Testy Pony
by Zachary Schomburg

I am given a pony for my birthday, but it is the wrong kind of pony. It is the kind of pony that won’t listen. It is testy. When I ask it to go left, it goes right. When I ask it to run, it sleeps on its side in the tall grass. So when I ask it to jump us over the river into the field I have never before been, I have every reason to believe it will fail, that we will be swept down the river to our deaths. It is a fate for which I am prepared. The blame of our death will rest with the testy pony, and with that, I will be remembered with reverence, and the pony will be remembered with great anger. But with me on its back, the testy pony rears and approaches the river with unfettered bravery. Its leap is glorious. It clears the river with ease, not even getting its pony hooves wet. And then there we are on the other side of the river, the sun going down, the pony circling, looking for something to eat in the dirt. Real trust is to do so in the face of clear doubt, and to trust is to love. This is my failure, and for that I cannot be forgiven.

Michelle Rhee has never trusted teachers, regardless of where they came from – traditional, non-traditional or otherwise. If you were in the system before she came into DCPS then you were part of the problem.  She has had no belief in us and when you do not have belief in people there is a tendency to treat them as unworthy of honest dealing.  Usually people who believe this way say things like “They are lucky they have a job!”  Yesterday Michelle Rhee held a press conference to crow to anyone willing to listen how enrollment is up and that this justifies her policies. Yes, enrollment is up. 1%. One percent. That is 1/100, just in case you forgot your decimal to fraction process. 491 pre-k and kindergarten students and she cries VICTORY IS OURS!  Did she give a similar press conference to discuss her mismanagement of money? No, I forgot. Failures are the fault of other people, no matter how large the failure and no matter how much it can be tracked back to her own policies.  But, have a 1% change in enrollment and then your buds at the Washington Post will write about reversing a history of losses. None of those kids better sneeze or they will lose their historic turnaround.

And now we come to the “immediate” raise we were promised.

Well, I hate to say I told you so but I do think I tried very hard to say that this is what Michelle Rhee would do.  Speaking of equine natures, the quoted poem above reminds me of a line from the movie Eight Men Out by John Sayles.  The gambler who is trying to fix the World Series with the Chicago White Sox is telling his underling why he isn’t paying the ballplayers more money. “Do you know how much you feed a dray horse to get him to work? Just enough to let him know he’s hungry.”  So we got our retro pay and the increase we should have had for the last three years but we won’t see anything of the “incredible” increase promised us in this historic contract. A contract was voted on (with only 1800 voting, so all you who didn’t vote at all do not get to cry) and the majority went for it despite the clauses 40.1 and 40.2 which absolved the DC government from having to pay any raise if there were insufficient funds. Well, guess what? There’s insufficient funds. And given the money management of Adrian Fenty and Michelle Rhee there will be even more insufficient funds before Gray ever gets close to taking over.

Oh well, to quote W: “Fool me once, shame on– shame on you. Fool me—-you can’t get fooled again.” Or can you?