- Brown Says Rip by Gray Aide Over Budget is Personal
- Gandhi Warns D.C. Leaders on Overspending
- Four Schools Honored by Fight for Children [Capital City, Cesar Chavez, and DC Prep PCS are mentioned]
- D.C. Outpaces Nation in Pre-K Quality, Funding
- Barras: Is Reading Fundamental in D.C.?
- Who Will Rescue the D.C. Voucher Program This Time?
The Washington Examiner
By Alan Blinder
April 10, 2012
Hours after D.C. Mayor Vincent Gray sought to stem unease on the D.C. Council about his proposal to spend nearly $80 million in surprise revenue, the months-long back-and-forth between the mayor and legislators grew sharply personal on Tuesday.
Since January, Gray has sent lawmakers two supplemental budget requests -- one valued at $44.7 million and the other worth $34.8 million. Although Gray pushed for quick action, Council Chairman Kwame Brown refused to schedule a vote until April 17, saying lawmakers needed time to have their questions answered.
"We're no longer just going to accept what people tell us and just go along with it," Brown told The Washington Examiner on Tuesday. "People are going to do their due diligence, and they're going to take time to make sure things are the way they're supposed to be."SClBLater, Megan Vahey, Brown's chief of staff, said the chairman hadn't scheduled a vote in March because the proposal wouldn't have passed.
But a senior Gray administration official, who demanded anonymity to discuss the legislative process candidly, insisted Brown was the sole reason for the delay.
"It's clear that the chairman is a do-nothing chairman," the official said. "It's not even the individual members of the council. It's the chairman."
Brown hammered Gray and his aides for the comment.
"It had to be a do-nothing staffer for the mayor who said that," Brown said. "It's personally offensive that [the mayor] would allow his senior staff to attack me for doing the people's work."
The war of words began soon after Gray met with legislators for nearly two hours in a bid to answer their questions about his proposals, which he issued after the District's chief financial officer twice predicted the city would take in more money than originally forecasted.SClB"We've done our best to work with them and to provide as many answers as possible," mayoral spokesman Pedro Ribeiro said. "We've done everything we've possibly could to work with them."SClBVahey said most of the questions legislators posed remained unanswered.
Gray's proposals include $25 million for D.C. Public Schools, more than $9 million for charter schools and nearly $20 million to pay city employees for the four furlough days they were forced to take last year.
The Washington Examiner
By Alan Blinder
April 9, 2012
The District’s chief financial officer warned D.C. leaders that the city is at risk of violating its spending laws if legislators and Mayor Vincent Gray don’t act quickly to address about $18 million in potential overspending, a letter obtained by The Washington Examiner shows.
In the missive dated April 2, District CFO Natwar Gandhi told Gray and Council Chairman Kwame Brown that while the city will ultimately have to respond to about $83 million in spending pressures, “several must be addressed immediately to avoid violating the District’s Anti-Deficiency law.”
The law was put into place a decade ago to help D.C. avoid overspending in the aftermath of its time in federal receivership.
In his letter last week, though, Gandhi said that potential overspending of up to $9 million for the city’s unemployment compensation program and $9.4 million for charter schools has placed the District in immediate jeopardy of breaking that law.
Gray’s office says the surefire solution is for the D.C. Council to pass the mayor’s broader supplemental budget requests, which add up to about $80 million. Indeed, Gray’s proposals would address both of the immediate needs Gandhi cited, but they’d also pay for another $61 million of the mayor’s ideas. Those proposals include paying D.C. employees for four furlough days they took in 2011 (that idea would cost about $19 million) and a $25 million boost for D.C. Public Schools.
Whether legislators will agree, though, is an open question and has been for months.
In January, most councilmembers told Gray in a letter they weren’t interested in quickly spending the extra money the city had collected, and Brown refused to schedule a vote on the matter.
Last month, though, Brown announced the council would weigh Gray’s proposals at its April 17 meeting.
In a bid to shore up support ahead of the vote, Gray is scheduled to brief lawmakers at 3 p.m. on Tuesday about his plans.
For his part, Gandhi is officially remaining mute on what he thinks city leaders should do. “Addressing the remaining fiscal year 2012 spending pressures as soon as possible… would be the most fiscally prudent approach to maintaining a balanced budget,” Gandhi wrote. “This would ensure the affected agencies do not violate the District’s Anti-Deficiency law.”
Four Schools Honored by Fight for Children [Capital City, Cesar Chavez, and DC Prep PCS are mentioned]
The Washington Post
By Bill Turque
April 10, 2012
Four D.C. schools were honored Tuesday for modeling high-quality programs and best practices that can be shared with a wider population of teachers and students. Capital City Public Charter Upper School, Cesar Chavez PCS (Bruce Prep campus), D.C. Prep PCS (Edgewood elementary campus) and Powell Elementary were named winners of the 2012 Quality Schools Initiative by Fight for Children, the non-profit founded by the late Joseph E. Robert, Jr.
Two of the winning schools are located in the Columbia Heights neighborhood of Ward 1. Capital City, which will graduate its first class of seniors in 2012, was cited for its commitment to educating the whole child with a strong academic and social curriculum “focused on teaching students to care about themselves, each other and their environment.” Cesar Chavez stresses literacy and mathematics in what Fight for Children called a disciplined school environment.
D.C. Prep (Ward 5) was praised for its early childhood programs and mission of “bridging the educational divide in Washington, D.C. by increasing the number of students from urban communities with academic preparation and personal character to succeed in competitive high schools and colleges.”
Powell Elementary, in the Petworth community of Ward 4 was cited for its bilingual early learning and Tools of the Mind, an early childhood program with and emphasis on self-regulation and interpersonal skills.
The four schools, which will share $175,000 in award money, will be celebrated Friday evening at a gala at the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center.
The Washington Examiner
By Lisa Gartner
April 10, 2012
The District ranked among the best in the nation for providing access to high-quality preschool seats last year, as the city spent more cash per student than any state but New Jersey, according to a report released Monday.
Maryland managed to stand its ground during the recession, but Virginia slashed funding and limited access to prekindergarten in "what ought to be a wake-up call to parents," Steve Barnett, director of the National Institute for Early Education Research at Rutgers University, told The Washington Examiner.
According to "The State of Preschool 2011: State Preschool Yearbook," the District spent $11,665 per prekindergarten student last school year -- just $4 behind New Jersey. In 2010, the District served 98 percent of the city's 4-year-olds and was praised by the institute for providing rigorous classroom experiences.
Maryland, meanwhile, spent about $4,414 per student and enrolled just 37 percent of 4-year-olds, marking a small, steady increase from years past. Virginia spent $3,808 per student in 2011, the smallest amount in the report's 10-year history and an 11.5 percent decrease from 2010. The commonwealth had the resources to enroll just 16 percent of 4-year-olds.
"Virginia has lost traction and needs to change course. If I'm a parent of a preschooler, I'm going to look to live in D.C.," Barnett said. "It's not quite 'man bites dog,' but it's a different story where D.C. truly is the leader."
D.C. Superintendent Hosanna Mahaley said the report shows early-childhood education is "on the upswing" across the city.
"District parents are confident in the improvements that have been made," Mahaley said.
Nationwide, state spending on preschool hasn't kept pace as enrollment has more than doubled over the past 10 years. In 2010-2011, 26 of the 39 states with public prekindergarten programs cut funding, for an overall drop of $60 million, in the second consecutive year of decline.
Lisa Guernsey, director of the New America Foundation's Early Education Initiative, said the recession hit preschool programs harder than K-12 because preschool is less established as state policy.
"Pre-K wasn't built into a stable funding stream in many states," Guernsey said. "But if you have only a fraction of children attending a good preschool, there will be many children in kindergarten classes who have not been exposed to reading time, social skills, or who can listen to instruction, and that can have cascading effects through the years."
The Washington Examiner
By Jonetta Rose Barras
April 10, 2012
In a city where the majority of D.C. Public Schools' fourth- and eighth-graders test below basic in reading on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, why have Mayor Vincent C. Gray and Chancellor Kaya Henderson proposed cutting school librarians, which is tantamount to shutting down libraries?
The plan would eliminate librarians in schools with student populations of 299 or less. Larger schools would retain their librarians. But they would be included under "flexible funding," allowing principals to make the final decision about whether to keep or cut.
"When DCPS cuts school libraries, it does an injustice to our city's public school students who need to advance their literacy if they are to succeed in today's world," Peter McPherson recently told the D.C. Council.
He is a member of the Capitol Hill Public School Parents Organization, which has demanded the cuts be reversed. For three years, beginning in 2005, CHPSPO worked with private organizations -- the Capitol Hill Community Foundation and the Washington Architectural Foundation -- to raise $2.4 million and renovate libraries in eight elementary and middle schools on Capitol Hill.
The cuts proposed by Gray and Henderson would undermine their work and contributions made by Target and Capital One for restoration of other school libraries.
"We're clear on the role literacy plays," Chancellor Henderson told me earlier this week. "I'm more urgently focused than anybody in this town and can't sleep over reading scores."
With a proposed fiscal 2013 budget of $812 million, why can't DCPS afford librarians at all its facilities? The administration also has proposed cutting special education coordinators. For this current fiscal year, DCPS has a projected deficit of $25 million.
What's happening with the money?
That's a question Henderson and her team will be asked when they appear next week before D.C. Council's Committee of the Whole, headed by Council Chairman Kwame R. Brown.
She told me rising costs are outpacing funding. The system also has to spread those limited resources across too many facilities. "We have got to right-size this school district." Translation: Some schools must be closed.
I understand those problems. I am even sympathetic. But school libraries and librarians are essential and critical.
"We have invested in full-time librarians for the last three or four years and we haven't seen the kind of payoff we'd like" with reading test scores, Henderson countered, adding she is not disparaging librarians. "We have pulled away from programs where we haven't received a return on our investment."
"I have to ask is there another way to get the results I want with the resources I have," continued Henderson, adding a newly introduced grants program -- Proving What's Possible -- would allow schools to implement best practices such as extending the instructional day and creating reading intervention projects. All schools can apply. The largest grants will be for the lowest-performing schools.
That's all good. But, in my book, libraries and librarians are irreplaceable. They inspire and nurture a love of reading. With that, all doors open.
The Washington Post
By Editorial Board
April 10, 2012
When President Obama reached a deal with Congress last year to reauthorize for five years the District’s program of federally funded school vouchers, families in the program and those who hoped to participate breathed easier. Tired of the political gamesmanship that annually threatened a program offering low-income children the chance of a better education, they welcomed the certainty. They may have celebrated too soon.
Mr. Obama’s fiscal 2013 budget requests zero funding for the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program, which allows children from low-income D.C. families to attend private schools with federal vouchers of up to $12,000 annually. It has proved popular and successful. More than 10,000 families have sought to participate since the program’s start in 2004, and polls show a majority of D.C. residents favor it. But teachers unions oppose it and, with the help of obliging Democrats, have tried — unrelentingly — to kill the program.
The administration argues that there is sufficient money to take care of currently enrolled students through the 2013-2014 school year and to allow new awards through attrition. But, as House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.) pointed out in a March 22 letter to the president, such tortured logic runs counter to the law. The Scholarships for Opportunity and Results (SOAR) Act, part of the larger budget deal reached last year to avert a government shutdown, authorized annual appropriations of $60 million for five successive years, to be allocated equally among the voucher program, the D.C. public school system and public charter schools. This three-sector approach recognizes the importance of parents having choices for their children as public school reform continues.
The administration’s action — which includes a bizarre provision prohibiting students who are unsuccessful in the lottery that allocates spaces in the program from reapplying the following year — would effectively place an arbitrary limit on the number of children able to enjoy the program’s benefits. Why cap the number at the 1,615 students currently enrolled when the program has accommodated larger numbers (1,903 in 2007-08, for example)? Does the administration really want to send the message — much like the one delivered in 2009 when Democrats tried to kill the vouchers — that there is not much of a future for the program?
Surely, it shouldn’t be among the president’s priorities to single out for attack a tiny federal program that not only works — in the judgment of federal evaluators — but also enjoys bipartisan support. If it is, we trust that Mr. Boehner would step in, as he did last year, to save a program that D.C.’s poorest families value for their children.
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