Mayor Adrian Fenty will continue to send his children to a private school in the District this year, reports the Examiner. Unlike Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee and Deputy Mayor for Education Victor Reinoso, who have both enrolled their children at one of the District’s best public elementary schools, the Mayor and his wife have chosen to send their seven year-old twins to another year at the private school they have attended since preschool. The mayor said his children will be enrolled in public school starting next school year.
The story quotes some community members who continue to criticize the Fenty family’s school choice, shouting about the need for D.C. government officials, and the Mayor who takes such pride in his takeover of the District’s schools in particular, to put their children in the public school system. And sure, there’s a logic to the argument in the abstract, but we’re talking about two, real live seven year-old boys here, boys who probably have friends at their school and relationships with teachers. We’re all for holding the Mayor accountable to practicing what he preaches, but aren’t parental decisions about when to move children to a new school really better left to the parents themselves? There could be a whole host of reasons why it would be best for the Fenty twins to switch schools next year instead of this one, and there’s no way upset community members could say for sure what the situation is.
One could more successfully argue that Fenty’s sons were enrolled in a private school when he was a hard-charging D.C. Council member, making him a long-standing hypocrite — but everyone knew Fenty’s kids were in private school when they sent him to the mayor’s office by a resounding majority, so the fact that they’ll be there for another year doesn’t really make that big of a difference. It’s good news that the Fenty boys will attend a D.C. public school next year — the Mayor will have that promise in his mind as he works with Rhee and Reinoso over the next year on fixing the troubled school system. We’ll be watching over the next year to ensure Fenty makes good on all of his school-related promises, but until then, this just doesn’t seem like something worth getting upset about.
