- DCPS Paying $2.2 Million for Buildings it Doesn’t Use [Septima Clark, Excel Academy, Maya Angelou, and National Collegiate PCS are mentioned]
- Thumbs-Up for Kwame Brown's Education Act
DCPS Paying $2.2 Million for Buildings it Doesn’t Use [Septima Clark, Excel Academy, Maya Angelou, and National Collegiate PCS are mentioned]
The Washington Post
By Bill Turque
March 22, 2012
Like Forest Gump’s box of chocolates, you never know quite what you’re going to get when you open up the DCPS operating budget. Pots of money materialize and disappear, names of spending categories change from year to year, making it difficult to follow which dollars go where.
This year, it turns out that the school system has paid $2.2 million to cover fixed costs (rent, utilities) for facilities it no longer operates. The payments, in the form of charges by the Department of Real Estate Services, which manages surplus city buildings, were disclosed as part of a routine “reprogramming”—budget-ese for shuffling around funds to cover unanticipated costs or changes in spending—that recently passed the D.C. Council.
See a partial list of them after the jump.
●$313,188 for the former Rabaut Junior High, closed by DCPS in 1993, which has housed several charter schools, including the Kamit Institute for Magnificent Achievers, which went dark in 2010.
●$314,937 for the former Birney Elementary in Ward 8, closed by DCPS in 2009, and now home to two charter schools, Septima Clark and Excel Academy.
●$141,817 for the former Evans Middle School In Ward 7, now Maya Angelou PCS.
●$129,318 for the former Harrison Elementary in Ward 1, closed in 1999 and last used by Children’s Studio PCS, which folded in 2010.
●$111,748 for the former Draper Elementary in Ward 8, closed by DCPS in 2009, now National Collegiate PCS.
●$42,018 for the former McGogney Elementary in Ward 8, closed by DCPS in 2006.
Some of the charges were even more peculiar because they had nothing whatsoever to do with the schools. These include:
●$89,739 for the MPD Second District headquarters on Idaho Ave. NW.
●$63,710 for the Sursum Corda library kiosk on New York Ave.
It’s not clear how long DCPS has been signing checks for these buildings. Spokeswoman Melissa Salmanowitz said in an e-mail that the school system was removing them from the books for FY 2013.
“We’ve been working with OCFO Office of the Chief Financial Officer] to ensure that the properties for which we are assessed are actually operated by DCPS. Many inaccurate assessments have already been removed to resolve outstanding issues,” she said.
The Washington Informer
By Dorothy Rowley
March 22, 2012
The D.C. Council has given a thumbs-up to an education initiative that paves the way for historic reform in the District of Columbia Public Schools (DCPS) system.
The "Raising the Expectations for Education Outcomes Act of 2012," which was crafted and introduced by Council Chairman Kwame Brown (D), establishes incentives for attracting top-notch teachers and preparing students to continue their education beyond high school.
"The idea is that we have to stop lying to our students and telling them that a high school diploma is a celebration of the beginning," said Brown. "In order to be a police officer you have to have at least 60 credit hours from a college. If applicants go for a job in the federal government, they will ask for an associate degree or some formal training." Brown, 41, said President Barack Obama has stated several times that the United States needs to be the most educated country in the world.
"But we can't be the most educated country in the world if our young folks aren't going to any post secondary education institutions, because they think that a high school diploma is going to be their way out."
Over the past several months, Brown has focused much of his attention on middle school students to ensure they are ready to enter high school. In doing so, he scoured the country and found early warning systems for identifying students at risk for dropping out. In some instances he discovered that several states had enacted the systems into law. Brown said a similar measure in his bill will also help determine where the District's fourth- through ninth-grade students are lacking in their studies.
"There's no use building brand new high schools when the kids [poised] to enter them aren't even ready for enrollment," Brown said. "It's great that the schools are new, but if kids going to them are still reading at the 6th-grade level, that's a problem." Brown said however, that during his interactions with parents, civic leaders and other community stakeholders, the recurrent issue surrounded DCPS' emphasis on hiring and retaining quality teachers.
"I've had listening sessions in almost every single living room in the city in every ward and what I kept hearing is how do we get highly-effective teachers in our low-performing schools," said Brown. "Clearly, we all know that you can't have brand new teachers in the worst performing schools and expect them to turn [them] around in 12 to 14 months." Brown's legislation – for which the D.C Council delivered a majority vote on March 20 – also had the support of Mayor Vincent C. Gray as well as DCPS, the Washington Teachers' Union (WTU) the Office of the State Superintendent of Education, and the U.S. Secretary of Education.
Brown said its passage gives the District distinction as the first jurisdiction in the country to require students to take the SAT or ACT and to apply to at least one post secondary education institution prior to graduation. In addition to allowing conversion of five existing facilities into "community schools," the bill includes a three-year pilot program that would provide $10,000 cash incentives to highly-effective teachers who transfer to low-performing schools. DCPS Chancellor Kaya Henderson was not immediately available for comment, but expressed in an earlier interview broad support of measures to entice the best teachers, many of whom have traditionally been concentrated in affluent areas of the District.
WTU President Nathan Saunders testified that he wanted to see teachers in the incentives program exempt from the controversial IMPACT evaluation.
"The Washington Teachers' Union has always said that increasing compensation and waiving IMPACT evaluations will help to improve the retention, satisfaction and performance of our teachers in high-needs schools," Saunders said during a January hearing in support of the bill. He said that for years, teachers in high-needs wards such as 7 and 8, have assumed the responsibilities of educating, parenting, and mentoring students.
"This difficult task, often results in teachers in high-needs wards receiving less effective ratings than their peers," Saunders said. "Unfortunately, the difficulties of teaching and being evaluated on the academic accomplishments of hungry, tired and distressed students prompts many teachers, including those rated highly effective, to teach in affluent schools." Brown said he looked forward to enacting the bill after Gray signs off on it.
"An excellent education and effective schools are the building blocks of a better quality of life," said Brown. "This package will help District students succeed by preventing [them]from falling through the cracks and ensuring that they receive the appropriate level of attention, instruction, engagement, and support needed to succeed in their classes so that they graduate from high school prepared for college, the modern workforce, and life."
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