The Washington Post - 16.11.2019

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saturday, november 16 , 2019. washingtonpost.com/regional eZ su b

religion

a mexican immigrant is

now the first latino leader

of the united states’

catholic bishops. b2

the District

a homeless man’s death

may have been due to the

cold, raising fears of more

weather-linked deaths. b4

obituaries

read about the lives of

residents of the D.c. area

at washingtonpost.com/

38 ° 43 ° 44 ° 39 ° obituaries.

8 a.m. Noon 4 p.m. 8 p.m.

High today at

approx. 3 p.m.

46

°

Precip: 0%

Wind: NE

10-20 mph

BY GABRIEL POPKIN

When students returned to the

District’s Capital City Public

Charter school in september,

they encountered old friends,

new teachers and a one-of-a-kind

classroom. Rather than walls and

books, it bursts with plum and

cherry trees, blueberry and aro-

nia bushes, milkweeds and vege-

tables, and lots and lots of insects.

This lush, multilayered ecosys-

tem of plants and animals both

familiar and obscure, growing be-

hind the three-story brick school-

house in northwest Washington,

is what’s known as a food forest. It

is the first at a D.C. school and one

of a handful at K-12 institutions

anywhere. school leaders intend

for this edible forest garden to

yield a bumper crop of benefits:

educational, nutritional, environ-

mental, even vocational.

on a sunny september day, it

also provided fun. A group of

rambunctious third-grade boys

competed at grabbing tiny moths

off zinnia flowers. An 8-year-old

named Liyah walked up. Ryoko

Yamamoto, the school’s garden

coordinator, spotted her and

handed her a plastic bowl.

“Want to pick tomatoes?” Ya-

mamoto asked. “Let’s try to fill the

whole bowl.”

Liyah maneuvered among

plants that loomed over her to

grab ripe fruits, handling each

one carefully and deliberately. Be-

fore long, she had filled half the

bowl with bright orange sungold

cherry tomatoes. Does she like

picking tomatoes? “sometimes,”

see garden on B3

Growth, of the garden variety

At this D.C. school, plum trees and cherry tomatoes provide a different type of education

BY TOM JACKMAN

After federal prosecutors de-

clined to file civil rights charges

against two U.s. Park Police offi-

cers who shot and killed un-

armed motorist Bijan Ghaisar in

2017, Ghaisar’s family and law-

yers turned their focus Friday to

prosecutors in Virginia with the

hopes that a state criminal case

could b e built against the o fficers.

Charging a federal officer un-

der s tate law is d ifficult b ut could

be done, Fairfax County Com-

monwealth’s Attorney Raymond

F. Morrogh said Friday. He said

he has told the Ghaisar family he

would examine the evidence and

consider a case, but his term is

ending soon and it is not clear

how h is s uccessor will proceed.

Also Friday, a letter written by

the Justice Department to the

see ghaisar on B2

Potential

for state

case for

Ghaisars

b ijan Ghaisar slain

by police in 2017

Focus shifts after federal

charges were ruled out

BY PETER HERMANN

Federal authorities in the Dis-

trict, Maryland and Virginia an-

nounced on Friday plans to more

tightly enforce gun laws and coor-

dinate investigations a mong juris-

dictions to better prosecute fire-

arms traffickers whose crimes of-

ten a ffect the region.

It is part of a new initiative

called Project Guardian that be-

gan this week under Attorney

General William P. Barr to combat

gun crime that is plaguing big

cities such as the District and Bal-

timore. Most of the guns used in

crimes in the District come from

Virginia, followed by Maryland.

“We want to stop the flow of

guns across the Potomac,” said G.

Zachary Te rwilliger, t he U.s. attor-

ney for the eastern District of

Virginia.

Te rwilliger, along with top fed-

eral prosecutors for western Vir-

ginia, Maryland and the District,

joined other local and federal law

enforcement officials on the plaza

at the national Law enforcement

officers Memorial, speaking

against a backdrop of two 304-

foot-long marble walls b earing the

names of 21,910 police officers

killed in the line of duty since 1786.

“ It is an illustration of how gun

violence impacts us all,” s aid D.C.

Police Chief Peter newsham, not-

ing that t he n ames o f friends of his

see guns on B4

Joint e≠ort

will target

gun crime

regionwide

Federal agencies in D.C.,

Md., Va. to coordinate

probes, prosecutions

BY LYNH BUI

The man charged in the fatal

stabbing of a customer who re-

portedly cut to the front of a line

at a Popeyes restaurant had

turned off his phone and social

media accounts in an attempt to

evade law enforcement before

his arrest, prosecutors said.

The allegations about Ricoh

McClain’s efforts to elude police

emerged Friday during his first

appearance in Prince George’s

County District Court, where a

judge ordered him to remain in

jail without bond.

McClain, 30, of District

Heights, Md., was arrested nine

days after Kevin Ty rell Davis, 28,

was killed.

McClain has been charged

with first- and second-degree

murder, but his attorney T homas

C. Mooney suggested McClain

was inappropriately charged.

“I don’t believe my client to be

the initial aggressor in this case,”

said Mooney, adding that his

client also was injured in the

incident.

McClain’s wife and two young

children also were in the crowd-

ed restaurant, the “last place” a

person would c ommit a premedi-

tated murder, Mooney said dur-

ing Friday’s bail review hearing.

Davis was fatally stabbed at a

Popeyes in oxon Hill, Md., on the

night of nov. 4, the day after the

fast-food restaurant rereleased

its popular chicken sandwich.

Davis is seen on surveillance

video cutting t he line for custom-

ers waiting to buy the sandwich-

es over the course of 15 minutes,

according to Prince George’s

County police. When Davis

reached the counter, McClain

see popeyes on B4

Popeyes killing suspect

allegedly went off grid

District Heights man

was arrested nine days

after fatal stabbing

BY PERRY STEIN

Te achers and staff members at

Mundo Verde Bilingual Public

Charter school are nearing a

historic moment: They’re a vote

away from settling with their

bosses on a union contract, the

first time that has happened at a

D.C. charter school.

Workers at the popular lan-

guage immersion charter school

in northwest Washington

formed the D.C. charter sector’s

only union in July. Another

school, Chavez Prep Middle,

formed a union in 2018, but

negotiations stalled and school

leaders shut down the campus

before reaching a labor agree-

ment with educators.

Charter schools are publicly

funded and privately run, and

unlike the traditional public

school system, their teachers are

not typically unionized. But

across the country, teachers at a

relatively small but growing

number of charter campuses are

organizing.

Many leaders of the charter

school movement oppose union-

ization, believing it results in the

same bureaucratic thicket that

charter schools were created to

escape.

But union leaders view the

Mundo Verde contract as a signif-

icant win and hope it serves as a

model for educators at other

schools who hope to unionize.

“D.C. has been a petri dish for

all of the different kinds of struc-

tures of educating children,” s aid

Randi Weingarten, president of

the American Federation of

Te achers. “ You now not only have

a blueprint for D.C. schools, but

for thousands of schools around

the country.”

The American Federation of

Te achers, the nation’s second-

largest teachers union, repre-

sents the union at Mundo Verde,

which has about 600 students.

Weingarten said her office has

fielded c alls f rom other D.C. char-

ter school employees hoping to

unionize after they heard of Mun-

do Verde’s organizing efforts.

In the District, more than

40 percent of D.C.’s public school

students attend a charter cam-

pus.

The language immersion

school has a second campus in

northeast D.C. that is not union-

ized.

The Mundo Verde union still

has to vote to approve the con-

tract. Because the pact has not

been finalized, union members

did not divulge specifics of the

contract. But they said it secures

higher pay for staff members.

The average Mundo Verde teach-

er salary in 2018 was $57,388.78,

according to city data.

Charter school teachers are

typically at-will employees,

which means they can easily be

fired so long as the reason is not

illegal. Under the contract, teach-

ers gain protections, with the

school adopting what is known

as a progressive discipline pro-

cess. Under that policy, employ-

see union on B2

Teachers near contract agreement

Higher wages on the line

for the District’s only

unionized charter school

photos by ricky carioti/the Washington post

“It was nothing. It was not well taken care of, just some trees and plantings.”

ryoko Yamamoto, capital city public charter school’s garden coordinator

Top: second-graders water the garden at Capital City

public Charter. aBoVe: ryoko yamamoto is the

coordinator of the food forest, a biodiverse landscape

anchored by fruit- and nut-bearing trees and shrubs.

fairfax county police Department

u.s. park police confront Bijan

ghaisar in a video still frame.

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