FOCUS D.C. Public Charter School Bulletin

March 19, 2009

--Charter Enrollment Spikes 17%; Enrollment Hits 36% of Total
--Chancellor Tells Council She Plays Role in Charter Disposition Decisions

Charter Enrollment Spikes 17%; Enrollment Hits 36% of Total

According to the just-released annual public school enrollment audit, the public charter schools now enroll 25,729 D.C. students --- 36% of the total. This represents a 17% jump from last year. Meanwhile, DCPS lost another 8% of its students and now enrolls 45,190, down from just under 80,000 when the first charters opened in 1996.

Another 2,403 D.C. public school students are enrolled in nonpublic schools and 380 more attend public schools in surrounding counties.

The audit reveals that 83% of public charter school students are African American, 12% are Hispanic, and only 2% are white. DCPS students also are heavily black and Hispanic; 7% are white.

This is the twelfth consecutive year of growth for the District's public charter schools, some of which have extensive waiting lists:

08-09 25,729
07-08 21,866
06-07 19,733
05-06 17,473
04-05 15,497
03-04 13,715
02-03 11,452
01-02 10,679
00-01 9,881
99-00 6,980
98-99 3,594
97-98 300
96-97 160 (approximate)

Chancellor Tells Council She Plays Role in Charter Disposition Decisions

Responding to a question by D.C. Council member Michael Brown, DCPS chancellor Michelle Rhee last Wednesday said that the mayor consults with her when the administration is contemplating putting a public charter school in a closed school building. According to Rhee, she advises the mayor as to the "quality" of the public charter school under consideration and also as to the impact the move would have on nearby DCPS schools.

Rhee made clear that she has no say in the disposition of other closed school buildings under the jurisdiction of the mayor.

Rhee emptied out 23 school buildings last spring, transferring 17 of them to the mayor's jurisdiction and keeping the remainder for "swing space." The mayor skimmed six of the 17 buildings off the top for use as government office space, offering the remaining 11 to the charter schools. Charters submitted 32 offers on 10 of these but the government agreed to enter into negotiations on only four. The remaining seven are now on offer to commercial developers.

Under D.C.'s charter school law, the mayor must offer all surplus buildings to the public charter schools first, regardless of the opinions of the chancellor about the potential impact of doing so on the school system. FOCUS believes that the government did not comply with this requirement and also that it failed to review public charter school offers in good faith.

Even with the recent school closures, DCPS, with 45,000 students, still occupies more than 120 school buildings, many of them half empty. Charters, with 26,000 students, occupy only 16; 70% of public charter school students are housed in often-inadequate commercial space.

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