TUESDAY, AUGUST 24, 2010
KLMNO Smooth sailing as area schools open school from B1 Webster’s son, Kelly, 8, a third-
grader, was sad to see the end of summer but appreciated his new school. “I like the name,” he said.
What’s in a name?
Naming a school after a sitting president is unusual but not un- precedented. At least six other U.S. schools are named after Obama, including one in Hemp- stead, N.Y., that was renamed im- mediately after the 2008 elec- tion. Prince George’s school offi- cials settled on the name in June 2009, four months before Obama received the Nobel Peace Prize, an honor he suggested might be based on the promise of the fu- ture.
Obama isn’t the first president to lend his name to a school while in office. In 2003, George W. Bush Elementary School opened in Stockton, Calif. In 1970, a Hiawatha, Iowa, school was named Richard M. Nixon El- ementary. Prince George’s voted heavily Democratic in the 2008 election, and in the majority-African American county Obama is con- sidered a role model. A mural in the new school’s main hall in- cludes the president, and a cabi- net near the entrance is filled with campaign buttons and newspapers marking his historic election. Some Prince George’s high school students were without schedules Monday, but the prob- lem was nothing like the wide- spread ones last year. Superin- tendent William R. Hite Jr. said many of the students had regis- tered late. Other students had courses they hadn’t signed up for and were missing ones for which they had registered, a problem mentioned by several parents at Dr. Henry A. Wise Jr. High School in Upper Marlboro. Hite said that schedule prob- lems should be resolved this week and that everything else is “running well.” A change in the back-to-school routine at Charles H. Flowers High School in Upper Marlboro caused what might have been the day’s biggest problems. School officials used to mail class sched- ules to students. This year, stu- dents were required to print them out. Many students forgot despite repeated urgings from administrators. “We told them: ‘Do not leave home without it,’ ” Principal Hel- ena Nobles-Jones said. “And many of them still left home without it.”
So hundreds of students wait- ed in halls, the cafeteria and oth- er spots Monday morning for copies as class minutes ticked away. It took more than 90 min- utes for all the students to reach class.
S
B5 PETULA DVORAK
The hee-haw and a haircut: Props in the D.C. mayor’s race
dvorak from B1 GERALD MARTINEAU FOR THE WASHINGTON POST D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee chats with Charleisha Calder at Wilson Elementary.
“We are at a much different level in school
openings.” — Michelle A. Rhee, D.C. schools chancellor.
The biggest disruption in the MARK GAIL/THE WASHINGTON POST
Laniah Saunders, center, and sister Savannah Rae Massey, pose for a photo by their mother, Elisha Saunders, at Obama Elementary.
“We printed it out at home, and we forgot it,” said Elizabeth Coker-Nnam, who waited with her younger sister, Deborah Co- ker, for more than an hour for a new copy. “I am frustrated. This is taking too long.”
Changes in the District
In the District, teachers re- turned to the prospect of fatter bank accounts. They received raises as part of a contract in June that increases average sala- ries from $67,000 to about $81,000. Under a new voluntary performance-pay program, teachers can make an additional $10,000 to $20,000 a year, but they will be closely monitored by the school system in its second year of a rigorous evaluation sys- tem. In July, 76 teachers were fired based on poor evaluations during the 2009-10 school year. With the Democratic primary in three weeks, D.C. Mayor Adri-
an M. Fenty and Schools Chan- cellor Michelle A. Rhee used an opening day visit to J.O. Wilson Elementary in Northeast Wash- ington to highlight the adminis- tration’s school-reform record, which includes higher test scores, improved facilities and a halt to enrollment loss.
Rhee, presiding over her
fourth school opening since be- coming chancellor, said there is little comparison between Mon- day’s opening and previous back- to-school days, when many schools began the year short of textbooks. Rhee said the school system had delivered 244,007 textbooks, out of 244,242 or- dered, on time. The remainder, she said, were ordered late by schools.
“Simply put, I think we can de-
finitively say we are at a much different level in school openings than we were a few years ago,” Rhee said.
District on Monday was planned. The 1,500-student Woodrow Wil- son High School opened in tem- porary quarters at the University of the District of Columbia. The school will remain at UDC while its Tenleytown campus is reno- vated. The school system and UDC split the $15million cost of retrofitting the five-story build- ing at Van Ness and Yuma streets. But with security avail- able for two entrances — com- pared with three in Tenleytown —morning arrival was slow. Offi- cials said they will add another entrance Tuesday. “We have no idea” what to ex-
pect, junior Nate Krieger said. “It’s going to be a little more crowded.” Frederick County and many schools in Anne Arundel County returned to class Monday as well. Calvert County and the rest of Anne Arundel will resume school Tuesday, and St. Mary’s County students will return Wednesday. Montgomery County and other Maryland jurisdictions will re- turn Aug. 30, and most of North- ern Virginia will return after La- bor Day.
birnbaumm@washpost.com turqueb@washpost.com
Staff writer Jenna Johnson contributed to this report.
Deal to sell Tysons property collapses E tysons from B1
split-level in Fredericksburg in 2006. “That’s why we moved,” Barnes
said. “We thought it was going to be sold.” The developer proposed to build a subdivision on a plot that included two adjacent proper- ties, but when he kept extending the purchase contract, Barnes started to worry. “We were right in the middle of the park, and I knew something wasn’t going to work right,” she said. “It was taking too long.”
Tied to the land Barnes’s land has a rich his-
tory. In 1842, a free black woman named Keziah Carter bought 50 acres of the Wolf Trap Planta- tion from a prominent Fairfax County family for $300. Connie Stuntz, a well-known amateur historian, wrote about the pur- chase in “This Was Vienna, Vir- ginia,” a book she co-authored with her husband. “It was completely unusual to
have a woman buying the land, and a black woman at that,” Stuntz said. There is little known about
Carter, Stuntz said, but she is be- lieved to have been a descendant of Chief Powhatan, the influen- tial 17th-century American Indi- an and father of Pocahontas. After Carter died in 1866, the land was divided among her heirs. In 1925, Barnes’s great- grandmother bought 3.87 acres on the former Carter lot. But Barnes’s aunt Thelma Lawe re- members that her grandparents, mother, aunts and uncles lived on the land at some point and owned more than seven acres. “Everybody back there was re-
lated,” said Lawe, 82 and living in Southeast Washington. “It was humongous. It was great.”
For Lawe, it was a rustic, but idyllic, childhood. The kids would heat well water twice a week for baths. In the summer, they would shower in the rain. The rural lifestyle continued with Barnes’s generation. Her fa- ther bought an acre from his grandmother in the early 1960s and built the two-story house where Barnes grew up. Barnes’s father was a self-em- ployed dump truck driver and her mother a cafeteria worker and school bus driver. While her parents were at work, Barnes’s great grandmother watched the children as they batted rocks, played hide-and-seek and picked the apple trees. “You didn’t have to worry about nobody, but you had to be in before it got dark,” she said, smiling.
Ready to sell
Everything changed in sum- mer 1978.
On Sept. 1, Barnes’s great un-
cle, father and two aunts, includ- ing Lawe, gathered in Fairfax County Circuit Court for a con- demnation hearing. The Fairfax County Park Authority bought their land through eminent do- main and paid the family $185,000 for 6.6 acres, court rec- ords show. About $11,000 went to satisfy delinquent real estate tax- es.
Lawe said most of her family was ready to sell. “My sister had her home, my brother had his and I had mine. We just got tired of paying taxes on some land that we at least fig- ured we would never use,” she said. The family’s land eventually became part of Raglan Road Park, almost 11 acres of woods that buffer neighborhoods from Tysons’ busy roads and shopping centers.
A chance to cash out A few years ago, developer Ste- ven M. Baldwin discovered Barnes’s property and the two ad- joining lots tucked behind a grav- el road at the end of a quiet cul- de-sac. An Arizona couple owns 1.18 acres of vacant land, and Barnes’s cousin owned a house on 0.6 acres.
Baldwin, the president of
Rockville-based Palisades Devel- opment, approached the three families about buying their land so he could build a subdivision. Barnes’s property was the most complicated, surrounded by Rag- lan Road Park, so Baldwin asked the county whether it would swap the tract with some park- land to create a consolidated de- velopment. Judith Pedersen, a spokeswom- an with the park authority, said the agency had no interest in the swap. “At that point, it did not look
like the best choice for the park authority,” she said. “We don’t swap land as a general rule, be- cause we didn’t feel there was a benefit to the park authority.” In July 2008, Baldwin sub-
mitted a rezoning application with Fairfax County to build two single-family houses and 14 townhouses. The project spurred nearby residents to mobilize because they feared a private street for the subdivision would be used by commuters to cut through their neighborhoods. Pamela Konde, who lives near
Barnes’s land, said she thought the planned townhouses would be too dense for the area, but she did not oppose two single-family houses. “That character, that single- family neighborhood, is some- thing we don’t want to be en- croached on,” she said. “That treed parkland buffers us, our
RAGLAN RD.
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PHOTOS BY JAHI CHIKWENDIU/THE WASHINGTON POST
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neighborhood, from the sites and sounds of the incoming Metro” and the future development in Tysons.
Baldwin said the families had
watched the surrounding com- munities develop over the years and were ready for their chance to make a profit. “They want their turn, and
they’re faced with opposition that they never put forth when everyone else did the same thing,” he said. “People can judge whether that’s fair or not, but that’s the reality of it.”
A dream slips away
As the project went through its hurdles, Barnes struggled to make ends meet. Her husband was out of work,
having suffered a heart attack that required quadruple bypass surgery. Barnes had two mild strokes in 2007, forcing her to re- tire early from the Fairfax County
P.G. CO.
Donna Barnes’s childhood home sits on an acre in Tysons Corner. Her family has owned the land since the 1900s.
school system. Unable to afford their mortgage, the couple listed their house as a short sale and moved into a rental. To help pay the bills, Barnes returned to work as a bus driver’s aide. Her brother, who declined to comment, was the point of con- tact for their land. Around Christmas of last year, he called with more bad news: The deal had fallen apart. Barnes cried that night, think-
ing: “Here we go again. I’ll never get ahead.”
Baldwin said he pulled the re- zoning application in June be- cause two of the three property owners decided not to sell. “As time went on, they grew
weary of the process,” he said. Baldwin would not disclose
contract details, but he said that “the market had changed, and I was trying to explain to them what it would take to work.” He told the families that the project could have fewer approved lots than originally planned, which “affects the purchase price.” Barnes is waiting to sell the
property so she can shore up her finances. One potential buyer is the park authority, although
Barnes hopes the agency does not condemn her family’s land, as it did in 1978. The county blueprint for Tysons says Barnes’s land is intended to become an extension of Raglan Road Park. As Tysons grows, the plan calls for the park to serve as a possible location for a recreation facility and as an open-space buffer between the Vienna neighborhoods and the rest of Tysons. Pederson said that the park au-
thority could acquire the land in the future but that “as a policy we do not comment on land acquisi- tion.”
On a recent morning, Barnes visited her old home, carefully stepping through the damp grass. “It just brings back memories,” she said with a sigh. “That’s the oak tree we used to play hide- and-go-seek behind.”
Barnes admits she regrets moving to Fredericksburg before the sale of her land was finalized. “Yeah, I moved too quick,” she said. “But the house was falling apart.”
Barnes, on the other hand, is doing her best not to.
hoshk@washpost.com S 267 7
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Tysons Galleria
shoo-in for a dynamic new mayor who took the city by a landslide last time around, shaking up government, making changes, cutting ribbons. But within the past year, it became clear that Fenty was in trouble, with polls showing that people across the District were fairly pleased with city services but not all that into him. As support for Fenty slipped, his campaign pace picked up, but his message didn’t change. The 39-year-old mayor remained unapologetic for his swagger and arrogance, asking people to look at his results, not his style. His long, lean, athletic figure was striding all over town, green polo shirt tucked into his khakis, multiple PDAs bristling on his belt. The shiny, bald head could be spotted from yards away, and when he was up close and intense in a voter’s face, you could see the veins pulsing. “He just seems angry when
he’s out there,” one woman told me. His press office went into high
gear in the spring, turning every change in the city into a campaign opportunity. Fenty has become ever-present at every school, dog park, recreation center, library and restaurant opening. He even got in on building demolitions and the acquisition of new
wheelchair-accessible vehicles. At the same time, Gray was hammering on his message of integrity and inclusiveness. His campaign staff always goes ahead of him in a neighborhood, scouting houses that are open to getting a visit from him. “Bullying in at dinnertime, that’s not his style,” they told me. At a senior center in
Northwest Washington last week, Gray sat down to talk to every one of the two dozen people who came to have pizza with him. He talked about including parents in the drive for school reform, about parenting classes for dysfunctional families and bringing back the giant, citywide rap sessions that former mayor Anthony Williams (D) held. He talked about bus shuttles,
sidewalks, jobs, the economy and food. “I’m a Pizza Hut kind of guy,” he told them. “Domino’s, something just doesn’t taste right there.” A young person in the audience told him that Domino’s had had a makeover; he should try it again. He said he wasn’t interested.
Maybe he’s had enough makeovers.
As the polls showed a tighter
race in recent weeks, both candidates have had their own version of makeovers: Gray on image, Fenty on message. Gray got a tighter haircut, sharper suits and ditched the Jerry Lewis eyeglasses. He has even hit the go-go music scene, showing up at one concert at Oxon Run Park earlier this month. He talks about the future every chance he gets. The 67-year-old is doing anything he can to show he’s not old D.C., old administration or old, period. Fenty, meanwhile, is stuck
having to talk about the past — and atone for it. He has launched an apology tour of sorts, trying to look a little more wise and contrite. “You know, running as an
incumbent, it’s different,” he told me one day, after untangling himself from a knot of people who had demands. They want to tell him about the streetlight that has been out for a month on their block, the dangerous pothole, the thugs across the street.
So face-to-face campaigning
for Fenty becomes an exercise in street-level, constituent services. He gets on one of his BlackBerrys and begins tapping out their info or he summons a staffer to take notes. He sometimes looks like a bored kid taking orders at the fast food drive-through. But even when he’s attentive to their every word, Fenty still can’t get some voters to commit. At a go-go party at Emery Recreation Center on his home turf of Ward 4, he had a hard time giving out his Fenty stickers as he waded through the crowd. “I gave him one chance; I’m not giving him another,” one woman said, after she brushed off the mayor and refused a sticker. He has a television ad saying
that he’s sorry for not listening, for running so fast he wasn’t including folks. His favorite new phrase is “I’m not perfect.” He even dropped the polo-shirt, triathlete, all-business posture and got on stage at a go-go show to dance the hee-haw. Gray didn’t dance at his go-go
event. Perhaps wisdom prevailed there.
And wisdom is what the city’s voters will need to disregard the Saturday night come-ons and figure out which of these guys offers a future. After all, choosing a mayor means a long-term commitment, not a weekend fling.
E-mail me at
dvorakp@washpost.com.
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