FOCUS D.C. Public Charter School Bulletin

May 9, 2006

--D.C. Charters To Celebrate Tenth Anniversary With May 20th Open Houses, Other Activities
--New DCPS Building Utilization Survey: 48 Schools With 200 or More Empty Seats
--BOE Member Tells Charter Hopefuls to Find Their Own Buildings; Objects to “Pressure”
--Hearing: Patterson Open to Amending Charter School Assets Bill
--Alert: Bill Would Subject Charters to Open Meetings Rules of Administrative Procedure Act

D.C. Charters To Celebrate Tenth Anniversary With May 20th Open Houses, Other Activities

The success of D.C.’s charter school movement will be celebrated on the 20th of this month, when as many as 50 of D.C.’s charter schools will open their doors for Charter School Open House and Rally Day, the kick-off for their 10th-anniversary activities. The open houses provide an excellent opportunity for members of the public to tour these innovative schools. The list of schools open on May 20th and their addresses are available at www.dccharterschools.org — click on “Saturday, May 20, 2006.”

D.C.’s first two public charter schools opened in 1996 with a combined enrollment of 160 students. Ten years later, nearly 18,000 District students go to school on 63 charter school campuses, and D.C.’s charter school movement now serves as an example to the rest of the country of what can happen when creative, dedicated people — school founders, teachers, parents, advocates, and policy makers — work together to make real school reform possible.

Beginning at 10:00 am and continuing through the early afternoon, nearly every charter school in the District will open its doors to the public, and thousands of parents, neighbors, community leaders, office holders, and mayoral and Council aspirants are expected to visit. Students will perform at each school throughout the open house hours, student artwork and projects will be featured, and food will be served.

At 2:30 p.m. the festivities will shift to Anacostia Park for a celebration co-sponsored by FOCUS, the D.C. Public Charter School Association, the Board of Education Charter Schools Office, and the D.C. Public Charter School Board. The assembled will be greeted by mayoral candidates and City Council representatives and will be entertained by recording artists Chuck Brown and Lilo Gonzalez.

New DCPS Building Utilization Survey: 53 Schools With 200 or More Empty Seats

A just-completed survey of all DCPS school buildings by outside consultants shows that 30 elementary schools, 13 middle and junior high schools, and 10 high schools have at least 200 empty seats each; the largest number of empty seats in any one of these schools is 858. Among the 30 elementary schools, the average number of empty seats is 251; among the 13 middle/junior high schools, 421; and among the 10 high schools, 391.

The survey, which encompassed 104 elementary schools, 20 middle/junior high schools, and 17 high schools, a total of 141, also shows that only 11 of the elementary schools and five of the secondary schools are at full capacity or over-enrolled.

The survey did not include the many DCPS buildings being used as “swing space,” as special education schools, or for administrative purposes.

In all, according to the survey the 141 schools have room for 26,373 additional students. More than 15,000 of these spaces are in elementary schools, while 6,000+ seats are available in middle/junior high schools and 5,000+ in high schools. By DCPS standards (square feet required per student), these totals represent more than four million square feet of excess space. Millions of additional square feet are encompassed by the buildings not included in the survey.

The Board of Education, after years of active resistance to the idea of unburdening the school system of costly extra space, recently promised to give up three million square feet between now and 2008. A revised Facilities Master Plan, due from the superintendent on May 15, is expected to identify at least one million square feet to be disposed of in the coming year. Under D.C. law, charter schools are entitled to a right of first offer on all of this space, although the school system has not publicly acknowledged that it will give charters the first bite at the apple.

BOE Member Tells Charter Hopefuls to Find Their Own Buildings; Objects to “Pressure”

D.C.’s charter school law, the School Reform Act, permits charter authorizers to grant conditional approval to applicants who lack a facility but are otherwise approvable. But William Lockridge, who represents Wards 7 and 8 on the Board of Education, used the occasion of last Friday’s public hearing for Board charter school applicants to blast charter hopefuls who fail to find an adequate facility by the application deadline — more than a year before successful applicants are permitted to open their schools. Lockridge acknowledged that successful applicants have plenty of time to find buildings in which to house their schools, but “too many times you can’t find an appropriate facility” with enough classroom space, a gymnasium, and other necessities. “Then you come to DCPS to pressure us to give you a facility. But I’m not putting one DCPS student at risk or sacrifice just so there can be another charter school.”

Unfortunately for Board of Education applicants, it is almost unheard of for a potential charter school to have identified by the application deadline the space it intends to occupy. Although D.C.’s hot commercial real estate market plays a role, the main reason for this has been the Board of Education’s unwillingness over the years to permit charter schools to occupy space that the school system no longer needs. A key factor in the Board’s intransigence on this issue has been Mr. Lockridge himself. Always opposed to charter school use of DCPS space, last year he led the charge against the Board’s first-ever effort to make a meaningful amount of space available to charters, organizing community opposition and angrily denouncing the Board’s plan at Board-sponsored community meetings.

Meanwhile, at a hearing yesterday before the Council’s Education Committee, BOE vice-chair Carolyn Graham assured Chair Kathy Patterson that the Board “is very favorable to transferring vacant space to public charter schools. We are not opposed to an engaged relationship with public charter schools going forward.” It remains to be seen which of these views will prevail.

Hearing: Patterson Open to Amending Charter School Assets Bill

Education Committee Chair Kathy Patterson yesterday expressed her willingness to work with charter school leaders and the banks who provide them with financing to amend the Public Charter School Assets and Facilities Preservation Amendment Act of 2006. The bill (B16-0624), introduced by Patterson in February with significant co-sponsorship, would transfer ownership to the District of all of 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 set off alarm bells at schools seeking bank or bond financing and at banks that frequently lend to charter schools.

At yesterday’s hearing, Donald Hense, founder and director of Friendship PCS, urged Patterson not to move the legislation forward until the charter schools gain access to DCPS facilities, and to amend the bill so that it would not become yet another obstacle to the progress of the charter schools. Tom Nida, chair of the D.C. Public Charter School Board, Eva Rainer, vice president of CityFirst Bank, and Joe Bruno, president of Building Hope, offered specific amendments that would reduce the banks’ fears about losing their contractual rights, preserve the flexibility of the chartering boards to find other charter schools to take over the assets and operations of failed schools, and protect private and federal funds from the reach of the law.

Alert: Bill Would Subject Charters to Open Meetings Rules of Administrative Procedure Act

A recently introduced bill that would amend the District’s Administrative Procedure Act by adding an open meetings requirement would extend the reach of the requirement to individual public charter schools. The Bill, B17-0747, is called the District of Columbia Open Government Meetings Act of 2006.

Sponsored by Education Committee Chair Kathy Patterson and Government Operations Committee Chair Vincent Orange and co-sponsored by Council members Graham, Fenty, Mendelson, Gray, Ambrose, Brown, Catania, and Cropp, the bill would require that any gathering of a “majority of a quorum” of the board of directors of a public charter school be open to the public unless it involved contract negotiations, personnel matters, student testing or discipline matters, or consultations with attorneys. The legislation also establishes meeting notice requirements and various meeting procedures, including the requirement to electronically record all meetings. Finally, the legislation provides a legal remedy to any person who thinks that the open meetings requirements have been ignored.

FOCUS has asked a major D.C. law firm that provides pro bono help on charter school legislative matters for an opinion on the legality of applying this legislation to charter schools. The charter schools are expressly excluded from the School Reform Act’s definition of D.C. government, which tracks the definitions contained in the Home Rule Act and the current Administrative Procedure Act.

The Patterson/Orange legislation also would extend its terms to the D.C. Public Charter School Board, one of the District’s two charter authorizers. The other authorizer, the Board of Education, also would be subject to the open meeting rules established by the legislation.

Friends of Choice in Urban Schools
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