Invisible Boy DC Public Schools' Failures and the Decline of Our Son

1. 
   

   An open letter to DCPS, OSSE, Mayor Gray, Ms. Henderson, Mr. Beers,

   
   Let yesterday's City Council meeting serve as your notice that we will NOT go away quietly. We will NOT give up on our son and the thousands of special needs children that you've been exploiting and abusing. 

   
   We will demand an accounting of the more than $23 million missing from special education funds that you've stolen by snatching children out of their private school placements so you could save money, with absolutely NO regard for the welfare and education of those children. You are going to be seeing a lot of us in the near future.
   
   We will use every LEGAL means necessary to expose you. We will make you sorry you had ever decided that the funding for special needs children could be your private slush fund. You will be hearing from us. You will be hearing about us. We will be on TV. We will be in newspapers and we will be everywhere you do not want us to be. We will appear at your fundraisers, at your ceremonial events, at your budget meetings. We will show you just how powerful two small people (and their wonderful supporters), the world wide web, and social media can be. And soon we will remind you of just how powerful a motivator shame can be. 

   
   You should all be ashamed of yourselves for what you are doing and we are going to make sure that you all WILL be ashamed (that is, if you actually have any conscience left) both jointly and INDIVIDUALLY. Bureaucrats love to hide behind that nameless, faceless, monolithic "system", but you will be afforded no such "cover". We will strip away your Nuremberg Defense that you were, "only doing your jobs". We will not only name names, but identify exactly what actions or inactions you were responsible for and describe how you were complicit in the debacle that is our son’s education and in the larger - and in our minds despicable - plan to steal our children's funding.
   
   You should look to the rape case in Steubenville, Ohio as a model for what we plan to do (with the exception of the hacking and any illegal activities). We will continue to draw attention to you and your actions and people will know what you are doing. We will soon unleash the next phase of our public campaign against you - a little something we like to call OPERATION PUBLIC SHAME. We are going to place all of you in an "Electronic Stockade" (and don't worry we've all already consulted 1st amendment experts...so please bring on that lawsuit and take our message to an even wider audience). Sadly, the law precludes us from placing you all on the National Mall in a big block of wood with your hands and head sticking out for all to see. But we will be creating little web vignettes about each of you (btw, you might want to check to see who owns your names as URL's …oops never-mind, because that would be ME). These vignettes will be widely distributed through various media and web networks. So, you should all be prepared to become infamous, as these vignettes will detail your complicity in what we view as crimes against children.
   
   The slow mental asphyxiation that you commit when you take away our children's ability to learn, by placing them in environments where you know they can't, is intellectual homicide in our book. You will not get away with this. We will make certain of that. You may beat us in a court of questionable impartiality, but we will beat you in the court of public opinion. Just know that even if you prevail in court, even if we home-school Max, or even if we move out of state... we will still come after you. We will not stop until you do. In fact, you should be afraid...very afraid of us because we will not allow you to keep our little boy INVISIBLE anymore!
   
   (p.s. as most of you who read this page with any regularity already know, Greg Masucci, wrote this. Maya is a much better writer than me...I’m just a bit more bellicose)

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Government regulations - Why DC can't have nice things

D.C. can't have nice things, like jobs for teenagers and those without law degrees, or the new businesses that provide them.

This even includes jobs in non-profit and low profit enterprises, like the arts.

The Anacostia Theater is forbidden from opening because its mandatory parking is across an alley.  Other businesses have been held up by the DC government because their mandated parking was physically contiguous but on property that was a separate tax parcel.

(It's interesting that parking is so often an issue, since most parking in DC is provided on government owned streets, and DC has long had a "central plan" to shift as many people as possible out of cars and into buses and our degenerating subway system.  It's a common assumption that public transportation like subways mean there is less automobile use and congestion.  But is this true?  A new subway in DC is the main engine of gentrification in a neighborhood.  Some libertarian economist or public policy graduate student should do a study - do subways in fact centralize economic development, so that more people from lower rent areas need a car to get to desirable jobs and shopping?)

Opening of Anacostia Playhouse delayed

By Jessica Goldstein,March 19, 2013

The Anacostia Playhouse, originally slated to open as early as mid-March,
 is probably going to be mired in parking-permit purgatory at 
least until the end of April, if not the end of the summer.

Here’s what happened at 2020 Shannon Place: The Anacostia 
Playhouse  is the new home of the former H Street Playhouse,
which was  forced out of its Northeast D.C. location last summer.
 Rising rent left  the 10-year-old theater and its owner, Adele Robey,
 in search of a new location. She found a space across the river and
announced plans to turn what was then a warehouse into a theater
by spring 2013.

The Anacostia Playhouse is required by law to have 15 parking spaces 
on site. The parking lot it planned to use is across a 20-foot alley from
 the Anacostia Playhouse lot. Because of that alley, the lot is
considered “off-site parking,”  so, by definition, the parking spots on
that lot can’t count toward the minimum  "on-site” parking requirements.

Until the Anacostia Playhouse can secure a variance that would put them
 in compliance with the zoning laws, construction must be halted.

“We thought we had satisfied [the requirement] with the 15 spots 
we had,” said Robey, now Anacostia Playhouse’s CEO. She also said 
that “everybody, everywhere, recognized that it was a technicality, basically, and the whole thing was going to hold up our building.”

“We’ve been working very closely with them to try to expedite the entire process,” said Helder Gil, public information officer at the Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs. “But our hands are tied due to the zoning regulations. But if the Board is okay with them using the adjacent lot for parking and issues the variance . . . we’re ready to issue the building permit.”

Robey and her daughter, managing director Julia Robey Christian, will probably have a hearing with the D.C. Board of Zoning Adjustment on April 23. Assuming they can get a bench decision that day — as opposed to waiting weeks or months for one — Christian said they will start building as early as April 24. Theater Alliance was supposed to be loading in and performing “Broke-ology” in May and June; the new plan is for the show to load in at the beginning of August and perform through the end of September.

That’s tricky, too, because Theater Alliance received a grant from the D.C. Commission on Arts and Humanities to produce work east of the river. “We have to spend all the money by September, or we have to give it back,” Christian said.

Though the Anacostia Playhouse has, in its lease, six months free for the building time with a two-month cushion for delays, this was not a problem that Robey or Christian anticipated. “My sense is [our landlord] will not really try to hold us to that because they know the bind we’re in,” Robey said. “But the worst-case scenario is, we’ll be in default of the lease and they can take the building back.”

One ironic twist that will maybe be funny in several years if/when things work out but right now, probably not so much, is that “the zoning regulations are currently being rewritten and this is one of the issues that would be dealt with,” Gil said. “It would be amended to allow for exactly this situation.”

Robey said: “This could not even be a law by the time we get anywhere with this.”

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WaPo endorses Mara

Patrick Mara for D.C. Council

THE APRIL 23 special election to pick a citywide representative to the D.C. Council features an eclectic field with seven candidates vying to fill the term vacated when at-large member Phil Mendelson (D) was elected council chairman. Turnout is expected to be low, with as few as 50,000 voters predicted and a small number of votes likely to determine the winner and the direction that will be set for the council and the District.By Editorial Board, Published: March 21

Patrick Mara , in our judgment, is the best choice, offering a record of energetic service to the community marked by a thoughtful approach to the issues and a willingness to speak his own mind. Currently a member of the state board of education from Ward 1, Mr. Mara has a keen appreciation for the importance of education and the need for continued reforms that will enable both charter and traditional public schools to help their students achieve. Long before ethics became a flash point for a council battered by the missteps of its members, Mr. Mara was committed to integrity and strengthened ethics in government.

Indicative of Mr. Mara’s strength is the fact that the only thing his opponents seem able to attack is his affiliation as a Republican. “The consequences could be disastrous for the residents of the District,” reads a recentcampaign e-mail from Anita Bonds (D), the incumbent by virtue of her interim appointment, about Mr. Mara’s possible victory. The socially progressive Mr. Mara — he’s broken with his party on issues such as gay marriage and D.C. statehood — would bring some welcome independence to a council dominated by think-alike Democrats. Mr. Mara has a proven willingness to engage GOP legislators on Capitol Hill to advance D.C. interests — and to stand up to them when necessary. It’s worth recalling that the District has had pretty good results when it’s elected similarly independent-minded Republicans in the past, notably former member Carol Schwartz and current at-large member David Catania, who has since switched to being an independent.

Of Mr. Mara’s opponents, attorney Paul Zukerberg (D) is an authentic new voice with a smart grasp of the issues, a commitment to pragmatism and a powerful message about marijuana laws making criminals out of too many of the District’s young people. No matter the outcome of Mr. Zukerberg’s candidacy, the conversation he has started about decriminalization must continue, and we hope he stays on the political scene. Democrats Matthew Frumin, an attorney and Ward 3 activist, and Elissa Silverman , a former Post reporter now on leave from the D.C. Fiscal Policy Institute, are both committed to improved ethics and have advanced well-meaning approaches. But Mr. Frumin’s support for limiting charters would impede education choice and Ms. Silverman’s past advocacy for the millionaire’s tax and expansion of the sales tax would, we fear, translate into new burdens on residents. Ms. Bonds, along with former D.C. Council member Michael A. Brown (reminted as a Democrat after losing as an independent last year), would take the council in a backward direction.

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