more ticket writers to
hound hapless visitors and commuters on the cities streets.
These flimsy justifications are offensive to me and should
be to Washington voters. The council patting themselves on the back
with monetary reward is akin Nero watching Rome
burn and commenting on how warm and lovely the flames are. There is one overriding reason for my
absolute disgust with the city council's pay increase and it is the indisputable
failure, the broken-busted-dysfunctional-hasn't-worked-in- decades public school
system. School and city council members
will point to the few and far between new school buildings or the few
successful charter schools (which are operated and governed differently) but
for the most part the buildings are dilapidated and sometimes hazardous to the
children's health. Staff has been cut to
the bare bone and resources are outmoded or nonexistent. The school system administration has a
history of cronyism and mismanagement.
My son's school, one of the better public elementary schools,
has discontinued time in the library because there is no longer a librarian and
the books are frayed and tattered, and will not be fit for use in another
several years. And African-American voters
sit around with their collective thumbs up their butts finding it impossible to
do what it takes to change this horrid situation. My guess is that if the White population of
the city relied on public schools, the situation would be unrecognizably
different. But Washington
has a thriving private school system that understands its unique position and
ability to ask for and get $17,000 to $22,000 per year, per student. In the District the motivating emotion of the
well-to-do and near-do-well parents who borrow and mortgage for a private PK
thru 12th grade education is FEAR.
While the parent comes to the city to do business, practice law, serve
on capital hill or as a diplomat, flush with cash or well connected, it is
thoroughly unacceptable and shocking to enroll their children in the public
schools here. Where does that leave the
District's every day working family who is just getting by, believing that they
are doing the right thing by insisting that their kids at least get to the
schoolhouse.
Listen to Show #24 about what TIME Magazine has to say about how the US
system of education is failing even good school systems and what needs to be
done to bring public education out of the 20th century. If even good public school systems need guidance
on how to educate children in the 21st century, can you imagine what
must be done for the children of the District of Columbia?
And don't forget that the cost of a public education for one
child in DC is approximately $15,000 which is almost the highest rate of many
large city school systems, of which Washington
is not one. That's almost enough for a good private school education. But where is the money going? All I see is cutbacks and cut corners.
When the council's pay raise takes effect in a few weeks,
councils in cities with larger populations than the District
of Columbia will earn LESS. It must be something about the citizenry of
the Nation's Capital that make governing fewer people more expensive! The US
Census puts the median household income for the District at $47,221. Here's the slimy new, annual rundown: the mayor-elect and the council chairman both
get a $48,000 increase to $200,000 and $190,000 respectively; council members
get a pay raise of $22,000 bringing their salary to $115,000.
In Boston, the
council equivalent makes $87,500 and in pricey New York,
they earn $112,500. To their credit,
there were three council members that voted against the pay raise. Although it's easy to appear to be doing the right thing when you know the raise will pass without your vote or you're leaving the council. (Is my cynicism showing?)
And while council members suggest that their raises are a
cost of living increase, as people on the public dole, I'd like to see them
make something closer to what Jane Q. Public's reality is. This city's government is broken. Would you go to your boss and say, "I know I
messed up that big report, and I'm always late, and I lost millions with my
shoddy bookkeeping, but how about a raise anyway." Recently, even monies that
were given in the form of federal grants to the DC schools were almost lost. The school system had $18.5 million that had
to be spent in two days in order to keep the funds. But where'd it go? There is still no accounting for how the $18.5
mil was spent. In November an accounting
firm found that the school system lacked internal controls which raise the
issue of misappropriation. Somewhere in
the District is somebody having one hellva Christmas thanks to a very serious
case of "I'm gonna get mine?"
I've always said to my kids "Trust is doing the right thing
even when no one is looking." Well, to
the DC City Council, who must have thought that no one was looking, this city
has been betrayed and this city's children have been and will continue to pay a
price in ways that can only be imagined and will be felt for years to come, in this, the school system of Nation's Capital.
See ya next time,
Sunny
