The Need For Solar Power

Yesterday, I testified before the City Council (specifically the Committee on Public Services & Consumer Affairs) at their public hearing on the Distributed Generation Amended Act of 2011. The Act would impose a requirement on local power companies that they purchase SRECs (Solar Renewable Energy Credits) from local solar providers in the city, for up to 2.5% of the power they provide to District residents by 2020. This Act would not cost a single tax dollar, but would spur innovation and create green jobs by creating a definable market for solar entrepreneurs in the District, not to mention spurring use of solar as a source of energy in the District (this will lead to the local creation of green jobs, environmental benefits associated with lowered burning of fossil fuels in the five major power plants within the city limits and will eventually make solar panels cheaper to install due to economies of scale and increased competition). This is a fine example of legislative policy creating a socially and economically beneficial market incentive. My testimony to the Committee is below:

Solar Power Testimony
Before the DC City Council
March 2, 2011

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Alan Page and I am the DC Statehood Green Party candidate for the At-Large City Council seat up for election on April 26th. Thank you for allowing me to testify.

The Distributed Generation Act is a key step forward in bringing the District closer to the green power revolution we must undertake to keep Earth livable for us all. Relying on fossil fuels primarily for our power in the District is destructive to the environment we depend upon to live. As a coastal city that contains two rivers in its borders, changes in water levels projected to occur as a result of global climate change could devastate the District if we do not do our part now to reduce carbon emissions and cut fossil fuel usage.

I advocate even more radical change than the Distributed Generation Act takes, but this is a key first step that must be supported. The Act seeks to have the District increase its reliance on solar energy to 2.5% of the energy consumed in our borders. This amount should be as high as 10%, but this is a positive step towards a stronger commitment to using renewable energy in the District.

There are several key reasons why we must reduce our reliance on carbon and increase our usage of renewable, natural energy sources like solar. One, our initial investment of $200 million to create an expanded solar grid will generate energy projected savings of $70 million a year starting in 2020 and every year afterwards. Why? Because solar energy does not have to be purchased. Unlike fossil fuels, it is provided for free by nature and requires no money to “extract” from the earth or transport. Two, increasing requirements regarding how much District energy must have a solar source will lead to the creation of up to 2,000 green jobs in the District created by solar firms laying the necessary panels to collect the newly mandated solar energy. We should also ensure that solar firms that enter into city contracts with the District commit to train and hire District residents to fill 50% of the employment slots created in conjunction with city-contracted projects. We commit to solar energy and solar firms should commit to our workers.

We can radically change the future of the District today, create much needed new jobs in fields that are projected to grow economically for decades, and improve the environment for our children. Make the right choice today. Vote yes on the Distributed Generation Act. The children are watching. And so are we.

Thank you.

(Photo by Martin Junius. Used under Creative Commons license)

Rethinking Education

Last night, I attended "Your Role in Education Innovation", sponsored by Young Education Professionals DC and Young Nonprofit Network Professionals Network*. I had a great experience at the event listening to educational professionals (including interim Chancellor Kaya Henderson) discuss the future of education in the District. Henderson concisely summarized the argument that compensation should be results-driven instead of seniority-driven (a concept that Washington Teachers Union initially resisted, but agreed to incorporate in recent teacher contracts). She also spoke about how public school education in the District went from having no oversight, to a military-style oversight and "needs to return to the middle". I definitely think there were some disaffected stakeholders in the early stages of reforming education in the District and we need to move forward together; with Henderson, I think we're on a good path towards moving forward on one accord.

According to a recently released report, enrollment is projected to go up 3.5% in the 2011-2012 for DCPS and DCPCS combined. This is a great vote of confidence in the education reform that has taken place to date. Henderson expressed interest in being willing to try any educational model with proven results that shows similar results here in the District; if it works elsewhere and works here, our children will be able to benefit from it. This best practices-driven willingness to try new models, evaluate them carefully, and decide to abandon or proceed them with them based on actual educational results on the ground is key. Ben Riley of New Ventures School Fund emphasized that testing alone was not sufficient and suggested regular unannounced classroom visits and other methods to augment evaluation (the current model, I believe, calls for five classroom visits). Newer tech-based methods were also discussed as ways to improve instructor performance, such as allowing mentors to give real-time teaching advice to struggling teachers via Bluetooth device cordlessly attached to their ear as they taught their classes.

We definitely have to push for the best education models to take public education to the next level, both at traditional public schools and our charters. Continued evaluation of these models should enable us to find out what works and hopefully scale successful models to help more children succeed. We're all in it together.

The event hashtag on Twitter was "eduvation". Education + innovation = eduvation. Let's keep moving onwards and upwards.

* Search twitter.com for the hashtag #eduvation for live tweets made during the course of the event.

Addendum: Special shoutout to DC Statehood Green Party visionary David Schwartzman for pointing out to me this brilliant article proposing one hour of real-world application of math and physical sciences concepts within the school day, by Marion Brady.

(Photo by George Ellenberg. Used under Creative Commons license)

Teachers' Unions Are Not The Enemy

There has been a lot of discussion positioning teachers' unions as the obstacle to effective education reform. Teaching is an inordinately difficult job and immensely complicated to quantify. Granted, we all expect teachers to apply maximum effort and expect maximum results from their students. We should also recognize that teachers in certain environments instruct students who face far greater personal challenges than students in other environments. While we are not in the business of making excuses, the statistics show the difficulty of maintaining gains in certain student populations from grade to grade, let alone expecting a "corporate style" improvement from year to year at a set percentage of test scores (analogous to stockholders expecting a set increase in earnings from a corporation in which they own stock, quarter after quarter). Sometimes, there is an academic, life-changing miracle in just getting a student on grade level and helping them stay on grade level to graduation. Then, there are the abstract concepts, like teaching students self-confidence and inspiring them about the future, traits that cannot be measured by standardized testing, but which we often (consciously or unconsciously) expect teachers to perform for their students as well. Who is the better teacher: a teacher who fosters intellectual curiosity that lasts a lifetime in her or his class in areas beyond what is covered by a standardized test or a teacher who teaches by rote to the test and produces a class full of students who can regurgitate facts and figures dispassionately, but have no desire to traverse new intellectual terrain or think critically about information they receive?

I have worked with public school students and I have heard the horror stories. One fourth grade student told me about a third grade teacher who once let her entire class spend the year coloring and doing crossword puzzles in lieu of more challenging work; how this veteran teacher escaped some punishment for this post-NCLB is confusing to me to this day. Some would say the process for terminating a teacher is too difficult. I understand the dismay. My daughter attends public Montessori school, where students can "vote with their feet" and move to other classrooms they find more challenging or enriching at will. Perhaps this could be a model for DCPS at large, eventually. We should be encouraging experimentation of this type on a broader level, but we should be working with teachers' unions to accomplish these types of radical transformations, not seeing them as implacable foes.

The current situations in Wisconsin and Indiana (where teachers face the loss of collective bargaining rights) is not the solution to our fiscal or educational challenges. The right to organize predates our fiscal and educational challenges by decades, respectively. Educational progress in this country did not dovetail immediately after teachers gained the right to organize, nor did our economy tank as a result. Where there is an overlap between teachers' union positions and fiscal waste or educational inefficiency, I am willing to challenge the unions to work with me to address these concerns, but I do not believe the elimination of the right to organize will eliminate the fiscal and educational challenges we face, in the District or the nation.

Teachers' unions are not the enemy. Let's work together to deal with the fiscal and academic challenges we face as a city.

addendum: This post was inspired by a question I was asked by the DC Association of Chartered Public Schools about my position on funding parity between charter schools and DCPS. They asked me to limit my reply to fifty words and I responded: "I support funding parity between DC Charter Schools and DCPS, as a position of fairness and justice, so long as parents have the same options to address any failure to create successful learning environments for children and teachers have a right to organize, in all public schools in the city". I want all schools to be responsible to parents and the community regarding the education that they provide (or fail to provide) to our children. I am also concerned that certain ideologues view charter schools as an opportunity to eviscerate the right to organize amongst teachers (although there are scores of well-meaning charter school proponents who do not share this view). I believe in academic experimentation, but I do not think the right to organize and radical transformation of the educational system in the District are diametrically opposed concepts. I welcome your feedback in the comment section below.

(Photo: Ben Russell, used under Creative Commons license)

Leveraging The International Status of Our City For Jobs

The EB5 visa program is designed to provide foreign investors with a visa if they invest in a business that employs at least ten full-time employees, located in a targeted area. What is a targeted area? "A rural area or an area with 150% the national unemployment rate". With unemployment at 25% in Ward 8 (and at 40% when counting those who have given up looking), that area of the city qualifies as a targeted area and this option for job creation should be explored. If the people choose me to be the next At-Large City Councilperson, I plan to aggressively work with embassies throughout the city to encourage foreign investors to seek EB5 visas by investing in businesses in our most challenged neighborhoods. I think it's time we used the international status of our city and the heavy international presence in our region to our advantage. Let's help the poorest neighborhoods in the District join the global economy.

(Flickr photo from afagen)

Join Me at Ras Uptown this Friday!

I would like you all to come out to a fundraiser/volunteer recruitment event I am having this Friday at Ras Restaurant & Lounge (4809 Georgia Ave NW, near Georgia and Decatur), 8:30pm-until. No cover, but part of the proceeds from the food and drink sales will be donated to my campaign.

Our Public Schools Are Our Treasure

MLK I Have a Dream celebration from jill cashen on Vimeo.

Not long after recent reports that DCPS enrollment has seen a year on year increase for the first time in 39 years, fourth grade students from Watkins Elementary and Peabody Elementary demonstrated today at the Lincoln Memorial why public schools are our treasure, by passionately reciting Dr. King's "I Have A Dream" speech in the video above. They close the recital with a stirring rendition of "We Shall Overcome". It's powerful to watch and indicative of some of the beautiful things going on in our city's public schools. This is just one of many reasons why I am proud to be a parent of a DCPS student.