FOCUS D.C. Public Charter School Bulletin

April 13, 2006

--Racial Resentments, Charter Bashing Dominate School Closure Hearing
--DCPS Interest Groups Gain Delay in Consolidations, Closures
--OPM Finally Seeks Bids on Bruce, Old Congress Heights Surplus Schools; Orange Still Stalling on Three Others
--Progress Being Made on Medicaid Reimbursements for Charter Schools
--Eleven Groups Apply to Open DCPCSB Charters in 2007

Racial Resentments, Charter Bashing Dominate School Closure Hearing

An April Fools Day hearing held by the Board of Education to give the public a chance to weigh in on the idea of consolidating programs and closing schools quickly turned ugly, a string of witnesses characterizing the Board’s plan as playing into the hands of “arrogant” whites and “ruthless” charter schools. The Board, under pressure from the Council to cut unneeded school space in exchange for $2.2 billion in facilities funding over the next ten years, had scheduled the hearing as the first step in a “transparent” school closing process by which the Board hopes to reduce its facilities burden by one million square feet this fall and by a total of three million square feet by the fall of 2008. Recent studies have shown that the school system, which has lost 30% of its enrollment since 1996, controls up to six million square feet it doesn’t need for its students, most of it in bad repair.

The first of the hostile witnesses, a longtime DCPS teacher, decried the “wholesale marketing and exploitation of minority, mostly black, children by whites and middle class blacks” and the “privilege and arrogance” of D.C.’s white residents, who, she said, care only about their own children. Several witnesses following her, all members of the small but virulent anti-charter group calling itself “Save Our Schools,” urged the Board not to close schools “in neighborhoods whose schools are being crushed by public charter schools,” which “ruthlessly recruit teachers and students away from DCPS” and “renovate [school buildings] on the backs of D.C. school children.” To give in to charters, one said, would be to encourage the District’s “power ruling elite,” who use “back channels to maintain white privilege.”

No Board member challenged the accuracy — or questioned the propriety — of these assertions.

Save Our Schools two years ago tried unsuccessfully to stop Two Rivers Public Charter School from opening on Capitol Hill (where SOS’s founders live) and lately has picketed the D.C. residence of Senator Mary Landrieu (D-La.) and held an anti-charter school “teach-in” at Eastern High School. In published materials, SOS has referred to D.C.’s charter schools as “segregators,” relying on a national study purporting to demonstrate that charters can “contribute to segregation by race and class.” According to these materials, D.C. charter schools, which by law are public schools run as non-profit corporations by D.C.-resident boards of trustees, are “privately owned and operated” and are in league with condominium developers and others whose actions are “fundamental to the process of gentrification.” According to SOS, charters are “not only racist and greedy...[but show] an utter lack of respect for the people of Washington DC.”

D.C.’s public school population is largely minority. While about 35% of the general population is white, 95% of the students attending school system schools and 98% of those in charter schools are members of minority groups (almost all black and Hispanic). SOS’s founders are white.

DCPS Interest Groups Gain Delay in Consolidations, Closures

Bowing to pressure from a variety of advocacy groups and individual community members, the Board of Education pulled back from its recent decision to announce on April 15 a list of schools to be consolidated or closed. Instead, the list will be made public when the Board receives the revised Master Facilities Plan from the superintendent on May 15. Community meetings on the MFP will begin on June 5, and the Board will take official action on the Plan on June 28.

The new schedule makes it likely that few, if any, charter schools will be able to occupy vacated DCPS space next fall.

OPM Finally Seeks Bids on Bruce, Old Congress Heights Surplus Schools; Orange Still Stalling on Three Others

The D.C. Office of Property Management finally has put out requests for bids on two of the five surplus school buildings promised to the charter schools by Mayor Anthony Williams in August 2004. The Council approved the disposition of the two buildings and sent them to OPM on February 14th.

The three remaining buildings have been held up for many months by Council Member Vincent Orange, whose Government Operations Committee staff professes not to know the reasons why the council member is unwilling to deal with the dispositions or when, if ever, he may do so.

Bids on the two buildings — the former Bruce and Old Congress Heights schools — are due May 24th. Both buildings are in bad repair and will require millions of dollars in renovations. Even so, several charter schools are expected to bid on each.

Under Council rules, two committees — Orange’s and the Economic Development Committee, chaired by Sharon Ambrose — must approve dispositions of surplus property. Economic Development may not deal with the property until it passes Government Operations.

This is the second time that Orange has dashed the hopes of charter schools wishing to acquire these buildings. Early this year he delayed the process by months when he insisted that the mayor resubmit the five buildings for Council approval because the 90 days allowed for Council review did not have time to run by December 31, 2005, the end of the last Council period.

Orange, who is running for mayor, hopes to return one of the three remaining buildings — Crummell — to DCPS to use for an early childhood math and reading program specified in legislation he submitted last year (the bill attracted no co-sponsors). DCPS, meanwhile, has admitted to controlling millions of square feet of school space it no longer needs and is expected to announce additional school closings next month. It is not known what Orange’s interest is in the other two buildings.

Ten charter schools enrolling 3,221 students are located in Ward 5, which Orange represents.

Progress Being Made on Medicaid Reimbursements for Charter Schools

The years-long struggle for fair and equitable Medicaid reimbursements for charter schools providing medically necessary services to special education students appears to be coming to an end, thanks to pressure exerted on D.C.’s Medicaid authorities by Kathy Patterson, chair of the education committee of the D.C. Council.

Like all public schools, charters in the District are required to serve students with special needs, in part by providing the medical services mandated by federal law. But although they have fulfilled their legal obligations (some for nearly eight years), most charters have not been able to gain full access to the Medicaid dollars earmarked for such services.

Currently, only about a quarter of D.C.’s 51 charter schools have a Medicaid billing number, a prerequisite for reimbursement. What’s more, even those schools that have been able to acquire a billing number have been unable to receive the maximum reimbursement allowed to public schools under the D.C. State Medicaid Plan. Among the factors contributing to this problem are confusing Medicaid policies and procedures and an unwillingness by Medicaid administrators to accept charter schools as fully public providers.

The DC Charter School Cooperative, with the blessing of Medicaid administrators, tried for three years to create a centralized, non-profit billing entity for charters. This effort came to naught when a new set of Medicaid authorities decided that each charter would have to bill independently. Accordingly, some schools began billing individually about two years ago with the assistance of for-profit organizations specializing in Medicaid work. But the reimbursement recovery process for these schools revealed yet another set of challenges, the greatest being that charters were not being reimbursed at an equitable rate compared to DCPS and not being reimbursed at all for some services for which DCPS was being reimbursed.

Happily, after two months of intensive effort by the Cooperative and others and with the support of Council Member Patterson, Medicaid has given charters a choice of billing options that will create parity with the school system and, in the long run, enable charters to recoup a larger share of what it actually costs for them to provide these necessary services.

Julie Camerata, Executive Director of the D.C. Charter School Cooperative, contributed to this story.

Eleven Groups Apply to Open DCPCSB Charters in 2007

The D.C. Public Charter School Board has received 11 applications from groups hoping to open charter schools in the fall of 2007. Among the schools seeking charters are a preschool-8th grade school for girls, two schools for children with emotional and behavioral disabilities, a prek-12th grade school offering an arts-infused curriculum, and a middle school emphasizing the development of leadership skills.

The DCPCSB, which chartered 19 new schools in the last three years alone (an approval rate of 42%), this year significantly raised the bar for its applicants. Prior to this application cycle applications could be approved outright (a purely theoretical possibility), granted conditional approval, or given “first-stage clearance.” Applicants in the last of these categories — which the Board has now eliminated — were given a chance to resubmit their applications after making major revisions. Since approximately half of the 19 approved schools escaped rejection by means of first-stage clearance, it is expected that the approval rate this year will be closer to the Board’s historic average of around 30%.

Three of this year’s 11 applicant groups went through FOCUS’s charter school startup program; three other groups, applying for their second D.C. charters, worked with FOCUS on their earlier applications. The FOCUS startup program comprises a half-day introductory session, a two-day school design workshop, and extensive one-on-one school design and application-drafting help from FOCUS staff and a team of academic, business, and real estate consultants.

Since beginning its startup program two years ago, 72% (13 of 18) of FOCUS-backed applicants have been approved; of the remaining 16 applications received by the Board during that period, only 1 was approved.

Friends of Choice in Urban Schools
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