SUNDAY, AUGUST 1, 2010
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CLOSE TO HOME VIRGINIA School boards need to hear all voices
I read with great interest Laura V. Berthiaume’s July 25 Local Opinions commentary, “Who really controls the Montgomery schools,” about the Montgomery County Board of Education’s relationship with its superintendent and staff. While there are many differences between our systems, Ms. Berthiaume succinctly captured a core shared tension when she wrote: “In the balance of power between the board of education and the bureaucracy, the superintendent and his staff hold all the cards. They outwit, outlast and outplay.” Activist stakeholders in Fairfax County see the same dynamic
between our school board and superintendent. They are not willing to be silent about it. They bring forward rich analysis and ideas that sometimes run counter to our staff’s recommendations. In providing this information, these stakeholders help us maintain the crucial balance between the school board members who are elected to govern and our superintendent, whom we hire to manage the system. Rather than embrace this growing community engagement and celebrate our blessings in having a brain trust of talent and experts in our county, we bristle and become defensive, creating a counterproductive cycle of mistrust where no one wins, least of all our students. Afew board members have publicly justified ignoring such vocal community activists by resorting to a quote from former board member Robert E. Frye Sr., who would challenge his colleagues to “listen to the silence” as votes moved forward on programs that would help some of our least empowered communities and students. I agree completely with Mr. Frye and have voted consistently — sometimes alone — to protect programs for our neediest kids whose parents are included in “the silence” he referenced. But “listening to the silence” does not preclude listening to the vocal, too. We have the capacity and the obligation — as democratically elected board members — to hear both. Indeed, we should hear everyone and then make sound policy decisions based on staff advice, our own consciences and, yes, careful consideration of community concerns — both expressed and silent.
Tina Hone, Falls Church The writer is an at-large member of the Fairfax County School Board. Local Blog Network
6voices.washingtonpost.com/local-opinions/ Some of the region’s best bloggers share work on the All Opinions
Are Local blog. Below is updated post from the last week.
Metro’s safety balancing act “When safety is more important than schedules, their lessons will
have been learned,” National Transportation Safety Board Chairman Deborah Hersman said of the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority at Tuesday’s NTSB hearing. The hearing found some troubling problems with WMATA’s safety
practices. Track circuits had been failing regularly, one of them consistently since 1998. WMATA officials had been recording 8,000 “alarms” per week showing track circuit errors, which they ignored because they believed the system was fail-safe. These problems, called “parasitic oscillations,” still affect 290 circuits. WMATA employees tested the circuits and claimed they couldn’t reproduce the problem, but it turns out they tested them wrong. WMATA needs to fix these circuits and retrain or replace maintenance personnel who don’t know how to properly test or maintain circuits. And it should do so quickly. WMATA should also replace the 1000 series rail cars, the oldest in the fleet, a process that fortunately is underway. But the NTSB fell into the common bureaucratic trap of ignoring the forest for the trees when it said that the 2000 series and 3000 series cars have some safety dangers of their own and could “telescope” in a crash. That may be true, but what can be done about it? Metro doesn’t
have the money to replace the 2000 and 3000 series cars. More important, riding in these cars is still far safer than driving. If WMATA took those cars out of service, it would have to eliminate many trains, forcing people to drive. And if riders stopped riding because they were nervous about the rail cars’ safety, they’d be driving instead. Either way, they’d be less safe. But that’s not the concern of the NTSB officials, who are responsible only for increasing railway safety. If they scare people away from Metro, and some of those people die in car crashes, that isn’t seen as a failure by the NTSB. Heck, if Metro shut down entirely, it’d have the best safety record of all. We have to keep in mind that the NTSB’s goals and riders’ goals, while often in harmony, aren’t always. The NTSB exposed many troubling facts about Metro’s safety
practices before and after the 2009 Red Line crash. WMATA needs to fix what it can fix, as soon as possible. However, we also need to accept that some things about transportation will never be 100 percent safe, and that transit is consistently safer than private cars on the highway. Hersman recognizes that truth, too, noting that as many people die
in two weeks on area roads as have died on Metrorail since it opened 34 years ago. Metro must improve its safety record, but riders must keep that record in perspective. Ultimately, ending the underfunding of Metro’s repair is the way to make the system as safe as possible. David Alpert, Greater Greater Washington
ELIZABETH GLAZIER It takes a neighborhood to keep us healthy
I wasn’t sure what to expect when I pulled up to the decrepit building in Anacostia. I had re- ceived a call from an older woman who said she thought her neighbor had fallen and broken his leg. That was all I knew. I parked and grabbed my black bag, which over the year had swollen to accommo- date a handheld Doppler, a port- able EKG machine and a host of other diagnostic tools. I left my white lab coat on the back seat — I’d learned quite quickly that I al- ready stood out in these neighbor- hoods as a young, white, female physician.
An elderly woman struggled with the creaky front door to let me into the building. She was the neighbor. She’d known my patient for 20 years, and although they were not related, she was his only real family. She’d grown worried when he wouldn’t open the door to his apartment. After trudging up the steps of the three-story walk- up, I knocked and hollered for what seemed an eternity. At last I heard the sounds of a walker. A rush of musty air spiced with the stench of rancid food greeted me as the door lurched open. He was a tall man, bent over an unsteady walker several sizes too
small for him. I could see his right leg was foreshortened, and that he winced when he put the slightest pressure on it. He invited me in for a glass of lemonade. Roaches scat- tered when I sat down on the couch. As I examined him, he told me about his life. He’d lived in the District for 70 years, had taught so- ciology, had been married and di- vorced a few times, and had no children. After about two hours of conversation and trust building, I persuaded him to be admitted to the hospital, where he could get better care for his broken hip. His gracious neighbor agreed to watch over his apartment and collect his mail while he was away. In 2003, I started a health-care outreach program for the home- bound on behalf of Unity Health- care in the District, and for three years I encountered this kind of neighborly concern over and over. Many of my house-call patients in the inner city relied on their neigh- bors as advocates and lifelines. Along with grocery deliveries, the neighbor of the man with the bro- ken hip arranged to find him driv- ers when he needed to visit a doc- tor. Another patient relied on a neighbor to help her sort out her pills when she spilled her pillbox
onto the floor — which she did about once a week. In addition to providing support networks, neighbors also functioned as first medical alerts, greeting me in hall- ways and stairwells when I arrived at their buildings. “Mrs. Smith hardly touched her breakfast when I brought it to her this morning.” “Mr. Johnson fell again trying to walk without his cane.” I began to think of these in- formal meetings as my morning rounds — similar to the informa- tion exchange sessions I’d conduct- ed with my interns and residents in the hospital. Before my house call experience, I would not have thought to include neighbors in di- agnosis or treatment. My first in- stinct after examining an elderly woman with dementia and no fam- ily support would have been to call adult protective services to obtain guardianship. But witnessing this informal urban care system al- lowed me to expand my services, utilizing the help of neighbors. Often the information I gleaned from neighbors was more impor- tant to me than vital signs or lab re- sults. Over time, I learned to priori- tize my visits according to daily neighbor reports. I also learned to enlist those same neighbors as part
of the treatment plan. One neigh- bor could provide necessary sup- port for a patient having trouble managing hypertension medica- tions. Another could accompany a patient who was losing too much weight to the grocery store and then sit with that patient during a meal. These lessons have stayed with me since my time in D.C. Our health-care system still needs to learn how the power of human connections, even nontraditional ones, cannot be overlooked when treating our patients. These con- nections can come in the form of neighbors, apartment mainte- nance workers, even building man- agers. Here, in the inner city, this informal neighborhood support network allowed many of my elder- ly patients to continue to live inde- pendently, in their homes, with dignity. Without its strong bonds, most of them would have been forced into care facilities. As doc- tors, we need to remind ourselves that it is often the people resources, rather than the ones we pay for, that help extend and improve lives.
The writer is a geriatric specialist at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio.
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NEXT WEEK’S TOPIC Continue the conversation on D.C. voting rights: What’s the right path forward? D.C. voting rights: What now? One of D.C. Del. Eleanor Holmes
Norton’s fondest expressions, used repeatedly over the past 20 years as she led the charge for D.C. voting rights, has been “kill ’em with your case.” Unfortunately for D.C. residents,
her July 25 Local Opinions com- mentary, “D.C. voting rights: Where we’ve been, where we’re going” pos- its a new, virtually incoherent strat- egy for winning D.C. rights that is far more likely to confuse than kill. Her proposal is a smorgasbord of disparate, if not conflicting, stra- tegic choices, each textually and substantively distinct from the oth- er. Such a recipe for moving the city forward is bizarre and all but guar- anteed to take us nowhere, because if we haven’t figured out where we’re going, how in heaven’s name are Congress or the American peo- ple supposed to follow our lead? With her fresh plan, Norton will succeed only in confounding our clear and compelling case for equal political rights. Before we slide yet further into
strategic disarray, perhaps good- faith efforts should be made to win a citywide strategic consensus on what our goal should be. Only then will it be possible to map a plan to get there. Timothy Cooper, Washington
The writer is executive director of the group Worldrights.
No one has more respect for El- eanor Holmes Norton than I do, and I am encouraged by her an- nouncement that she plans to in- troduce a statehood bill in Con- gress if she is reelected. She’s right that “it was the city’s decision that took statehood off the table,” and it should be the city that supports re-
mine whether we can finally get a hit after so many strikeouts. Every- thing should be on the table. In her review, she did not include
retrocession to Maryland, which would enable us to have represen- tation in both the House and Sen- ate. Obviously, the prospect for this course is as bleak as (perhaps even bleaker than) the alternatives Nor- ton discussed, but that is no reason for not considering it. Bob Guttman, Washington
MARK GAIL/THE WASHINGTON POST Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton speaks at a DC Vote rally last year.
storing it. The people of the District have never abandoned statehood as our goal; it was the D.C. Council and those who seek compromise on Capitol Hill who did. I disagree with Chief Financial
Officer Natwar Gandhi that “state- hood would cost the District an ex- tra $1.2 billion.” Although the Dis- trict as a state would be responsible for some of this cost, a portion would still be the responsibility of the federal government. Also, we must remember that the group D.C. Appleseed has shown that we leave $2 billion a year on the table by not being a state, because we are not able to tax the 72 percent of the city workforce that lives in Maryland and Virginia. I would add that bringing us close to representation, as hap- pened with the D.C. voting rights bill this year, does not make us stronger; our recurring losses only embolden our opposition. And we are going to have to face gun propo- nents no matter what.
Last year, Puerto Rico put $20 million into its effort to become a state; the District has budgeted $0 for fiscal 2011. I went to a statehood rally last week, and fewer than 100 people showed up. Until the city budgets real money and Washing- tonians show their support, the movement will go nowhere. It’s time to stop looking for dif- ferent ways to make this work. When in doubt, do the right thing, and the right thing is statehood. Michael D. Brown, Washington
The writer is shadow U.S. senator for the District.
Del. (how I wish it were really Rep.) Eleanor Holmes Norton’s re- view of the history of attempts to secure D.C. voting rights was, of course, accurate. She has valiantly participated in every effort. But because her history is so ac-
curate, the story is bleak — one fail- ure after another. She is right that we must review the record to deter-
Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton’s commentary on the fight for D.C. voting rights accurately reviewed past efforts to achieve equal repre- sentation for D.C. residents. Unfor- tunately, she offered no realistic al- ternative to repeating past failures. Abetter strategy can be found on
D.C.’s license plates: “Taxation Without Representation.” Unlike Puerto Rico — where residents also have a nonvoting delegate to Con- gress but are exempt from federal income taxes — D.C. citizens have the worst of both worlds. A similar exemption from federal income taxes for D.C. residents, in addition to directly benefiting our residents, would attract an influx of high- income taxpayers from around the country, who would then provide the District with higher “state” in- come tax revenue. And unlike state- hood or House voting rights, this approach is supported by some of the most conservative members of Congress, who have co-sponsored a bill by Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Tex.) to achieve this. Norton should work to pass this
bill, H.R.1014. If we can’t be equal to Virginia or Maryland, perhaps we can be equal to Puerto Rico. Kent Jeffreys, Washington
R
C5
RESHMA MEMON YAQUB BETHESDA A personal power surge, courtesy of Pepco
Dear Pepco, Undoubtedly you’ve received
many irate messages since last Sunday’s storm rendered so many in our region powerless. Bethesda, where I live, was hit particularly hard. But Pepco, this is not an- other irate message. This is a thank-you letter — for giving me these three days to restore my own power. Let’s be clear about one thing:
Electricity and me, we’re tight. There are maybe two dozen days a year when I don’t have either my air conditioner or my furnace run- ning. My microwave beeps some half-dozen times a day, which is almost as often as my coffeemak- er. I run the dishwasher daily. The only time my computer gets turned off is when it needs reboot- ing. My own little obsessive-com-
pulsive bedtime ritual involves double-checking that my cell- phone is charging.
When the lights went out, I was
certain it was just a blip. But as the hours wore on, I grudgingly accepted that the power might stay off into the night. Getting my boys — Zain, 10, and Zach, 6 — into bed would be a challenge. It’s one thing to corral them at 8 p.m. when there are CDs to listen to, air conditioning to keep them com- fortable and our nightly negotia- tion over which hallway lights stay on. In the hot, dark silence, I let them stay up till they got tired enough to fall asleep quickly. By late Monday morning, Pep- co, I admit I was pretty annoyed. Not only did we all sleep poorly, but the boys’ camp was canceled because of the outage. I used
matches to jump-start my gas range and managed to cook a fair- ly impressive brunch. (Cook, mind you, not microwave.) By 11 a.m. we had played all the board games I could take, and Zach was com- plaining of a sore throat. We head- ed to the pediatrician’s office, where he was prescribed an anti- biotic — which required refrigera- tion.
But by Monday night, I was
starting to loosen up. In the cool- ish darkness of my basement guest room, I realized that I had made it through almost two days without power. It brought back memories of childhood summers visiting relatives in Pakistan. There, even in the more expensive homes, the electricity was inter- mittent. Central air was unheard of. After a few days of complain-
ing, we adjusted and simply played with our cousins. Lying there, I also realized I felt
the way I had a just few months ago, when I took up running and went on to complete my first 5K. A little bit impressed with myself. Kinda powerful. I mulled over my cousin’s upcoming wedding in Canada, a 10-hour drive with my boys that I hadn’t been sure I could handle. And suddenly I real- ized that I could. That night, I stopped reading when the sun set, and contemplat- ed how out of touch I am with the rhythm of my environment. There are people, I know, who always sleep when the sun goes down and rise again when it comes up. People who don’t keep their her- metically sealed homes frigid in the summer and toasty in the win-
ter. I just never pictured myself be- ing one of them. Normally I strug- gle to rise by 7 a.m., having inevita- bly stayed up too late reading, or surfing the Internet, or drinking coffee too close to bedtime. But on Tuesday, sure enough, I woke at dawn. Running errands that morning,
at first the car’s air conditioning felt wonderful. Then it started to seem too cold. So I opened the window, which felt good, but weird. I went back and forth, AC then window. I imagined this is what it feels like trying on a new dress after losing weight and not believing that it fits.
Coming home with the kids that
afternoon, our block was still dark, and I was surprised by what I felt: relief. Again I thought of running, how I like to slowly raise the speed
on the treadmill. I was curious to find out what my threshold was. As we got closer, however, Zain spotted a light in a neighbor’s house. When we opened our door, our lights, too, were on. The kids were happy. I walked around the way one does after be- ing away for a long time. I checked everything. I turned off all the lights. The fans I left on. The win- dows I left open. I didn’t turn on the AC. I did plug in my cell phone and make some coffee. I knew I’d get used to it all again, but maybe not as soon as I would have thought. So Pepco, thanks for the refresh- er course on Third World living. I almost enjoyed it. Just don’t let your friends — the gas company and the water system — know how badly I needed to see the light.
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