First Class

by Alison Stewart

  This would become the prevailing narrative in the District, repeated again and again, whether or not it was true. Henderson didn’t pile on in a way that many others in the media and in the school did. Her analysis was evenhanded.

  “I also think that there are some challenges—to be really fair to them—in being able to operate in a charter context where you can do sort of whatever you want and having to operate in a school district context.”

  Henderson showed her considerable skills as a diplomat, as well as her steeliness, when pushed on the subject. “I think, you know, I think when we, DCPS, engaged in this new kind of a relationship, I don’t think that we had—this was the first time we ever did this, right? So, I don’t know if we had all of the supports necessary.” The comment was an example of twenty-twenty hindsight and Henderson knew it. At the time it seemed to make sense. She continued, “We had worked out the appropriate amount of supports and the appropriate amount of accountability. We were kind of figuring this out together. And I think that also affected Friends of Bedford’s ability to be successful at Dunbar. I think it was a host of things. I think, you know, there’s a little bit of blame to go around to everybody.”

  As for the tensions between Leonard and reinstalled Principal Jackson? “Let me be clear,” her tone hardened, dramatically. “That was their hire…. While technically all principals are DCPS principals, they brought Principal Jackson down from New York. We didn’t know him before this. That was their choice to run Dunbar.” In a job where she doesn’t get to laugh a lot, she cracked a small joke, soaked in truth, about wanting a drama-free year. “My primary hope is that kids have an uneventful school year.”

  George Leonard believes one thing to be true: “They made a big mistake pulling us out of that school.” He and his team—Niaka, Bevon, and Derrick—were working in their familiar setup of tables in a U shape, with laptops open and stacks of reports and data piled up. Only this time they were at Coolidge High School where, for the time being, they were still the managers and where they’d had more success. For nearly two hours, the Bedford group swatted down accusations, knocked off all of the criticism that led to their expulsion, and presented the names and dates to back up their claims. They pointed to their accomplishments, from cleaning up the school to a rise in students testing proficient or advanced in reading, an uptick from 18.2 percent to 31.9 percent at Dunbar.1 From what they had witnessed, they believed an action plan they had presented before they were canned was still being used. At times their arguments and claims seemed feasible, but at other times they sounded downright paranoid. They realized they had made two critical errors: underestimating the political climate of Washington and failing to put their hubris aside.

  “We came here to educate,” said George Leonard, shaking his head. “Getting caught up in the political end and the negativity? No, no, no, I am not getting caught up in that. We came here to do that job that was in the school building. We didn’t know we were going to have to educate all of DC.” Even though no voices were raised, their anger was palpable. With their natural way of picking up where the other left off, Niaka Gaston added, “We are not politicians, and we are not sorry for it.”

  They definitely weren’t politicians. They didn’t compromise. They didn’t adjust to the situation. Their modus operandi led to professional Darwinism. The group that adapts to its environment survives. Just because one survives doesn’t mean that person or entity is in the right; it just means it found a way to exist in its current environment. Friends of Bedford’s “we know better than you, plus we are from New York” attitude did little to endear them to DCPS and some of the Dunbar alumni. When a mailing went out from the alumni association touting the goals Bedford wanted to achieve at Dunbar, someone from the class of ’43 sent it back with a note that read, in part, “Why in the world are you mailing out these objectives and the names and pictures of Leonard, Thompson, Cerisier, and Gaston, all of Brooklyn, NY? We Dunbarites are very dissatisfied with your article featuring out of towners and Dunbar High School.”

  If Bedford saw something that was interfering with the plan, one of them would speak out. At one point they publicly criticized the cutting of staff midyear as well as the way teachers were evaluated through a program called IMPACT.

  “We went around saying things like ‘IMPACT is stupid!’ Now the person responsible for IMPACT is now the chancellor. I said it was a dumb idea to have an RIF [reduction in forces] in October. Who does that?” They called out a scheduling administrator for putting all the kids, eight hundred of them, at lunch together. They decided against AP classes because they believed they were window dressing at this point because the kids did not do well. Friends of Bedford seemed to be running Dunbar as a charter school, which it wasn’t—they still answered to DCPS. It was an off-kilter relationship. They were given a lot of leeway at first. One of the Bedford officers confessed, “It still worked while Michelle Rhee was at the helm because she understood that’s who we are. She would defend us. We really didn’t understand the extent to which she protected us.”

  Leonard knew the end was coming. “When [Rhee] stepped down, we knew our project would be in jeopardy. Fenty and Rhee [were] the governing body. When Gray won, it started to rain on us. She left in October, and we knew then that our safety net was gone.” The Friends of Bedford were confronted with the reality that their detractors had been keeping score.

  When presented with their reported failings, they rebutted each and every one. On the charge that they bumped Vince Gray from graduation? Not true. That the school wasn’t secure? Friends of Bedford had asked for security but were denied. In fact, in its first report submitted to DCPS there is a detailed budget for the security the Friends of Bedford requested. The Bedford report requests,

  An increased number of security agents to manage the movement of students, not only throughout the building, but also into and out of the building.

  Better trained agents who are qualified in handling disruptive students and student conflict.

  The use of proactive agents willing to engage students who are cutting and/or violating the rules and regulations of the school and DCPS.

  The partner [Friends of Bedford] is currently awaiting a decision from DCPS regarding its ability to hire an outside security company to replace or supplement Hawk One services.

  It is the intention of Friends of Bedford Inc, to manage the security service if DCPS allows.

  After Hawk One went bankrupt in 2009, the Bedford team broke the rules and hired its own security company to supplement the replacements. DCPS removed the Bedford hires. Chaos in the halls? A load of bad kids were transferred into their school, and problems followed. They didn’t respond quickly enough to the alleged sexual attack? They wanted to wait until the police investigation was conclusive. The teacher who walked out and talked to the Washington Post’? She wouldn’t accept that there were certain legal channels they had to go through in order to discipline kids. They had an answer for everything.

  What seems to have been lurking around the edges of the difficulties was the disintegrating relationship between Friends of Bedford and Principal Jackson. By this point, it was a case of he said/he said about what had happened between them. Things got so toxic that lawsuits were filed and subpoenas sent, including one to a Washington Post reporter. All that eventually went away, but the bad feelings did not. Jackson felt undervalued and dismissed. Friends of Bedford felt deceived, describing the events as a coup staged by a former friend. Jackson saw Bedford as being in over its head and not tuned in to the immediate needs of the students.

  By this time, the Friends of Bedford knew all of its members would be returning to New York soon. They questioned whether or not DC was really ready for reform.

  “Denial,” Niaka concluded. “They are in denial. They are not about change.”

  “They refuse to move the citizens to the point where they can be competitive in this country,” Leonard said. Not clarifying exactly who “they” were, he con
tinued, “DC is a farm, and what they are growing is human athletes. And if they don’t become professional, they go back on the street. Most of the graduates are still on the eighth-grade level. That is the sad truth.”

  Gaston’s next remarks summed up why he believed the Bedford-DC experiment couldn’t work. “They saw us as reformers who were actually here to reform, and instead of allowing us the time to do the job, they found reasons to make excuses. Michelle Rhee’s mistake.” He did concede one point, however. “We are arrogant. We are. I am going to say it, because we are great. We know what is right, and we know that we are going to fight for what’s right.”

  They would have kept on talking if not for a warning announcement over the PA. Another massive snowstorm was going to hit DC. Teachers should prepare for an early dismissal. All the men rose, put on their hats and coats, and headed for Coolidge’s exits as the students started to leave.

  “We need to be in the halls and outside,” George Leonard said.

  It snowed ten inches overnight. Mayor Gray had been in office for twenty-three days. Jake Tapper, a reporter from ABC News, tweeted to his followers: “Dear Mayor Gray, it’s been snowing for hours and I haven’t seen one snowplow. You there?” As former Mayor Fenty had already found out, in DC the power shift changes like the weather.

  Spring 2012

  In Dunbar’s library, Principal Jackson gives some advice to a member of the debate team, something about presentation.

  “Awww, Mr. Jackson … ,” says the young man.

  “It is true. Believe it,” Jackson insists as he walks over to sit at the head of a long table. It is close to 6:00 PM. Principal Jackson is in the library to attend just one more meeting before the end of a long day that started with him greeting students in the morning. In walks one of the ladies from the front office with a piece of birthday cake for him, from an office party he had to miss. “Thank you, Miss Hayes.”2 He nods to her. She gives him a big smile back and then takes the plate as others trickle in for the meeting.

  “Relationships, relationships, relationships” are one key to Jackson’s leadership at Dunbar High School. He’d been back at Dunbar just over a year. “Most of the children in the building knew me and when I came back they were so happy to see me. The kids said, ‘Oh, Jackson is back. We know what we have to do.’ So everybody was in class, and everybody basically wore their uniforms. I didn’t have any problems. So that I came back the first day, children knew, ‘Well, this is Mr. Jackson.’ They even told the little freshmen, ‘That’s Mr. Jackson.’ ”

  Before he was reappointed principal, Mr. Jackson had been working as a consultant in the school, a position agreed upon after the collaboration with Bedford disintegrated. “Unfortunately we did not agree with how the school should be turned around. When they told me that they wanted to do certain things, I said, ‘Well, respectfully, Mr. Leonard, that does not work.’ And they did not listen. So, therefore, at the end of the year, I said, ‘I will not work with you again. I am resigning my position as principal, and you can do what you need to do.’ And unfortunately, because they did not know what they were doing, in terms of turning schools around, the school spiraled out of control. The day I left is the day the school spiraled out of control.”

  Teachers tell anecdotes of as many as fifty students in the halls if no authority figure was around, and about colleagues who, by Christmas, had taken all of their personal days for the year because work was so stressful.

  When Jackson returned, he got the security DCPS promised and some latitude to do things his way—in the short term. “Fortunately we were able to put certain things in place where, you know, … it stabilized the school.” One teacher described it as Law & Order with a caring side. Stephen Jackson will speak about himself in the third person, often. Of his return he said, “The students know Mr. Jackson loves them. And oh, I love my students and they love us. And we take care of our students. And we build relationships with our students.” Jackson relates to the students on several levels. When the young black man Trayvon Martin was shot in Florida and was described as being suspicious for wearing a hoodie, Principal Jackson joined the young men in his school in protest one day by wearing a hooded sweatshirt.

  Jackson describes his method as “nag and nurture.” The students are regularly reminded of disciplinary action, including supervised study and the enigmatic “Jackson’s list.” “Generally, we call up their parents. If a student gets into another argument with another student, we bring in staff members where they are able to mediate between the students, and generally we don’t have anything after. But if we do, you know, the last thing we do is suspend ’em. We may suspend ’em for a couple of days. We may suspend them for a longer period depending on their infraction, but … I want to knock on wood that we haven’t had many fights in this building at all. We diverted the fights because kids know if they fight, the hammer comes down on them very hard. The language … that they have used in the past, you know, they don’t use the same type of language, although you may hear it here or there. But all you have to do is ‘Ahem!’ Or ‘Oh, I’m sorry. I’m sorry.’ So it’s a different attitude because kids feel they’re in a nurturing environment.”

  Students with an interest in science can enroll in smaller academies focusing on technology and engineering. “In addition to that, we’ve created a tenth grade academy. Just for tenth graders. Then we have the eleventh and twelfth graders that are in the towers. But the tenth graders, they have their own area. Ninth graders have their own area. The eleventh and twelfth graders have their area. We’ve also created another lunchroom so the ninth graders eat by themselves. And then the following period, the tenth graders eat by themselves. The eleventh and twelfth graders eat together upstairs. So we built, over last summer, a brand-new lunchroom downstairs, separately, just for the ninth graders and just for the tenth graders.” The ninth graders are also required to take an 8:00 AM class that focuses on their futures. They wander in, some of them still putting on the belts they had to take off to make it through the metal detector at their entrance. One day the first half of the period was dedicated to creating a five-year timeline. The students were asked to make a collage, a storyboard, about their hopes and dreams for five years down the road. A group of giggly girls are busy pasting pictures of wedding dresses on their large pieces of cardboard. In the second half of the period the students were asked to prepare questions for a group of volunteers, professionals who were brought in to talk to the students about career options.

  “Because we’ve created a learning environment for students in the ninth and the tenth grades, exponentially they are learning. So we separated them, and fortunately for us, the ninth graders are not picking up certain habits of the older folk.” Jackson laughs a knowing laugh.

  The meeting is about to begin. A few local politicians stroll in, a couple of coaches, alumni, and a few members of city government. An agenda is distributed, and an attendance sheet is passed around. Everyone is here for the monthly meeting to discuss the new $122 million Dunbar Senior High School.

  16 NEW NEW SCHOOL

  WEARING WHITE CONSTRUCTION HATS and holding shiny new shovels, politicians, educators, and alumni dug into a big pile of earth churned up for the occasion. It was a cliché photo op, but the sentiments felt that day were something rare in such a political city: they were genuine. Once the dirt started the fly, the crowd hooted with joy.

  The ground breaking for the new new Dunbar High School was an emotional occasion for those who gathered on the school’s backfield. “A marvelous day!” cheered a class member from 1969.1 A former educator who loved teaching in the first building, Dunbar I, recalled a better time: “The original school was an absolutely beautiful edifice. I enjoyed my tenure there. I loved the children and the administration. I loved the community that was Dunbar. I loved the community that we formed.”2 For many, November 17, 2011, was a step toward rebuilding Dunbar on all levels.

  Laid out in the offices of the firm of Perkins Eastma
n the drawings showing the elevation, landscaping, and interior cutaways of Dunbar III could have covered an average conference table three times over, maybe four. Matt Bell, one of the firm’s principals, stroked his salt-and-pepper beard as he explained why his team had pursued the Dunbar project.

  “We like to do schools because we think they’re really the sort of anchors of communities, so this one looked like a great opportunity to fix something that seemed to have gone haywire with the ’70s building. And we think we can. We thought at the time, when we went after it, that it’s a good project for us because it has—it’s an urban school, and a tight, urban site, so we know how to do those sorts of things. We like building in DC. We have a lot of experience in the process of DC.”

  Perkins Eastman, formerly EE&K, has designed libraries and public parks around the world and in the District. Not long before the Dunbar project, the firm executed a streamlined, elegant, and seamless addition to a Victorian school in Foggy Bottom that was designed in the late 1800s. Even though Bell has the demeanor of a seasoned vet who has “been there, done that, flew back business class,” he was obviously intrigued by this opportunity. “It’s a very high-profile project, not the least of which because it’s in the nation’s capital, but also because of the history of this particular school. So, we’ve teamed with Moody-Nolan; they’re the largest minority architecture firm in the United States. So, there’s a lot of constellation of things that sort of come together.”