FOCUS D.C. Public Charter School Bulletin

June 20, 2002

In this issue:

Board of Education Ax Falls Again
Council Passes FY 2003 Budget Acts; Fixes Needed
DCPS Must Share TANF Funds with Charters
No Progress on Surplus Buildings, Sharing of DCPS Facilities

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Board of Education Ax Falls Again

Following an informal hearing last Friday, the Board of Education this week voted unanimously to close World Public Charter School. Only three board members attended the hearing. Richard Milburn PCS also closed, foregoing its right to a hearing. This past spring the Board also voted to close Techworld PCS. Altogether, the Board has closed six of its charter schools - four under the current Board. The D.C. Public Charter School Board so far has not closed any schools.

In today's Washington Post Peggy Cooper Cafritz cites the school closings as evidence of the board's seriousness "about quality - from the classroom to administration and special education." Anyone in attendance at the Board's recent closure hearings, however, knows that Board members demonstrate very little interest in whether children are actually learning and a very school-system like devotion to compliance. What's more, board members evidence almost no understanding of the difference between charter schools and their own schools in terms of their level of control. Attacks on World for not using textbooks and other comments from the various Board members at this and other hearings make it clear that the Board has no intention of recognizing the "exclusive control" that the School Reform Act gives the charter schools over administration, personnel, expenditures, and instructional methods.

Those who understand what charter schools are all about know that the ability to close bad charter schools is one of the
real strengths of the charter school idea. Unfortunately, the way the Board handles the closure process leaves the question of the quality of these schools very much unanswered.


Council Passes FY 2003 Budget Acts; Fixes Needed

The D.C. Council has passed the FY 2003 Budget Request Act and FY 2003 Budget Support Act. The former underfunds the public charter school facilities allowance by about $300 per student. The latter contains an amendment to the facilities allowance designed to ensure that such a "mistake" will not be made in future years, but the amendment is written in a way that could lead to an even lower facilities allowance for FY 2004.

We are working with the Senate
D.C. Appropriations Subcommittee to increase the FY 2003 facilities allowance and to correct the amendment. We also are hoping that additional federal funding will be made available for the charter school credit enhancement fund. We'll keep you posted.

DCPS Must Share TANF Funds with Charters

The Budget Support Act contains the following new legislation: "[DCPS] shall distribute any TANF or Health and Human Services funds...designated for after-school programs, on an equitable basis, to DCPS and Public Charter Schools service students with after-school programs..."

Congratulations to Eve Brooks and Raj

Vinnakota and several other of our school leaders for this important victory. We'll keep you informed about how this is to work out in practice.

No Progress on Surplus Buildings, Sharing of DCPS Facilities

In spite of continuing pressure from FOCUS and from some members of the Council, Deputy Mayor Eric Price and his staff remain non-committal on our requests to free up additional surplus buildings for the public charter schools. In a letter to FOCUS received last week, Price says that no decisions have been made on the disposition of the Keene, Bruce, Bundy, and Addison schools. Bruce and Addison are empty and Keene soon will be; DHS likely will move out of Bundy soon.

One fly in the ointment (as always) is DCPS, which continues to insist it needs more buildings and wants Keene and Addison for "special education." DCPS also is resisting our efforts to gain access to a small piece of land connected to the Reno School, another surplus facility. Another barrier to our obtaining these buildings is the evident indifference of the Williams administration to the plight of our schools and their students. Much of Price's letter was taken up by a litany of all the many things the administration has done for charter schools, including such Coalition accomplishments as full funding, the facilities allowance, and the credit enhancement fund.

Meanwhile, DCPS continues to stall on the issue of sharing space with the charter schools. We've had no meetings with them since early April, when DCPS cancelled the last scheduled meeting without providing a reason. Our many calls and emails since then have gone unanswered. The FY 2003 Budget Support Act contains new legislation requiring DCPS to permit charter schools to share space in facilities that currently are underutilized or projected to be underutilized because of enrollment declines. Unfortunately, this legislation, introduced by Sharon Ambrose, leaves it to the Board of Education to develop rules for implementing the legislation. This puts the fox directly in the
hen house once again.


Friends of Choice in Urban Schools 1530
16th Street, NW #001
Washington, DC 20036
(202) 387-0405 phone
(202) 667-3798 fax