December
7, 2000
December
7, 2000
Testimony of Malcom E. Peabody, Chairman, Dc Public Charter School Coalition
District of Columbia Council Committee on Education, Libraries, and Recreation
Public Hearing
Long-Range Facilities MAster Plan
Good afternoon Mr. Chavous, members of the Committee, and staff. My name is Malcolm Peabody, and I'm chairman of the DC Public Charter School Coalition, which represents all of the District's Public Charter Schools. Thank you for giving me this opportunity to testify.
I'm here to provide you with the public charter school perspective on the Long-Range Facilities Master Plan. As you know, public charter schools are public schools in every way. They are publicly funded, free, and open to all DC public school children without screening of any kind. The public charter schools now serve 13% of the District's public school children.
Public Charter School Students Need More and Better School Buildings
Because public charter schools serve the same children as does DCPS, it is vitally important that we as a city ensure that these schools are able to locate in suitable buildings. Unfortunately, many of the 33 public charter schools have been forced to set up shop in less than adequate facilities, such as church basements and inappropriately-designed commercial buildings. Playground space is in short supply.
This problem has reached crisis proportions. Twenty-two of the 33 schools are in temporary space and will need to move within the next three years. Startup schools, such as the four that will open their doors next fall, find it almost impossible to find adequate space.
There are three reasons for this problem. First, in spite of having a legal preference to acquire DCPS surplus school buildings, the public charter schools have managed to locate in only 10 of the approximately 60 buildings that were declared surplus several years ago. The second reason is the unavailability of commercial space because of the District's intensely competitive real estate market. The third reason is the popularity of the public charter schools among District parents, which has resulted in explosive growth – from three schools to 33 in just four years. There is no indication that this trend will change any time soon.
Nor is there any sign that the real estate market is going to get less competitive in the foreseeable future. This means that the solution to the public charter school facilities problem must come in the public sector. Fortunately, there is a significant amount of surplus public real estate available.
The DC government controls upwards of 300 such properties, many of which may be suitable for public charter school use. A concerted effort must be made to make these properties available to the public charter schools.
In addition, the Mayor controls 21 surplus school buildings, several of which would be ideal for public charter school use. The Mayor should do the right thing for our school children and make these buildings available to the public charter schools rather than sell them to high tech companies or use them for government office space (DC government agencies currently occupy ten of these 21 buildings, paying no rent).
To the Extent Possible, Underutilized DCPS School Buildings Should be Used to House Public Charter School Children
For the longer term, the Long Range Facilities Master Planning Process provides us with a golden opportunity to use our inventory of active school buildings for the maximum benefit of all our school children.
For this to happen, two critical things must take place. First, the needs of public charter school students for school space must be taken into account. Thanks to Superintendent Vance and Mr. Jayyousi, this appears to be happening, at least to some degree.
Second, we must have an accurate count of the number of public school students who are in our traditional and public charter schools right now. All planning for the future is based on extrapolations from these numbers.
Regrettably, we cannot be even reasonably certain that we have those numbers. According to the Kids Count 2000 Factbook, the US Census Bureau estimates that only 67,990 children age 5 through 17 live in the District of Columbia. Yet this fall, DCPS's reported enrollment exceeds that number, and public charter schools enroll nearly 10,000 more. Several thousand other DC children attend private schools.
It is possible that the Census Department estimates are low. It is also possible that we are overcounting our public school children. Because independent auditors do a physical count of each public charter school student, we know that public charter school enrollment is accurate. However, no physical count of DCPS students is done. Instead, statistical sampling methods are used. I am not an expert on this subject, but I am informed that the sampling methods used may be suspect, given that very few students from each individual DCPS school can be included in the sample – an average of only 28. Also, sampling does not capture students who move from DCPS to public charter schools or otherwise leave the system but are not removed from DCPS records. This fact alone presents the possibility of significant overcounting.
Until we actually count each and every pubic school student, we can't be sure how many there are. If we aren't sure, our long-range facilities planning is suspect. If there are many fewer students than we think, this would mean we'd be wasting tens of millions of dollars renovating or constructing school buildings that are not needed. It also likely would mean the failure to free up seriously underutilized school buildings for use by our public charter school students. This would be an opportunity wasted and bring harm to thousands of the District's public school children.
We urge the Council to do everything in its power to protect the interests of public school children whose parents have chosen to send them to public charter schools and will do so in the future. Specifically, we would ask the Council to:
surplus school buildings under his control
This concludes my remarks. We are very grateful for the continued support of the Education Committee and the Council.