a18 eZ sU the washington post.saturday, november 16 , 2019
letters to the editor[email protected]loCal oPiNioNsT
HE LATEST scores on standardized tests
show the District’s traditional schools out-
performing the gains made by the city’s
public charter schools. You might think that
would rankle the executive director of D.C.’s Public
Charter School Board, but in fact Scott Pearson says
he is thrilled. Not only do “we want good schools for
everyone,” Mr. Pearson says, but also the school
system is doing so well in part because of education
improvements that come in response to competition
between the city’s two public school sectors.
Education reform in D.C. has become a national
model, with the flourishing public charter schools a
key component. Mr. Pearson’s advocacy and astute
leadership over the past seven years have played a
large role in this success. His decision to leave his
post at the end of the school year is well earned but
leaves a void that will be hard to fill.During Mr. Pearson’s tenure, the number of
charter schools, publicly funded but privately
operated, grew from 98 to 123 and now enroll
43,556 students, just under half of public school
students. Of these charter school students, 74 per-
cent are African American, and 7 7 percent economi-
cally disadvantaged. Mr. Pearson helped improve
the quality of schools through smart oversight that
used data t o hold schools accountable; h e didn’t shy
away from shutting schools that consistently failed
students. Charter school students have shown
steady improvement on District-wide assessments
as well a s on t he N ational Assessment of Education-
al Progress. The graduation rate of 72.4 percent is
higher than the citywide average. Notably, those
improvements came as charter schools were made
more accessible, serving more special-needs stu-
dents and dramatically reducing expulsions andsuspensions.
The Public Charter School Board will undertake a
national search for Mr. Pearson’s replacement. It
comes at a critical time, as charter schools, both
locally and nationally, face renewed criticism. The
autonomy and independence that allow charter
schools to innovate and succeed are being threat-
ened by the efforts of some D.C. Council members to
impose burdensome regulations and unnecessary
red tape; high-quality charters that want to expand
have been stymied by the administration’s refusal to
give them access to shuttered school buildings. “The
politics are complicated, and they are certainly more
so than they were eight years ago,” said Rick Cruz,
chair of the Public Charter School Board. Let’s hope
those politics don’t lead the District to lose sight of
what charter schools have achieved — for students
and for the city as a whole.Job well done, Mr. Pearson
D.C.’s charter schools chief is leaving at a critical time.
In Venice’s case, there is no choice at all. Less a
modern city than an open-air museum, Venice
cannot be surrendered to the sea, despite expert
projections that the city will be entirely submerged
by 2100. The current plan to save the city calls for the
installation of a system of floodgates that would
close when high water threatened, similar to a
proposal to wall off New York Harbor in response to
sea-level rise. But as the water continues to advance,
Venice’s lagoon may have to be more or less
permanently closed off from the Adriatic, which
would radically alter its ecosystem and pose prob-lems for disposing municipal waste.
Saving Venice will take money, time and compro-
mise. In substantial ways, the place will not be the
same. Humanity must ask how many Venices it
wants in the decades to come. For centuries, humans
have built their civilization around water, under a
certain set of climatic conditions, in anticipation of
only the rare catastrophe. Unless humans make
easier changes now to reduce global warming’s r isks,
they will have harder choices in the future, in places
ancient and new, in ways predictable and unexpect-
ed.V
ENICE HAS always been linked closely with
the water that surrounds it. The city is
thought to have been founded by refugees
seeking protection from Germanic invaders
by sheltering in the northwestern Adriatic Sea’s
islands and marshes. By the 12th century, the doge
would annually drop a ring into the Adriatic to
symbolically wed the sea. The Venetian merchant
republic ruled the Mediterranean shipping trade for
centuries, and the wealth it generated funded the
construction of a glittering metropolis on piles
driven into the city’s lagoon.
But Venice is sinking, and the seas are rising —
and never before has the water seemed so close.
Some 85 percent of the city flooded this week as the
highest tidewaters in more than 50 years inundated
its historic core. A viral video caught a man
swimming through St. Mark’s Square, site of the
Doge’s Palace, the city’s iconic campanile and the
11th-century St. Mark’s Basilica. In its hundreds of
years, the basilica has flooded only six times. Two of
those times came in the past two years.
Venice’s problems stem from more than just the
audacity of those who built a major settlement on a
shallow lagoon. The ground below the city is shifting
as the aquifer below the lagoon depletes. Mean-
while, man-made climate change is boosting sea
levels steadily and promoting extreme weather.
Virginia’s Hampton Roads, home to some of the
United States’ most important military installations,
faces a similar dual threat of sinking land and rising
seas, resulting in major flooding problems in naval
drydocks and other critical infrastructure.
For coastal areas contending only with climate-
r elated sea-level rise, sinking Hampton Roads and
Venice are warnings of what is in store when water
levels get increasingly ahistorical. Shoreline devel-
opment that once faced only occasional risk will be
inundated more and more often. Communities will
have to face the dilemma of retreating from the coast
or spending huge amounts of money trying to
engineer protections.Venice drowns
It’s a warning of what’s to come.
ABCDE
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the Washington Post
1301 K st. nW, Washington, d.C. 20071 (202) 334-Regarding the Nov. 9 Metro article “Arlington
water main break causes boil advisory”:
It seems like these days it doesn’t matter where
you live, you’ll still face water hardships. It can be
anything from water main breaks to contamination,
threats of privatization, shutoffs or skyrocketing
rates. As with many of our water woes, the
boil-water advisory we saw in the District and
Arlington on Nov. 8 likely could have been prevented
by more proactive upgrades to our aging water
systems.
Line ruptures are almost always a result of
deteriorating infrastructure, something that is now
regrettably becoming a motif in our country. As a
result, there’s bipartisan support for infrastructure
investment, but nobody agrees on how much or
where to get the money from. President Trump’svision relies on the privatization of essential assets,
a route that never operates in the best interests of
residents and always functions with profit as the
ultimate bottom line. He’s wrong. We need a model
like the Water Affordability, Transparency, Equity
and Reliability Act that dedicates adequate federal
funding through a progressive tax stream for water
projects to halt our country’s deepening water
affordability crisis and take the burden of infra-
structure updates off struggling households.
Residents in the District, Virginia and the rest of
the United States deserve to wake up in the morning
and know that we can drink a cup of clean, safe and
affordable public water.
Jackie Filson, Washington
The writer is the spokeswoman for
Food and Water Action.It’s time to address our aging water infrastructure
andrea Merola/assoCIaTed Press
A woman tries to cross a flooded street as people walk on a trestle bridge in Venice on Friday.Regarding the Nov. 10 Local Opinions essay
“Transforming higher education at home — to grow
the future”:
It has been great to watch more opportunities
come to young people in Montgomery County
through the Universities at Shady Grove. However,
with a projected enrollment of 7,500 students, it is
time to consolidate the programs under one umbrel-
la: the University of Maryland Shady Grove.
With its own president and administration, our
university would take its proper seat in the system.
The students would have a voice, funding and
resource discussions would have an advocate, and
full-time faculty (not loaners from other institu-
tions) would be dedicated to our students. The time
has come.
Mary J. Hoferek, GaithersburgPut the programs under one umbrella
In his Nov. 12 op-ed, “Tribalistic party identity is
all Trump’s defenders have left,” Eugene Robinson
predicted that Donald Trump’s presidency is near-
ing its end, even if the Senate Republicans absolve
him in the impeachment trial to give him about
another year in office before the voters take care of
business in the November 2020 elections.
In that year, however, the president is likely to
inflict more damage on our country and on the
future prospects of the Republican Party. Our
country badly needs a retooled Republican Party as
a positive force in our government.
The impeachment trial offers the Senate Repub-
licans a unique opportunity to quickly remove
Mr. Trump by simply being honest jurors in the f ace
of highly convincing evidence presented to them. It
is time to jump into the lifeboats and abandon the
sinking ship. Once Mr. Trump is out of office, the
rebuilding of the party can start immediately, and
some seats may be saved in the 2020 election.
Harry Obst, AlexandriaIt’s obvious that Nikki Haley’s support for
President Trump is based on her political and
economic ambitions. Are we expected to believe
that Ms. Haley’s sudden distress over the warning
shared by former secretary of state Rex Tillerson
and former White House chief of staff John F. K elly
are a result of her newfound sense of patriotism?
More likely, it’s Ms. Haley’s obsequious fidelity to
what she sees as a path to the White House in
2024.
Ms. Haley failed to tell her readers how
Mr. Trump reacted when she shared this “danger-
ous” i nformation with him. She did, didn’t she?
Pamela Kincheloe, ManassasThe Nov. 13 news article “Protagonists in
political drama: Career federal employees” put a
much-needed human face on the courage of career
federal employees who risk making disclosures
related to the impeachment of President Trump
and other White House and agency appointees.
The overall problem is much bigger and is
getting worse for federal workers.
Mr. Trump and the Senate have increased the
risks to all federal employees whose rights under
law have been suspended. That is because the
Trump White House and the Senate have silenced
the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB) and
closed its channels for appeals and requests for
stays in whistleblower cases before the MSPB.
Since March 1, and for the first time in 40 years,
the White House and Senate have paralyzed the
very self-governance in our own democracy by
leaving vacant the entire board. This despite the
fact that the Senate Committee on Homeland
Security and Governmental Affairs confirmed the
three necessary bipartisan nominees months ago.
The Senate Republicans will not budge, and the
Senate Democrats are silent. Their jobs are secure.
Ye t it i s federal employees w ho have the most t o risk
who are speaking out.
Steven L. Katz, Potomac
The writer was chief counsel to the chairman of the
U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board from 1993 to
1997 and is former counsel to the U.S. Senate
Committee on Governmental Affairs.It will not matter one whit whether Rep. Adam
B. Schiff ’s ( D-Calif.) committee demonstrates plain-
ly that President Trump withheld aid to Ukraine to
make its l eaders come u p with defamatory informa-
tion on Hunter and Joe Biden. The 43 percent o f the
U. S. electorate that supports Mr. Trump will not be
moved. They just don’t care.
Marie Armstrong, Reedville, Va.If a baseball team stole signs but didn’t win, is
it not still wrong?
One of the Republicans’ defenses of President
Trump’s actions toward Ukraine is that eventually
the a id was g iven. Okay. In that case, i f you t ry t o kill
someone but aren’t successful, no crime.
I have been frustrated watching the process of
the impeachment. Republicans disgracefully look
down on the general public’s cognitive ability. They
should not underestimate normal people regard-
less of our political standing point.
Ichiro Kishimoto, New YorkThe GOP’s actions on impeachment
P
RESIDENT TRUMP and his defenders have
been arguing, weakly, that his actions toward
Ukraine, including demands for the investi-
gation of his political opponents, were some-
how consistent with U.S. national interests. There is
no way to make that case about his treatment of
Marie Yovanovitch, the former U.S. ambassador to
Ukraine. In compelling testimony during the
House’s impeachment inquiry on Friday, she de-
scribed how the president’s firing of her was orches-
trated by corrupt Ukrainian actors whom the United
States had been trying to neutralize — and how that
reversal damaged U.S. diplomacy around the world.
No wonder, then, that Mr. Trump, who has never
offered a reason for yanking Ms. Yovanovitch, took
to Twitter to abuse her, claiming that “everywhere
Marie Yovanovitch went turned bad.” Beyond the
absurdity of suggesting that Ms. Yovanovitch some-
how brought about the troubles of Somalia or
Uzbekistan, Mr. Trump was attacking a still-serving
federal government employee even as she testified to
his wrongdoing. Democrats were right to suggest
this amounted to witness intimidation.
The truth is that Ms. Yovanovitch was having an
impact in Kyiv. As o ther witnesses have testified, she
was aggressive in pushing the Ukrainian govern-
ment to fulfill its promises to tackle corruption,something it did not do. In particular, she tangled
with Yuriy Lutsenko, the general prosecutor.
Mr. Lutsenko responded by launching a smear
campaign against her, in conjunction with two
shady U.S. businessmen and Mr. Trump’s private
lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani. Mr. Lutsenko won
Mr. Giuliani over with false claims about Joe Biden.
The businessmen, who had been seeking Ms. Yo-
vanovitch’s ouster since 2018, got Mr. Trump’s ear by
making a large contribution to a PAC supporting
him.
As Ms. Yovanovitch put it, “individuals, who
apparently felt stymied by our efforts to promote
stated U.S. policy against corruption... were able to
successfully conduct a campaign of disinformation
against a sitting ambassador, using unofficial back
channels.... They shared baseless allegations with
the president and convinced him to remove his
ambassador, despite the fact that the State Depart-
ment fully understood that the allegations were false
and the sources highly suspect.”
The consequences of this extend far beyond the
humiliation of a distinguished diplomat who had
served for 33 years. “Such conduct undermines the
U.S., exposes our friends and widens the playing
field for autocrats like President Putin,” Ms. Yovano-
vitch said. “Our Ukraine policy has been thrown intodisarray, and shady interests the world over have
learned how little it takes to remove an American
ambassador who does not give them what they
want.” Moreover, she said, the State Department has
been degraded by the failure of its leadership — that
would be Secretary of State Mike Pompeo — “to push
back as foreign and corrupt interests apparently
hijacked our Ukraine policy.”
Republicans tried to argue that Ms. Yovanovitch’s
story had nothing to do with Mr. Trump’s campaign
to have Ukraine launch political investigations. But
Mr. Giuliani clearly saw Ms. Yovanovitch as an
obstacle to his effort to orchestrate a probe of
Mr. Biden. They s uggested that, because Ms. Yovano-
vitch now has an academic fellowship, she had
suffered no great harm. In r eality, a s she described it,
attacks on her and other dedicated public servants
are “leading to a crisis in the State Department as the
policy process is visibly unraveling, leadership va-
cancies go u nfilled, and senior and mid-level officers
ponder an uncertain future and head for the doors.”
“How could our system fail like this?” the ambas-
sador asked. “How is it that foreign corrupt interests
could manipulate our government?” The answer lies
with a president who put his personal interests —
and those of corrupt Ukrainians — above those of the
United States.How our system failed
Ms. Yovanovitch describes a president who put his own interests ahead of country.
ABCDE
AN INDEPENDENT NEWSPAPER
editorialsGeorge F. Will’s c hastising of the humanities in his
Nov. 14 op-ed, “Oh, the humanities,” missed one
important factor regarding the decline in demand
for learning history. E ven the most intensive study of
history is no guarantee the individual or masses who
studied it will be able stop people who didn’t — or
policymakers who should have — from repeating the
past, or lethally rhyming with it, as we/they have
repeatedly done in modern times.
We need fewer lawyers in Congress and more
scientists, engineers, ethicists and historians. But
these are not the majority of voters. There is one
more caveat to the Economist’s Bagehot column that
Mr. Will quoted: “Modernity shrinks time and space;
people live in an eternal present of short-term
stimuli and instant gratification.” It is the human
capacity to believe anything and then not even do
what we know we should.
Chuck Woolery, RockvilleWe need more historians in Congress
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