Written by DCist contributor Sara Mead

The District of Columbia’s Public Schools open today for the 2007-08 school year, the first for DCPS under control of Mayor Adrian Fenty and the leadership of Chancellor Michelle Rhee. Questions that have become an annual start of school ritual in D.C.—Will students have textbooks? Will there be enough teachers? Will the bathrooms work?—take on added weight this year, because their answers offer the first tangible results by which parents and D.C. voters can begin judging whether Rhee and Fenty are delivering on promises to bring real improvement to DCPS.

So far Rhee has had something of a honeymoon period. She’s charmed the District’s press and political leadership. Her tour of the system’s dysfunctional textbook warehouse was a media hit. The Post reported glowing reactions from teachers and school leaders who met with her or attended a back to school conference last week. The City Paper even ran a long and positive article about her good relationship with the president of the city’s teacher’s union—something virtually unheard of among urban superintendents. District media, educators, political leaders, and residents are so fed up with the city’s educational failures that they’ve been willing to embrace whatever hope Rhee has to offer.

But we’ve been down this road before. Just three years ago Rhee’s predecessor, Clifford Janey, received a similarly glowing reception. Yet, while Janey made several positive changes—most notably instituting new academic standards with aligned assessments and professional development—the pace of change was just too slow. He failed to address serious problems with the system’s school support and physical infrastructure. City leaders became frustrated, and Janey was unceremoniously ousted immediately after Fenty gained control of the schools.

Rhee’s honeymoon period isn’t going to continue indefinitely, either. The start of the new school year probably marks the beginning of its end, since having schools in operation, and teachers and students back in the classrooms every day, makes it much easier for critics to find something to complain about. And they will. But that’s not necessarily a bad sign. In fact, strong criticism and opposition are par for the course if Rhee’s doing her job right.

That’s because making DCPS the kind of quality school system our city’s kids deserve is going to involve a significant amount of pain. DCPS’ legacy of failure is like a massive, pus-filled, infected boil on the face of the city, one that has to be lanced, drained, and cleaned in order to get better. And that’s gotta hurt.

Take the question of school closures. DCPS has more than 1 million square feet of excess space and many underutilized school buildings. No one likes school closures. Parents and community leaders get upset. Teachers fear losing their jobs. It’s a political fiasco for school leaders who take it on. But it has to be done. These underutilized schools are a huge financial drain on the District. DCPS has to heat and maintain the space even if it’s not being used by students. The city annually foregoes millions in potential revenue from renting those buildings out to other organizations—including charter schools and social service groups—that could put them to better use. More importantly, underutilized buildings are educationally insalubrious for DCPS students. Schools with small and declining populations can’t provide all the programs and resources kids and teachers need to be successful. Walk into a school that’s suffered enrollment declines for several consecutive years and occupies only a fraction of its space and you can feel the life draining away. School closures won’t be pleasant, but they’re inevitable, and in the long run it’s better to get them over with sooner rather than later.

But underutilized buildings are nothing compared to underutilized people. The Examiner reported Friday that DCPS will pay $5.4 million this year to 68 teachers, aides, and administrators who don’t actually have jobs. Most were “excessed” from downsizing or closed schools and couldn’t find positions elsewhere in DCPS—but they can’t actually be let go under the teachers union contract. Renegotiating that contract is one of the top priorities on Rhee’s plate this fall.

Those 68 people aren’t the only under- or mis-utilized DCPS employees. Last week the Post’s Colbert King wrote a column praising Rhee for taking on what he called “the central office hydra,” and detailing the misdeeds of DCPS’s central administration headquarters. The weird thing about the column was that King treated the central office as if it were a creature in its own right, never acknowledging that it’s merely the aggregation of individual employees, whose individual skill or fecklessness determine whether the central office is on the whole a support for or obstacle to school-level improvement. When someone says “central office” is a problem, they’re really talking about some of the people who work there. Doubtless DCPS’ central office employs many competent, caring people who are working their damnedest to do good things for kids. But too many of their colleagues are none of these things.

Rhee was brought in, in part, because of the skill she has shown, through the New Teacher Project, a non-profit she founded, in helping school districts bring in talented people. DCPS needs to attract high-quality people, from the classroom to upper management roles. But it’s just as important to deal with people already in the system who detract from, rather than advancing, its mission. That doesn’t necessarily mean mass firings, although it will involve transitioning some individuals to employers outside DCPS. It also means changing people’s jobs to better align them with DCPS improvement goals, and holding people accountable for performance. None of those things are going to be popular with the affected employees, or the unions that represent them. But they’re necessary to improve results for District students.

We’ve heard a lot the last few weeks about textbook procurement, school repairs, and fixing the school’s antiquated personnel data system. Those actions are essential first steps for getting DCPS to a place from which it can begin to improve. But even if Rhee could wave a magic wand tomorrow and make all DCPS buildings shiny new, all classrooms fully equipped with necessary supplies, all data systems up-to-date and functional—we’d still have a system of shiny new buildings full of students performing far below grade level. Moving beyond that, driving real change in children’s day to day classroom experiences and real change in student learning, is going to require pissing people off.

One of the arguments for mayoral control was that being accountable directly to the mayor would give the chancellor more political power to take tough actions. Of course, that all depends on whether the mayor has the guts to back her up when she does things that key interests—and even, sometimes, the general public—don’t like. We’re about to see how that theory holds up in practice.