Another major loss
Barbara Sizemore Dies; D.C. Superintendent
By Yvonne Shinhoster Lamb
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, July 28, 2004; Page B06
Dr. Sizemore had a reputation as a brilliant educator and a fierce advocate for community-controlled schools when she was selected by the District school board to lead the city's troubled system. However, her educational philosophy and administrative style led to her being fired by the city's elected school board in 1975.
Her tenure, like that of the superintendents before her and since, depicted the strained relationship between the city's school board and its superintendent. Dr. Sizemore also came to the District at a time when adolescent home rule politics were beginning to fracture along lines of race and class.
A 1975 Washington Post article described it this way: "Mrs. Sizemore assumed center stage in an arena that was wracked by social ferment, political battles and court fights during the two decades of civil rights struggles and the District's drive for home rule. The campaign for self government ended only last year with the city's first elected mayor and Council in more than a century."
The board, which was the city's only elected agency at the time, said Dr. Sizemore was a poor administrator who was often insubordinate. She countered that it interfered too much in the daily dealings of the school system and did not support her proposals for decentralizing schools and other major reforms. The board offered her a chance to quit the post with $46,000 in severance pay, but she rejected it.
Dr. Sizemore made no secret that she was particularly interested in raising the academic achievement of African American students and stirred controversy when she said in a speech that she had "a higher calling than educating children, and that was uplifting my race." In the 1975 Washington Post interview, she added, "I did not understand that in order to be superintendent of schools I was to give up my higher mission."
