Kevin Pernell ChavousThe Martindale-Hubbell Law Directory, Volume 5 (2000) (born May 17, 1956) is an American lawyer, author, education reform activist, and former Democratic Party politician in Washington, D.C., in the United States. He served as a member of the Council of the District of Columbia from January 1993 to January 2005, and was an unsuccessful candidate for Mayor of the District of Columbia in 1998.
In 2017, Chavous was named President of Stride K12, Inc., a technology-based education company and the nation's leading provider of proprietary curriculum and online school programs for students in pre-K through high school.
Chavous oversees all of the services that the company provides to approximately 200,000 students nationwide.
Early life and education Chavous was born in Indianapolis, Indiana, the son of Bettie J. and Harold P. Chavous. His father was a pharmacist and his mother a civil rights activist. Chavous was the oldest of four children. His first job was working at Chavous Drugs, his father's drug store, sweeping and mopping floors and stocking shelves.
Chavous was educated at Brebeuf Jesuit Preparatory School in Indianapolis and Wabash College in Crawfordsville, Indiana, where he earned a bachelor's degree in political science. While at Wabash, he was NCAA Division III District All-American in basketball. Chavous also earned a JD degree from the Howard University School of Law in Washington, D.C., where he was president of his law school class. He is a member of Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity.
Community activism After graduating from law school, Chavous became a personal injury lawyer for the D.C. law firm of Cadeaux & Tagliere. The Chavouses and their children lived in Hillcrest, an affluent neighborhood in Southeast Washington on the District-Maryland border.
In May 1988, Chavous was elected to the District of Columbia Democratic State Committee, representing Ward 7.; The following year, Pepco, an electric power public utility, proposed a significant expansion of its coal-fired power generating plant on the edge of the River Terrace neighborhood in Ward 7. The River Terrace Community Organization, a group representing citizens living in the neighborhood, opposed the plant, and Chavous agreed to represent the group in court pro bono. Pepco cancelled the expansion in 1991, and Chavous gained significant visibility for his work.
Chavous also joined the national board of directors of Handgun Control, Inc., a group working for strong federal gun control legislation.
1992 council race and term
1992 council race The Pepco fight launched Chavous' political career. Chavous, who by now was hosting a once-a-week program on legal issues on radio station WDCU-FM, announced in May 1992 that he would challenge incumbent Ward 7 Councilmember H. R. Crawford. Crawford, The Washington Post reported, was facing strong criticism from voters from his legislative achievements and three Democratic primary election challengers. Chavous waged an intensive grassroots campaign to unseat Crawford. According to The Washington Post, Chavous visited every single-family residence in Ward 7 personally, either speaking with members of the household or leaving behind campaign literature. On September 15, 1992, Chavous unseated Crawford, 4,866 votes (41.7 percent) to 4,266 (37 percent). In the general election on November 3, 1992, Chavous easily defeated Republican candidate Johnnie Scott Rice, 96 percent to 4 percent.;
First council term Chavous was sworn in on January 2, 1993.
During his first term on the council, Chavous aligned with Ward 2 council member Jack Evans (elected in 1991), At-Large council member William Lightfoot (elected in 1988), and Ward 6 council member Harold Brazil (elected in 1991) to form a caucus known as the "Young Turks". Together, they successfully opposed tax increases sought for the city by Mayor Sharon Pratt Kelly. On June 22, 1993, an unidentified gunman sprayed the public swimming pool at the Benning Park Recreation Center with fire from a semiautomatic weapon. Panic-stricken children and adults fled the pool, and six children were wounded by gunfire. The incident highlighted the high level of gun violence in Ward 7, and The Washington Post said Chavous was thrust into the citywide spotlight by it. Chavous personally brought his two young children to the pool (which had seen almost no visitors since the attack) on June 29 to demonstrate the pool's safety and send a message of defiance to drug dealers and violent criminals. On September 26, 1993, four-year-old Launice Smith was shot in the head and hand (and survived) while her family watched a pick-up football game at Weatherless Elementary School in the Fort Dupont neighborhood in Ward 7. Smith was injured when four gunmen emerged from a nearby woods and then hunted down and executed 20-year-old Kervin Brown in what D.C. police said was part of an ongoing battle between rival drug gangs. Once more, Chavous was seen as one of the most important political leaders responding to violence in the city. On September 29, he announced for the formation of a 20-member task force on public safety and began pushing for Ward 7 residents to police their own neighborhoods and report drug dealing, crime, and violence. Chavous later called the task force one of the most important developments of his first term.
Among other key legislative accomplishments in his first term was a 1993 act allowing the city to seize abandoned vehicles; and 1994 legislation that enacted a temporary ban on new liquor licenses for stores selling beer by the can (so-called "takeout beer").; He and the other Young Turks also successfully enacted in 1995 a $70 million cut in the wages earned by trade union members under the city's version of the Davis–Bacon Act. (The cut was temporary, and expired in 1996.)
Chavous' legislative activism declined significantly over his first term. Chavous told The Washington Post in February 1996 that "it has proved easier to wait for someone else, be it the mayor or the control board, to propose hard solutions," according to journalists Howard Schneider and David A. Vise. He unsuccessfully supported in 1995 a package of conservative Republican Party proposals to significantly change the way the city provided welfare benefits, and a plan to create an independent school board to approve and oversee charter schools. One significant (and eventually successful) change he advocated was the creation of a District of Columbia Financial Control Board to save the city from bankruptcy. He was one of the first council members to call for federal oversight (in early 1995), although later in the year he refused to vote to cut big-ticket items such as unemployment benefits or the city's summer youth jobs program. Congress created a financial control board in April 1995.
1996 reelection and second council term
1996 council race Chavous sought reelection in 1996. He faced a challenger in the Democratic primary election, District of Columbia Board of Education member Terry Hairston. In July 1996, Hairston challenged Chavous' right to be on the ballot. D.C. election law required a candidate to obtain signatures from at least 250 voters in a ward in order to run for a district council seat in that ward. Chavous submitted signatures from 574 voters. But D.C. law also required that all individuals gathering such signatures be residents of the District of Columbia, and Hairston alleged that Chavous campaign worker Calvin S. Hawkins did not meet that condition. The District of Columbia Board of Elections ruled in Chavous' favor on July 30, 1996. In the Democratic primary held on September 10, 1996, Chavous easily defeated Hairston and another challenger, Eddie Rhodes, winning 68 percent of the vote.; Chavous won 90 percent of the vote in the general election on November 5, easily beating D.C. Statehood Party candidate Durand A. Ford (6 percent) and Republican Party candidate James Bernard Miles (3 percent).;
Second council term On December 30, 1996, Chavous was elected chairman of the council's Committee on Education, Libraries and Recreation. Ward 3 council member Kathy Patterson, a veteran education activist, also fought for the chairmanship. Patterson strongly criticized Chavous' commitment to educational reform, but Council Chairman David A. Clarke awarded the post to Chavous after he publicly declared education reform to be the biggest issue facing the city. Patterson, however, won an agreement that stripped jurisdiction over labor issues from Chavous' committee and gave it to the Committee on Government Operations (chaired by Patterson). During his first year in office, the District of Columbia Public Schools undertook an emergency $50 million project to repair leaking and structurally unsound roofs at several public schools. The project was significantly mismanaged, and forced a delay in the opening of the school year. Chavous ordered a hearing on the issue in September 1997, but a significant number of parents of schoolchildren complained he had not provided enough oversight and acted too late. In March 1997, Chavous sponsored another significant piece of legislation, a resolution disapproving a construction contract for the highly controversial Barney Circle Freeway.
Chavous also opposed construction of a new convention center in the city. As late as May 27, 1998, Chavous said he had not decided whether to support the project. But he voted to oppose it during the council's vote on June 2, arguing that plans to build a convention center smaller than many then under construction was "a plan to build a second-tier convention center".
After his losing mayoral campaign, Chavous became what The Washington Post called a "frequent critic" of the new mayor, Anthony A. Williams, and had "the chilliest relationship with the mayor" of any Council member. Chavous was an early supporter of Councilmember Carol Schwartz's tax cut package in March 1999, which became law in May.; Chavous also led a nine-month effort to reconstitute and reform the D.C. Board of Education. After a long battle with Mayor Williams and other Council members, the Council approved a plan to reduce the size of the board, and make four of the nine members subject to mayoral appointment (with Council confirmation). Voters were asked to approve the "hybrid" board, which they did so in a close vote in June 2000.; According to The Washington Post, the bruising school board battle helped and hindered Chavous politically. While his allies said it showed he could tackle tough problems, dissenters argued that Chavous avoided the real issues (lack of money for schools and crumbling infrastructure). Chavous blamed the lengthy legislative process on unnamed individuals who he said did not engage in good faith in the process, but critics argued that Chavous never engaged in the kind of political hardball that was needed to move the reform bill along faster. Larry Gray, legislative chairman of the D.C. Congress of PTAs, blamed Chavous for deep cuts in the school budget during the past four years, failures in the teacher certification program, and significant delays in getting technology into the classroom.
Private-sector work In late 1998, after his campaign for mayor, Chavous left Cadeaux & Tagliere and joined the law firm of Arent, Fox, Kintner, Plotkin & Kahn.
Chavous left Arent Fox and was appointed Vice President of Communications for Covad Communications Group, a broadband provider, in December 1999. But he left that position after just a year. Citing his somewhat difficult reelection campaign, Chavous said he wanted to devote more time to his Council position.