Washington Informer

Citing the heavy cloud of suspicion that has been hovering over his administration following a trail of convictions aligned with his 2010 election campaign, at least two D.C. Council members are calling for the resignation of Mayor Vincent C. Gray.

At-large Councilman David Catania and Ward 3 Councilwoman Mary Cheh said in interviews earlier this week they are demanding that Gray vacate his post immediately. According to Catania, it's the right thing for Gray to leave; and Cheh said it doesn't matter whether he had knowledge of any wrongdoings while seeking to unseat rival Adrian Fenty. Gray's who had been the Council chairman, won the election with assistance of an illegal shadow campaign. The campaign, which remains under investigation, involved laundering $653,000 that was donated by a local well-known businessman.

"Whether he knew or not about the shadow campaign, the time has come for the mayor to step down," Catania said in an interview Wednesday. "We know that his campaign engaged in a criminal conspiracy to undermine the election laws of our city, calling into question the legitimacy of the election and his legitimacy as mayor."

Cheh added that, "Whether or not he knew of the massive election fraud that was taking place in his name, he is responsible for it."

Meanwhile, Gray has said he has no plans to vacate his office.

During the recent dayslong heat wave, Jay Rock of Southeast D.C., attempted to cool off by dousing his head with a cold bottle of water. 

Temperatures had consistently remained in the triple digits, with the oppressive heat having blanketed the Washington region./Photo by Shevry Lassiter for The Washington Informer

CFederal authorities have determined that an illegal shadow campaign helped get D.C. Mayor Vincent Gray elected on 2010.

According to testimony documented in federal court on July 10, Eugenia "Jeanne" Clarke Harris admitted that $650,000 in illicit funding which helped pave the way for Gray to take the helm, was provided by a District businessman. She acknowledged that the money – that went unreported to the D.C. Office of Campaign Finance– was used for supplies, consultants' fees and other expenses for Gray.

"The 2010 mayoral election was corrupted," Ronald Machen, U. S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, said in an interview. "The mayoral campaign was compromised by back room deals, secret payments and flood of unreported cash."

A cover-up to mislead authorities began last year after an investigation was launched into Gray's campaign. In doing so, documents were forged and/or shredded, and tax returns for Harris's public relations firm, Belle International, were amended.

Harris, 75, a public relations executive, pleaded guilty to three federal and local charges. She has not been sentenced, but could reportedly face a prison term of two to three years and $60,000 in fines.

According to Harris's plea agreement, the businessman -- vaguely referred to as Jeffrey Thompson -- is listed a co-conspirator No. 1. He has not been charged, but the funds he provided were funneled through Belle International between late July and Sept. 14, 2010.

Gray, who once hired Harris as a communications consultant, has not been named in any court documents. But as a result of the improprieties aligned with Harris, his administration has marked its third credibility blow since May.

Meanwhile, Machen has vowed to continue the investigation until all parties involved have been held accountable.

A new report by the District-based think tank, Center for American Progress, reveals that students enrolled in the local public education system believe school is too easy and that most times they don't find classes like math to be very challenging.

According to results of the survey that was released this week, and which analyzed three years of questionnaires from the Department of Education's National Assessment of Educational Progress, 39 percent of D.C. fourth-graders and 34 percent of eighth-graders have often viewed their math studies as always "too easy."

In comparison to their peers in the Maryland and Virginia systems, 90 percent of 8th graders in D.C. said they were more likely to classify their math classes as boring, even though significantly fewer District students are graduating from high school.

The survey also notes that while 71 percent of District eighth-graders usually report that they "understanding what their math teacher asks" (compared to 75 percent in Maryland and 77 percent in Virginia), District students were more likely than Maryland and Virginia students to read more than 20 pages in school and for homework.

Other points of the nationwide study found that:

• 51 percent of eighth-grade civics students and 57 percent of eighth-grade history students said their course work is "often" or "always" too easy;

• 39 percent of high schools seniors "rarely" write about what they read in class;

• 37 percent of fourth-graders said their math work is "often" or "always" too easy.

Washington, D.C. — The D.C. Public Charter School Board (PCSB) voted this past spring to approve four applications for new public charter schools for the 2012-2013 school year.

The proposed schools are: Creative Minds, Latin American Youth Center Career Academy, DC Scholars and BASIS DC. Three of the applications received conditional approval and must satisfactorily address the required conditions outlined by the Board before they can be granted a charter to open in the fall of 2012. The Latin American Youth Center Career Academy was approved with no conditions. All seven members of the Board voted on the applications with Board Member Sara Mead voting by proxy. Fourteen applications were denied.

"The Board received a rich array of charter applications – some from founders with extraordinary track records in other states," said Board Chairman Brian W. Jones. "We conducted an exhaustive review of the applications including a rigorous public hearing and poured over mountains of data submitted to the Board. The decisions we made were not made lightly."

Creative Minds will offer students a comprehensive education program that involves an international primary, project-based curriculum, including the arts, and integrates standards-based literacy and math instruction in small classrooms. While the school's proposal was developed to serve pre-school through eighth grade, the PCSB felt that the application was stronger for pre-school through fifth grade and conditionally approved the application to serve those grades only, with the possibility of being approved to serve the middle school grades later.

The Latin American Youth Center (LAYC) Career Academy will provide young people between the ages of 16 and 24 who have not been successful in a traditional school setting with skills necessary to attain a GED certificate, vocational training in high-growth occupations, college-credit classes and preparation for success in college, postsecondary education, training programs or the workplace. LAYC has founded three successful public charter schools in the District: LAYC Youth Build, Next Step and Latin American Bilingual Montessori (LAMB). Board members noted their successful track record with these schools as a strong indicator of success with Career Academy.

DC Scholars will serve students in pre-school through the eighth grade partnering with Scholar Academies, a non-profit, school management organization that has been successful operating schools in Philadelphia and Washington, DC—including the highest performing charter middle school in Philadelphia.

BASIS DC plans to provide a rigorous liberal arts college preparatory education to middle and high school students in grades 5 through 12. The BASIS school model has been successful in Arizona and the PCSB gave conditional approval pending the applicant's demonstration of how this model will be adapted to the demographic profile of students in the District of Columbia.

The Board received many strong proposals, but felt that many applications fell short of connecting the mission with the curriculum. "The connection of a fabulous mission to an operational plan was lacking," said Board Vice Chair Skip McKoy. "It's not our job to connect the dots, but it's incumbent on applicants to do appropriate research on potential student population."

In February, the PCSB received 19 applications with Bedford Collegiate Academy withdrawing its request after it was accepted. The Board conducted a rigorous review process before deliberating and voting at the April 25th meeting.

During the review process, each applicant received a technical review as well as interviews with the founding groups and proposed principals. Public hearings were held where applicants were allowed to present their proposals to the Board and the public. The community also provided input at the hearing. All applicants will receive extensive feedback from the Board on their applications.

On Sunday, for the sixth day in a row, more than 15,000 homes and businesses in the District remained without power, according to Pepco spokesman Marcus Beal.

But as residents continued to deal with record temperatures that consistently exceeded 100 degrees, a local union contends that rather than blaming the delay restoring power to incompetence on Pepco's part, the utility company's "chronic" lack of manpower is at fault.

Members of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) Local 1900 also claim that Pepco's shift from hiring union utility workers to non-union temporary contractors has added to the problem.

"We have half the linemen we had 15 years ago," Jim Griffin from IBEW Local 1900, said in a statement. Griffin, whose union represents 1,150 Pepco workers, added that, "We have been complaining for a very long time. They have relied for a long time on contractors. They are transients, they don't know our system, and we typically have to go behind them to fix their mistakes. It's very frustrating. We take ownership in our work, we make careers out of this."

Griffin said IBEW warned Pepco years ago about the consequences of under-staffing.

"Everything is keyed on dollars and cents profit," IBEW Utility Director Jim Hunter reportedly warned back in 2005. "Storm outages are longer, and utilities are asking for more and more help from other utilities. The problem is that other companies are in the same boat. And they are still not hiring."

Griffin went on to say that starting 15 years ago, Pepco stopped hiring workers to replace retiring electrical workers and offered incentive-laden buyout deals to get electricians to retire.

He said that in order to address understaffing problems, Pepco -- which currently employs 1,150 union workers and approximately 400 non-union contractors -- has at times, hired non-union temporary contractors, instead of hiring new workers.

Meanwhile, according to a statement of Pepco's website, an estimated 300,000 man-hours were expended to restore customers, including call center support. Pepco secured about 1,000 hotel rooms to house field crews over an eight-day period, arranged more than 53,000 meals and issued about 10,000 cases of water and 9,000 cases of energy drinks to keep crews sufficiently hydrated during the high heat the region experienced last week.