FOCUS D.C. Public Charter School Bulletin

April 15, 2008

--Nearly One in Three D.C. Students Now in Charters; Council Members Express Reservations About Further Growth, but Chancellor Demurs
--Ten Apply to Open New Charter Schools in 2009
--Another Historic School Becomes “Luxury” Condominiums; No Action So Far on Charter Space Needs
--Mayor’s Proposed Budget Preserves PCS Facilities Funding, Increases Operating Funding

Nearly One in Three D.C. Students Now in Charters; Council Members Express Reservations About Further Growth, but Chancellor Demurs

According to the official audit recently released by the State Education Office, D.C.’s 55 public charter schools this year enroll 21,866 D.C. resident students, an increase from last year of 2,204 students, or 11%. The school system, meanwhile, lost 3,190 students, or 6%. A total of 49,001 D.C. resident students now attend DCPS schools; another 2,631 students are transported to non-public schools or to public schools outside of D.C. Charter schools now enroll 31% of the students attending District public schools.

This is the eleventh consecutive year of growth for the ever-popular charter schools, many of which have extensive waiting lists:

07-08 21,866
06-07 19,662
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)

Six new charter schools are scheduled to open next fall, and a petition in pending with the D.C. Public Charter School Board to open seven former Catholic schools as the Center City PCS in the fall. The projected first-year enrollment for all of these schools together is approximately 1600.

Far from celebrating the popularity of public school choice among D.C. parents, some members of the D.C. Council want to limit those choices in the future. At a recent public hearing, at-large council member David Catania severely scolded the D.C. Public Charter School Board for having a “limitless, open-gate, catch-as-catch-can approach” to chartering that has led to the creation of “mediocre” schools that aren’t doing any better than DCPS schools. According to Catania, the constant departure of DCPS students to the charters undermines DCPS by making it impossible for the chancellor to create meaningful budgets. Although expressing the belief that the Chancellor’s reform efforts call into question the charter schools’ “future availability and popularity,” Catania nevertheless called for a moratorium on new chartering or a cap on charter school enrollment.

At the same hearing, at-large member Kwame Brown suggested that now that the chancellor was going to reform DCPS, including by adding specialized programs of the sort common at charter schools, D.C. parents have all the choice they need within DCPS. Brown, whose children attend a charter school, also expressed concern that the charter school “system” isn’t accountable to the mayor or chancellor nor “aligned with the new direction” they are taking. Brown has introduced legislation that, in violation of the School Reform Act, would require all schools, including the charters, to offer a uniform arts curriculum.

At-large member Carol Schwartz, who at previous hearings has called charter schools “elitist” because they are able to select their students (they can’t), weighed in on the subject of the “awfully high” number of charter school students (81 of 21,947, or .003%, compared to .008% for DCPS) for whom D.C. residency was not proven during the recent audit. Schwartz seemed only slightly mollified by the news, provided by a member of the DCPCSB, that under the law the charter schools receive no funding for these students.

Other council members, most notably Ward 6’s Tommy Wells, have attacked charters at other hearings for such things as their “lack of accountability” and their habit of “dumping” students after the enrollment audit, both of which are entirely false, as are the above assertions by the three at-large council members (see, for example, “D.C. KIDS COUNT Report Confirms Substantial Achievement Advantage for DCPCSB Charters” and “OSSE Analysis Debunks PCS Post-Audit Dumping Myth,” FOCUS D.C. Public Charter School Bulletin 1/28/08; also see “Charter Board Announces 2007-2008 Accountability Program” FOCUS D.C. Public Charter School Bulletin 11/7/07. Both are at http://www.focusdc.org/news/news.asp?View=Bulletins).

Thankfully, reason visited the council chamber in the form of Chancellor Michelle Rhee, who in response to council member Catania made clear her commitment to choice for public school parents: “I...believe very strongly that we have to have choice in public education. It’s one of the things I think in this city that we’ve actually done right...and I am not in favor of putting a cap or limit on the number of charter schools that we have in the city.”

Ten Apply to Open New Charter Schools in 2009

Ten applicant groups have applied to open new charter schools in the fall of 2009. Three of the ten schools would cater to special education students and one other would open as an adult ed/career training center. As to the rest, one would serve preschool through 3rd-grade students; one pre-k through eighth; and four would provide some combination of middle and high school grades. Among the latter four, one would emphasize international studies, one math and science, and the others general college preparation.

Historically, only around 30% of applicants to the D.C. Public Charter School Board have received charters.

Another Historic School Becomes “Luxury” Condominiums; No Action So Far on Charter Space Needs

Georgetown’s Wormley School, sold by the District to Georgetown University in 1998 for $1.5 million, “is being transformed into a select collection of seven luxury custom condominium residences and six townhouses” selling for $1,295,000 to $5,000,000. Wormley, which Georgetown never used and sold to a developer in 2005 for $8 million, is just the latest of a long list of former DCPS school buildings that now house high-end condominiums, fancy health clubs, and other commercial entities. Meanwhile, the many charter schools seeking permanent homes have gotten no word from the administration as to which of the 23 DCPS school buildings to be closed at the end of this school year will be made available to them as required by (perennially ignored) state law, and which will be used instead for “economic development,” to house government agencies, and for other non-school purposes. A group of key administration officials from the executive office of the mayor, the office of property management, and the office of economic development have been meeting over the last few months to develop plans for the closed schools; neither the D.C. Public Charter School Board nor the charter schools have been represented in these discussions.

The majority of D.C.’s 55 charter schools (on 80 campuses) are housed in commercial space, often lacking cafeterias, libraries, gymnasia, and playgrounds. The developer of the Wormley School is putting townhouses on the school’s former playground, where generations of D.C. children played.

Mayor’s Proposed Budget Preserves PCS Facilities Funding, Increases Operating Funding

Mayor Fenty’s proposed FY 2009 budget increases the “foundation level” of the Uniform Per Student Funding Formula (UPSFF) to $8,770 from $8,322, as had been recommended to him by the Office of the State Superintendent of Education. The foundation level is the minimum amount of funding that attaches to a public school student in the District of Columbia. The charter school per-pupil facilities allowance will remain at its FY 2008 level of $3,109 per student.

The proposed increase in the foundation level is coupled with significant increases in grade-level weightings for preschoolers (3-year olds), prekindergartners (4 year-olds), and kindergartners. Funding for preschool would increase under the mayor’s budget to $11,751 per student from $9,654 last year; funding for prekindergartners and kindergartners would increase to $11,401 from $9,654. Funding at other grade levels would increase only slightly.

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