FOCUS D.C. Public Charter School Bulletin

February 10, 2005


Underutilization of DCPS Schools Focus of Facilities Hearing

The need for DCPS to“right-size” and make some room for charter school students took center stage at a hearing yesterday of the Council’s Committee on Education, now chaired by Ward 3’s Kathy Patterson. A number of witnesses, including Mike Peabody of FOCUS, Ariana Quiñones of the DC Public Charter School Association, and various charter school leaders, called upon the Council to exert its influence to bring about a more equitable distribution of school facilities between DCPS and the charter schools. Right now, 33 of the District’s 52 charter school campuses are located in commercial buildings, while DCPS controls nearly six million square feet of space it no longer needs.

In response to this testimony, various Council members called on DCPS to stop stalling and to do something about the inequitable distribution of school buildings. Ward 6 Council member Sharon Ambrose expressed outrage at the “screaming and yelling” she and others had to do last summer to induce DCPS, whose empty space could accommodate all 15,000+ charter school students twice over, to give a 200-student startup charter school a one-year lease to occupy an empty wing of a DCPS school building. Marion Barry, a new member of the Committee, chided DCPS for failing to “bite the bullet and close some schools,” and promised he “would not vote for another penny of capital funding” for DCPS until some action was taken.

Carolyn Graham, testifying for the Board of Education, though not promising quick action on the Council’s complaints, did admit that “critical and difficult” decisions would have to be made about “right-sizing our facilities inventory.”

Orange to Amend Tax Exemption Bill to Include Charter School Teachers

Council member Vincent Orange has agreed to amend his bill to exempt DCPS teachers from state income tax to include public charter school teachers. At a hearing on the bill yesterday, at which FOCUS and several charter school leaders testified, the Council member stated that he had never intended to exclude charter school teachers and that he would change the bill’s requirement that teachers had to be employees of the Board of Education in order to qualify for the exemption. FOCUS is drafting amended language for use by the Council member.


Co-location Plan “Urgent” Say School Board Members

After years of resistance to the idea of sharing space with charter schools, the Board of Education’s Committee of the Whole yesterday accepted a set of standards that will guide the superintendent as he develops a plan to locate charter schools in underutilized DCPS space. The superintendent intends to move quickly to identify buildings suitable for co-location.

The school system controls nearly six million square feet of space it doesn’t need to accommodate its enrollment, which has declined more than 20% since the first charter schools opened eight years ago. Total DCPS enrollment is now 61,710, of which nearly 3,000 attend private schools or public schools outside of the District. A total of 114 of DCPS’s 145 school buildings are underutilized by at least 20%; of the 114, 87 are underutilized by 40-80+%.

Several of the Board members attending the meeting remarked on the urgency of freeing up space for the charter schools, noting that additional delay could lead to the Board losing control over all of its buildings. A variety of proposals are being discussed in the Council and elsewhere to create some sort of trust or independent agency to hold, renovate, and equitably distribute school buildings between DCPS and the charter schools.

School Board Involves Superintendent in Charter School Matters

The Board of Education’s Committee of the Whole yesterday also decided not to charter any more schools until receiving recommendations on the subject from the superintendent. The recommendations will be included in the “Education Master Plan” now being prepared by the superintendent and, according to special assistant Robert Rice, will answer the question “how does the Education Master Plan affect charter schools and their approval and space.” According to the superintendent himself, “the effort here is to make sure our work is coordinated and connected,” that is, how the Board’s charter schools fit into the “use of facilities and overall educational needs” of the school system.

According to today’s Washington Post [Metro, p. B-1], Board member Tommy Wells expects the superintendent to suggest the kind of charter schools the Board should charter, for example, bilingual schools or schools serving at-risk students. Wells added: “We want the superintendent to weigh in and share with us how charter schools can carry out his overall plan.”

The Board’s action and the various comments by Board and staff are another indication that the Board may be be trying to rid itself of its charter school burdens by having the superintendent take over its chartering and charter school oversight responsibilities. Several members of the Board have expressed interest in this option and the Board has been looking into its legality.

The charter school law, known as the School Reform Act, has a number of provisions relevant to this question, all indicative of the drafters’ intent that there be a firewall between the charter schools and DCPS. For example, the Act defines charter schools as public schools that are not part of DCPS. Additionally, the Act specifies that no DC employees other than employees of the chartering boards can have anything to do with chartering decisions. The Act also specifies that no law, regulation, or policy that is applicable to DCPS can be applied to the public charter schools.

In addition to running afoul of the law, breaching the charter school-DCPS divide would violate the vital principle of charter school autonomy from central control by the school system. This autonomy protects charter schools from burdensome regulation and the imposition of the “one size fits all” mentality that squelches creativity in school system schools around the country.

Charter School Enrollment Grows 13% to 15,500

The just-completed audit of school year 2004-2005 charter school enrollment shows that an additional 1,757 students enrolled in charter schools this year, an increase of 13%. This brings the total number of charter school students to 15,500, 21% of the total number of students attending public schools in the District. Charter school enrollment has grown every year since the first charter schools opened in 1996; more growth is expected next year when as many as a dozen new or expansion schools could open.

Friends of Choice in Urban Schools
1530 16th Street, NW #104
Washington, DC 20036
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(202) 667-3798 fax
www.focusdc.org