School Walkout Planned to Protest Closures

Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee has yet to announce her revised closure list for D.C. Schools, but City Desk is reporting that activists and angry parents are organizing a walkout on Thursday, Jan. 31 in what appears to be a protest of the idea to close any schools at all.

Organizer Maria Jones, an activist parent of a child at one of the schools on the current closure list, Burroughs Elementary, told Jason Cherkis that she and fellow organizers will encourage all teachers, students, and DCPS employees to skip work and school a week from today and march from DCPS to the Wilson Building.

"We must send a message that Michelle Rhee doesn’t have the will of the people,” Jones says. “If we do not resist, 23 schools will close and many, many people will lose their jobs.”

It's natural that emotions run high when it comes to parents worrying about their children's education, but the idea of protesting any school closures at all seems awfully silly. Significant school closures have been on the city's agenda long before Mayor Fenty was even in office, and he was elected almost entirely on a platform of major school reform. If the individuals organizing this march hope to convince the entire city to get behind them, they'll need to come up with a message beyond "We're angry with Mayor Fenty" and "people are going to lose their jobs." Of course people are going to lose their jobs -- DCPS is the most bloated of all District agencies, and the city elected Mayor Fenty to trim the fat. That said, some of the arguments we've heard to revise which schools will be closed and which won't really do seem to merit some consideration. Protesters next week would do well to focus their message on the individual schools they think should be looked at again.