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SUNDAY, DECEMBER 12, 2010 Teachers describe problems at Dunbar
Ousted administrator says ‘everybody has what they want now’
BY BILL TURQUE Geometry teacher Jessica Lilly
found the fliers on the wallswhen she arrived at Dunbar Senior High School early one morning last month. They included a pho- to of a female student, with her name, phone number and an ob- scene caption announcing that she was available for oral sex with boys and girls. “Wanna be next?????” “Holla atMe!!!!” It was a vile piece of bullying.
Lilly said that as far she knows, there was no response from Friends of Bedford, the team of private consultants who ran the school until they were removed by interim Chancellor Kaya Hen- derson onWednesday. It was one of numerous incidents of harass- ment and violence that she said were tolerated or overlooked. On Dec. 1, she quit the school in disgust and despair. “Friends of Bedford created a
school culture of neglect, insecu- rity, zero accountability and poor communication,” Lilly wrote in an anguished e-mail this week. Her account is one of several
that have emerged since Bedford was ousted, less than three years after it was hired by former chan-
cellor Michelle A. Rhee to turn around Dunbar. City records show Bedford has been paid $1.2 million this year as part of a three-year contract to overhaul Dunbar and Coolidge high schools. The firm remains in con- trol of Coolidge. Laura Johnson, amath teacher,
said that after promising state-of- the art classroom equipment and rich professional development opportunities when they arrived in 2009, Bedford CEO George Leonard and his deputies seemed to disappear. “They started coming to school
really late,” Johnson said. “They wouldroll inaround11 or
12.They would stay really late but they were not there at the beginning of the day.” Leonard declined to discuss
the specifics of Lilly’s and John- son’s charges. “Everybody has what they want now,” he said Friday. “Any comment would just fuel it.We’re ready to move on.” Johnson and Lilly are fledgling teachers, two of the hundreds of recruits brought to the District by Rhee and Henderson from alter- native training programs. As a Teach for America graduate, Lilly understands that she’s easily ste- reotyped: impossibly young (23), earnest, energized and compul- sively prepared. She came to an interview Thursday with a two- page, single-spaced outline of the points she wanted to cover. But she made it through last
year at Dunbar with a strong evaluation and spent last sum- mer planning how to raise her game in the classroom. There were some bright spots that first year. Tenth-grade reading scores on the DC-CAS rose about 10 points, which Lilly attributes to the relentless work of the two sophomore English teachers. But when Principal Stephen
Jackson, who was brought to DunbarbyLeonard,wasremoved at the end of the year, the school climate, always challenging, be- gan to deteriorate, Lilly said. Fighting in the cafeteria and hall- ways increased, and the smell of marijuana wafted through the stairways of the sprawling cam- pus, which includes a 13-story high-rise. Johnson said that in early October, a student who had smoked PCP tried to jump from a window and bit a security guard whorestrained him. Lilly said she wrote up a girl who aimed her iPhone at a classmateandusedan app with a scarily realistic sound of gunshots. “Kids started to notice that no
one was being held accountable for anything,” she said. At a staff meeting on theMon-
day after Thanksgiving, after re- ports that six students had been arrested Nov. 22 in an alleged rape (chargeswerelater dropped) reached the media that weekend, Lilly said her stomach was in knots. She said she asked Leon- ard whether it was possible to get
some training to help students who would be trying to process the situation. She said that Leonard’s only response was that more security would be added. “After the meeting I had to go
up to my classroom and pretend that nothing happened,” she wrote. “For the rest of the day I attempted to teach . . . in between student conversations about the attack. The students have a very limited understanding about the nature of sexual assault and they do not have the anger-manage- ment skills or coping skills to deal with their
emotions.For example, students were threatening to beat up the victim because she’s ‘a whore.’ . . . I have many students who have been raped themselves and there were no supports in place to help them cope. . . . It was a total free-for-all.” Lilly left Dunbar that day and
never returned. As torn as she was about abandoning her stu- dents, she said the school’s cul- ture, one of tolerance for sexual violence, was one she said she could no longer be a part of. She said she’s glad Bedford is
gone, and that Jackson has been rehired by Henderson, who has promised to address Dunbar’s many needs. But Lilly said she can’t go back:
“There have been promises be- fore.”
turqueb@washpost.com
Catholics stage anti-abortion protest near Germantown clinic BY ANN SCOTT TYSON
Electromagnetic railgun may be a weapon for future
railgun from C1
rails, along which a surge of elec- tricity runs. They are bolted in- side a long oblong box the length of a tractor trailer. Bundles of thick black cables
feed into one end of the box, where the slug is loaded between the rails. When the power is fed through the rails it creates a surge that flings the slug along and out the muzzle at tremendous speed. Charles Garnett, the railgun
project manager at Dahlgren, said itgets itspowerthesameway a pocket camera builds up energy to operate its flash, but on amuch larger scale. The use of electricity to power
such a round would change the way naval guns have been fired with explosive propellants like gunpowder for centuries, the Navy said. The electromagnetic railgun
was once a focus of the Reagan- era Strategic Defense Initiative, dubbed “StarWars.” It was a seen as a weapon that might shoot down incoming nuclear missiles. A quarter-century later, the
Navy hopes it might soon provide a ship fast, new, long-range fire power. “It’s a very important technolo-
gy,” said Rear Adm. Nevin P. Carr Jr., chief of Naval Research, al- though “this is not a weapon that’s going to be here tomorrow.” Carr, in a telephone interview
Thursday, said it also makes for an excellent defensive weapon against such things as enemy cruise missiles. Indeed, the Navy railgun proj-
ect’s Latin motto is “velocitas eradico,” roughly “speed de- stroys.” Carr said the Navy had been
working toward a railgun that could fire a 64-megajoule shot, with a range of 200 miles. “I am not as focused on that number today,” he said. “We’re more inter- ested in getting capability to the fleet sooner.”
“It’s more than just a better way to push a bullet out the barrel. Another point . . . is a railgun is not a gun. It’s a
launcher.” —Rear Adm. Nevin P. Carr Jr., chief of Naval Research
He said he would like to see a
railgun demonstrated at sea by 2018 and deployed on ships in the early 2020s. After that, further research couldmake theguneven more powerful. He said the proj- ect has cost about $211 million. The first railgun test at Dahl-
gren took place in 2006, theNavy has said. Carr said a ship with railguns
would need no conventional pro- pellant to fire the weapon, be- cause the non-explosive projec- tilewouldbe fired with ahuge jolt of electricity. That would make the ship safer for the crew and allow the vessel to carry 10 times more ammunition, he said. “It’s more than just a better
way to push a bullet out the barrel,”hesaid. “Anotherpoint . . . is a railgun is not a gun. It’s a launcher.” Carr said the “bullet” is hurled
into the atmosphere in seconds and can descend on a target in minutes, at a speed of aboutMach 5. “That’s pretty juicy technology,” he said.
ruanem@washpost.com ‘Let’s not tear each other down,’ GOP leader says maryland from C1
suffered lopsided defeats in state- wide races last month but made gains at the county level in several regions. Those gains were touted by
speakers at the convention Satur- day while little was said about a governor’s race that O’Malley won by more than 14 percentage points — twice the margin by which he defeated Ehrlich four years ago. Republican insiders offered
JOHN F. WILLIAMS/U.S. NAVY
Ahigh-speed camera image of the electromagnetic
railgun.Afuture tactical railgun is expected to hit targets at ranges almost 20 times farther than conventional surface ship combat systems.
somewhat different interpreta- tions ofMooney’s victory. DonMurphy, aGOPconsultant
and former state delegate, said it suggested that many activists
wanted a clean break from Eh- rlich, who has dominated the party since 2002, when he be- came the firstMaryland Republi- can in a generation to win a governor’s race. “Apparently, there’s a fair
amount of animosity toward Eh- rlich world, and Mary was a vic- tim of that,”Murphy said. John Kane, who is married to
Mary Kane and served as GOP chairman during Ehrlich’s ten- ure, said he thought the result had nothing to do with Ehrlich. Instead, John Kane said, the
party activists made a “very un- fortunate” decision to side with a more conservative chairman. “I believe it’s clearly a step back to
an uncompromising and uninvit- ing environment that clearly didn’t work in the past and won’t work in the future,” he said. Before becoming Ehrlich’s lieu-
tenant governor pick,Mary Kane had twice sought public office: losing a 2000 bid for Montgom- ery County Council and a 2002 run for the state House of Dele- gates. Mooney succeeds Audrey E.
Scott, a former Ehrlich Cabinet official who agreed to serve as chairman during the past year. She finished out the term of James Pelura, who was pressured to resign as chairman because of anemic fundraising and party in- fighting.
Addressing the convention af-
ter the vote, Mooney made an appeal for unity. “Let’s not tear each other
down,” he said. Other candidates for chairman
Saturday included William Campbell, theGOP’s unsuccessful nomineefor comptroller this year and a former chief financial offi- cer for Amtrak; Mike Esteve, chairman of the Maryland Col- lege Republicans; and Sam Hale, founder of the conservative group Maryland Society of Patriots.
wagnerj@washpost.com About 600 people gathered
Saturday in an anti-abortion pro- test organized by the Catholic Archdiocese of Washington out- sideanofficecomplex inGerman- town, where physician LeRoy Carhart was to have started offer- ing late-term abortions last week. “Our goal is to get Catholics
aware of the situation with the state laws in Maryland,” said Christa Lopiccolo, executive di- rector of the department of life issues for the archdiocese. “Maryland is becoming a safe
haven” for abortion doctors be- cause of “the laxity of the law,” Lopiccolo said, adding that Car- hart came to Maryland from Ne- braska. The protesters gathered for
Mass at 8 a.m. at Mother Seton Parish, filling the pewsandstand- ing in the aisles of the church, which is about a half-mile from the abortion clinic. “We are callednowto march, to
pray full of love, not full of vio- lence,” said Father Carlos Benitez, pastor atMother Seton. The predominantly Catholic
group, including several priests, parents and children bundled in
hats and jackets, and a fewpeople carrying anti-abortion signs, walked to the perimeter of the office complex where the clinic is located, softly chanting prayers and singing hymns. No one appeared to approach
the clinic or the protesters during the event. “We’re just celebrating life and denouncing the destruction of life,” said Jessica Burris, 31, of Germantown, as she held her daughter Cecilia,whoturned 2on Saturday. “I don’t think it’s our choice”
whether to continue a pregnancy, Burris said, as her four other
children played nearby. She said she is expecting a sixth child in May. “It’s God’s will,” she said of her large family. John Naughton, a retired pro-
gram manager for IBM who lives at LeisureWorld, held up a wood- en crucifix as he prayed. “This is horrendous what they are doing here . . . slicing and dicing babies who are fully formed and can feel pain,” he said. Naughton said he participates in anti-abortion ral- lies every Saturday and recog- nized several “regulars” in the Germantown crowd.
tysona@washpost.com
Federal judge in Va. to rule Monday on health-care lawsuit
BY ROSALIND S.HELDERMAN A federal judge in Virginia is
expected to rule Monday on the constitutionality of the nation’s health-care overhaul. Twenty-five lawsuits are pend-
ingacross thecountrychallenging the federal statute. Two federal
judges have ruled that it is consti-
tutional.Many observers say they think U.S. District Court Judge Henry E. Hudson, who sits in Richmond,may be the first judge to strike down the law. If he does, hewould rule that Congress over- steppedits constitutionalauthori- tytoregulateinterstatecommerce with a requirement in that law
that individuals obtain health in- surance by 2014 orpay a fine. The suit was filed in March by
Virginia Attorney Gen. Ken Cuc- cinelli II (R), who said he was defending a new state statute that made it illegal to require individu- als to have health insurance. It is separate from a case filed jointly by 20 other states in Florida. A
‘Carl’ may have been a Union soldier carl from C1
Rossbacher, managing editor of North South Trader’s Civil War magazine, who researched the photo when the library an- nounced the donation in October. “I’m relatively sure it’s him,”
she said. The photograph, encased with
the hair and note, was one of about 700 in the collection donat- ed by Tom Liljenquist ofMcLean, who operates a chain ofWashing- ton area jewelry stores. He and his sons have been buying Civil War photographs for 15 years. The bulk of the images, most of
which depict young, unidentified Union soldiers, are posted on the Library of CongressWeb site and have been added to the photo sharingWeb site flickr. The library, which also reports Rossbacher’s findings, said that more than 200,000 online views of the collection were recorded, just onMonday.
Rossbacher, of Orange, Va.,
who is also a genealogist, said she became mesmerized by the “Carl” picture when her magazine re- produced some of the photo- graphs with an essay by Liljen- quist’s son, Brandon. “That young man called me,”
she said of the boy in the photo- graph. “He cried out for some kind of identification.” Rossbacher pored over Civil
War records to find people killed in or near Dinwiddie in late March or early April 1865. “I tracked down every Yankee
andrebelwhowould have been in the vicinity at that time,” she said in a phone interview. “After trawling through nu-
merous Civil War-related data- bases, the only ‘Carl’ I could locate with any unit, North or South, who lost his life in the conflict in the geographic area and time period mentioned in the note” is Rogers, she said in an e-mail. Rogers, she found, was killed
March 29 at a place called Quaker Road in a battle that occurred as the Union army was prying Con- federates from their entrench- ments outside Petersburg, Va. A series of chaotic battles took
place as the desperate and out- numbered Confederates fled to- ward Appomattox, eventually surrendering April 9. Records show that Rogers was
20, Rossbacher found, and enlist- ed at Lafayette, N.Y., south of Syracuse, on Sept. 5, 1864. He served in Co. K., and his regiment lost more than 50 men at Quaker Run. Rossbacher, who specializes in
Civil War research, acknowl- edged that “Carl” and “Carlos” don’t match perfectly, nor do the April 1 date of death in the note and the March 29 date of the battle. And she cannot account for the age discrepancy. She said that CivilWar record-
keeping was notoriously uneven as to dates, ages and spellings of
judge is to hear oral arguments in that caseThursday. Hudson’s staff sayshe is expect-
ed to file his ruling by midday Monday. The decision will almost certainly be appealed. The consti- tutionality of the law will ulti- mately be determined by the U.S. SupremeCourt.
heldermanr@washpost.com
6
on
washingtonpost.com CivilWar 150
For special coverage of the 150th anniversary, see
washingtonpost.com/civilwar.
names, but her examination, for now, points to Rogers. “He remains the only Carl . . .
or Karl or any other permutation who I could verify was a casualty there at the time,” she said in an e-mail. And the identity of the parents remained uncertain. Rossbacher said that Rogers
was first buried near the battle- field and later in Poplar Grove National Cemetery near Peters- burg. Tom Liljenquist, the donor,
said that Rossbacher’s theory was exciting, although “I can’t speak for the veracity of her conclu- sions. . . .We just collect the pho- tographs.” “She’s pretty savvy” though, he
said. “There’s an excellent chance that’s who it is.”
ruanem@washpost.com
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