Last evening the DC Public Charter School Board held a low-key monthly meeting during which Carlos Rosario International PCS and Friendship PCS sailed through their 20-year charter reviews and Community College Preparatory Academy PCS easily received permission to continue operating after its first five years.  It was a welcome respite from the unevenness of the board’s March 12th emergency session during which it voted to begin charter revocation proceedings against Washington Math Science and Technology PCS.  The gathering was held at Washington Latin PCS, the school upon which I served as board chair, and even though it was at a remote location in the school’s multipurpose space, the sound quality was excellent.  Dr. Darren Woodruff dialed in and you could make out all of his comments.

I want to single out the performance of Patricia Brantley, Friendship’s chief operating officer, who seems increasingly confident in her leadership after succeeding founder Donald Hense.

The only difficulty I had about last night was the use of proxy votes by board members.  I know that attorney Stephen Marcus has raised this issue in the past.  Other organizations I have participated with as a board member have included in their bylaws a requirement that votes by member must be made in person or by telephone.  The electronic ballot has not been permitted because it does not allow deliberation by participants as is found in a live meeting.  I’ve also received governance advice from experts that this is the proper manner in which to conduct business.  I don’t understand how a board member can make an informed decision if he or she has not had the opportunity to listen to the deliberation first-hand.  I wish the board would eliminate the use of proxy voting.

In other public education reform news, the Washington Post ran an editorial yesterday pointing out that in spite of a series of setbacks by DCPS, significant progress has been made since Michelle Rhee became Chancellor.  From the piece:

“Recent school controversies have given license to critics of school reform to weave a misleading narrative of what has occurred since the elected school board was dissolved and control of the schools given to the mayor in 2007. Under their scenario, reform has been an abject failure, with most schools worse off except for those that have seen improvement because of demographic changes.”

I really don’t think this is what individuals are saying.  What is clear is that the bold claims of significant improvements in high school graduations rates was a sham, that families continue to game the system through residency fraud, and that Mayoral control has not fixed the ills of a system that was characterized by patronage.  Moreover, the academic performance of minority children is embarrassingly low more than a decade after oversight was taken away from the Board of Education.

We can and must do better.  Another generation of kids has been shortchanged.  It is as if the school system continues to be about protecting the reputations of the adults in charge of this mess.  It is about time someone or some people out there started acting like there was an urgency to creating a world-class education system.  If it were your children nothing less would be acceptable.