Mayor Fenty Sends Sons To Public School Outside His Neighborhood

VIA WASHINGTON POST:

Fenty: Don’t Ask Me About My Kids!

Mayor Adrian M. Fenty told reporters again that he will not answer any questions about twins Andrew and Matthew attending Lafayette Elementary.

The Northwest school is not within the boundaries of his Crestwood neighborhood. Their in-boundary school is West Education Center. School sources say the boys skipped the city’s lottery system to win their spots at the high-performing Lafayette.

The 9-year-old fourth-graders are attending public school for the first time. Fenty promised that they would join the system he is trying to turn around once they completed third grade at their previous private school.

Media swarmed the mayor after he gave a key to the city to the Washington Kastles tennis team on the steps of the John A. Wilson Building.

“I’m not answering any more questions about my kids,” he said.

Fenty said reporters should find new topics. “Please, just stop asking me the question.”

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VIA WASHINGTON POST:

Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee said Friday that D.C. Mayor Adrian M. Fenty did not bypass any rules or policies by enrolling his twin sons in an elementary school outside of his Crestwood neighborhood.

But Rhee declined to say whether the Fenty children were placed ahead of other families on a waiting list for spots in the fourth grade at Lafayette Elementary School in the Chevy Chase neighborhood.

Fenty’s children had previously attended a private Montessori school that runs through third grade. When classes began Monday, the mayor fulfilled a longtime pledge to place his sons in the public school system once they reached fourth grade. Fenty (D) has repeatedly declined to discuss how he enrolled his children at Lafayette, one of the District’s most coveted elementary schools, rather than West Elementary, his neighborhood school. Lafayette, which is 72 percent white and 28 percent minority, has a more affluent student body and higher standardized test scores than West, which is 71 percent black, according to District figures.

In her first extended response to questions about the enrollment of the mayor’s children, Rhee told WTOP radio: “I can assure you that no rules were broken. We have a number of provisions that allow kids to go to out-of-boundary schools, and all of those things were followed.”

The Fenty twins’ enrollment marks the first time a D.C. mayor has had children in public schools since Christopher Barry, son of former mayor Marion Barry, attended city schools in the 1990s. Christopher Barry, who was raised in Southeast Washington, also went out-of-boundary to attend schools in upper Northwest. Former mayors Anthony A. Williams and Sharon Pratt did not have school-age children.

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