- Charters are lifting the D.C. public school system
- Examiner Local Editorial: Editorial: D.C.'s shrinking school system doesn't need extra cash
- D.C. government as landlord collects healthy sums for ATMs, former schools [Meridian PCS, Eagle Academy PCS, and Capital City PCS mention]
- Activists file lawsuit to stop D.C. school closures
The Washington Post
By Robert Cane
March 30, 2013
Courtland Milloy [“D.C. schools chief’s lofty goals face some tough tests,” Metro, March 20] wrongly claimed that D.C. public charter schools siphon resources and talented students from the public system. D.C.’s charter schools, which educate 43 percent of students enrolled in D.C. public schools, have a higher share of students who receive federal school lunch subsidies than does the D.C. Public Schools system. Economically disadvantaged charter students score on average 14 percentage points higher on D.C.’s standardized reading and math tests than their DCPS peers.
Far from taking resources from the traditional school system, the city annually spends $1,500 to $2,500 less in school operating funds on D.C. charter students than on DCPS students. The city provides an annual school facilities allowance of $3,000 per charter student but spends thousands more on facilities for each DCPS student.
Despite this, D.C. charter schools have an on-time high school graduation rate 21 percentage points higher than that of regular DCPS high schools, ensuring that a higher share of charter students are accepted to college. Charters’ success, especially with the city’s most vulnerable children, spurred the city to reform DCPS, helping to raise the public education bar for every child.
Robert Cane, Washington
The writer is executive director of Friends of Choice in Urban Schools.
The Washington Examiner
March 31, 2013
What's wrong with this picture? As part of his $1.8 billion budget for the next fiscal year, D.C. Mayor Vincent Gray proposes spending $442 million to renovate and build new public schools. At the same moment, DC Public Schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson is closing more than 10 percent of the existing schools due to underenrollment as parents bail out of the traditional system in favor of public charter schools. The folly of spending hundreds of millions of dollars on new construction for a public school system that is being forced to downsize is self-evident. But it is compounded by the fact that the District still has no plan for disposing of the 10 schools that are currently vacant or the 15 additional ones that will be vacant soon.
The District has already spent more than $2.5 billion since 2007 to modernize DCPS schools. Charters now account for nearly all of the growth in District enrollment. They educate 43 percent of all D.C. public school students, and enrollment is up 10 percent this year compared to less than 1 percent enrollment growth for DCPS. Over the next few years, charter schools' enrollment percentage is expected to increase. They are on track to beat DCPS very soon if current trends continue.
However, charter schools ?-- which by law are supposed to be given first crack at all surplus school properties, but aren't -- still have to shoehorn their students into less-than-optimal facilities. If Gray wants to spend tax dollars on school construction, he should target the public charter schools, not DCPS. Gray's budget proposal would also spend $70 million over the next six years to renovate the University of the District of Columbia, which has also been forced to downsize.
D.C. Council member David Catania, chairman of the Education Committee, has questioned the logic of physically expanding a downsizing school system. But he needs to dig deeper and ask: What happened to the $2.5 billion that has already been plowed into the DCPS capital construction budget over the past six years? If that money had been spent wisely and well, there should be little need for new construction to accommodate DCPS' remaining 45,557 students -- down more than 100,000 since enrollment peaked back in the 1960s.
Gray should document exactly how that $2.5 billion was spent and clearly explain DCPS' future needs before the council approves hundreds of millions of tax dollars for new construction in a shrinking system.
D.C. government as landlord collects healthy sums for ATMs, former schools [Meridian PCS, Eagle Academy PCS, and Capital City PCS mention]
The Washington Business Journal
By Michael Neibauer
March 29, 2013
Ever wonder where those ATM transactions fees go? In the case of machines in D.C.-owned buildings, they help pay for schools, public safety and other public services. The D.C. Department of General Services leases space in government facilities to ATM operators, notably Access One ATM Inc., and the District gets 65 percent of the machines' monthly transaction fees. Since Oct. 1, 2011, according to a list of lease amendments provided to the D.C. Council, the District has amended five ATM leases to reach the 65 percent figure. Those leases consist of two at Judiciary Square, two at Eastern Market and one at 4058 Minnesota Ave. NE.
They are but five of 48 lease amendments executed by the D.C. government since the beginning of fiscal 2012. It executed 18 as landlord and the rest as tenant. The District collects, for example, $450,000 a year from Meridian Public Charter School for the use of 2120 13th St. NW, the former Harrison School. Eagle Academy Public Charter pays the District $1.1 million a year for the use of 3400 Wheeler Road SE, the former McGogney School, and Capital City PCS pays $1.5 million annually for 100 Peabody St. NW.
Advisory Neighborhood Commission 7D leases space at 4058 Minnesota for $2,711.64 a year, and in the same building Eclectic Cafe has a 10-year lease that costs $41,280 annually, or roughly $27 a square foot for the 1,500-square-foot space.The U.S. Postal Service pays $141,350 annually for its space at the Reeves Center, 2000 14th St. NW, and the Jackson Arts Center forks over $134,391.64 a year for 3050 R St. NW, another former school.
One nonprofit, is getting a much better deal. Recreation Wish List Committee of Washington, D.C., which operates the Southeast Tennis and Learning Center, pay $1 per year for 701 Mississippi Ave. SE. in Congress Heights. The 20-year lease amendment was signed on Dec. 1, 2012.
The Washington Post
By Emma Brown
March 29, 2013
Activists trying to halt the planned closure of 15 D.C. public schools filed a lawsuit Friday in D.C. Superior Court, arguing that the closures disproportionately affect poor, minority and disabled students. “A local government may not, when it comes to equal access to education, treat some classes of its citizens different than it treats another class,” says the complaint, filed by lawyer Johnny Barnes on behalf of five plaintiffs organized by the community group Empower D.C.
Barnes, flanked by supporters in front of the courthouse Friday morning, said he requested and was granted an emergency hearing for April 4. He said he plans to request a preliminary injunction that would keep the schools open until the suit, which alleges violations of local and federal civil-rights laws, is resolved. D.C. school officials said they had not seen the complaint but “vigorously deny any allegations of discrimination,” spokeswoman Melissa Salmanowitz said in a statement.
“Our consolidation efforts will lead to greater equity across the city, including already an increase in the number of art, music and foreign language program offerings at our schools,” Salmanowitz said. “We are confident that our decisions will ultimately make DCPS stronger and better supportive of our students.”The District is one of several cities — among them, Philadelphia and Chicago — where officials have announced plans to close public schools. Elsewhere, planned closures have triggered broad outrage and civil disobedience, but the reaction in the District has been more muted.
For months, Chancellor Kaya Henderson has argued that after a four-decade enrollment decline, the school system has too many half-empty buildings that are expensive and inefficient to operate. Local lawmakers have largely agreed with that argument. Some of the emptiest buildings are in low-income neighborhoods, where more than half of families there have flocked to fast-growing charter schools. Closing such underenrolled buildings, the chancellor said, will allow her to save $8.5 million a year and concentrate resources on teaching and learning.
Henderson first proposed closing 20 city schools but reduced the number after a series of community meetings. Thirteen schools will close in June, and two more will close next year. All of them are east of Rock Creek Park, and many are east of the Anacostia River in low-income areas. The 15 closures will displace more than 2,700 students. Black students account for 93 percent of those children, according to the complaint, but are 72 percent of the school system’s total population. Poor children make up 82 percent of the affected students but 70 percent of the larger population, it says.
The complaint argues that the closure plan will subject those children to damaging instability, returning the District to an era of segregated schools “inasmuch as it promotes a dual system denying the same and equal access to education for some school children based upon their race, disability and where they live.” The complaint also says Henderson can’t prove that the closures will save money and produce stronger schools. The closure of 23 city schools in 2008 cost more than expected and has not resulted in achievement gains, it says, citing analyses by Mary Levy, a lawyer and longtime D.C. schools watchdog. Barnes said he believes that the complaint is the first in the nation to argue that state and local governments should not be able to use an economic argument as the basis for making decisions that disproportionately affect subgroups of students.
The suit compares the District to Virginia’s Prince Edward County, where in the late 1950s officials chose to close public schools instead of integrating them. The U.S. Supreme Court ordered the county’s schools reopened in 1964, ruling that officials there had violated students’ constitutional rights to equal protection under the law. The complaint also alleges that D.C. officials failed to engage Advisory Neighborhood Commission members in the decision to close schools. Two of the plaintiffs are commissioners who represent neighborhoods where schools are closing, and three are parents of students in schools that are to close.
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