FOCUS DC News Wire 12/18/13

 

 

The D.C. Public Charter School Board voted unanimously Monday to take the first step toward closing Options Public Charter School, citing a “pattern of fiscal mismanagement” has triggered a civil lawsuit and a criminal investigation.

 

The board voted to begin charter revocation proceedings over the objections of parents and Options’s court-appointed receiver, who argued that the school is unique in its ability to serve some of the city’s most troubled students, most of whom have emotional and learning disabilities or have been kicked out of other schools.

 

“The challenges that these students face are difficult to overstate,” receiver Josh Kern, who has been overseeing the school since October, told the board Monday. “It is a simple statement of fact that for many students at Options, the school is their educational option of last resort.”

 

Options serves nearly 400 students, many of whom would probably end up attending traditional D.C. public schools should Options close, according to the charter board’s staff.

 

The board has yet to decide when Options would actually close, but has been clear that the school will remain open at least until the end of this school year.

 

In a memo to the board, Kern proposed keeping Options open under new management and offered a plan to shrink the school to a size that he said would be more effective at providing needed therapeutic services.The city’s charter school sector should take on the challenge of serving students with significant disabilities well, he argued.

 

But charter board members and staff said that the law requires them to revoke a school’s charter in cases of fiscal mismanagement. There is no room for discretion, said Executive Director Scott Pearson.

 

Dozens of parents and students packed the charter board’s meeting room to show support for Options and to argue that students should not be punished for adults’ alleged wrongdoings.

 

Three former managers of Options allegedly created a contracting scheme to divert millions of dollars from the school to two for-profit companies they ran, according to the civil complaint pending in D.C. Superior Court.

 

The former managers have denied any wrongdoing and are each seeking to have the civil lawsuit dismissed.

 

“This all has to do with money. The kids have nothing to do with that. We all were duped, but you’re holding the children responsible,” said Amy Jones Little, president of the Options Parent Teacher Organization, who said the school changed her stepson’s life.

 

“I know if it wasn’t for Options, I would either be visiting him in jail or preparing a funeral,” she said.

 

The school’s closure won’t be finalized until the board votes again early next year. But parents and students are already wondering what they will do.

 

“I don't know where my son will go,” said Brenda Monroe, who said her 16-year-old had found success and matured at Options after getting into trouble at other schools. “We just have to pray.”

 

 

Last night the DC Public Charter School Board (PCSB) took the first step towards closing a school serving many students with special needs that has been accused of numerous failings. However, newly released documents show that the PCSB knew of widespread violations at the school in June of last year and took no apparent action.

 

DC's Attorney General has alleged that former managers of Options PCS diverted at least $3 million to their own pockets, and federal investigators are now looking into whether former leaders of the school committed Medicaid fraud. Several current and former teachers at the school have told the Washington Post and Greater Greater Education that the diversion resulted in a lack of funds that caused egregious violations of the Individuals with Disabilities Act (IDEA), the federal law that mandates special education services.

 

A 2012 report from the Office of the State Superintendent of Education (OSSE), which was released to GGE, details the extent of the violations at Options. When asked what actions the PCSB or its staff took in response to the report, PCSB's spokesperson said only that the "PCSB works with OSSE on issues of IDEA compliance."

 

Under IDEA, public school systems are required to identify students with disabilities, conduct assessments, and then determine what special education accommodations each student requires. These accommodations go into an Individual Education Plan (IEP), which carries the weight of federal law.

 

OSSE is responsible for issuing regular reports on each public school's compliance with IDEA. However, OSSE cannot punish or close a charter school. Only the PCSB can do that, even if there are widespread violations of federal special education law at the school.

 

PCSB spokesperson Theola Labbé-DeBose said that the board "uses OSSE reports and takes their feedback or warnings on issues." She said that the PCSB itself has no staff designated to monitor special education compliance at charter schools.

 

The 2012 Options PCS special education compliance report from OSSE included the following findings:

 

 

In the 2011-2012 school year, Options lost 3 claims brought by students against the school for failure to deliver special education services. However, none of the changes demanded by hearing officers, known as Hearing Officers Determinations (HODs), were implemented by OSSE even though the deadline for all of them had passed.

 

Special education oversight is broken

The PCSB never mentioned these reports last night, or that it knew of these widespread violations. So, what does the board know now that it didn't know over a year ago? Why is it only considering closing the school now?

 

The reason appears to be that mismanagement at Options became an issue for the PCSB only after Washington Post reporter Emma Brown uncovered large-scale financial mismanagement at the school in October. However, it's clear from the OSSE report that the PCSB knew or should have known about the damaging consequences of that mismanagement for the school's 320 students long before October.

 

The only logical conclusion is that there are no consequences for a school that denies federally mandated special education services to students, even on a mass scale. The only time schools pay for denial of special education services is when a student's parents are able to retain attorneys to sue the school.

 

In the case of Options, 100% of students are low-income, according to the PCSB. That means their parents are less able to afford legal services.

 

But the ability to defend your child's right to federally mandated special education services shouldn't be a privilege of the wealthy. Until violations of special education law result in consequences for schools, they will be.

 

 

J.C. Hayward’s last noon broadcast began like any other, with orchestral theme music and the top headlines of the hour.

 

It was Oct. 1, the first day of a partial government shutdown that would dominate Washington news for weeks, and there was Hayward, pivoting to lighter fare with a short take on two National Aquarium alligators heading to a new life in Louisiana. She then emerged from behind the WUSA (Channel 9) anchor’s desk to interview a cancer survivor whose story inspired a feature film.

 

These are the rhythms of local television news, the rhythms that have been at the center of Hayward’s days for most of her life.

 

Anchoring news broadcasts at WUSA for more than 40 years, she appeared in thousands of living rooms across the region, becoming a face and a name that Washingtonians recognized. She emceed countless charity fundraising galas, built a reputation for caring about the city she covered. Viewers came to trust her, and many came to feel as if they knew her.

 

And then she was gone.

 

Shortly before Hayward appeared on air that first day of October – dressed as glamorously as ever in a pale pink suit and a pair of towering slingback heels – the D.C. attorney general filed a lawsuit naming her as one of five people involved in an effort to divert millions of dollars from a city charter school for troubled teens.

 

As chairwoman of Options Public Charter School, the complaint said, Hayward allegedly signed off on lucrative contracts that funneled local and federal tax dollars to two for-profit companies founded and run by school managers. Hayward allegedly helped incorporate one of the companies named in the civil lawsuit, a company that according to several people familiar with the investigation is now under federal scrutiny.

 

WUSA officials placed Hayward on leave pending further investigation. She had promised on air that day to attend a movie screening later that night. She didn’t go, and she hasn’t appeared at a public event or on air since. It’s been 80 days.

 

Hayward’s lawyer, Jeffrey S. Jacobovitz, said she is innocent, unaware of the alleged self-dealing scheme. He said Hayward’s work for Options was just one example of the extensive volunteer work that has made Hayward a “stellar member of the D.C. community.”

 

It is unclear when Hayward might return to broadcasting, but WUSA has hinted that they’re waiting for the end of the Options legal wranglings. Mark Burdett, WUSA’s general manager described Hayward as “a leader in the community” who has been “a mentor to young people aspiring to work in TV for decades.”

 

“All of us here at WUSA are hoping for a speedy resolution to these legal proceedings,” Burdett said.

 

People close to Hayward said she is dividing her time between one condominium at Leisure World in Silver Spring and another near Fort Lauderdale. Her decades-old daily rhythm has been upended, her solid reputation unsettled. Her friends are unbowed.

 

“She’s the kindest and most giving person I have ever known,” said Tina Wright, who has known Hayward since they pledged the Delta Sigma Theta sorority at North Carolina Central University more than 50 years ago. “She wouldn’t take a dime from anyone.”

 

Hayward declined to be interviewed for this story. On Wednesday, D.C. Superior Court Judge Craig Iscoe is scheduled to consider Hayward’s request to be removed as a defendant in the civil lawsuit.

 

Hayward, now in her late 60s, made a name for herself in television news at a time when female anchors — and especially African American female anchors — were rare. Then she held on as generations of news directors and station executives came and went.

 

Her fans see her as a survivor, particularly after she announced on-air in April 2012 that she had been diagnosed with breast cancer. WUSA broadcast segments on Hayward’s treatment — an effort, she said, to raise awareness among other women.

 

Andrea Roane, who has worked alongside Hayward at WUSA for more than 30 years, said that she can’t imagine what her friend has gone through since the Options allegations surfaced. But “she’s strong, she has her faith, and she’s going to fight,” Roane said. “We’re all anxious for this to be resolved and for her to come back.”

 

Born Jacqueline Hayward, she grew up an only child in East Orange, N.J., just outside of Newark, where she learned to play the classical piano and babysat the boy across the street.

 

She went south for college at North Carolina Central University, then transferred to the District’s Howard University and attended for two years. In 1985, Howard gave her an honorary doctorate.

 

Hayward donated a $1 million life insurance policy to Howard and pledged her body to the medical school for research, according to news reports. Her lawyer said she bequeathed $250,000 to Arena Stage earlier this year and has donated more than $100,000 to local nonprofit organizations.

 

By all accounts, she never planned to go on television. But then a summer fellowship at Columbia University came along, a program meant to bring more minorities into the news business. Hayward took it.

 

After a short stint at a CBS affiliate in Atlanta, she came to Washington’s WUSA in the early 1970s, carving a niche for herself as an engaging personality focused on positive stories about regular people making a difference in the world.

 

Her friends say she was conscious of her status as a role model — especially for the city’s African American children. She served on the boards of countless nonprofit groups over the years, many of them focused on improving the lives of the city’s poorest kids. And she took an interest in individual students, like Lynda Jones-Burns, providing them with guidance and even financial assistance.

 

“When I came here, I didn’t want to be just a face on television. I wanted to put down roots here,” she said in 2012, when Mayor Vincent C. Gray (D) showed up in studio to celebrate her 40th year on the air. “I just wanted to be a part of the city from the very beginning.”

 

Her fans responded, showering her with bouquets of flowers that crowded her desk at WUSA’s headquarters on Wisconsin Avenue in Upper Northwest.

 

“There probably isn’t a male in that building who didn’t take advantage of that when they were short flowers for Valentines Day or an anniversary,” said Dave Statter, a former reporter at WUSA.

 

Doreen Gentzler, a longtime anchor at competitor WRC-TV (NBC4), said she has admired and respected Hayward’s work for decades.

 

“She was one of the first women on the anchor desk. . . . I enjoy her enthusiasm and sense of humor on the air,” Gentzler wrote in an e-mail. “There’s no question about her commitment to our community. . . . She is always out there helping to raise money and drawing attention to worthy causes.”

 

Hayward launched a blog in 2011, where she posted updates from her on-air and community work, as well as postcards from her personal life with two Yorkies, Sasha and Solomon. The blog, which also includes photographs from an Options board meeting Hayward hosted at her home two years ago, has not been updated since Oct. 1.

 

Officials at several organizations for which Hayward served as a board member, including the Boys and Girls Club of Greater Washington, said she was a valuable volunteer who was more of a figure­head — using her celebrity to draw money and attention to good causes — than a decision-maker or money manager.

 

Paul Alagero, the Boys and Girls Club’s chief development officer, said Hayward was an honorary board member who raised money for the group’s arts programs, calling her a “huge advocate for youth who were interested in learning about the arts.”

 

Options was different. As chairwoman of the school’s board, she was responsible for overseeing more than $10 million in public funds meant to educate 400 students, many of whom had disabilities.

 

Minutes from Options board meetings, which are contained in court records, show that Hayward was engaged in discussions about issues ranging from truancy and academic performance to financial and organizational management.

 

Prosecutors have accused Hayward of being an accomplice to a self-dealing contracting scheme that funneled at least $3 million of school funding to private companies controlled by Options leaders.

 

Hayward, who at the time was chairwoman of the Options board, allegedly played a role in incorporating one of the companies and served as a paid member of the company’s board, according to court records. She also signed lucrative contracts between Options and that company, court records show.

 

Hayward’s lawyer has argued that she knew nothing of the alleged scheme and that she was carrying out her board duties in good faith. If a scheme existed, he wrote in a court document, “Dr. Hayward was herself a potential victim.”

 

Long before the Options controversy, Hayward was well-known for spending generous amounts of time, money and energy helping the District’s underprivileged kids. One of them was Lynda Jones-Burns.

 

Jones-Burns grew up with two sisters in a one-bedroom apartment in Northwest Washington, raised by a single mother who worked as a hotel housekeeper for more than three decades. Jones-Burns had two life goals as a girl: She wanted to work at a job that allowed her to sit down, and she wanted to live in a house with stairs.

 

She was a 17-year-old senior at the District’s Cardozo High School when she won a $1,000 college scholarship that Hayward had promised to the member of the marching band with the highest grade-point average. Jones-Burns played clarinet.

 

To celebrate, Hayward threw a party at her sprawling house in Silver Spring. The food was catered, and the house had more than one set of stairs. “It was over-the-top amazing,” Jones-Burns says now, three decades later. “I hadn’t seen anything like that before.”

 

Jones-Burns turned 18 three days later and Hayward took her out to dinner at Benihana, the Japanese restaurant. Hayward, divorced and without children, promised to be her godmother and set about giving Jones-Burns experiences and opportunities that made her feel like Cinderella.

 

 

 

I am not sure why the Washington Post’s Jay Matthews chose to highlight the cause of teacher Caleb Rossiter. Mr. Rossiter states that he recently resigned from his position as a ninth grade algebra 1 teacher at Friendship Public Charter School’s Tech Prep because he was pressured to inflate the grades of students who were failing and because kids were returned to his classroom who he felt were dangerous. I too received Mr. Rossiter’s resignation letter. In fact, it is posted on the internet. As an experienced education writer, over the years Mr. Mathews must have received, as have I, many notes from individuals who have a particular gripe to bring against another party. However, there are two sides to every story, and as I’ve learned those that want to publicize their case outside of proper channels, and to multitudes of people not directly involved in the issue, are almost always the one who has demonstrated inappropriate judgment.

 

Besides, I have witnessed in action the fine principal of Tech Prep Doranna Tindle. She is the epitome of professionalism. I saw her excellent public speaking skills on display as she introduced her school’s nominee at the recent Friendship PCS Teacher of the Year Awards Gala. Fortunately, I was able to hear from her again at this month’s Education Innovation Summit organized by the CityBridge Foundation. 

 

In my recent article about the event I chose to focus on the presentation by E.L. Haynes during the afternoon breakout sessions featuring schools trying to win a Breakthrough Schools: DC grant. But I could have also written about the strong showing by Ms. Tindle. The Tech Prep principal described in clear thorough detail her school’s goal of providing her superior performing high school students with real life work experience by placing them in part-time jobs. The idea is to prepare these under served young adults to successfully enter the workforce; however she also has a second important benefit in mind. By reducing class size by about 30 percent while these kids are out of the building there would now be the opportunity to allow the school’s extremely talented Advance Placement teachers to provide additional assistance to those who are behind academically. It was evident to everyone in the room that Ms. Tindle’s plan would then crate a true win-win situation for her students and for public education in general in the nation’s capital.

 

The Friendship Principal’s proposal is about as far as you can get from grade inflation and a lack of concern for the welfare of her teachers. Ms. Tindle has demonstrated that she is a rising educational leader worthy of our support.

 

 

The Walton Family Foundation is pumping $6 million into a Washington-based group that promotes private school vouchers in D.C. and around the country — a donation that it hopes will double the number of students using tax dollars to pay private school tuition.

 

The foundation, created by the heirs of Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton, is giving the money to the Alliance for School Choice, a nonprofit that has been promoting and lobbying for school voucher programs in D.C., Ohio, Indiana, Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina, Florida, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and elsewhere.

 

Proponents of vouchers say they give low-income children the opportunity to escape troubled public schools. Critics say that tax dollars are better spent improving public schools.

 

The $6 million infusion will basically double the budget of the Alliance for School Choice, which reported total revenue of $6,380,488 in 2011, according to federal tax filings. The chairwoman of the organization is Betsy DeVos, a high-profile Michigan Republican leader who is married to Dick DeVos, heir to the Amway fortune.

 

The alliance shares staff, facilities and other resources with the American Federation for Children, a nonprofit also founded by Betsy DeVos and its political arm, the American Federation for Children Action Fund.

 

Together, these three organizations have lobbied state legislatures to create programs that allow low- and middle-income students to use public tax dollars to attend private schools, including parochial schools. The groups have also helped create donation tax credits, which are state tax credits given to individuals or businesses who donate to private school scholarships.

 

Vouchers were once thought to be moribund, but came roaring to life in 2010 in states where Republicans took control.

 

Kevin P. Chavous, a former D.C. Council member who is executive counsel to the American Federation for Children, said the grant will allow his group to “aggressively” market school vouchers to low-income families.

 

“I’m amazed in Southeast and Northeast D.C. at how many people, particularly low-income parents, don’t know about this option,” Chavous said. “When they find out about it, they love it. We see this around the country, whenever these choice programs come into existence. We assume that once it’s in place, we assume that people know about it, and they don’t.”

 

Currently, about 300,000 K-12 students around the country are paying for private schools with public tax dollars, according to the Alliance for School Choice. The group says it wants to double that number.

 

The alliance plans to use some of the Walton funding to help communities implement their voucher programs.

 

The D.C. voucher program is the only federally funded type in the country. The federal government has poured $152 million into the D.C. Opportunity Scholarships Program since it was created by Congress in 2004. About 5,000 students have received vouchers to attend private schools in the District.

 

The execution of the D.C. voucher program has been rocky, with inadequate safeguards over the millions of dollars in federal funds, insufficient information for parents and a student database that is riddled with incomplete information, the Government Accountability Office found in a report released last month.

 

The GAO found the trust’s policies and procedures “lack detail in several areas related to school compliance and financial accounting, which may result in little overall accountability for program funds.”

 

Those conclusions echo a Washington Post investigation published last November, which found that the 52 D.C. private schools approved to participate in the voucher program are subject to few quality controls and offer widely disparate academic experiences.

 

The Post found that hundreds of students use their voucher dollars to attend schools that are unaccredited or are in unconventional settings, such as a family-run K-12 school operating out of a storefront, a Nation of Islam school based in a converted Deanwood residence and a school built around the philosophy of a Bulgarian psychotherapist.

 

At a time public schools face increasing demands for accountability and transparency, the voucher schools operate in relative isolation. The government has no say over curriculum, quality or management.

 

Of the District students now receiving vouchers, more than half attend Catholic schools and a handful are enrolled at prestigious independent schools such as Sidwell Friends, where President Obama sends his daughters.

 

The most comprehensive study of the D.C. program, released by the U.S. Department of Education in 2010, found that voucher students were more likely to graduate than peers without vouchers, based on data collected from families. And parents reported that their children were safer attending the private schools, though the students themselves perceived no difference.

 

But the study found “no conclusive evidence” that the vouchers improved math and reading test scores for those students who left their public schools.