Welcome back to work, Washington. Actually, we’re curious — are any of you checking in on headlines from home today, having gone ahead and taken the rest of the week off? If so, we never liked you in the first place. Despite the tornado watch and humid, drizzly conditions, we hope you had a wonderful 4th of July celebration and of course, didn’t have any fireworks-related accidents. ABC7 is reporting that at least nine people in D.C. and Virginia suffered injuries from fireworks mishaps yesterday, including seven adults and children who were injured at an incident at an elementary school in Vienna.
Bilingual Staffers Sought for City: The Fenty administration will soon launch a campaign to hire more bilingual staff, in an effort to rectify a long-standing shortage of Spanish-speaking and other employees in D.C. government. Fully 13 percent of the District’s population is now Latino, but only about 2 percent of D.C. employees are Latino. Other language skills the local government is hoping to recruit includes Vietnamese, Korean, Chinese and Amharic.
Fenty Encouraged to Pick Compliant Schools Chief: The Examiner reports that Marie Drissel, a key political fundraiser for Mayor Adrian Fenty, sent emails to the administration encouraging them to pick a schools chancellor who wouldn’t overshadow the mayor and wouldn’t end up on the side of Board of Education President Robert Bobb. Drissel was the first person to testify on behalf of interim Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee at a confirmation hearing on Monday.
Briefly Noted: D.C. Police officer shot and killed a man yesterday after the suspect fired at police … Fatal shooting on Just St. NE … Park Road NW reopens this morning … D.C. seeks to increase tree population.
This Day in DCist: Last year we wondered why new developments in Prince George’s County were getting New York names, and the year before that we took a closer look at the Democracy Tree.
Photo by alexdc
