- Should DC limit charter growth? David Catania says no, while Bowser and Schwartz say maybe
- Judge orders D.C. charter to stop payments to company founded by school leaders [Community Academy PCS mentioned]
- News about Community Academy Public Charter School just got worse [Community Academy PCS and Options PCS mentioned]
Should DC limit charter growth? David Catania says no, while Bowser and Schwartz say maybe
Greater Greater Washington
By Natalie Wexler
October 27, 2014
Some DC residents see the continued growth of charter schools as a threat to the DC Public School system. Others believe that competition between the sectors will spur DCPS to improve. At a recent mayoral forum, it became clear that Muriel Bowser and Carol Schwartz basically fall on one side of this divide while David Catania is on the other.
The forum was sponsored by a coalition of organizations that have called for strengthening neighborhood schools and requiring coordinated planning between DCPS and the charter sector, which now serves 44% of DC students.
Charter advocates have argued that the market should determine the school landscape. If parents are voting for charters with their feet, they say, why stop them? Their view is that competition with charters will spur DCPS to improve.
Those who want to limit charter growth respond that charter expansion is undermining DCPS's ability to compete. They say charters attract the more motivated lower-income families, increasingly leaving DCPS with the students who are hardest to educate.
And they point out that in some areas, middle-class families start bailing out of DCPS after 4th grade, scrambling for spots in the subset of charter schools that appeal to a more affluent population. If charter growth is restricted, the argument goes, many of those families will remain in the system and help improve neighborhood schools.
In one recent instance, a science-themed charter school opened across the street from a similarly-focused DCPS school. In addition to competition for students, some argue that this kind of growth results in a wasteful duplication of resources.
Close questioning at the forum
At last week's mayoral forum, which can now be viewed online, moderator Natalie Hopkinson hit hard on these issues when questioning the three candidates in a series of one-on-one conversations.
With each candidate, Hopkinson described her own frustrating experience as a DC parent: her neighborhood elementary school closed twice, there was no middle school that her child could attend by right, and she spent five years on the waiting list for the charter school of her choice.
She also presented the candidates with statistics suggesting that DC now has far more schools than it needs. In 1965, she said, the District had 147,000 students and 196 schools. Today, there are 85,000 students and 213 DCPS and charter school buildings.
Is this growth sustainable, Hopkinson asked? She presented the competition between DCPS and the charter sector as a "death match" for enrollment and resources that is "getting nastier" as charters increase their share of the student population.
Both candidates agreed with Hopkinson that competition from charters was sometimes harmful to DCPS schools, and they all initially responded that they would be able to get the charter sector to coordinate with DCPS voluntarily.
But when Hopkinson pressed them on what they would do if voluntary measures failed, Bowser and Schwartz said they would seek changes in the law to limit charter growth.
"I'm willing to do whatever it takes to best leverage our public school dollar," Bowser said.
And Schwartz said that she would ask Congress to "tweak" the DC School Reform Act it passed in 1996, which brought charter schools to the District.
Catania, on the other hand, took issue with Hopkinson's premise that the two sectors were engaged in a "death match." Enrollment is growing overall, he said, and there are plenty of schools to go around.
He acknowledged that in some situations it may be unfair to locate a charter next to a DCPS school—for example, when the charter is in a newly renovated building and the DCPS school is dilapidated.
But, he added, "I don't believe in putting an artificial hold on charter schools while DCPS struggles to improve itself. I think we need to put DCPS on an equal footing, and DCPS needs to compete."
Catania said that DCPS has missed opportunities to make its schools more attractive, citing its failure to fund a promised STEM program at H.D. Woodson High School in Ward 7 and the lack of a bilingual school east of the Anacostia River.
The limits of a competitive model
Competition with charters has in fact spurred improvements in DCPS, and perhaps Catania is right that DCPS will only continue to improve with competition. But many parents are likely to opt for a charter with an established reputation rather than take a chance on a DCPS school with a troubled history, no matter how many shiny new classrooms and programs it gets.
The candidates' different responses on charter growth reflect a fundamental divergence in DC's education debate over what should be prioritized: individual choice, or what some perceive to be the common good.
Charter schools have provided many students with a better education than they would have gotten otherwise. And charter advocates have a good point when they say it's unfair to limit parents' ability to choose the best possible public education for their children.
But if the charter sector gets much larger, the challenges DCPS faces may become truly crippling. And that's a problem not just for DCPS, but for the students who remain there and the communities they live in.
Some argue that people are responsible for their own choices, including the choice of a worse school. But a choice-based school system can end up penalizing children whose parents or guardians make ill-advised choices or no choice at all. It doesn't seem fair to hold those children responsible for choices they can't make for themselves.
Who can change the law?
Even if we decide we want to limit charter growth, it's not clear how we would do that. Would Congress need to change the law, as Schwartz assumed? Or could the DC Council amend the law itself?
That question could be resolved by a lawsuit currently pending before a DC federal court, another topic raised at the forum. Charter advocates have sued the District over unequal funding, arguing that the Council has no authority to deviate from the Act's central provisions.
If the charter advocates prevail in court, those who want to limit charter growth will be at the mercy of a Congress that may well be unresponsive.
Judge orders D.C. charter to stop payments to company founded by school leaders [Community Academy PCS mentioned]
The Washington Post
By Michael Alison Chandler
October 28, 2014
A Superior Court judge ordered a D.C. public charter school to stop payments to a private management company set up by the school’s founder, who has been charged with diverting millions of dollars in taxpayer money for his personal gain.
Judge Neal E. Kravitz said he was issuing the preliminary injunction because he believes that the District has a strong likelihood of demonstrating in a trial that the school — Dorothy I. Height Community Academy Public Charter School — overpaid Kent Amos by about $1 million last year alone, in violation of District law and the school’s articles of incorporation.
“I view this as an egregious case,” Kravitz said. “This is not an arrangement that should be allowed to continue any longer than absolutely necessary.”
Amos’s attorney, Frederick D. Cooke Jr., said that he was disappointed in the ruling and plans to request a stay.
“I believe this is harmful to the school community writ large,” he told the judge.
Amos founded the first Community Academy school as a nonprofit in 1998. He oversees schools that serve 1,600 students on three preschool or elementary campuses and one online-only school.
In 2002, Amos and two colleagues founded a for-profit management company, Community Action Partners and Charter School Management, and eventually got approval from the schools’ board of trustees to transfer some executive positions and functions to that private entity.
D.C. charter schools are allowed to contract with for-profit management companies, including those that employ school leaders. But Kravitz said Monday that the law needs to be looked at in concert with another District law that says operating revenue at nonprofit organizations must be used for public benefit and not to enrich private individuals.
Federal tax returns show that Amos received about $1.15 million in income in 2012 from the private management company. In 2013, he received $1.38 million, including $103,000 that was paid to his wife. His stepson also earned about $167,000 that year.
In those years, the judge said, management fees rose while costs declined, with fewer people on staff and many of the duties being performed by school employees.
Kravitz estimated, based on expert testimony, that Amos received three to five times the accepted salary for chief executives in comparable nonprofit educational institutions during the past two years and “greatly inflated” sums in the past.
“It is not difficult to imagine” the benefits that the school’s students could have derived from the money, Kravitz said.
Kravitz said he intends for the injunction to be minimally disruptive for teachers and students. The school will be allowed to continue payments to the management company through November, with court approval, to give the board time to reorganize school management.
A civil case seeking to recover taxpayer funds is pending against the management company, Amos and the charter school.
News about Community Academy Public Charter School just got worse [Community Academy PCS and Options PCS mentioned]
The Examiner
By Mark Lerner
October 28, 2014
Today the Washington Post's Michael Alison Chandler reveals that a Superior Court judge is forbidding the Dorothy I. Height Community Academy PCS from making any further payments after November to the charter management organization run by Kent Amos. Here's why according to the reporter:
"Federal tax returns show that Amos received about $1.15 million in income in 2012 from the private management company. In 2013, he received $1.38 million, including $103,000 that was paid to his wife. His stepson also earned about $167,000 that year."
In a previous Post article it was explained that much of the work supposedly performed by Mr. Amos' Community Action Partners and Charter School Management firm was actually completed by employees of the charter. This is disgusting. Coming on the heels of the severe financial irregularities at Options PCS it appears that the DC Public Charter School Board must take immediate steps to prevent these types of activities from taking place in the future.
These interventions must go far beyond contract reviews and obtaining board meeting minutes which were part of an action plan already implemented by the PCSB. The organization should adopt rules along the lines of state legislation proposed in Michigan. These include (from a recent article appearing in the Detroit Free Press):
"Management companies would be required to provide their schools with audited financial statements that disclose how they spend money they receive from their schools. The schools would be required to post this information on their websites."
"Management companies would be required to provide their schools with a list of company employees, officers and board members whose compensation packages exceed $100,000. They would also be required to describe all fringe benefits, including the cost of the benefits, for these employees and officers. Schools would be required to post the information on their websites."
The public has always been nervous about public money going to charter schools that are run by unelected board of directors and authorizer. The news about Community Academy and Options play directly into these concerns. It is time to put emergency policies in place to restore the faith in a movement now educating 38,000 children.