FOCUS D.C. Public Charter School Bulletin

February 16, 2006

--Audited PCS Enrollment Exceeds 17,000; DCPS In-District Enrollment Drops Below 55,000
--Zoning Commission Passes Emergency Regulations Limiting Charters
--Charter School Facilities Would Revert To City Under Patterson Legislation
--Board of Education Wants Charter School Salaries, Other Information on Web Site

Audited PCS Enrollment Exceeds 17,000; DCPS In-District Enrollment Drops Below 55,000

According to official audit reports issued by the State Education Office on February 8, public charter school enrollment increased to 17,419, up more than 13% from last year. DCPS in-District enrollment, meanwhile, declined by nearly 4,000 students, or 6.5%, to 54,748. Another 2,646 DCPS students are in special education private placements or in public schools outside D.C. Overall public school enrollment declined by more than 2,000 students, many of whom are attending private schools on federally-funded vouchers.

This year’s charter school enrollment represents 24% of total in-District public school enrollment, up from 21% last year. This is the ninth consecutive year of growth for these popular schools:

05-06 17,419
04-05 15,500
03-04 13,743
02-03 11,452
01-02 10,679
00-01 9,656
99-00 6,980
98-99 3,594
97-98 300
96-97 160 (approximate)

During this period the number of charter schools grew from two to 52 (on 64 campuses). Meanwhile, DCPS in-District enrollment dropped from approximately 78,000 to its current level of just under 55,000 — around 30%. Six new charter schools and at least one expansion school are scheduled to open next fall.

Zoning Commission Passes Emergency Regulations Limiting Charters

The D.C. Zoning Commission this week voted unanimously to implement new regulations restricting by-right location of public schools in residential zones. The regulations, passed on an emergency basis, are effective immediately and can be left in place for up to 120 days.

The mayor’s Office of Planning developed the revised regulations after Ward 6 council member Sharon Ambrose took up the cause of a group of neighbors protesting the plans of AppleTree Early Learning PCS to locate on their mostly residential street in N.E. The neighbors, who also filed a lawsuit seeking to prevent the District from issuing building permits on the property, claimed that allowing the 50-student preschool to locate on their street would “destroy the historic residential character of the neighborhood.”

Under the regulations existing at the time AppleTree bought the building, the minimum lot size required for by-right location in the R-4 neighborhood was 4,000 square feet and the required lot width was 40 feet. The new regulations raise these figures to 9,000 square feet and 120 feet, respectively. Schools, like AppleTree, that do not meet these new requirements must seek a special exception from the Board of Zoning Adjustment, a process that can take a year with no guarantee of a favorable outcome.

The new regulations also affect the other residential zones. In R-1 zones, minimum lot size has been doubled, to 15,000 square feet. R-2 and R-3 lot requirements, previously 4,000 square feet, are now 9,000 square feet. And in R-5 zones, which previously had no minimum, the lot requirement is now 9,000 square feet. The 120 foot street-frontage requirement applies to all zones.

Although the regulations ostensibly apply to all public schools, including DCPS schools, in reality they serve as a barrier only to public charter schools which, unlike DCPS, are growing and desperate for new space. Small charter schools like AppleTree are most likely to be affected by the changes.

The changes to the regulations do not apply to the many other uses that may locate by right in residential zones, including churches, embassies, hospitals, sanitariums, private clubs, fraternities, sororities, boarding houses, museums, Sunday school buildings, and mass transit facilities.

Charter School Facilities Would Revert To City Under Patterson Legislation

Council Education Committee Chair Kathy Patterson has introduced legislation (“Public Charter School Assets and Facilities Preservation Amendment Act of 2006”) that would transfer ownership to the District of all the assets of closed charter schools that have not been sold to pay off outstanding liabilities. Charter school facilities are included in the reach of the bill.

Under the bill, when a school voluntarily gives up its charter or has it revoked, its chartering board, in consultation with the school’s board of trustees, would be required to develop a plan for the repayment of any “liabilities and obligations.” Once these are paid, anything left over would “be deemed the property of the District of Columbia....”

The bill raises many questions, including whether the Council has the authority to amend the congressionally-passed School Reform Act and whether the provisions of the bill will make it more difficult for charter schools to obtain facilities financing.

A hearing on the bill has not yet been scheduled.

Board of Education Wants Charter School Salaries, Other Information on Web Site

The D.C. Board of Education has passed a resolution directing its Ad Hoc Committee on Charter School Oversight to hold a public hearing on whether the Board’s charter schools office should post on its website financial and other information about Board-approved charter schools. In the resolution the Board indicated its desire for the following to be posted: approved charter school applications, approved annual budgets, audited annual financial statements, IRS-990 forms (each charter school is a non-profit corporation), and each school’s “top five salaries and positions.”

The resolution was introduced by Board member Victor Reinoso, evidently in response to complaints from some D.C. residents that information on charter schools was too difficult to obtain from the chartering boards. It is not known for what purpose the complaining residents wanted the information or if they sought similar information about DCPS schools.

Under the School Reform Act, passed in 1996, the District’s charter schools must operate with a high degree of transparency. The Act makes every application to start a charter school, whether approved or not, a public document. Each charter school must annually file with its chartering board a detailed report of the school’s performance, activities, and fund raising, along with an independently audited financial statement. These documents, along with a wide variety of periodic financial and other reports required by the chartering boards, are also public documents. Neither the Board of Education nor the DC Public Charter School Board currently posts these documents on the web.

One of the most important tenets of the charter school philosophy is that parents should have access to the school performance and other information they need to be able to intelligently choose between and among public schools, charter and traditional. Policy makers and the general public also need access to certain kinds of school information in order to be able to make intelligent decisions about overall D.C. school policy, including budgeting. For intelligent choices and decisions to be made, the same kind and quality of information must be available for both public charter schools and DCPS schools.

Because of this philosophy, any thoughtful and even-handed effort to make relevant information on individual public charter and DCPS schools more readily available to the public is likely to be supported by D.C.’s public charter school community. Such support is unlikely for efforts directed solely at the public charter schools, on which far more information already is available than on traditional public schools.

The Board of Education has not yet announced a hearing date on the resolution.

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