Why Rhee's mayoral comments are troubling
Let’s set aside the question about whether D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee should have taken sides in the city’s mayoral race. Even if she had said nothing, everybody would know she stands firmly with Mayor Adrian M. Fenty, the man who hired her and who has given her free rein.
But her all-but-direct threat to quit if Fenty loses to D.C. Council Chairman Vincent C. Gray in September’s Democratic Party raises a question about her priorities, not to mention her reluctance to admit that she might not have all the answers to fixing D.C. schools.
My colleagues Bill Turque and Nikita Stewart wrote in a Post article that Rhee on Tuesday said in two separate interviews -- one with WAMU’s Kavitha Cardoza and one with The Post -- that she would not work for a mayor who did not share her education reform ideas, and then she made it clear that Gray doesn’t.
So Rhee is all but saying that if city residents don’t give her her way by reelecting Fenty, she is out of here.
Never mind that she really doesn’t know how Gray will approach their relationship. What political candidates say during a campaign is not always what they do if they win and take office. Considerations change.
What is more important, and of more concern, is that Rhee surely knows the importance of consistency in school leadership. She knows she was the seventh person to head the school system in a decade when she arrived in 2007, and that the constant turnover at the top was disastrous for the city’s schools.
