April 25, 2007

--Mayor Signs School Takeover Bill; Worrisome Charter School Accountability Provisions Eliminated From Final Version
--Reform Bill Moves State Agency Out of DCPS; Scope of Facilities Agency Narrowed
--Fenty Administration Makes Three Surplus Schools Available for Charter School Bid; Some Others Taken Off the Table
--Thirteen Apply to Open Charters in ‘08


Mayor Signs School Takeover Bill; Worrisome Charter School Accountability Provisions Eliminated From Final Version

Mayor Adrian Fenty signed legislation on Monday giving him direct control over the school system. Under the bill, the DCPS school board will go out of business; a “chancellor” (superintendent) will be appointed by and report directly to the mayor. The bill also creates a state board of education with a mix of advisory and policy-setting responsibilities. Jurisdiction over the 18 Board of Education charter schools will shift to the D.C. Public Charter School Board, which, at least temporarily, will be the only chartering authority.

Congress must affirmatively enact these provisions in order for them to become law; enactment is expected.

Fenty also had sought a role in charter school accountability, but the Council eliminated from the final version of the bill a provision that would have given the state education officer, who reports to the mayor, the power to revoke charters. FOCUS and the charter school association campaigned hard against this unnecessary and dangerous intrusion into the autonomy of the District’s charter public schools; in the end Ward 8 Councilman Marion Barry saved the day with an eleventh hour amendment striking the offending language.

The Council also amended a provision that would have required that the chartering authorities undertake a “high stakes review” of every school’s academic performance at three years instead of the currently-mandated five. Acceding to the wishes of the D.C. Public Charter School Board, the Council version gives the Board the option of conducting the high stakes academic review prior to the five year mark but does not require it. This gives the Board the ability to act earlier against schools that are not making academic progress and do not appear likely to improve much by the fifth year.

The proposal to permit the state education officer to revoke charters flew in the face of both local and federal law. Under the School Reform Act, D.C.’s charter school law, the chartering authorities, not the state, have the responsibility for general charter school oversight. Because of this, it is the chartering authority, not the state, that is primarily responsible for holding charter schools accountable under NCLB. But the Fenty administration wanted the state to have the ability to “reorganize” charter schools that fail to make AYP for the requisite number of years or to impose other “corrective actions,” just like it has with DCPS. Thanks to the Council, these will remain the responsibility of the chartering authorities.

Reform Bill Moves State Education Agency Out of DCPS; Scope of Facilities Agency Narrowed

Two other provisions of the Fenty bill are of great interest to D.C.’s charter public schools. The first shifts all State Education Agency [SEA] functions from DCPS to the mayor’s State Education Office; the second creates a government agency, the Office of Public Education Facilities Modernization [OFM], to oversee the implementation of the school system’s $2+ billion building renovation program.

SEA functions include the notorious Office of Federal Grants Programs (OFGP), whose policies and practices have frequently made D.C.’s charter school leaders apoplectic over the last 10 years [See Bulletin, February 28, 2006, at http://www.focusdc.org/news/news.asp?View=Bulletins].

For all of those years FOCUS has led a campaign, fervently supported by the charter schools, to get OFGP away from the school system, which has not been able to rise above its serious conflict of interest in managing a program that disburses funds both to itself and to its competitors. Last year, OFGP’s failures drew the attention of the D.C. Council, the U.S. Department of Education, and the Senate D.C. Appropriations Subcommittee, which ordered the Board of Education to hire a consultant to come up with legislation to separate the SEA from DCPS [See Bulletin July 20, 2006, at http://www.focusdc.org/news/news.asp?View=Bulletins].

As to facilities modernization, the original takeover bill would have created an independent authority for school facilities management and construction which, in addition to overseeing the renovation of DCPS’s crumbling buildings, would have had broad authority to lease and otherwise dispose of excess DCPS school space (estimated at around five million square feet). In the final version of the bill, however, the agency is made part of the government, and its mandate is limited to implementing the DCPS master facilities plan.

FOCUS has been pushing for an independent facilities agency for many years, on the theory that as long as DCPS controls the buildings the charters are unlikely to make headway in their quest to occupy excess space. Although we would have preferred to see the Council go along with the mayor on this issue, it may be that, given the mayoral takeover of DCPS, an independent facilities agency is not essential for improved charter school access to empty space. The school board, which was primarily responsible for keeping buildings away from the charters, will no longer exist. And both the chancellor and the head of OFM will work for the mayor (the latter will report to the deputy mayor for education), who has stated that he supports getting charters into more DCPS buildings. Even so, to the extent that DCPS Facilities and Real Estate Office personnel, historically unhelpful to charters, remain on the front line of the disposition process, we are unlikely to see dramatic improvements any time soon.

Fenty Administration Makes Three Surplus Schools Available for Charter School Bid; Some Others Taken Off the Table

The Fenty Administration has announced that it will make three surplus schools available for bid by the charter schools in the near future and will try to fast-track the Council approval process once the winning bidders are selected. The three sites are the Keene School, occupied for several years by Community Academy PCS, which thought it had made a deal with the previous administration for permanent occupancy; the Slater-Langston school (two buildings on the same lot) ; and the Reno School (also known as the Rose School), a 13,000 sq. ft. school in Northwest. The previous administration had sought to make Slater-Langston available for charter school bid but was prevented from doing so by the chair of the Council Operations Committee, who refused to let the Committee vote on whether to make it available. Another building held hostage in the Ops committee, Crummell School, has been taken off the availability list in response to community pressure against turning the building over to the charter schools.

The School Reform Act, as amended in 2004 at FOCUS’s urging, requires that charter schools be given a right of first offer to any surplus school made available for lease, purchase, transfer, or change of use. The Fenty forces have promised to turn more surplus schools over to the charter schools than did the Williams Administration, which failed to make the issue a high priority. The government has jurisdiction over around a dozen such buildings, many occupied by government agencies or homeless shelters.

Thirteen Apply to Open Charters in ‘08

According to a press release issued by the D.C. Public Charter School Board, thirteen applicant groups made the April 9 deadline for submitting applications to open charter schools in the fall of 2008. Six of the 13 went through FOCUS’s intensive charter school startup program this year.

The proposals run the gamut of grade levels and academic emphases, including a PreK – 8th Chinese immersion/International Baccalaureate school, an all-girl ES/MS, a PreS-8th school featuring single-sex classrooms, and a performing and visual arts middle school.

Each application will be reviewed and scored by a group of experts before being sent to the Board for review.

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