By Liane Scott, on March 24th, 2013 
The following digital story, produced by Empower DC member Ernestine Ward, summarizes how she came to Empower DC, and why she believes its work is important. Ernestine is a somewhat new DC resident and, unlike many other transplants to the area, she intends to stay. According to Ernestine, “volunteering with Empower DC has not only helped me gain a sense of community, but has also helped me become aware of many of the city’s pressing issues.”
I believe the above digital story exemplifies the mission of the Grassroots Media Project, which has been, “to provide a space for media production and training to individual activists and community-based nonprofits in the Washington, DC Metropolitan area. Through the creation and distribution of news media, such as radio segments, short videos, public service announcements, digital stories, etc., GMP producers will educate and inform policy makers and the public at large about issues that matter to them. Our productions will be distributed on the Internet, public radio, public access television or any distribution outlet willing to work with us. We hope to provide an alternative to the mainstream media, which often overlooks or misrepresents issues and causes that matter most to low-income and working class residents of the District of Columbia.”
Unfortunately, Empower DC is no longer able to support that mission and this will be my last post for the Grassroots Media Project. Fortunately, Executive Director Parisa Norouzi has said that Empower DC would welcome another organization that fills the media training niche now left vacant by the suspension of the Grassroots Media Project and that she would like to have the content of the blog accessible as an archive, which you can find at the site grassrootsmediaproject.org.
In the meantime, GrassrootsDC.org is still up and running. The content on that site will be produced by former Grassroots Media Project volunteers who want to continue to work towards the project’s former mission. We are no longer working for the Grassroots Media Project but are instead in the process of forming a new organization called Grassroots DC. Grassroots DC will continue to fulfill the media training niche to which Parisa Norouzi referred. We will also continue to cover not only the work of Empower DC but as much of the considerable work being done by DC’s entire progressive community as we can manage.
Beyond our home online as GrassrootsDC.org, we don’t yet have a brick and mortar location. Producers continue to work collaboratively but from a variety of locations. With any luck, that will change soon and we’ll be able to resume training in person. In the meantime, you can still find our curriculum online and the alternative media that covers the issues that matter most to DC’s low-income and working-class residents at GrassrootsDC.org. It’s not the end of the Grassroots Media Project but a shift to what I believe will be a more sustainable organization, Grassroots DC.
By Liane Scott, on March 24th, 2013 
Empower DC and the Barry Farm Tenant and Allies Association (BFTAA) confronted DC Mayor Vincent Gray during his planned photo opportunity at the “ground breaking” for the new Barry Farm Recreation Center. While the ground breaking occurred on the grounds of the existing Rec Center, the plans for the new one have not yet been made public and the only existing public plans have the Center built on another location entirely, not only raising the question of why the ground breaking was at the wrong location, but why the existing Rec Center has to close in order to build a new one slated to be built on a separate piece of property.
Through the power of protest, Barry Farm residents and Empower DC won a reprieve for the Center as the city promised not to shutter the facility until they actually meet with the residents. Empower DC organizer Schyla Pondexter-Moore spearheaded the organizing of the action. Executive Director Parisa Nouruzi was featured on the news, as well as members Joe-Ann Donaldson, Phyllissa Bilal and Michelle Hamilton. See news clips below.
View more videos at: http://nbcwashington.com.
By Guest Contributor, on January 28th, 2013 
Last week, the DC City Council’s new Education Committee met for the first time. Inside the hearing room, Schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson was defensive, while outside Empower DC announces a lawsuit that would block Henderson’s plan to close 15 DC public schools. Below is a brief round up of the news from that day. It includes two videos from the local news and one article from the Examiner. Enjoy!
View more videos at: http://nbcwashington.com.
DCPS Chancellor Faces Lawsuit, Angry City Council
Cross-Posted From The Examiner Written by Jane Kreisman
Shortly before embattled DC Public Schools (DCPS) Chancellor Kaya Henderson met with the DC City Council’s new Education Committee inside the John A. Wilson Building today, Empower DC and attorney Johnny Barnes announced a legal injunction to block her plan to close 15 city public schools from the freezing steps of the same building.
Protesters brought many of their colorful and provocative signs inside and filled seats at the City Council committee hearing. The proceedings indoors aired live on City Cable TV 13 and DC Council member David A. Catania kept other citizens apprised of developments by tweeting live on Twitter.
D.C. Council members finally had their chance to question Chancellor Kaya Henderson in person and in public about her latest school consolidation plan.
David Catania, the Independent At-Large Council member who is Chair of the new Education Committee has said that one of his top priorities is improving the school system’s budget transparency and ”understanding how every dollar is spent.”
Catania said that DC education committees have been ”missing in action for six years,” and that lack of oversight has detrimentally affected DCPS.
For example, the closure of 23 D.C. schools in 2008 cost nearly $18 million, according to an audit released in August, nearly double the $9.7 million originally reported by the school system.
Catania has already introduced three bills this year for city reform, most notably one for DC CFO budget transparency.
Council and Committee member Yvette Alexander represents Ward 7, where four of the Chancellor’s 15 schools are slated to be closed. She demands that any savings from the closures of those four schools, Ron Brown Middle, Kenilworth Elementary, Davis Elementary and Winston Education Campus, must remain in Ward 7.
While Alexander made a visible effort and succeeded in remaining civil and constructive throughout the meeting, the Chancellor did neither.
The most notable comments about her contentiousness came from Marion Barry, Council member for Ward 8 and former DC Mayor, who criticized the Chancellor for giving the council a ”facetious” answer to their questions. He also took her to task for interrupting him and for ”cutting (him) off’.”
At one point, Henderson lost her composure and raised her voice over soft-spoken Barry.
”Why the hostility?” he asked.
Half-way through the Chancellor’s answer to his next question, he retracted it, complaining, ”No, I don’t want your answer.”
He ended his attempt at a civil discourse with the Chancellor with a statement of disgust, insisting, ”You’re not telling the truth!”
Instead of releasing the anticipated data of studies already conducted to support her case, Henderson was mostly on the defensive today.
Although Henderson again promised ”more robust” programs across the city, she was reminded how she has orchestrated a systematic downsizing and ”excessing” of Art, Music and other ‘special subjects’ programs and teachers during her tenure.
Council member Alexander stated, ”I want to see Art , Music and P.E. in every school in Ward 7. I want to see language offerings in Ward 7, modern libraries in Ward 7, and a STEM focus in every school in Ward 7.”
As the end of the meeting approached, Chairperson Catania gave his ”recap,”
‘We are hoping to embark on a new era of collective responsibility, giving out honest information, so that the public can make informed decisions.’
The Chancellor was allowed the final word:
”This is complex, frustrating and difficult,” she said, but she agreed to ”work on these budget issues.”
Notably, this is how the Chancellor chose to end the nearly 3-hour meeting.
Dripping in flashy, bulky gold jewelry, the Chancellor bragged about all her other standing job offers and implied that she could be making a lot more money ”without all of this,” gesturing with both arms at the City Council and the cameras.
. . . → Read More: News Round Up: School Closings Lawsuit
By Guest Contributor, on January 4th, 2013 
Cross-posted from The Washington Teacher written by Candi Peterson
As 2012 comes to an end, two unmistakable trends have emerged from studies that public schools are being sold down the river to private interests and the rush to close schools has not resulted in any measurable improvement in standardized test scores. The Chicago Teacher’s Union (CTU) just issued The Black and White of Education in Chicago’s Public Schools report on the “underutilization crisis” in the Chicago Public Schools system. CTU contends that this crisis that has been manufactured largely to justify the replacement of neighborhood schools by privatized charters.
“When it comes to matters of race and education in Chicago, the attack on public schools is endemic,” said CTU President Karen GJ Lewis. “Chicago is the most segregated city in the country, and our students of color are routinely deemed as second-class by a system that does nothing but present one failed policy after the next.”
More specifically, Chicago Teachers’ Union highlights what the policy of neighborhood closings and charter openings has led to:
– Increased racial segregation – Depletion of stable schools in black neighborhoods – Disrespect and poor treatment of teachers – Expansion of unnecessary testing – Decreased opportunities for deep conceptual learning – Increased punitive student discipline – Increased student mobility – Minimal educational outcomes
Locally, DC Action for Children, a non-profit advocacy organization came to a similar conclusion that educational outcomes have been minimal in the District of Columbia. Their newly released study, DC KIDS COUNT, Third Grade Proficiency in DC: Little Progress (2007-2011) , looked at five years of third grade reading and math test scores from the DC Comprehensive Assessment System, (DC CAS) for insights about citywide proficiency, the achievement gap and neighborhood disparities. Their results? “We could not prove any statistically significant citywide progress from 2007-2011 in reading or math proficiency. The same held true when we broke scores down by race, by DCPS schools, DC public charter schools, students from economically advantaged or students from economically disadvantaged families.” This study neutralizes the rationale used by Chancellor Henderson and her predecessor Michelle Rhee which is embedded in the first goal of the five-year plan DC Public Schools ) which is: “To improve achievement rates.”
I personally don’t believe that Henderson’s under-utilization argument makes any sense. What we know is that the policy of closing schools has not saved DC Public Schools (DCPS) any money. The evidence shows us that closing our schools has driven more parents out of our public schools to charters and elsewhere. It’s a no brainer that less students in our public schools equals less money for DCPS.
DC Public Schools cannot demonstrate that their continued failed policy of closing 20 plus schools every 4 years, is not achieving its number one goal of improving test scores. So why then is Henderson and other heads of school districts stuck on stupid nationally, one might ask?
The answer lies in CTU’s report, “A crisis has been manufactured to justify the replacement of neighborhood schools. There is a real economic benefit to real estate investors, charter school operators, philanthropists and wealthy bankers.”
An August 2012 Reuters article spells out the reason for the national push to privatize. ” The U.S. spends more than $500 billion a year to educate kids from 5-18. The entire education sector represents 9 percent of the gross domestic product, more than energy or technology sectors. Traditionally, public education had been a tough market for private firms to break into- fraught with politics, tangled in bureaucracy….. Now investors are signaling optimism that a golden moment has arrived. They’re pouring private equity and venture capital into scores of companies that aim to profit by taking over broad swaths of public education.”
When the smoke clears in 2013 and all the policy arguments are made, DCPS will close another 20 schools give or take a few concessions and 12,000 students and an estimated 1,200 teachers and school staff members will be thrown under the bus.
By Guest Contributor, on December 20th, 2012 
Cross-Posted from The Washington Informer Written by Dorothy Rowley
A cadre of parents, teachers and community leaders recently gathered on the grounds of a Southeast elementary school to protest a controversial proposal by D.C. Public Schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson to shutter several neighborhood schools.
During a Dec. 13 rally at Malcolm X Elementary School in Anacostia, the fired-up group of more than 100 Ward 8 residents who vehemently oppose the 20 school closings – the majority of which are located in their neighborhoods – loudly proclaimed along with newly-elected D.C. Ward 8 School Board representative Trayon White, that “enough is enough.”
Cynthia McFarland, 48, said that Henderson has lost touch with the needs of her community. “My grandchildren live in Ward 8,” the Alabama Avenue resident said. “They go to school at Hart [Middle] and Malcolm X. I was raised in the public school system and walked to school. So did my children. Ms. Henderson needs to stop playing games and do what’s not only right but necessary.”
McFarland also stressed that given the large number of children who live in Ward 8, it’s essential that all of the area’s neighborhood school doors remain open.
According to a statement issued prior to the rally by organizers, many of those in opposition represent Ferebee Hope and M.C. Terrell/McGogney Elementary and Johnson Middle schools. “Parental, school and student choice are no longer a part of the equation in accordance with decisions regarding neighborhood school closings,” a portion of the statement read.
Four years ago, at the behest of Henderson’s predecessor, two dozen schools were closed throughout the District in an attempt at school reform. But Henderson, 42, admitted recently that those closings only proved costly and ineffective: while student test scores remained stagnant, DCPS enrollment figures dipped from 47,000 students to less than 45,000, and paved the way for public charter schools to gain leverage as the preferred education model.
White, who helped organize the Malcolm X rally, said it doesn’t make sense to close any of the community’s schools.
“We don’t need less educational resources, but more educational resources,” the outspoken 28-year-old protégé of Ward 8 Council member Marion Barry, said. “A lot of factors have to weigh in on the closings, and so far, the chancellor hasn’t [stepped up to the plate] with an adequate explanation. Dropout and truancy rates are already high in the area, and if she closes our schools, those rates will only increase.”
White added that a major concern of parents has been plans to merge low-performing DCPS buildings with high-performing charter schools.
White said that in talks with Barry, he expressed that there’s no guarantee DCPS will be more successful in its attempt at school reform.
“History has proven, especially since 2008, that if we continue to go down this road, we will be right back here again discussing another round of school closures,” White said.
Henderson’s plan – currently being studied by members of her administration – calls largely for the closings of under-enrolled and under-performing schools.
After her staff makes adjustments to the proposal, Henderson will confer with Mayor Vincent Gray, 70, and together in January, they will announce their final decision about which of the 20 schools will be closed.
Kim Harrison, 49, who works with Concerned Parents for Action Coalition, a citywide organization that advocates on behalf of public schools, drummed up support for the for the rally.
She said word of the closings have been exacerbated in the aftermath of a series of public meetings where Henderson shared reasons behind her proposal.
“We can’t be quiet, as this is a bigger issue than we think,” said Harrison, who lives in Southeast. “It’s just awful, all this talk about closing our schools. Our children need a school that’s in walkable distance – and they clearly need to be D.C. schools, and not charter schools,” she said.
“In order for reforms to work, they’re supposed to engage community stakeholders, parents, teachers and students, and Henderson’s proposal has failed to include [that kind of input].”
|
Subscribe to Blog via Email
|
)% 
%categories-linked( 