Despite the adage that you get more bees with honey, I will not sit idly by and allow Congressman Jose Serrano, Democrat from Bronx, NY, write an opinion for The Washington Post that is layered with obfuscation and misperceptions, without calling him on it.

Serrano is suddenly the focus of the DC Opportunity Scholarship Program’s supporters, forced by the unique circumstances of the federal government’s oversight of the District of Columbia, which he manages as chair of a nebulous Subcommittee on Financial Services and General Government. Serrano is apparently angered that this position begets him calls from all over the nation - from people of all stripes and walks of life, who want children to have what they deserve and rarely get in the District’s traditional public schools - a good education that is also safe, also preparatory for life.

Serrano’s attitude to these calls - and the children affected - can best be considered ignorance. He says that local people should lobby their local leaders, as if their local leaders have the authority to spend federal money. By doing so, he also ignores that local people HAVE lobbied local leaders - tens of thousands of them - and those local leaders have endorsed the program and written Congress about that endorsement. The Mayor, the Chancellor of the city’s schools, a majority of the City Council, the former Mayor, the former City Council Education Chair, the Mayor’s staff. These are not Republicans, as Serrano wants us all to believe. These are Democrats, and predominantly people of color, who understand and care deeply about the people of this city, and who are happy to draw help from anyone who can or would want to help them, regardless of affiliation.

That’s what it means to be a true democrat - an individual open to many viewpoints and voices, which apparently, Serrano is not.

Finally, a word from a person who actually has deeper roots in the Bronx than he. My grandparents settled in the Bronx in the early part of the last century, and my mother was raised there. I grew up attending family functions in the Bronx. The area started as an enclave for European immigrants and over time, evolved into an enclave for immigrants from throughout our continent, drawing people of Latino descent from throughout the Hemisphere. But the people who populate the area are no less interested in great education than my ancestors. And today, despite the best of intentions by area leaders, the Bronx is ailing, with poverty and gangs just two of the indicators. But schools are slowly helping turn around the younger generation, thanks to charter schools that the city, the state, and education entrepreneurs have worked together to create. This is just one form of choice that exists. The same people Congressman Serrano proudly represent also draw heavily on Catholic schools. They would probably shudder if they knew that their Congressman opposed any opportunity out of poverty for those disadvantaged by circumstance, in any city. Indeed, Serrano’s own constituents rely heavily upon religious institutions to help them provide food, shelter, clothing and all social services to their community. Not one block in the Bronx is without a religious organization, most of which draw federal and state funds to help the state administer programs for the needy.

Such aid seems not to bother Congressman Serrano, even though the same principle is at work in the DC scholarship program he apparently abhors. That program provides federal funds in the form of scholarships to ensure that more children have access to poverty-fighting institutions, and they are only spent by the choice of Americans, living in the District, who want something better for their children.

And so I ask you, Congressman Serrano — How dare you write that this is a program whose fate lies in the hands of local leaders when you’ve made it clear you control the appropriations process for DC programs like this one? How dare you say this is a program that was imposed on the District by Republicans, when the individuals who fought tirelessly for years to see it enacted, and who still lobby you for its continuation are as varied in their composition as the neighborhood you call home?

Oppose the program if you wish, but don’t lie and say you do so because the program was imposed by Republicans and not supported locally. Tell the truth. And then stop complaining about how many calls you are getting from people around the country that support the program.  They pay your salary, and they want you to do your job, objectively, and without bias. And with appreciation for the needs of the people you serve.

October 1, 2009

Dear Mayor Fenty,

We missed you at yesterday’s rally to celebrate the DC Opportunity Scholarship Program. A cast of thousands was on hand to raise their many voices with one message to Congress and the Administration: that they reauthorize the program so that the children of our city may receive the very best education possible.

We’ve heard lately that you are leaning supportive.

If you had been there, you’d be a believer.

This is not a partisan or ideological issue. It is only political because we have allowed it to become a football between the nation’s leaders and special interests.

You can help fix this.

(Save Opportunity)

Senator Durbin used Wednesday’s hearing on Washington, DC public schools to broadcast what feels like a last ditch effort on his part to remove continuation of the DC Opportunity Scholarship Program from consideration, and frankly, making thinly veiled accusations of mismanagement and fraud when he himself admits to lacking all of the details speaks of desperation.

While there may be a legitimate question of the program’s transparency, if that truly is an obstacle to continuation, it is one that can easily be removed. What cannot be questioned is the fact that DC OSP families have seen the education and futures of their students dramatically changed for the better because of their participation.

Perhaps the most scrutinized and vetted federal education reform program in history, mountains of research and hours of testimony before Congress by experts, educators, parents and students should speak for itself, pointing to increased student achievement, safety and satisfaction.

This small $14 million program has proven itself to be effective on many levels, and yet billions upon billions are heaped into pork legislation, pet projects and favors without so much as a raised eyebrow? This year, public schools across the country have been the recipients of the largest influx of monies ever allotted to education. Rather than fighting what works, Senator Durbin and his teachers union supporters would better serve the kids he so strongly “defends” in his war on the DC Opportunity Scholarship Program by thoroughly following the $100 billion pledged to the country’s schools and ensuring that it not continue to fund failing and broken programs.

Save Opportunity

Copyright: Doug Stroud www.lttlphotography.co

Baseball may appear to have a very incongruous relationship to the topic of education reform, but it appeared, at least on August 19, on a muggy evening in Washington, to have more in common with kids most in need of schools than any other piece of popular culture.

Washington, DC was for years without a team.

Children in DC for years were without any access to schools that work.

Baseball used to be a huge phenomenon in Washington.

Many schools used to be phenomenal here as well.

Dunbar High School was a college prep school with a very high percentage of graduates. But at last night’s Nationals game, at least two parents of children who participate in a program of choice said there was no way they’d send their daughters to that school - a school that is now a symbol of miseducation for all but the most motivated and hardened students.

Indeed, programs like the one that allowed these parents and 2,000 others to choose alternatives to their assigned public schools - schools like St. Augustine, Nannie Helen Burroughs, Archbishop Carroll - are giving parents what baseball here, even with its warts, is giving the community. Hope, dreams, and a chance to redevelop their lives.

As the Nats closed in on the Rockies last night, twice (before losing with a close 5-4), hundreds of students attending schools of opportunity cheered on their ailing team, happy to be in a stadium that has helped transform a once-desolate neighborhood, happy to be with others who have also had a second chance at an education.

While they are not winning yet, baseball has helped save this city. The DC Opportunity Scholarship Program is doing the same, but unlike baseball which rests mostly in private sector hands, school choices for DC students rest in government hands - Congress mostly - which has chosen thus far to deny them any more access to their own field of dreams, their chance for a way up, their way to come from behind.

They can still pull out a bottom of the 9th win for these kids when they return from recess. We can hope.

(To learn more about School Opportunity Night, please visit: www.saveopportunity.org)

Like a C-SPAN junkie throwing a shoe at the TV to thwart a clueless Washington Journal guest, a supporter of the DC Opportunity Scholarship Program can at times feel like a solitary soldier in the face of the bureaucratic juggernaut that is Capitol Hill.

There have been hearings, reports, letters, editorials, parent and student testimony, rallies…

And yet, Congress and the Administration continue to fret over the effectiveness of DC’s voucher program, laboring (or not) to find an answer even as it stares them right in the face.

Okay, perhaps not the President, but at least Members of Congress get out into the real world and rub shoulders with the residents of their transitory home.

Do they realize that 74% of the folks passing them in the street each day support a continuation of DC OSP?

A new report out today from the Friedman Foundation cuts past the politicos and gets right to the heart of the matter: how District residents - beneficiaries of this and other reforms - feel about their schools, their school leaders and the choices they have for their children.

Their desire to to see the program survive this prolonged vetting is reinforced by groups such as Save Opportunity and DC Children First that work one-on-one with DC families on a daily basis in an effort to enlighten elected officials to the reality of the program’s success.

This is a wake-up call that needs to be delivered to every elected representative with a vote to cast.