FOCUS D.C. Public Charter School Bulletin

July 20, 2006

--Senate D.C. Approps Committee Orders Legislation to Split Off State Functions from DCPS; Urges More Buildings for Charters
--DCPS Closure/Consolidation Program and Charter Schools: Less Than Meets the Eye
--Council Operations Committee Exempts Charters from Open Meetings Rules; Full Council Sends Bill Back to Committee
--Judge Rejects SOS Claims Against Two Rivers PCS, Government
--Zoning Commission Approves Detrimental Changes
--BOE Holds Hearing on Giving Up Chartering Role

Senate D.C. Approps Committee Orders Legislation to Split Off State Functions From DCPS; Urges More Buildings for Charters

If the Senate D.C. Appropriations Committee gets its way, DCPS will be forced to give up its State Education Agency functions to the mayor’s State Education Office (SEO) or to another existing or new government agency. The Committee, upset by the recent designation of the DCPS SEA as a “high risk grantee” by the U.S. Department of Education, directed DCPS to contract with an outside entity to develop legislation to achieve the separation (in consultation with the mayor, DC Council, SEO, and D.C. Public Charter School Board). The directive came in the report to accompany the D.C. fiscal year 2007 appropriations bill, which will be taken up by the full Senate in the fall.

The SEO was created in 2000 because with the advent of the public charter schools in 1996, each, like DCPS, its own “local education agency” (LEA), DCPS had a conflict of interest in administering such state functions as the collection and distribution of federal entitlements and competitive grants. But faced with intense DCPS opposition to giving up the state function, and aware of the difficulty DCPS would have in separating long-commingled local and federal functions, the Council backed off. In spite of repeated promises to do so, the DCPS SEA never has been able to administer its federal grants in an even-handed way, much to the detriment of D.C.’s 52 charter school LEA’s. The situation worsened dramatically this year, when the charter schools’ October 2005 entitlement payments were delayed until February of 2006 and charter preschools, previously funded, were denied funding altogether.

Back in March of this year FOCUS testified before the D.C. Council Education Committee to the continuing severity of the problems with the DCPS SEA and urged committee chair Kathy Patterson to draft legislation shifting the state functions to the SEO (testimony attached). Patterson expressed a willingness to explore the matter, but Williams Administration staff testified at the hearing that the mayor would not support such a move. However, The Washington Post reported on the 17th of this month that Mayor Williams will go along with the restructuring if the “task force” studying the issue concludes that it will be good for the school system. According to the Post, Patterson, “several” school board members, and DCPS superintendent Clifford Janey also support the Senate directive, which was drafted by Mary Landrieu (D-La), ranking member of the D.C. Appropriations Committee.

The committee report also urged DCPS to lease unused school space under its jurisdiction to the charter schools, and criticized the Williams administration for shutting the charters out of almost all of the many surplus school buildings over which the mayor has jurisdiction.

DCPS Closure/Consolidation Program and Charter Schools: Less Than Meets the Eye

With much fanfare, DCPS in the spring announced that it would rid itself of nearly a million square feet of underutilized space by August of this year and another two million by August of 2007. Under the 2006 phase of the plan, released last month, five DCPS buildings are to be emptied of students: Fletcher-Johnson, R.H. Terrell, Van Ness, McGogney, and Shadd (together totaling nearly 635,900 square feet, almost half in Fletcher-Johnson). According to the plan, a total of just under 300,000 additional square feet are to be vacated in another 10 school buildings.

Sadly, much of the space detailed in the plan either will not be available for lease by the charter schools or is already leased to charter schools. For example, the R.H. Terrell building, with 143,700 square feet, is to be torn down by DCPS to make room for a new school to be constructed several years from now, and will not be leased to charter schools in the interim. Another emptied building, McGogney (67,700 square feet), will house the students vacating R.H. Terrell along with an unspecified number of DCPS administrators. Similarly, an unspecified amount of square footage in two other buildings to be emptied of students, Van Ness (49,400 sq. ft.) and Shadd (72,100 sq. ft.), are to be used for DCPS administration. Finally, the basement of Fletcher-Johnson is fully occupied by a non-school tenant.

Of the remaining 10 buildings with some excess square feet listed in the DCPS plan, one was leased last year on a long-term basis to the Metropolitan Police Department (in contravention of a law requiring that charter schools have the right of first offer on excess DCPS space); five already are leased to charter schools (two on long-term leases going back to the late 1990’s); one will house the KIPP PCS/Scott Montgomery DCPS partnership; and three have some space available for new co-locations. One of these three, however, is Adams Elementary School, which is being transformed by a partnership with Oyster Bilingual School that is still being planned, making it unlikely that the 15,000 square feet listed as excess will be made available for lease anytime soon.

In all, then, it appears that new space potentially of interest to charter schools will be available in seven of the 15 phase I buildings. DCPS has requested letters of interest for six of these spaces. Once again this year, the requests do not specify that bids will first be taken only from charter schools, which is required by the School Reform Act.

Council Operations Committee Exempts Charters from Open Meetings Rules; Full Council Sends Bill Back to Committee

The Council Government Operations Committee recently voted unanimously to exempt charter schools from legislation intended by its authors to strengthen the D.C. government’s open meetings rules. The Committee responded to arguments made in public testimony by FOCUS and the D.C. Public Charter School Association that, under the School Reform Act, individual charter schools, each of which is a non-profit corporation, are not part of the D.C. government and therefore cannot be made subject to rules intended for government agencies. In addition, the bill as originally drafted would have discriminated against charter schools, the only public schools or non-profit corporations to which the bill’s provisions would extend.

The overall bill met significant opposition in the full Council, many of whose members asserted that the bill would make it impossible for two or three elected officials even to chat about government business in the hallways of the Wilson Building without publishing notice of the “meeting” in the D.C. Register and otherwise complying with the new rules. The bill was sent back to Committee, where its future is uncertain.

Judge Rejects SOS Claims Against Two Rivers PCS, Government

U.S. District Court Judge Henry Kennedy, Jr. has ruled that the virulent anti-charter school group Save Our Schools has no standing to challenge the admissions policy of Two Rivers Public Charter School, which, according to SOS’s September 2004 complaint, discriminates against black students. The judge also dismissed all but one of the claims against the many defendants brought into the suit by SOS -- the DC Public Charter School Board, the Board of Education, DCPS, Mayor Anthony Williams, the D.C. Council, and the Secretary of Education.

The SOS complaint alleged that by funding the public charter schools, which the complaint asserted enroll fewer African American and poor students, the District has re-segregated D.C. education by consigning minorities and the poor to bad DCPS schools. The suit also put the blame for DCPS's failure to provide good schools and schooling on District leaders' intentionally discriminatory "diversion" of funds to the public charter schools.

The latter claim is the only one to survive the motion to dismiss. In his opinion, Judge Kennedy noted that “[p]laintiffs’ allegations of discriminatory intent and conspiracy to support a racially discriminatory school may prove to be entirely untrue,” but “the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure entitle plaintiffs to an opportunity to present specific facts in their support.”

Two Rivers, which opened on Capitol Hill in the fall of 2004, is one of D.C.’s most integrated schools, enrolling 50% African-American students, 32% white students, 8% Hispanic students, and 3% Asian students. Overall, D.C.’s public charter schools have a higher percentage of minority and disadvantaged students than does DCPS.

Zoning Commission Approves Detrimental Changes

The D.C. Zoning Commission, prodded by the Office of Planning, has approved amendments to the zoning regulations that would make it nearly impossible for charter schools with more than 16 students to locate in residential neighborhoods. The smallest existing charter school has 35 students.

The amendments are scheduled to become final following a 30-day public comment period.

The regulations dramatically increase minimum lot sizes required for “by right” location by pubic schools with more than 16 students in residential zones, for example, from 5,000 square feet to 15,000 square feet in R-1-B and from 4,000 square feet to 9,000 square feet in R-4. The regulations also greatly increase the required minimum lot width required in residential zones. Charter schools seeking to locate in residential neighborhoods on lots not meeting these requirements would have to seek special exceptions from the Board of Zoning Appeals, always a lengthy process of uncertain outcome.

The planning office undertook to revise the regulations after complaints by neighbors that the proposed AppleTree Early Learning PCS, a 54-student charter preschool, would create too much traffic and noise if permitted to locate in their mostly-residential neighborhood. The regulations for which these neighbors successfully lobbied, however, will affect not just AppleTree but all small charter schools, forcing them to locate in heavily trafficked commercial zones.

FOCUS has learned that in preparing these regulations the Office of Planning ignored high-level mayoral officials who protested that the regulations as written undermined the principle of small neighborhood schools, driving what should be neighborhood assets into inappropriate commercial locations. We also have been informed that in drafting these regulations Planning failed to consult with any government agency charged with making education policy for the District. Planning did meet early on with a group of charter school and zoning experts pulled together by FOCUS, making some changes in the regulations, but ignored the group’s arguments that the regulations as drafted would have a severe impact on small schools.

BOE Holds Hearing on Giving Up Chartering Role

The Board of Education, one of two charter authorizers in the District (the other is the independent D.C. Public Charter School Board) on Tuesday heard public testimony on whether it should give up its chartering powers and concentrate instead on the troubled school system. Four of the 17 Board of Education charters were represented at the hearing; all four opposed the idea of the Board, half of whose members are elected, leaving the charter school field to unelected entities, as one witness put it, “pushing the whole movement of public charter schools aside as if the nearly 18,000 charter school students aren’t part of public education in the District.” Representatives of the schools present at the hearing also expressed concern about what would happen to their schools if the Board transferred its authority to an outside, yet to be determined, entity. Members of the public who testified echoed the view that, as an elected body, the Board should live up to its responsibilities rather than pass them on to others.

A number of other Board of Education charter schools not present at the hearing have signed on to a “Call for Action” opposing the Board’s exit from the chartering business.

Ramona Edelin, new head of the D.C. Public Charter School Association, also testified at the hearing. Though not taking a position in her testimony on whether the Board should give up chartering, Dr. Edelin encouraged the Board “to think through the several management or organizational models it could employ in order to achieve its goals for the children of the nation’s capital, as it deliberates whether it will recommend relinquishing its chartering authority.”

Although over the years the BOE has chartered some of the District’s strongest public charter schools, its record as an authorizer has been less than stellar. It was forced to close many of the schools it chartered — unwisely — in the early years of the movement (the first D.C. charters opened in 1996). Its charter school operation throughout has been characterized by inadequate staffing, high turnover, and less than effective oversight. And the BOE charter school office is now under investigation by law enforcement agencies for possible financial improprieties.

D.C.’s charter school law, the School Reform Act, empowers the BOE and the DCPCSB to grant charters and also grants to the D.C. Council the authority to establish a third authorizer, which authority it has not exercised. Passed by Congress for the District, the SRA would have to be amended by Congress to permit the BOE to give up its chartering role; the Congress, presumably, also would have to decide what is to be done with the 17 charter schools the Board currently oversees. A Senate D.C. Appropriations Committee Report issued last week expressed the Committee’s “concern with the quality of oversight performed on public charter schools” by the Board and questioned whether “the BOE would be more efficient focusing only on DCPS.” The Committee indicated a willingness to consider “legislation to modify the chartering authority structure, including amending the DC School Reform Act to designate another authorizer.”

The Board intends to announce in September its decision on whether to support such a move.

Friends of Choice in Urban Schools
1530 16th Street, NW #104
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