- D.C. Council to look at trio of school bills
- Schools taking serious look at putting armed police in schools after massacre
- Oyster-Adams seeks ways to fix language imbalance
The Dupont Current
By Elizabeth Wiener
February 6, 2013
The D.C. Council, which recently re-established a standalone committee on education, may be edging back into closer scrutiny of the public school system — as evidenced by three bills introduced by council members Tuesday.
A bill by at-large member David Catania, who is promising vigorous oversight as chair of the new education committee, addresses concerns about cheating on standardized testing. The bill would require every public school to have a “testing integrity monitor,” and make any encouragement of cheating by school staff a violation of the law. Eight other council members cosponsored the bill.
Meanwhile, Ward 2 member Jack Evans, expanding efforts to beef up library services in public schools, offered a measure that would require every school to have a full-time arts, music and physical education teacher as well as a librarian. At the start of the school year, 58 schools lacked at least one of those positions, he said. A majority of the council co-sponsored that measure.
And Marion Barry of Ward 8, critical of proposed school closings predominantly in the eastern half of the city, introduced legislation to give the council a vote before schools are closed. That’s a power it lost when control of the schools was turned over to the mayor. His bill won only one co-sponsor, Yvette Alexander of Ward 7.
The Washington Post
By Donna St. George and Ovetta Wiggins
February 7, 2013
School leaders in Prince George’s County proposed the creation of a new school police force Thursday, saying that the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut “changed school security the way 9/11 changed travel.”
The call for more police in Prince George’s schools comes as several leaders in Montgomery County push to double the size of the county’s small band of “school resource officers” and as officials in Prince William County consider significantly increasing the number of police officers in county schools.
Just two months after the Dec. 14 massacre in Newtown, Conn., left 20 children and six school staff members dead, the theoretical discussion about how best to secure the nation’s schools is making its way into reality. As schools work to tighten security measures, proposals for more police on campuses are now part of budget discussions across the region and across the country.
Police have become a central focus in many areas. President Obama has proposed $150 million in funding for school-based officers, psychologists, social workers or counselors. In Virginia, the governor’s school safety task force last week urged restoring state funding for such officers, which had been cut in recent years. The next day, Gov. Robert F. McDonnell (R) urged the legislature to make restoring and enhancing that funding among its highest priorities.
Nationally,a Washington Post-ABC poll in January showed that 55 percent of the public would support placing armed police or trained security guards in the nation’s schools.
“People want to do something, and this seems to be the most direct way to improve school security,” said Corey A. Stewart (R-At Large), chairman of the Prince William Board of County Supervisors, who is pushing to expand police coverage by 15 positions at a cost of about $1.5 million in the first year and $1.3 million in later years.
For Stewart, the proposal is a turnaround: Last fall, he wanted to cut four school-based police positions to save more than $500,000. He said Sandy Hook shifted his thinking. “It’s not going to be cheap,” Stewart said, “but I think it’s going to be worthwhile.”
In Prince George’s, Michael E. Blow, the school system security director, recommended Thursday that the Board of Education spend about $8 million to enhance security at county schools in light of the Connecticut shootings. The proposal, made on behalf of Interim Superintendent Alvin Crawley, includes installing electronic-controlled access and panic buttons in the front offices of each school, installing cameras at 65 schools and creating the new police force.
The police force, which could serve warrants and make arrests, would cost $2 million and be similar to the force that patrols Baltimore city schools, said Briant Coleman, a spokesman for the school system.
“The gauntlet was dropped when that individual took the actions he took at Sandy Hook,” Blow said.
Still, budget constraints are widespread, and some argue that schools need more guidance counselors, not police. The National PTA, while lauding the larger Obama plan, voiced disappointment in the police expansion, saying schools should be completely gun-free. Civil rights groups warn that more police in schools will mean more arrests and citations, often for behavior that once meant a trip to the principal’s office.
The Dupont Current
By Elizabeth Wiener
February 6, 2013
As D.C. Public School officials take a hard look at enrollment boundaries citywide, the Oyster-Adams Bilingual School is beginning a more nuanced study of ways to right-size its enrollment and reach the desired balance between English and Spanish speakers.
Ideas under consideration for the acclaimed pre-K-through-eighth-grade school include relocating its Woodley Park campus or ending its policy of accepting any in-boundary student.
The Oyster-Adams program,established 40 years ago in Woodley Park, has always aimed for a 50-50 split of Spanish-dominant and English-dominant students “to foster true bilingualism, bi-literacy and bi-culturalism,” according to the school’s mission statement. And now, due to demographic changes and the growing popularity of high-achieving public schools like Oyster-Adams, that balance is badly out of whack.
For decades, the school had relatively few in-boundary pupils. But in recent years Woodley Park has seen an influx of young, mostly English-speaking families. A brand-new school building that opened in 2001, as well as broader school improvement efforts, made Oyster more attractive to nearby residents. And then in 2007, it added upper grades when it merged with the Adams
School in Adams Morgan, with jagged enrollment boundaries including not only Woodley Park, but slivers of Adams Morgan and Mount Pleasant.
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