FOCUS DC News Wire 2/3/12

 

D.C. Charter School Under Scrutiny for Lack of Special-Ed Students [Roots, St. Coletta, and Options PCS are mentioned]

The Washington Post

By Bill Turque

February 2, 2012

 

A Northwest D.C. public charter school that has not enrolled a special-education student in three years is under scrutiny by District officials.

 

Roots Public Charter School, which serves 120 children in grades pre-K through 8, said it does not discriminate against students with physical or emotional disabilities. But the staff of the D.C. Public Charter School Board, which oversees the city’s 57 publicly funded, independently operated schools, said in a recent report it has “grave concerns” about Roots’ admissions practices. It said the board planned “an intensive compliance review” of the school.

 

Federal law requires that all public schools provide “a free and appropriate” education to students with disabilities. Charter schools, which are open to all families citywide on a first-come-first-served basis, are prohibited from inquiring about a prospective student’s special-education status. About 10 percent of the city’s 29,366 charter school students were eligible for special-education services, according to enrollment data from the 2010-11 school year. Roughly 13 percent of traditional D.C. public school students are in special education.

 

The inquiry into Roots comes as charter school treatment of special-needs students has been called into question in the District and across the country. The Southern Poverty Law Center is suing the Louisiana Department of Education on behalf of thousands of disabled New Orleans students. Last year, the Bazelon Center, a nonprofit legal advocacy group, filed a complaint with the Justice Department charging that some of the District’s charters openly discourage parents of disabled children — especially those with significant needs — from enrolling.

 

Traditional D.C. public schools serve the vast majority of “Level 4” students — those with the most profound emotional or physical disabilities. Most Level 4 charter students are concentrated at two schools, St. Coletta and Options. The Justice Department is gathering information about the complaint, which did not name Roots or other individual schools.

 

Roots, tucked into a converted garage in the Lamond-Riggs neighborhood, opened in 1999 built around Nguzo Saba, the seven principles of African heritage: unity, self-determination, collective work and responsibility, cooperative economics, purpose, creativity and faith. Its Web site says part of its mission is to “prepare students to break the chains of psychological conditioning that attempt to keep them powerless in all phases of society.” Class sizes are small, with a 1-to-10 teacher-student ratio. About 60 percent of Roots students read at proficient or advanced levels on the 2011 DC CAS. The charter board’s new performance rating system places the school in “Tier 2,” the middle of its three tiers.

 

School officials said they have served special-education students over the years, just not in the past three. Founder and Principal Bernida Thompson said they often draw parents who don’t want their children labeled as needing special services.

 

“A lot of parents who go here feel that too many black children are labeled special ed and that this is a conspiracy against black children and they don’t want that,” Thompson said. “Ours is an African-centered school. They learn about their heritage and it gives them power and strength.”

 

Roots officials also said the school’s open design, with no walls separating classrooms, makes it less attractive to parents with children who have attention-deficit issues or who require time away from regular classes to receive special services.

 

Charter board members said they are not accusing Roots of wrongdoing, but that the unusual absence of special-education students merits investigation.

 

“It does seem odd that any of our schools would have no students with disabilities enrolled,” board member Darren Woodruff said.

 

Board members also said that they could not account for why Roots was able to go for three years without a special-education enrollment before questions were asked.

 

“We weren’t on top of it,” Vice Chairman John “Skip” McKoy said. “And they [the school] weren’t on top of it.”

 

 

 

 

New Focus on D.C. Public-Charter Collaboration [E.L. Haynes, Washington Latin, D.C. Prep, and Two Rivers PCS are mentioned]

The Washington Post

By Bill Turque

February 2, 2012

 

D.C. Public Schools and the Public Charter School Board have traditionally operated in silos, each pursuing its unique mission.

 

DCPS maintains a system of neighborhood schools with seats guaranteed to anyone within prescribed boundaries. The PCSB oversees schools open to all comers citywide. Decisions about openings, closings, program offerings and facilities have, more often than not, been made in isolation.

 

Last week’s IFF report on school capacity is the latest sign that the silos are about to come down. Among its recommendations for improving education in the city’s most underserved neighborhoods is “a sustained and coordinated effort” between 123-school public system and the community of 53 publicly funded, independently operated schools. The report, which divides all public and public charter schools into quartiles based on test score trends, urges the city to invest in middle-of-the-pack, “Tier 2” schools to make them more effective. But it also sees charters playing a key role in some of the ten “neighborhood clusters” --most of them south and east of the Anacostia River--identified as most in need of better education options.

 

The report recommended that the city take steps to improve or close 41 schools in what it called Tier 4, the lowest quartile. Most of those are in DCPS. The report also recommended that any seats lost in that process should be replaced by seats in high-performing charter or regular public schools.

 

While city officials stress that no final decisions will be made without careful discussion at the community level, IFF recommends that the city “coordinate the closure of DCPS schools with PCSB. As necessary, authorize a charter school within the same building or in the immediate vicinity before school closure. With cooperation and coordination between DCPS and PCSB, PCSB can use the buildings as incentives to recruit the highest performing charter school operators into the Top Ten priority neighborhood clusters.”

 

Scott Pearson, the charter board’s new executive director, said he welcomes the prospect of collaboration.

 

“I came into this job excited about the idea of working in a more coordinated way with my partners in the public schools,” said Pearson, a former U.S. Department of Education official and co-founder of a San Francisco charter management organization. He was appointed by the board in December to manage PCSB staff, consult with board members on charter issues, and represent them in dealings with schools and city officials.

 

It will mean a change in the way the seven-member board, appointed by the mayor, does business. When it votes to authorize the opening of a school--as it has done more than 50 times in its 15-year history--it has been with little consideration to location. IFF recommended that the board issue “geographic and grade specific requests for charter school proposals” aimed at the ten neighborhood clusters. Pearson said the board will work with Deputy Mayor De’Shawn Wright and Chancellor Kaya Henderson on a more concerted approach.

 

“If we see that there are neighborhoods where there is a dearth of quality schools, we should try to focus quality charter operators to open there,” Pearson said, especially if surplus DCPS buildings are available. But he added: “I don’t think we would get to the point where we would be so prescriptive we would tell schools that they can’t open anywhere but these neighborhoods,” he said.

 

A number of cities have been fostering more collaboration between traditional school districts and charters. A new report by the University of Washington’s Center on Reinventing Public Education noted “a paradigm shift” taking hold in cities such as New York, Baltimore, Denver and Boston, “from two decades of animosity and winner-take-all competition toward strategic collaboration and partnership.” The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is supporting formal district-charter agreements with funding in 14 cities.

 

Pearson said he plans to look both locally and nationally for top charter organizations interested in locating in the neighborhoods targeted by IFF.

 

“I think one of the strengths of the charter sector in D.C. is that so many of the charter schools and so many high performing schools are home grown,” he said, referring to E.L. Haynes, Washington Latin, D.C. Prep, Two Rivers and other charter schools.

 

One thing Pearson said he does not see: charters somehow replacing traditional public schools in the neighborhoods highlighted by IFF. The city would risk eligibility for federal funding if charter schools operated with some kind of neighborhood admissions preference, he said.

 

“It’s a very dangerous, slippery slope,” Pearson said. “For every neighborhood preference that says ‘This makes a lot of sense,’ there are lot of examples where it would be a bad idea. “Once you open the door to that it becomes very difficult to decide which neighborhood preferences would be helpful.”

 

 

 

 

Celebrated Charter Model Readies for D.C. Opening [Basis and Hospitality High School PCS are mentioned]

The Northwest Current

By Beth Cope

February 1, 2012

 

Mary Riner Siddall describes herself as “the parent that teachers hate” — the sort who “goes into classrooms and sees what’s going on.” About a year ago,she went into a classroom in Arizona, having flown cross-country to visit a group of charter schools drawing national attention. What she saw there, she says, was “mind-blowing.” 

 

“I remember sitting in a seventhgrade English class, and they were studying ‘The Coming of the Ship,’ [a chapter from Khalil Gibran’s ‘The Prophet’], and looking forward to Siddhartha’s ‘Path of Enlightenment,’ and he was throwing in Plato’s cave metaphor, passages from Kurt Vonnegut … .” “I’m looking around, and the kids are eating it up,” she continued.  

 

“My jaw just dropped. This is not the sort of pabulum stuff that you see in normal schools.” But it is the sort of stuff, she  promises, that you’ll see this fall at  BASIS DC, which is scheduled to  open its downtown doors in August. Siddall is the executive head of the  developing charter school, which is  currently seeking rising fifth-  through eighth-graders and will add  a grade each year.  

 

“We’ve entered an agreement to  purchase a building in the Chinatown  area, and we are actively recruiting,”  said BASIS trustee Dave Hedgepeth.  “I can tell you that we’ve gotten a  very enthusiastic response.” That response could mean the new school has to hold a lottery to  dole out spots: As of yesterday, Siddall had received 245 applications toward the 400-student cap, with another 40 nearly complete and 11 days to go before  the Feb. 10 deadline. 

 

Charter schools are required to hold  lotteries to fill seats whenever demand exceeds supply, and BASIS will hold its own, if necessary, on Feb. 11. The school does not have an entrance exam. But Siddall also noted that the school is already seeking an increase in the cap, because she said its new home — the old Stables Building at 410-12 8th St. NW, formerly used as Hospitality High School — has room for 150 more students. Growth is nothing new for BASIS, which started in  1998 in Tucson, Ariz., and now has six campuses in that state. 

 

Founders Michael and Olga Block had moved to  Arizona from Prague so Michael could take a position in  the economics department at the University of Arizona.  Olga, who had been a dean at Charles University in Prague, was disappointed with the educational options for their children there. Over the ensuing years, their effort has drawn abundant praise. Newsweek has listed BASIS Tucson as one of the top six high schools in the national annually for the past five years. 

 

U.S. News & World Report put it in the top 10 in 2010. And The Washington Post listed it fourth on a similar ranking in 2011. About a year ago, the Blocks contacted Siddall, a longtime mover and shaker in education reform, to talk about bringing a campus to Washington, where she lives on Capitol Hill with her three children. “That was a Friday, a week before the charter application was due,” she said. By the following Monday, she had formed a bring-BASIS-to-D.C. committee, and soon after, the charter application was granted.

 

Hedgepeth, a Republican who made an unsuccessful bid in 2010 for the D.C. Council, served on the committee after learning about BASIS during his campaign.“There are a number of things that make BASIS schools special,” he said. “The first thing I would say is 

that the students are really challenged.” 

 

That’s clear in their course and testing requirements: Fifth- and sixth-graders study Latin. Eighth-graders take economics. Middle-schoolers take internationally recognized tests annually. High school students must complete a minimum of six Advanced Placement classes — and most of them do so by the end of 11th grade. Eighty eight percent of BASIS students pass the related AP tests.“We offer gifted and talented for all, because we believe all children can [handle it],” said Siddall. “BASIS is really hard. But it’s hard for everybody, because everybody’s being challenged on whatever level they’re at.” She and Hedgepeth stressed that BASIS wants kids from all backgrounds. 

 

“One of the things that was really important … was to have a school that was centrally located,” said Hedgepeth, whose 7-year-old daughters are too young for BASIS but may apply in the future. “You have so many high-performing charters now which are located very close to each other, so they’re almost cannibalizing each other. So we thought that there was great opportunity to have a centrally located [school] … that could draw kids from [both] Ward 3 and Ward 8.”For the past three months, Siddall has been holding parent interest meetings throughout the city. 

 

At one such gathering last week, held in Cleveland Park, she told parents that an incoming fifth-grader who “knows his basic math facts and can read at a fourth-grade level” will succeed at BASIS, despite its rigor. Both Siddall and Hedgepeth said the key is hiring the best teachers. “The secret to BASIS success — it’s not rocket science. … We hire teachers who are experts in their subject matter,” said Siddall. The school accepts non-certified teachers, but they must have at minimum a bachelor’s degree in their field. Then it gives them freedom to set their own teaching paths. 

 

“If you have a passion for Shakespeare and you’re being forced to teach ‘Jane Eyre,’ that passion and that love is not going to come out,” said Siddall. The school’s new economics teacher, Robert Biemsderfer, was present for last week’s meeting. He will also guide an optional tutoring program that starts next month to prepare incoming students. 

 

A third of the teachers have already been hired. Another third will come from other BASIS schools, and Siddall is working to find the rest. “Getting teachers is not a problem,” she said, noting that the school will offer competitive salaries and performance bonuses, but the real draw is the teaching freedom. BASIS’ academic emphases do require certain tradeoffs, Siddall acknowledged. 

 

She explained to parents that the facility does not have room for a full gym or playground, but will offer activities like martial arts and yoga in an exercise room. Sports, she said, will be driven by parents and students — not a major emphasis, in other words.

 

“The bottom line is, does this contribute to our mission of the school, which is to provide the best globally competitive education,” she said in an interview. “And if the answer is no, then it doesn’t happen. … BASIS will never have a football team.”BASIS DC will be the first of the charter group located outside of Arizona, and Siddall, who plans to send her children there, said Washington was chosen for a reason. 

 

“In Arizona, this is a school that’s been in the top 10 in the nation for 10 years, and it’s had a movie made about it. … But nobody knows about it, because it’s in Arizona.” Further expansion, she said, is likely.

 

 

 

 

Panel Outlines Latest Plans for Walter Reed [LAMB and Washington Yu Ying PCS are mentioned]

The Northwest Current

By Deirdre Bannon

February 1, 2012

 

While groundbreaking to redevelop the Walter Reed Army Medical Center campus is potentially years away, plans that define how the District’s parcels could be used were approved at a local meeting last week and will soon be sent to the D.C. Council for a final vote. The  Walter Reed Local Redevelopment  Authority Committee voted Jan. 25 to allocate more than half of the site’s 3.1 million square feet to residential properties.

 

About 25 percent of the space will be allocated for office use, with the remainder going to nonprofit, retail and education facilities. The committee’s recommendations will next go to Mayor Vincent Gray, who will draft legislation that will be submitted to the council.Sitting on the committee are 13 voting members — eight of them city agency directors, and five who represent the public — and eight nonvoting members, including five from the public as well as Ward 4 Council member Muriel Bowser, Council Chairman Kwame Brown and D.C. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton. 

 

As a whole, the group serves as a voice for the community, making recommendations about the project to the mayor. Because boundaries dividing the Walter Reed campus were redrawn last spring, the District will have dominion over 67.5 acres while the U.S. State Department will get the remaining 45.5.Under the proposed plan, HELP Development Corp. would build 75 units of low-income housing for homeless veterans and their families; Transitional Housing Corp. would be allocated 6,000 square feet of office space to provide services to the homeless; and So Others Might Eat would be given a 40-unit building to provide housing to homeless individuals ages 55 and older.

 

 Local schools are also poised to benefit. The Washington Yu Ying Public Charter School would be able to use 100,000 square feet of build ing space for a middle and high school, and the Latin American Montessori Bilingual School would get 30,000 square feet.Rekindling the hotly contested debate about storing and maintaining city buses at the site, the committee made it clear that buses would not be welcome but allowed for the possibility of housing trolley cars there in future. 

 

Timing of any future development hinges on two key factors: the demolition of existing buildings, and the city’s ability to attract an “anchor” retail store or large corporate or government office.“The Army still owns the land, so we can’t do anything until the land is ours,” Eric Jenkins, the District’s project director, said during the meeting. “That could be 18 to 24 months away.”“This is a positive step,” he added about the resolution. “Things can happen faster if market conditions change and an anchor is attracted to the space.” 

 

Committee members discussed possible interest from the FBI to relocate its offices to the site but noted that no serious talks had been initiated.The city is expected to put out a request for proposals to settle on a master developer who would oversee all stages of the development going forward. A consultant at the meeting estimated that 60 to 70 percent of the development is likely to be completed in the first 10 to 12 years, starting with nonprofits and schools moving into their buildings and followed by residential development and finally development of an anchor tenant’s space.

 

The cost of the development could reach $625 to $640 million, according to the consultant, with a breakdown of $500 million in vertical development, $80 to 90 million in infrastructure and $45 to 50 million for parking. 

 

A public hearing is expected once proposed legislation is submitted to council. In the meantime, a community presentation of the reuse plan is 

scheduled tomorrow from 7 to 9 p.m. at Tifereth Israel Congregation, 7701 16th St. NW