The mayor and the chancellor: A partnership built on trust
By Leah Fabel
Examiner Staff Writer 10/12/08
“Mayor [Michael] Bloomberg [in New York] and [Richard] Daley [in Chicago] are great people,” Rhee said. “But they don’t hold a candle to Adrian Fenty in terms of the support they offer their superintendents. And I know those superintendents, so I know that none of them even come close.”
Rhee called people with her kind of passion “a dime a dozen,” and said only the mayor’s backing has made her reforms possible.
“Transfer me somewhere else and you’re going to have the same thing you get everywhere else,” Rhee said.
“But where’s a politician anywhere who says ‘You know what? I know people are going to be upset, and yes our phones are going to be ringing off the hooks, but this is the right thing to do for kids. You don’t find people like that in public office.”
Fenty thinks Rhee is being overly modest.
“She’s not a dime a dozen. She’s one of the best managers and school leaders this country has ever seen,” he said.
Whether their close partnership matters in the long run will depend on their ability to dramatically turn around the city’s long-failing schools.
“She promised me — she made all of the right representations about holding people accountable, moving fast and having kids’ priorities first so that everything else would be secondary,” Fenty said.
In return, he promised his unwavering support. And Rhee has tested it, from firing her own daughters’ principal (along with nearly 40 others) to instituting controversial monetary incentives for students with good grades and attendance.
Hayden Wetzel, archivist for nearly 200 years of D.C. school history, said the two young leaders — Fenty is 37, Rhee, 38 — have taken the first critical steps by breaking with the recent past.
“Two mayors, Anthony Williams and Fenty, and now one chancellor in Rhee have decided to declare war on the city’s personnel systems as perpetuating inefficient bureaucracies,” Wetzel said.
“The question is, if they can get rid of this thing, will what they create be any better?”
3 Comments
Reader Comments:
POSTED Oct 12, 2008
: "I'm so sick and tried of this Mayor always talking about accountibility. Well what about him hiring people that will only do as he say because they don't have the experience in the positions that he has hired them in and they will do as the dictator says. We the people need to get together and hold this Mayor accountable for messing up this city."POSTED Oct 14, 2008
get a clue: "Yup, she made all the right representations. They bear no relation to what she actually does, but in this all-PR administration, it doesn't matter. These two know-nothings, impressed with their own boldness, are destroying DCPS. Kinda ironic since it seemed as if there was no place to go but up. Sometimes when everybody criticizes you, it's because you're effing up big time. Neither Fenty nor Rhee seem to get that."POSTED Oct 16, 2008
More Rhetoric ...: "This whole charade is disgusting, coming from both of these charlatans. I don't know what is more disgusting: the mistakes in judgment they both make through hubris or their worship of each other that is so nauseating and blatant. The real question is when all of the personnel lawsuits are paid out, and they will be, will Mr. Accountability be held accountable? He is as bad with the word accountable as two other politicans are with the word maverick."