The Worst City Government
The Worst City Government With the District ranking dead last in the nation's drop-out ratings, a full 45 percent of D.C. highschoolers hit the streets without diplomas—about 10,000...
...By 1988, the foundation had gone unattended for so long that its managers at Economic Opportunity Atlanta, a quasi-governmental agen cy, had forgotten to file the incorporation fee three years running, dissolving the foundation without even noticing...
...EOA decided to dip into the fund to lend itself $50,000 interest free . . . . —Jim Newton Please send nominations to: Worst City Government The Washington Monthly 1611 Connecticut Ave...
...school system, with spending levels 51 percent above the national average, had a $5.4 million deficit last year...
...What's been the District's response...
...Since April 1, 1988, the school board has spent more than $400,000 on the empty building...
...NW Washington, D.C...
...Why now the renewed attention...
...This led to proposed cuts in summer school programs, textbooks, and supplies, as well as threats to lay off teachers...
...Leased to store school records, the facility has remained padlocked and strewn with garbage . . . . —Mark Feldstein Atlanta, the city that boasts of being "too busy to hate" has also been too busy to file a $15 incorporation fee—even though that's all it takes to get access to $185,000 lying dormant in a bank account...
...20009...
...The Worst City Government With the District ranking dead last in the nation's drop-out ratings, a full 45 percent of D.C...
...In April, eight months into a federally funded program to encourage attendance, the city had spent only $393.41 of its $395,000 grant...
...And while the headquarters of the Board of Education gleams after a $22 million face lift, school budgets are so low that one elementary school rations its paper and paste on a yearly supply budget of $600—less than a quarter of what the central office pays a private company to water its plants...
...It didn't, however, lead to any action on an empty warehouse for which the school board pays $1,000 a day...
...And that, of course, was on administrative expenses . . . . District residents may find comfort, however, in the fact that they don't live in Chicago, where on an average day more than 5,700 public school students attend classes with no teachers—not even substitutes...
...The money belongs to the Atlanta Children's Foundation, which was founded in 1981 as the city emerged from its missing and murdered children's crisis...
...highschoolers hit the streets without diplomas—about 10,000 kids a year...
...One thing you can't say about the Chicago schools, though, is that the school board president doesn't know what he's doing...
...He sent his kids to private schools . . .. —Katherine Boo The D.C...
Vol. 21 • June 1989 • No. 5
