jonetta rose barras: Mary Levy forced public education changes with determination and data
Remarkable. That’s the word used frequently by DC residents and leaders with whom I spoke in recent weeks to describe Mary Levy, a public education activist who lived in Ward 2 and died of cancer this summer. Some, myself included, have wondered who now will translate Mayor Muriel Bowser’s budget documents for DC schools — whose opacity makes it difficult for parents and other interested citizens to understand how the government is using taxpayers’ money and the impact of that spending.
For 40 years, Levy performed the role of budget whisperer and public education warrior. She was in a class all her own.
Where is the memorial acknowledging her contribution, celebrating her legacy? Shouldn’t there be plans, at least, for a Mary Levy school or street?
“Mary was remarkable; at heart, she was a linguist,” not just a fiscal analyst, Roderic Boggs, former executive director of the Washington Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs, told me. We spoke last week just days after a memorial ceremony — organized by Levy’s family, including husband Edward Levy and daughters Dina and Rachel — held at George Washington University and attended by more than 100 people.
“Her ability to backwards map DCPS funding was superior to anyone outside DCPS, and her annual analysis, detail, and clear commentary will be greatly missed,” DC Council Chair Phil Mendelson said during that event.
“It was remarkable that when Mary’s youngest daughter graduated from DC Public Schools [in 1991] Mary remained committed to providing the kind of information that public-school advocacy requires,” said Delabian Rice-Thurston, former executive director of Parents United for DC Public Schools, an advocacy group that operated mostly in collaboration with the Lawyers’ Committee.
Rice-Thurston described herself as “the voice of Parents United … before the media from 1985 to 2000” but said Levy ensured she would “never be caught with inaccurate facts” when speaking to reporters.
“Her quiet voice, used firmly in testimony or when questioned by officials, was never refuted. She was that good,” continued Rice-Thurston. “I remember sitting near her at hearings as she knitted while taking in the testimony being presented so that she could refute it if needed. I remember her calling herself Madame Defarge,” a character in Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities.
The group sprang into action in the early 1980s after then-Mayor Marion Barry proposed a massive cut to the DCPS budget. Boggs told me that he met with Barry during that period.
“I reminded him that he had promised his own kid would be going to public schools. He said that’s the kind of thing politicians say in campaigns,” said Boggs. “Then, and I am paraphrasing here, he said, ‘If you want more money, you’re going to have to come and get it.’”
With a membership that topped 1,000 parents and other education advocates, the group did exactly what Barry dared them to do. Armed with a written financial analysis and a detailed comparison of spending between Montgomery County and DCPS prepared by Levy, Parents United demonstrated the severe underfunding by the city government, particularly given the much higher proportion of low-income students in DC.
In that report, she highlighted, among other things, that “the District spent $500 less per student than Montgomery County” and “DC had only 86 classroom aides while Montgomery County had 614.”
In 1982, Parents United secured an additional $28 million for DCPS over what Barry had proposed; in 1983, they got $57 million more.
I met the group and Levy in 1986 when I became a daily reporter for The Washington Times. My beat was public education. Boggs helped build coalitions, especially with other law firms and business leaders. Rice-Thurston, a city planner by training with a schoolteacher husband, was an effective organizer. Levy was the bulldog, expertly attacking with original research, data, charts and graphs that provided unassailable proof of the deplorable treatment of DC’s children and teachers in the city’s public schools.
“When Mary said something was a fact, it was a fact. She had the data to back it up,” recalled Elinor Hart, a longtime statehood advocate and founder of Vision House, a nonprofit organization actively involved with oral history projects including one documenting the work of the Lawyers’ Committee during Boggs’ tenure.
In 1986, Parents United published “Student Leader and Principal Survey of Building Conditions and Classroom Resources in the District of Columbia Public Schools.” The study, which included data from 110 of the 184 schools operating at the time, revealed unusually large classes, the need for remedial support for secondary students, a lack of nurses and health services, chronic shortages of textbooks and supplies, a need for counselors, and problems with the physical plant.
Those findings contradicted the glowing narrative of school progress presented by the then-superintendent, Floretta McKenzie. Unsurprisingly, in 1988, Parents United gave Barry an overall “D” for his handling of city schools.
For several years, I closely tracked the work of Parents United and Levy — and not just because they were critical elements of my beat. From them I learned about the inner workings of DCPS and the flawed, inadequate public education policies that led to so many children being shortchanged.
Call that period the education of jonetta rose barras — although I am certain I wasn’t the only reporter schooled by Levy, who officially became a paid staffer of the Lawyers’ Committee in 1990. As director of its Public Education Reform Project for the next 15 years, she issued dozens of analyses and reports that changed the trajectory of public education in DC.
Perhaps none drew as much attention as the fire code violations lawsuit filed against the city and the DC Board of Education by the law firm of Steptoe & Johnson in concert with the Lawyers’ Committee and Parents United. They had documented more than 10,000 infractions, including broken internal fire doors as well as exit doors sealed by locks and chains, preventing egress during any emergency.
In 1992, DC Superior Court Judge Kaye K. Christian, whose son attended a DC public school, ordered all the violations corrected. That effort went on for years. There were several instances where the judge refused to allow schools to open when fire code repairs had not been completed. When that happened, Parents United took the blame.
The case was subsequently settled. However, it laid the groundwork for systemwide rehabilitation of city schools and later their full-on modernization.
Even after decades of following education policy and reporting on her influential role, it wasn’t until after Levy’s death that I learned she didn’t set out to become DC’s education champion. She had earned her doctorate in linguistics. “She was probably the only person to read The Hunt for Red October in its Russian translation,” Ed Levy joked during an interview with me last week.
After receiving her degree, she worked at the DC-based Center for Applied Linguistics, examining the job market for “people who specialized in uncommon languages. And I found out why it was I was having trouble finding a job,” she jokingly confessed in a 2022 recorded conversation with Boggs.
Levy subsequently enrolled in George Washington University Law School. By then, she was married to Ed, whom she met while they were both attending the University of Michigan; their daughter Dina was 2 years old and their second daughter, Rachel, was on the way.
While at GWU she signed up to work with the Law Students Civil Rights Research Council and was placed with a firm headed by legend Joe Rauh; after she graduated, he hired her as an associate, working alongside the three partners. They were knee-deep in education cases in New York and three other cities, representing people suing for more state aid.
“Federal claims had pretty much been wiped out by the Rodriguez case in the Supreme Court that was decided in 1973,” Levy told Boggs, referring to the court’s finding that education is not a federally guaranteed constitutional right. “And the whole school finance movement to improve equity in school funding started going through state courts.”
Levy, who had become adept with statistical studies while working with the linguistics center, transferred those skills and talents, aiding the law firm’s school finance experts. Later, as cases moved to various appellate courts, she conducted the analysis alone. She was immersed in those cases when Barry tried to solve the District’s fiscal crisis by starving DCPS of needed funds.
In 2000, after her youngest son graduated from high school, Rice-Thurston retired from Parents United. Boggs retired from the Lawyers’ Committee in 2017.
Levy remained on the case, aiding children, parents, teachers.
I never understood where she got the energy or how she managed to do so much, especially with a family. “This was her work. She went to a lot of meetings,” said Ed, who for more than 20 years was a lawyer with the U.S. Department of Energy; later he worked as a consultant in the same field.
“I don’t remember that having a significant impact [on the family],” he added. After all, by 1991 both of their daughters had graduated from high school. These days one lives in Virginia, the other in New Jersey.
It appears Levy worked on school issues almost until her death at the age of 82. In 2020, she was diagnosed with uterine cancer. In 2023, she was undergoing treatment. That same year, I spoke with her about the budget for public education. Privately, she admonished me afterward because she didn’t think I had presented the full story about the amount of money going to central administration. We didn’t always agree, but — like everyone else when Mary Levy spoke — I listened.
At the memorial earlier this month, Mendelson seemed to capture the sentiment of many people, including myself, although a previous commitment unfortunately kept me from attending. “I’m here, we’re here, to celebrate and thank Mary for the work she did.
“We’re here not because she has died, but because she lived,” he said. “Because of what she did in the hyphen between the date of her birth and the date of her death.”
jonetta rose barras is an author and DC-based freelance journalist, covering national and local issues. She can be reached at thebarrasreport@gmail.com.