Martin Austermuhle(Editor’s Note: And for the first part of our Nationals opening day coverage, we start outside the stadium.)
As 46,000 anxious baseball fans filed slowly into Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium for the Nationals’ long-awaited return to the District, 100 students, parents and activists protested the state of the city’s schools. Standing behind a banner that boldly read “Millions for Stadiums, Peanuts For Schools,” they denounced schools in disrepair and falling behind in most education indicators.
The protest was organized by the D.C. Public Schools Full Funding Campaign and others, including the D.C. Statehood Green Party and prominent anti-war group International ANSWER, which momentarily seemed to forget that the protest dealt with local education — not the war in Iraq. Protestors — including young activists-to-be bearing childishly written signs and handing out baseball scorecards asking D.C. Mayor Anthony Williams to “Hit a Home Run for D.C. Schools” — listened to testimonials from students from nearby Eastern High School and Cardozo High School who described their crumbling educational infrastructure.
Among the concrete demands, the protest asked Williams to immediately dedicate $200 million of this year’s budget surplus to make emergency repairs in needy schools. Education advocates had recently expressed surprise that the $779 million operating budget for city schools cut capital improvements by 15 percent.
