FOCUS D.C. Public Charter School Bulletin



January 25, 2006

--Charter School Property Tax Rebate Program to Begin
--State Education Office Recommends Funding Increase
--DCPS Facilities Plan Bid Specifications Exclude Charter School Planning
--New Regulations Being Developed To Curb Charters in Residential Zones
--Two Surplus School Buildings Move Closer to Disposition; Three Still in Limbo
--Board to Seek Revocation of Charter

Charter School Property Tax Rebate Program to Begin

D.C. charter schools that pay property taxes through leases on commercial property will be able to apply for rebates of the taxes they pay during the 2006 and subsequent fiscal years. The news caps several years of effort by FOCUS to get the District to provide equitable tax treatment to charter schools that do not own their school buildings.

Charter schools are exempted from property taxes under the District’s charter school law. The District’s tax code, however, provides the exemption only to charter schools (and other educational institutions) that own their buildings. But as regular readers of the Bulletin well know, many charter schools have been forced to locate in commercial space under so-called triple-net leases, by which they are responsible for the cost of utilities, insurance, and taxes. FOCUS first brought this discrepancy to the attention of the city council in 2001, but was not able to get any traction on the issue until 2004, when FOCUS-drafted legislation was championed by at-large Council Member Phil Mendelson (it was co-sponsored by Kevin Chavous and Jack Evans).

The legislation is expected to save the charter schools hundreds of thousands of dollars each year.

State Education Office Recommends Funding Increase

The State Education Office, Directed by Deborah Gist, has recommended to the mayor that the fiscal year 2007 education budget include an increase in base per-student funding to $8,002. The current amount is $7,534.

The funding base, known as the “foundation level,” is the minimum amount at which each D.C. public school student is funded. Students at certain grade levels are funded at a higher amount, and additional funds attach to students who receive special education or English-language services.

The recommended increase was based on an analysis by the SEO of what it costs to provide “adequate general education services at each grade level” based on current teacher salaries. In a report accompanying the recommendations the SEO notes that the results of ongoing negotiations with the teachers union might require a further increase in the foundation level.

It is not known whether the recommendations will be accepted by the mayor, whose proposed FY 2007 budget must be transmitted to the Council by March 20.

DCPS Facilities Plan Bid Specifications Exclude Charter School Planning

When the School Reform Act (D.C.’s charter school law) was passed in 1996, Congress, fed up with the state of DCPS facilities, gave the responsibility to the mayor and Council to design a plan for the repair, improvement, maintenance, and management of public school facilities. Despairing of DCPS’s ability to implement the plan, the mayor and Council also were directed to find another agency to take it over.

Neither of these steps was taken, and no comprehensive facilities planning was done until 1999, when the mayor and Council, which had unofficially delegated their authority to DCPS, pressured the superintendent to start the planning process. The plan produced by DCPS in 2000 badly overestimated its future enrollment and underestimated costs. Charter schools and their representatives were excluded from the planning process and no provision was made in the plan for the needs of charter school students.

The exclusion of charter schools was addressed in 2003, when the Council passed a friendly amendment to the School Reform Act requiring that charter schools and their representatives be included in the planning process and that any new plan “provide for the needs of all public school students and all public charter school students.” Responsibility for making this happen was left with the mayor and Council.

DCPS is scheduled to produce a new facilities master plan later this year, and it has solicited proposals from planning contractors. In spite of the dictates of the School Reform Act, the Request for Proposals expressly excludes from its terms “facilities planning for the public charter schools.” What’s more, the RFP does not list the charter schools’ legal claim to excess DCPS space and the ongoing charter school facilities shortage among the issues to be analyzed by the contractor in preparing the plan.

Unlike in 2000, DCPS evidently does intend to permit the charter schools and their representatives to sit at the planning table; if, however, the plan itself does not expressly provide space for charter school students (in closed buildings, shared buildings, etc.) this participation will be meaningless.

Meanwhile, a provision in the facilities funding bill making its way through the Council would amend the School Reform Act by formally shifting responsibility for facilities planning from the mayor and Council to the superintendent. The provision also would eliminate the requirement that the plan provide for the needs of charter school students. Instead, the superintendent would be admonished to “consider” their needs.

New Regulations Being Developed To Curb Charters in Residential Zones

The District’s Office of Planning is writing new residential zoning regulations that would limit the number of charters that could locate “by right” in residential zones. The first draft of the regulations, obtained last week by FOCUS, would restrict by-right zoning to those schools whose proposed property has an area of at least 20,000 square feet, 120 feet of street frontage, and enough room to load and offload students on site. All other charter schools seeking to locate in residential neighborhoods would have to seek special exceptions from the Board of Zoning Appeals.

The planning office undertook to revise the regulations after complaints by neighbors that the proposed AppleTree Early Learning PCS, a 56-student charter preschool, was not really a public school and should therefore not be able to locate by right on their mostly-residential Ward 5 street. Under the regulations currently in force (written long before charter schools existed), “public school” is defined as a school run by the Board of Education. The proposed new regulations would clarify that charters are in fact public schools and impose restrictions on all public schools (DCPS and charter) that seek to locate in residential zones.

Realistically, however, the new regulations will apply only to charters, as DCPS will be closing buildings, not opening new ones, for years (if not decades) to come. Any new zoning restrictions, therefore, will require charters to operate under conditions that DCPS did not face when it opened its 150+ school buildings. Charters also would be subject to more stringent requirements than churches and embassies, which will continue to be able to locate by right in any District neighborhood.

No one can dispute that schools locating in residential neighborhoods can create traffic and other concerns. But the District of Columbia is desperate for better public schools and this need should be reflected in zoning policy and practice. What’s more, for most of the 10 years charter schools have existed the policy of the District government (including DCPS) has been to block charter school access to surplus and underused school buildings. Dozens of the former have been sold and leased for condominiums and other commercial purposes, and it has been suggested that DCPS could vacate as many as a third of its current buildings. If charters could occupy these buildings the need to convert buildings in residential (and other) neighborhoods to school use would be dramatically reduced.

FOCUS and others are working with zoning to reduce the negative impact on charters of any new regulations.

Two Surplus School Buildings Move Closer to Disposition; Three Still in Limbo

Vincent Orange’s Government Operations Committee yesterday voted that the Bruce and Old Congress Heights surplus school buildings are no longer needed for public purposes and may move forward to the Economic Development Committee for review of the mayor’s proposed disposition of the two buildings. Three other former school buildings — Keene, Crummell, and Slater/Langston — were left off the Committee’s agenda. Mayor Williams had written a letter to Committee Chair Orange urging him to move on Keene and Slater/Langston as well, but these and the Crummell school building were not on the Committee’s agenda. Crummell is the subject of an Orange-sponsored bill that would turn it into a “Fundamentals of Reading and Mathematics Pilot Program” for three- and four-year olds, presumably run by DCPS.

If the Economic Development Committee also approves the disposition, Bruce and Old Congress Heights can be offered for purchase or lease. It is expected that the buildings will first be made available for bid by the charter schools exclusively. It is also expected that the buildings will be made available for long-term lease only: the Williams administration is already on record as favoring leases over sales of public property, and the Orange Committee also expressed a strong preference for lease over sale.

Board to Seek Revocation of Charter

The D.C. Public Charter School Board voted Monday night to move to revoke the charter of the New School for Enterprise and Development, a high school opened in the fall of 2000. NSED has been on “priority review” status for the last year — a kind of probation imposed on schools that the Board feels are in danger of losing their charters. The school has 15 days to request a public hearing.

Last year the Board closed the Southeast Academy Public Charter School; the year before, the Board-chartered Academy for Renewal in Education Public Charter School closed voluntarily. The District’s other chartering authority, the Board of Education, has closed seven schools; an eighth BOE school has just given up its charter without revocation proceedings.

Unlike traditional public schools, public charter schools can be closed for failure to improve their students’ academic performance, for mismanagement of public funds, and for failure to follow their charters or applicable laws. School closure, though drastic, is an important part of the charter school ethos; absent the threat (and periodic reality) of closure there is no true school accountability. Closure also is a reflection of the commitment of the chartering authorities to providing good public schooling.


Friends of Choice in Urban Schools
1530 16th Street, NW #104
Washington, DC 20036
(202) 387-0405 phone
(202) 667-3798 fax
www.focusdc.org