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Tuesday, December 21, 2010

Mike DeBonis on Local Politics - Brown keeps education oversight, hires Board of Education member

Mike DeBonis on Local Politics - Brown keeps education oversight, hires Board of Education member

Brown keeps education oversight, hires Board of Education member

By Mike DeBonis

D.C. Council Chairman-elect Kwame R. Brown has made his first organizational move, announcing that he will retain oversight of the city's public schools in the next term rather than hand the responsibility to a committee run by one of his colleagues.

Until 2007, the council oversight of education generally fell to a standing committee, but that year Chairman Vincent C. Gray, with newly elected Mayor Adrian M. Fenty chomping at the bit to disband the school board and take direct control of the schools, chose to keep the issue under his direct purview. In the following years, Gray used sometimes marathon hearings to question the course of education reform under