First Class

by Alison Stewart

RHEE: Because I did not—

  GRAY: The law was … Did you know that the mayor signed that budget also?

  RHEE: Yes, I do.

  GRAY: So, did you tell him that you were just simply going to flout the law?

  RHEE: What I told him was that I was going to make the decisions that I felt was in the best interest of children.

  GRAY: Irrespective of what the law said?

  RHEE: No, because we would have ultimately sent down the reprogramming that we would need to.

  GRAY: Ultimately. What difference does that make? You already ripped the people, what difference does that make then? It’s moot. You rip … you took $9.1 million that we had said we were going to reduce summer school, you then said I’m not going to do that because I don’t like it …

  RHEE: Correct.

  GRAY: … so I’m going to rip the people. So what difference does a reprogramming make at that stage? These people sitting out here lost their job because that is the decision you made …

  RHEE: Correct.

  GRAY: … so what was the council supposed to do at that point?

  RHEE: Well, I think that the bottom line is that I am the agency director—

  GRAY: Well …

  RHEE—you commented earlier in my infinite wisdom, I was hired to run the school district. I got a 13–0 confirmation vote from this council, so I assumed—

  GRAY: I was a part of that.

  RHEE: Exactly, so I assumed—

  GRAY: I didn’t confirm you to be a single authority, however. I confirmed you because I hoped that you would follow the law.

  RHEE: Correct, but you also confirmed me believing that I had the skills, knowledge, and abilities necessary to be able to manage this agency effectively.

  While Gray did not like Rhee, he loved, loved, loved, loved Dunbar High School. Seated in his large city council office on one of the many wood-and-leather chairs, he leans forward as he speaks.

  “Dunbar was still a school that … had enormous academic rigor,” he said. “The teachers were people who were highly intellectual, highly accomplished folks who probably became teachers because, in their field, they couldn’t get jobs otherwise: physicists, chemists, mathematicians—very highly accomplished people—very rigorous in the educational requirements, and worked closely with the homes. You know, and highly respected. And that’s why I’m not …”

  Clearly Gray was getting ready to let loose on the chancellor. “Teachers were revered, especially African American teachers. I mean, there was doctor, lawyer, teacher. And to see what’s happened to these African American teachers, the way they’ve been treated, it has just hit outright in this African American community in the city. And, this chancellor doesn’t get it. She doesn’t see it.”

  Rhee’s firing of so many teachers struck a particular nerve in the black community. “Michelle Rhee doesn’t understand middle-class black people,” Gray said, without any anger, but as more of an analytical conclusion. He was referring to the role of teachers in the black community. Historically, the caliber of people who became teachers were men and women who would have been Rhee’s classmates at Cornell, if they had been born forty years later.

  “Of course, she doesn’t have that kind of background, so it doesn’t mean anything to her. She’s catching the brunt of it because she’s tone deaf. But, you know, you had teachers who worked closely with the home, that were great role models. You had—it was a much more closely knit environment than what you have now.”

  However, Gray does not have nostalgia for the days of Dunbar’s glory, the pre-1954 segregated days, that some older folks will quietly say under their breath was a better day for Dunbar. “You knew what you were being excluded from…. We already were into a period of desegregation of schools, but Dunbar was never really desegregated. I don’t think Dunbar’s ever been desegregated. It’s still as African American today as it was back when there was segregation. Those who think that, you know, education for African Americans might have been better, the problem I have with that is that what you don’t get is the social education that is vital, because that’s the world you’re going to live in.”

  Gray’s world was the one of working-class, segregated Washington. He grew up in a one-room apartment near Dunbar. “My parents— neither one of my parents finished high school.” His mother didn’t work, but his dad did everything he could for the family. “My father worked two jobs. My father worked in the hospital in the daytime and drove a taxicab at night. He worked long hours. I think he worked himself to death, actually. You know, and that’s the myth about Dunbar, also, that the perception, you know, it was kind of rich black folks who were sending their children. It was pretty much working-class folk. I know when I went there, Dunbar was already in transition. It wasn’t the Dunbar it was in the ’30s and the ’40s and even early ’50s. Because now folk are going there because they lived near Dunbar. That’s how I got there.”

  Gray’s adult career has been one of public service laced with politics. He headed an organization to advocate for the developmentally disabled and mentally ill. He was the executive director of Covenant House in the District. He’d been a successful councilman where he was now chairman. He was thought to be calm, thoughtful, and accommodating. And at this point in his life, after becoming a widower in his late fifties, he was being nudged toward running for mayor of his hometown.

  With all this conflict simmering from the preceding year, Councilman Vincent Gray, Mayor Adrian Fenty, the Friends of Bedford, Stephen Jackson, Dunbar alumni, guests, and honors students took their seats on the stage at Cramton. There was last-minute jockeying for aisle seats as the graduates walked in, the young men in black caps and gowns, the young women in crimson. A young man who had graduated from Dunbar a few years before and was now a security guard at the Brookings Institution was there to cheer on his younger sister. He was proud that she was headed to college, and he politely asked for an aisle seat so he could get a good picture of his little sis.

  Chairman Gray (Dunbar 1959) seemed like a natural choice to be commencement speaker. That’s what some students and faculty, including Principal Jackson, had thought when they invited him. The Friends of Bedford had officially invited Mayor Fenty. The commencement speaker’s position appeared to have been double-booked, so thought some alumni and students, and the principal.

  Gray opened the event to great cheers. “You are part of the Crimson Tide,” he told the students to applause. “You are wearing the red and black with great pride. You are carrying the name of one of the greatest people in the history of this country, that is Paul Laurence Dunbar.”

  He later told a reporter, who videotaped the interview, that he was not pleased to have been what he saw as “bumped” from the speaker’s slot. “I was asked verbally if I would do this, and I agreed to do so for those who asked informally. Those were people associated with the school, faculty members who said that the faculty had come together and the students wanted me to do this as well.”

  He made a point that was not lost on anyone watching the clip. “This is the high school I graduated from. Some things ought to be above politics and be sacrosanct, and that is when you have an opportunity to come back and be a part of your own high school, that is an absolutely wonderful moment.”9 The politics Gray was referring to was the fact that he was now officially challenging Adrian Fenty; Vincent Gray was running for mayor.

  Fenty’s turn at the microphone didn’t go quite as well. It was enough to make the TV reporter jump up to make sure the camera was rolling. They’d set up to get some b-roll of the two candidates; what they got was some incredible audio. As Mayor Fenty greeted the students, the booing started. It did not last long, and there were cheers too, but the boos were loud enough to make the evening news. The mayor was unfazed.

  “Dunbar class of 2010,” he addressed the graduates, “the world is ready for you to make your mark. Dunbar’s mantra is where the tradition of excellence continues. And that couldn’t have been a more worthy goal. Kee
p pushing yourselves. Don’t ever take no for an answer. Never accept any excuses from why a challenge cannot be met and why a problem cannot be solved.”

  When a reporter asked about the mix-up, a genuinely bewildered Fenty said, “I didn’t even know this was an issue until you guys asked me. I didn’t know anything about it.” He composed himself and continued. “I really do feel that everyone was here in a positive spirit on behalf of the kids. And I think that’s what matters.”10

  A year later, Fenty, Gray, Rhee, Leonard, and Jackson would all have new jobs.

  15 THE FALL

  IF YOU HAD LOGGED on to the DCPS website in early August 2010 to find out who was the principal of Dunbar, your answer would have been someone named TBD. When Leonard and Jackson had stood a few feet apart handing out diplomas just two months earlier, the Gray/Fenty drama wasn’t the only dissension festering on that stage. The working relationship between the Friends of Bedford and Stephen Jackson was not working.

  It was an arranged marriage of sorts. Their styles didn’t mesh. Bedford was nuanced, Jackson direct. Bedford was planning for the long term; Jackson was in the here and now. The Bedford team reveled in its New York-ness; Jackson adopted DC as his hometown. Bedford had the full support of Chancellor Rhee; the alumni loved Jackson. Publicly they all put up a good front, especially on August 28, 2010, when Dunbar was the rally point for Al Sharpton’s “Reclaim the Dream” march on the anniversary of Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech.

  For years, because of its history, Dunbar had attracted visitors and been used as a backdrop or photo op. First Lady Barbara Bush was a commencement speaker, Robert Kennedy met with students, musician Alicia Keys visited in celebration of Women’s History Month, and even Richard Nixon had greeted students back in the day. For Sharpton’s “Reclaim the Dream” event, Dunbar felt like the appropriate venue at which to start the march; so many of its graduates had been early civil rights leaders and fighters for equality. Graduates had worked to change the law and education.

  Dunbar was the right place and would be in the national spotlight that day. A stage with a full sound system was set up on Dunbar’s field behind the school. The bleachers around the track began filling up as early as 8:00 AM. Tripods were plunked down on the media platform, and TV correspondents prepared their intros. Within the first five minutes of the scheduled list of speakers, both Jackson and Leonard were on the stage, welcoming the crowd. Later, Leonard would reveal he was surprised at Jackson’s appearance and introduction as the principal of Dunbar, because he no longer officially held the post. Still, both men shook hands and smiled. It was not a day for conflict, especially given that the real Dunbar superstar of the day was a student named Bianca Farmer, whose heartfelt speech gave hope for the next generation and reminded everyone what was really at stake:

  We can reclaim our families, we can reclaim our schools, we can reclaim our streets, and we can reclaim our pride. We have to do this so that we can reclaim a promise for a better tomorrow. I challenge my peers, brothers, and sisters to remember how far we have come and to not allow our legacy to be put in vain. Reclaim the dream. Thank you.

  By the fall of 2010, Michelle Rhee was a household name, the result of an intense press campaign for the documentary Waiting for Superman, made by the Academy Award-winning director of An Inconvenient Truth. It revealed to the rest of the country what people in the District had known for a long time: the public school system in DC was rotting.

  The film had made a big splash and provided an enormous platform for Rhee’s work and her movement. For months the documentary had been showing in small screenings to select groups of tastemakers and media people. There was incredible buzz, to the point of noise, around the movie, Rhee, and her reform movement. Oprah Winfrey booked Rhee on her show and declared her a great leader, a “warrior woman.” By this time, if any paper or blog ran a story about Rhee, the comments section would be jammed with opinions supporting her plan and salient objections to what she proposed. And sometimes the posts would contain hateful, disgusting, and racist remarks. She was a liar or a savior.

  During this moment when education reform was front and center in the zeitgeist, Mayor Fenty doubled down on Rhee. Instead of distancing himself from the controversial woman he had hired, they visited schools together. She made speeches at his events. A popular media meme began to evolve: the Washington DC mayoral election was a referendum on Michelle Rhee and all the changes she had put in place.

  On September 14, Vincent Gray defeated Adrian Fenty in the Democratic primary. On that day he became the presumptive mayor of Washington, and ultimately Michelle Rhee’s boss. The director of Waiting for Superman, Davis Guggenheim, a DC native, had followed Rhee for a year. He hoped Gray would consider keeping her. “She’s a very polarizing figure. I think she’s a hero, and I think she was doing the essential work. And I think if you stopped what she was doing, it would be a tragedy. So my hope is that the new mayor will find a way to continue what she’s doing because it really—you could tell it was working.”

  Michelle Rhee resigned one month after Fenty lost. Some of the people she put in place would not only survive but thrive. Her number two, Kaya Henderson, rose up the ladder to become interim chancellor. Others would not make it to the end of the year.

  On the Monday before Thanksgiving, a fifteen-year-old girl went home and told her mom she had been raped by six Dunbar students in the school, near a lower-level stairwell, during school hours. The following day six young men were arrested and charged with aggravated sexual assault. The story began to circulate and made the local news just as the school was closing for the holiday. Classes resumed the following Monday, and over the next nine days the school went through a seismic shift.

  After the alleged assault, rumors about the level of safety in Dunbar’s halls were no longer being considered hearsay. By numerous accounts from faculty and students, and the interim chancellor herself, there seemed to be behavioral relapse at Dunbar. George Leonard was acting as interim principal, but he was also managing Dunbar and Coolidge.

  “I felt that Leonard did an outstanding job the first year until he became principal,” retired librarian Charles Phillips recalled. He liked the team of Jackson and Friends of Bedford and had high hopes for what they might accomplish together. “Leonard had the special ability to communicate to everybody. He made you feel wanted. He made you want to feel that you could do better than you’re doing, even if you were the worst teacher there. You could do better if you were the best teacher. You still had to do better.”

  However, that fall Phillips noticed an uptick in crude behavior. Gambling. Sexual displays. He said something was just “off” that fall. “Things changed. Students didn’t even know who Leonard was when he became principal.” Discipline in the halls was spotty. “Leonard spent too much time in the office and not enough time in the halls, standing in the halls. When he was in the hall, these kids ran. They didn’t hang around. When he wasn’t in the hall … chaos.”

  A young Teach for America teacher walked out of the school and took her story to the Washington Post. She claimed Dunbar was a hostile and dangerous environment. Even though, after reviewing the evidence, the district attorney dropped the sexual assault charges against the Dunbar male students on November 30—without explanation—the Friends of Bedford had become the ones under investigation.

  On December 8, George Leonard and his team were summoned to meet with Interim Chancellor Kaya Henderson and members of her senior team. The next day a letter went out to Dunbar parents.

  Dear Parents and Guardians of Dunbar Students,

  In order to provide your children with a solid education in an environment that promotes their growth and learning, I have made significant changes at Dunbar Senior High School beginning this week. I shared this information with you last evening through a telephone message.

  We are committed to ensuring that all students and staff are safe and that Dunbar Senior High School returns to an environment where al
l teachers can teach and students can learn. In partnership with the Dunbar community, a plan is in place that will touch on many aspects of Dunbar’s operations. This plan will require immediate action over the next two weeks, and will be followed by longer-term work designed to further support teaching and learning.

  Leadership. As of today—Thursday, December 9th—Dunbar will be led by a new, but familiar, interim principal. Stephen Jackson was principal of Dunbar during the 2009–2010 school year. He was reappointed interim principal of Dunbar yesterday. Friends of Bedford will no longer manage or have oversight over Dunbar.

  Principal Jackson will lead a Dunbar that is orderly, well-run, and conducive to your child’s learning. In the coming days, he will announce other steps that will be taken in order to improve the Dunbar climate.

  Safety. Both MPD and the Roving Leaders have assigned additional officers to Dunbar in order to ensure security of students and teachers. Portions of the building not in use have been secured and closed off. Non-functioning cameras and other security equipment have been repaired or replaced.

  Parent and Family Engagement. A parent meeting has been scheduled so that you will be able to discuss with Principal Jackson these changes and other matters important to you. The meeting will take place on Monday, December 13th at 6:00 PM in the Dunbar library.

  Interim Principal Jackson is supported by a team made up of administrators, counselors, and others who will be present at Dunbar over the next several weeks. Along with Dunbar leadership, faculty, and staff, they will address issues of neighborhood safety, school facilities and operations, student support, and family engagement.

  I am confident that these changes will result in a stronger Dunbar that will better serve your student. We look forward to your engagement in this process, and we will continue to update you as these plans go forward.

  Sincerely,

  Kaya Henderson, Interim Chancellor

  “Why do I think it didn’t work out? I think there are a couple of reasons.” Kaya Henderson paused for a moment to think. It had been a few months; things had calmed down and now she had a little perspective. “On the one hand, I think, what Friends of Bedford was able to do in Brooklyn was very different than the situation here for a couple reasons. One, in Brooklyn they started a school from scratch. So, you know, they took a group of ninth graders and grew their school over time, as opposed to taking an existing four-year institution that is, you know, already has kids across all four grades. And they were able to build a culture, as opposed to trying to change a culture. They were also here responsible for two schools at the same time, Dunbar and Coolidge. Whereas, I think, in Brooklyn they were able to devote 100 percent of their time and attention to one school.”