C4 EZ RE THE WASHINGTON POST.SUNDAY, MAY 15 , 2022BY EVAN GLASS AND LAUREN IVEYIt has been almost two years since the tragic death
of George Floyd. In the aftermath, Montgomery
County and local communities across the country
have made significant efforts to reimagine public
safety and support policies that improve racial equity
and social justice.
One of the most important areas of this work has
focused on police reform and ensuring that every
resident — regardless of race, immigration status or
Zip code — feels safe in the community.
As we emerge from the pandemic, the entire
country is experiencing an increase in crime and
violence. Homicides nationwide are up by about 40
percent, and mass shootings are increasing. At the
same time, the National Policing Institute, formerly
known as the National Police Foundation, recently
reported that 86 percent of local police departments
are experiencing a staffing shortage. Montgomery
County is no exception. Our jurisdiction is facing
significant police shortages, and about 65 percent of
our officers are eligible for retirement.
With recruitment at an all-time low, we need to
rethink how we hire officers to serve and protect our
residents. One remedy is to increase the starting
salaries for recruits, recognizing that the base pay in
Montgomery County is among the lowest in the region.
Yet this situation also presents an important oppor-
tunity to invest in a public safety system that
strengthens community-police relations.
Part of this enhanced community policing strategy
is to hire police officers who not only understand the
communities they serve but also are from those
communities. One way to achieve this is through the
expansion of the Montgomery County Police Depart-
ment’s Cadet Program. The program helps address the
department’s staffing needs by training young county
residents from all communities and all backgrounds,
thus improving the department’s cultural competency
and local connections.
Established in 2016, the cadet program gives local
college students a firsthand experience in the police
force. After completing an extensive application and
background process, cadets work 20 hours a week and
are paid for their time. Consider it a paid internship
while attending school.
During rotating assignments throughout the de-
partment, participants learn about Maryland criminal
and constitutional law, use-of-force policies and the
role that implicit bias has in decision-making. Individ-
uals also participate in ride-alongs, DUI checkpoints
and community events. The expectation is that the
knowledge they gain in the classroom and in the field
will better prepare them for the police academy,
should they choose to enroll.
Cadets who go through the program express a sense
of pride in serving the community they grew up in —
and, in turn, they are able to serve as role models to
those who are following in their footsteps. Young
people who want to help make their community safer
can use the opportunity as a ladder for a career in
public service.
Though the cadet program is relatively small, it
accurately reflects the diversity of Montgomery Coun-
ty, which is home to 4 of the 10 most diverse areas in
the nation. Of the 15 participants in 2020, five cadets
were Latino, four were Black and two were Asian
American — a nearly 75 percent diversity rate. This
cadet class was a compliment to MCPD as a whole,
which is approximately 75 percent White, and has
proved to be an effective recruitment tool in providing
a more diverse pool of candidates than traditional
recruitment efforts.
We have made meaningful progress to reimagine
public safety and should build upon what we know
works. An expansion of this proven program would
help diversify the ranks of our police department,
provide meaningful opportunities for our youths and
strengthen our community safety efforts.Evan Glass, a Democrat, is an at-large member and vice
president of the Montgomery County Council. Lauren Ivey is
a Montgomery County Police Department police officer
candidate and a graduate of the cadet program.Communitypolicing inMontgomery —by the communityremoved before it becomes an open
meadow. Thousands of runners,
walkers and bikers use the park daily
in season. In July and August, the
impact of these lost trees becomes
apparent to those running along the
bike path. Where there was once
shade at 7 a.m. and 8 a.m., there is
now full sun. When the temperatures
hit the high 70s, that can be nasty.
Relief for runners, however, is not
the real reason to fix these problems.
Congress authorized the Mount Ver-
non Memorial Highway in 1928. By
the time it opened in 1932, it was
renamed the George Washington
Parkway. By the 1940s, it was truly a
work of art. My parents brought the
family to picnic along the banks of
the Potomac River. Visionaries of
their time gave us this marvel. So why
is the Park Service letting it go to
ruin?
Look at the meadow from the mile
7.5 parking lots to the river. In thepast several years, six grand hard-
wood shade trees have died without
replacement, and several more are on
their last legs. In addition, depres-
sions in the grass area act as rain
catchments, killing the grass. That’s
nice for the ducks but otherwise is
ugly.
What is to be done? The parkway
must become a priority — with appro-
priate funding — for the National
Park Service. For a while, parkway
management supported volunteer
“weed whackers,” but we soon real-
ized that the problems were several
orders of magnitude too great for a
small band of volunteers to address.
The first step, therefore, should be for
the Park Service to survey the whole
of the parkway and submit a report
that will enable it to assess the total
cost of restoration, which would
i nclude:
l Killing the vines that are threat-
ening the tall hardwoods on bothsides of the parkway, and don’t give in
to the distinction between native and
invasive vines; if they are killing the
trees, they need to go.
l Remediating the areas already
denuded of trees by bringing in
enough fill dirt to cover the current
vines, planting tall hardwoods and
monitoring them until maturity.
l Replacing all the trees in the
original design that have been lost,
especially those in the meadow near
Columbia Island Marina.
l Filling the depressions in the
aforementioned meadow and along
the bike path so that rainwater runs
off rather than accumulates, and then
replant the grass.
This will not help my generation,
but it will be a gift to future genera-
tions, just as the parkway was a gift to
us.The writer is a longtime Alexandria
resident.BY SHANNON HODGEAll schools in D.C. are facing
enormous challenges as they
work to serve students and
close the opportunity and
outcome gaps that have widened
during the pandemic. But for many
schools, these challenges are exacer-
bated by chronic underfunding that’s
ingrained in our educational system,
with schools that primarily serve
communities of color experiencing
the brunt of these inequities.
That’s why leaders across the dis-
trict — including in charter schools,
D.C. Public Schools, Mayor Muriel E.
Bowser’s (D) administration and the
D.C. Council — must focus on cre-
atively and consistently advancing
equity. That kind of concerted effort,
working together and not against
each other, is how we will close the
opportunity and outcome gaps for all
students.
Too often, the conversation on how
to improve education outcomes for
students in our city focuses on the
distinction between charter schools
and D.C. Public Schools schools. For
example, some point to charterschools as the reason that neighbor-
hood middle schools in Wards 7 and 8
are lagging behind the rest of the city
in academic outcomes. Critics often
point to data showing that most
students living in Ward 3 (which has
no charter schools) attend their
neighborhood school, and most stu-
dents living in Wards 7 and 8 (which
have charter schools) do not.
Though that’s true, it is overly
simplistic to cite mobility as proof
that parents in Wards 7 and 8 don’t
have good options available for their
middle-schoolers. In fact, according
to city data, the percentage of stu-
dents who attend a middle school in
the ward they live in is roughly the
same in Wards 3 and 8 (57 percent vs.
54 percent). Parents, regardless of
where they live, value the ability to
decide what school works best for
their child’s needs. The fact is, this
feature is one of the best tools in the
D.C. public education system.
DCPS and charter schools are both
public schools. And in reality, many
D.C. students attend or will attend
both types of schools. Both are work-
ing hard to serve students in the
District and uplift their communi-ties. And we don’t always get it right.
That’s why we should constantly be
asking what each student needs and
what policies and programs can best
address those needs so we are work-
ing toward solutions that make every
public school excellent.
District leaders have an opportu-
nity to advance equity in the fiscal
2023 budget, and the D.C. Council is
on track to deliver in key ways.
Increasing the base funding rate for
students, including adult learners,
will help ensure that schools can
offer interventions that will acceler-
ate learning and give D.C. residents
over the age of 16 an opportunity to
get the skills and credentials needed
to support their families. And the
Committee on Housing and Execu-
tive Administration has recommend-
ed the D.C. Council expand the
E mployer-Assisted Housing Pro-
gram’s definition of first responders
to include teachers, which will help
teachers live in the communities
they serve. We’ve urged the full
council to support this proposal,
which will improve recruitment and
retention by making it more
a ffordable for educators across bothsectors to live in D.C.
We have also called on the D.C.
Council to commission a new, com-
prehensive adequacy study to pro-
duce the data and recommendations
needed to craft good policy and make
funding decisions. We need this type
of creative, effective policymaking to
strengthen all our schools and retain
our best teachers.
Charter school leaders have
pushed the D.C. Council and the
Bowser administration on these pri-
orities with the goal of accelerating
learning equitably, centering stu-
dents and their needs, as we continue
to weather the ongoing challenges
created by the pandemic to provide a
high-quality education. These priori-
ties benefit all public school students,
at both charter schools and DCPS
schools.
We need solutions that will make
every public school excellent. That’s
why we must work together across
sectors and with community leaders
to make sure equity is at the center of
everything we do.The writer is founding executive director
of the DC Charter School Alliance.D.C. leaders must work together for equity for all studentsBY JOHN R. POWERSCan the loss of the beauti-
ful hardwoods along the
George Washington Parkway
be arrested?
Probably not.
The neglect on the part of the
National Park Service might be much
too great, but we can hope. In 2021,
the NPS budget was $2.8 billion, but
not a penny was spent on the mainte-
nance of the trees along the parkway.
The vines killing trees became
apparent in 2006. At that time, the
trees along the section from the Belle
Haven Marina Road to Mile Marker 7
were close to the edge of the Mount
Vernon trail, the bike path that fol-
lows the parkway, but the vines were
already pushing into the tops of these
trees. A parkway maintenance super-
visor gave me an estimate of $1 mil-
lion to arrest the problem from Old
Town Alexandria to the Mansion.
Just think of the huge savings had
the Park Service spent the $1 million
then instead of many times it would
cost today if it finally agrees to
address the problem. The worst case,
however, is that by doing nothing, the
parkway will eventually lose its beau-
tiful woodlands.
This is not just a budgeting prob-
lem; it is also a management prob-
lem. In 2011, the parkway environ-
mentalist was spending money on a
pet research project in the back-
woods of Turkey Run Park. I tried
then to get funds redirected to the
parkway, to no avail.
Today, the denuded areas along
this section extend almost 75 yards
into the former woods toward the
Dyke Marsh Wildlife Preserve trail. I
can see cars on the parkway from that
trail; the losses are that extensive.
The damage, however, is not limited
to just this section; it is just the most
noticeable there. If you are driving
down the parkway, look at the aggres-
sive vine growth on both sides of the
road. There are sections where the
damage can still be arrested, but the
vines in the above section need to beSave the GW Parkway hardwoodsCRAIG HUDSON FOR THE WASHINGTON POST
People on the banks of the Potomac River near the George Washington Parkway on Dec. 12.Local OpinionsWASHINGTONPOST.COM/LOCALOPINIONS. [email protected]BY KENNETH L. MARCUSO
ne day before Yom Has-
hoah (Holocaust Remem-
brance Day), the George-
town University Law Cen-
ter hosted a well-attended event
featuring notorious anti s emitic
conspiracy theorist Mohammed
El-Kurd. El-Kurd is infamous for
promoting the modern-day
“blood libel” against Jews. He
cloaks his antisemitic rants as crit-
icism of Israel, claiming Israeli
Jews “harvest organs of the mar-
tyred” and “feed their warriors our
own.”
In light of El-Kurd’s reputation,
some have urged that he be
banned, while others insist that he
be given a platform. Both are
wrong.
Censorship is bad policy. But
any American university that
gives such bigotry a platform is
due for a reckoning.
On the same day as the George-
town event, the Anti-Defamation
League announced that antise-
mitic incidents had reached a
frightening all-time high in the
United States, with 2,717 incidents
of assault, harassment and van-
dalism reported the prior year.
Other groups recently reported
similar findings in the United
Kingdom, as well as in Canada,Australia, Germany and else-
where. This is the backdrop
against which the Georgetown
University Law Center held its
event.
El-Kurd claims Zionists have an
“unquenchable thirst for Palestin-
ian blood” and describes the Jew-
ish state as “blood thirsty and
violent.” Speaking at Arizona State
University earlier in April,
E l-Kurd promoted the antisemitic
conspiracy theory that Jews con-
trol the media and threatened to
shoot his Israeli Jewish critics if
they tried to heckle him. This is
nothing if not blatant antisemi-
tism and racism.
When Jewish students ex-
pressed outrage over the El-Kurd
event, the administration defend-
ed the event on free-speech
grounds. “We allow a huge
amount of latitude even where
speech is deeply offensive to some
members of the community, some
or even many,” said Mitch Bailin,
Georgetown Law’s dean of stu-
dents. “Those are things that we
think are important to education-
al values, to promoting free
speech, to promoting a free discus-
sion of ideas, even if those ideas
are deeply, deeply o ffensive.”
The problem with this argu-
ment is not that free speech is bad
but rather that it is not George-town’s policy. Only about three
months ago, Georgetown consti-
tutional scholar Ilya Shapiro chal-
lenged President Biden’s nomina-
tion of Judge Ketanji Brown Jack-
son to the Supreme Court. At that
time, the law school’s administra-
tion applied a very different stan-
dard. Georgetown Law’s dean,
William M. Treanor, castigated
Shapiro’s comments as being “at
odds with everything we stand for
at Georgetown Law” and placed
Shapiro on administrative leave.
Nor was the Shapiro incident
anomalous. Last year, when two
Georgetown Law instructors de-
scribed the performance of the
school’s African American stu-
dents in ways that the administra-
tion found offensive, Georgetown
fired one and placed the other,
who soon resigned, on adminis-
trative leave, instituted non -
discrimination training for other
faculty and announced the
e nhancement of the school’s bias
reporting process.By canceling certain academ-
ics, Georgetown has placed itself
in a double bind. Either it treats all
controversial speech harshly, even
when aligned with progressive
politics, or it maintains free
speech for all. If Georgetown
makes an exception for some, it
reveals that its harshness toward
others has more to do with their
politics than with Georgetown’s
supposed commitment to inclu-
sivity, civility and respect.
To escape this double bind,
Georgetown must listen, learn
and lead. As a world-famous
u niversity, Georgetown cannot
tolerate the ignorance its law
school has put on display. It is
incumbent upon the university to
look deeply into how its law school
has lost its moral compass. It
should educate itself and the com-
munity about the world’s oldest
form of hatred and the one that
has been given the keys to the law
school. And it should examine
how the law school has becomesusceptible to this pathology.
This work could also be aided
by the establishment of a task
force, ideally with participation
from the university’s governance
board. Its task should include a
full review of not only the univer-
sity’s free-speech policies, espe-
cially with respect to Shapiro, but
also its approach to antisemitism
and Jewish student life. It should
consider the extent to which the
university complies with the Edu-
cation Department’s policy guid-
ance, which incorporates the exec-
utive order on combating
a ntisemitism.
Armed with this knowledge,
Georgetown’s leadership must
lead. The U.S. Commission on Civ-
il Rights has long admonished
that “university leadership should
set a moral example by denounc-
ing anti-Semitic and other hate
speech, while safeguarding all
rights protected under the First
Amendment and under basic
principles of academic freedom.”
Georgetown’s own speech policy
recognizes that “more [discourse]
is better” and maintains that “the
remedy for silly or extreme or of-
fensive ideas is not less free speech
but more.” The university has its
own free-speech rights — and
those rights encompass the free-
dom to condemn racism, antisem-itism and discrimination in all its
forms. And Georgetown must do
just that.
However, as Treanor acknowl-
edged, in response to a previous
incident, “words alone will not...
be enough to move [the George-
town community] forward.” Seri-
ous leadership, action, education
and introspection are required.
This would be important for any
college but especially for one
whose mission is to graduate stu-
dents “to be responsible and ac-
tive participants in civic life and to
live generously in service to
o thers.”
In a free society, even vile
speech would not be banned; but
in a good society, it would not
garner an audience, either.
Whether we permit this nastiness
or not, we should be ashamed
when our communities encourage
it, and we should think deeply
about how we have arrived at a
place where we are forced to
choose between raw bigotry and
blunt censorship.Kenneth L. Marcus is founder and
chairman of the Louis D. Brandeis
Center for Human Rights Under Law
and author of “The Definition of Anti-
Semitism.” He served as the 11th
assistant U.S. secretary of education
for civil rights.Georgetown’s double bindIn a free society, even vile speech would not bebanned; but in a good society,it would not garner an audience, either.