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June 27, 2007

Morning Shots

Washington Post:  Council mostly applauds nominee

D.C. Council members and city leaders yesterday gushed praise on Mayor Adrian M. Fenty’s nominee to take over the $2.3 billion public school modernization program, but some were highly critical of the mayor for the secrecy with which he made the choice. Council members questioned Allan Y. Lew during a public roundtable on his nomination and voiced displeasure with Fenty's lack of consultation in the process for choosing Lew and other appointees.

As chief of the schools modernization, Lew would be paid $275,000 a year, a raise of $25,000 from his sports commission job. He said he plans to manage school construction with the same care he has used with past projects. Lew's duties would include creating the construction office from scratch.

Lew said he has visited several schools and has seen the damage done by years of neglect. The schools will need an aggressive maintenance program to preserve the school renovations, he said. "If we don't build in the various warranties . . . three years, two years from now, we will be revisiting the same schools," he said. "It's almost like not changing the oil in your car. The engine dies."

Philadelphia Inquirer:  Charter schools booming in the suburbs

With only five days of school left, advanced-math fifth graders at Renaissance Academy-Edison Charter School considered a new concept: how to compute the surface area of a juice box.

Such rigorous curriculum and individual attention, administrators say, have boosted the Chester County school's standardized math and reading scores substantially since it opened in 2000. Last month, the Center for Education Reform recognized that improvement by naming Renaissance a national charter of the year.

Once found almost exclusively in urban centers with dismal academic options, charters such as Renaissance - located in a bucolic corner of the solid-performing Phoenixville Area School District - have become increasingly common in the suburbs.

The nation's 4,000 charters dot suburbs in increasing numbers, especially in high-growth communities in California, Florida and Pennsylvania, Allen said. Bucks and Delaware Counties have three each; Montgomery has one. (Additional cyber charters based in Chester and Montgomery Counties attract online learners who can reside anywhere in Pennsylvania.)

Los Angeles Times:  Schoolyard secrets (Editorial)

First there are stories across the country about students not getting enough exercise. Parents call for more recess time and exercise.  Now the Los Angeles Times exposes the health risks being covered up at schools nationwide with an anecdote about a contaminated playground at a New Jersey middle school.  With districts cutting down on children's playtime and covering up health risks at schools across the country, it's no wonder children today have health issues.

The arrest this month of a reporter, accused of trespassing for taking soil samples at a pesticide-contaminated Paramus, N.J., middle school, is a powerful reminder of our tolerance for official secrecy about environmental health risks at schools.

The story reflects a cynical paradigm about environmental safeguards in our schools — namely the public's right not to know. The sad truth is that the suppression of environmental health information by government officials is a national scandal. In New Jersey, state law doesn't require that the public be notified of hazardous contamination at schools or how it will be handled. In California, state watchdogs only have the funding to investigate proposed schools, not existing ones.

Take, for example, my own alma mater — Beverly Hills High School. Four years ago, I began to investigate the possible link between an elevated incidence of cancers among its graduates and the fact that the campus is the site of 19 oil wells, which have brought at least $50 million in royalties to the school district, the city and its residents for nearly 50 years.

In Beverly Hills, the oil wells at the high school are still operating; a lease agreement runs until 2016. And no one is making it easy to find out exactly what chemicals those wells may be emitting; government officials simply insist that there is no safety problem whatsoever.

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