- D.C. Should Make Surplus Schools Available to Charters [KIPP DC PCS is mentioned]
- Gray Freezes, Then Thaws, Charter School Payments
- Budget Battle Could Scar Gray, Council
- Demand High for D.C. Private School Vouchers
D.C. Should Make Surplus Schools Available to Charters [KIPP DC PCS is mentioned]
The Washington Post
By Editorial Board
April 15, 2012
The Benning Road campus of KIPP DC, the network of high-performing college-preparatory charter schools, is home to three academies serving children from preschool to eighth grade. Interest in attending the schools is so high that more students had to be turned away in the recent lottery for the upcoming school year than will attend. So it’s maddening to look across the street from the filled-to-capacity campus at the empty classrooms of a former school and wonder if there isn’t more the city should be doing to help its best-performing charters find facilities that will allow them to expand and meet the need for their services.
A step in the right direction was the recent announcement by the administration of Mayor Vincent C. Gray (D) that it will consider offers from charters for leasing four former school buildings. Advocates for charter schools, which now enroll 41 percent of public school students, cautiously hailed the announcement as a signal that Mr. Gray would be more accommodating than his predecessors of charters’ need for public space, although they said the proof will be in the results. D.C. law requires that charter operators receive “right of first offer” to bid on surplus school properties, but practice under former Mayors Anthony Williams and Adrian Fenty saw many of the buildings used for condos or government offices — or even going to rot.
Interest in the four buildings is tempered by their deteriorated conditions, some of which will likely require the investment of millions of dollars. One of the schools, Langston Elementary, closed in the mid-1990s and is in such decrepit shape that there were no takers when it was put on the block a few years ago. J.F. Cook Elementary, which closed in 2008, has been so vandalized that it looks like a construction zone.
Deputy Mayor for Education De’Shawn Wright acknowledged there has been a problem of closed schools not being made available for timelier reuse; he said there are efforts to streamline the process. He also told us he is working with the city’s top-tier charter schools to help them expand into neighborhoods that — as grimly chronicled in a recent facilities study — lack quality education.
But other cities — Atlanta and New York come to mind — are way ahead of the District in providing charters that have proven records of success with classroom-ready facilities. The District does provide a facilities allowance, but that amount, $3,000 per charter student, is less than the $7,992 that charter advocates calculate the city spends on capital costs for its public school students. What makes the discrepancy all the more glaring is the fact that so many schools in the public system are massively underenrolled.
High schools with enrollment equal to a third of building capacity and elementary schools with numbers like eight fifth-graders or 13 fourth-graders don’t make any sense. Why not share space with charters, which are currently operating out of cramped basements or ill-suited commercial space? And isn’t it time that the District started closing schools rather than just talking about the need to do so?
City officials who think there’s plenty of time for these decisions would do well to think of the children who next year will be on a waiting list rather than in a classroom where they have a chance of learning.
The Washington Post
By Bill Turque
April 13, 2012
Did the Gray Administration try to hold a $100 million-plus quarterly payment to charter schools hostage in its dispute with the D.C. Council over the supplemental budget bill?
It seemed that way for a few hours on Friday. D.C. Public Charter School Board Executive Director Scott Pearson said he was informed by State Superintendent Hosanna Mahaley’s office that the payment, due next week, would be frozen pending resolution of the supplemental spending measure. This sent a flutter of alarm through the charter community, where many schools run on tight budgets that depend on prompt payment of the quarterly installments.
The bill includes $7 million for the charter sector to cover larger-than-projected enrollment of special education students and summer school costs. The council has had questions about the payment, as well as Gray’s proposed $25 million supplement to DCPS to cover overruns in food service and other programs. It is due to take up the bill Tuesday.
Gray spokesman Pedro Ribeiro initially insisted that there was no money available for the regular quarterly payment unless the council acted on the supplemental.
“We have told the council for weeks there are spending pressures that need to be resolved,” he said. “The supplemental has been down there [before the council] for a couple of months now.” Ribeiro said chief financial officer Natwar Gandhi has sent numerous letters to the council urging action.
“There’s no money in the checking account,” Ribeiro said. “The CFO won’t let you bounce a check.”
This sounded mighty peculiar, given that the quarterly charter payments are based on per pupil allotments under the uniform funding formula. Why would a dispute over $7 million hold all of that up?
It’s also not quite what Gandhi said. His April 11 letter to Gray and D.C. Council Chairman Kwame R. Brown states: “I recommend that the total pressure of $7 million be addressed now so that the District can meet the required April 15 quarterly payments and the July 1st payment for summer school.” That’s a little bit short of saying that the charters get nothing without council action.
But that’s how the message seemed to resonate Friday.
D.C. Council Chairman Kwame R. Brown weighed in, essentially saying that the whole thing was a flimsy attempt to muscle the council into acting.
“It would be irresponsible and inaccurate to lay the blame on the Council for the administration’s decision not to make the fourth quarter payment to charter schools in a timely manner,” Brown said in a late afternoon statement. In fact, he said, it was entirely the mayor’s call.
“The CFO has not been given the authority by the administration to make a fourth quarter payment to the DC Public Charter Schools. The Council strongly urges the Mayor to immediately authorize the CFO to make the fourth quarter payment,” Brown said.
Around 6 p.m., after consulting with whomever, Ribeiro called back to say that the charters could receive their regular quarterly payment, just not the supplemental piece --unless and until the council acted.
The Washington Examiner
By Alan Blinder
April 15, 2012
Although D.C. Mayor Vincent Gray is likely to prevail Tuesday in a budget vote that he sought for months, the aftershocks of the political brouhaha that defined the debate are likely to continue.
For Gray, the path to Tuesday's vote on his $77 million spending package has been bruising. He offered two supplemental budget requests since January, only to have most of the D.C. Council publicly rebuke him for even contemplating spending so much extra cash so soon.
Later, internal emails showed members of Gray's staff were trying to use funding for the Ward 5 special election as leverage to win votes for the full package.
And last week, Gray spent two hours meeting with lawmakers to answer their questions about his proposal, only to face more criticisms than questions.
But it hasn't been much easier for Gray's council colleagues. After the mayor's briefing for legislators, a senior aide to Gray slammed Council Chairman Kwame Brown as "a do-nothing chairman."
As recently as Friday, the mayor and council were exchanging accusations over who would be to blame if the city's charter schools had their funding cut off because the council didn't act quickly enough on Gray's supplemental budget.
"To announce on the Friday before the vote that the charter schools aren't going to receive a payment because the council hasn't acted is irresponsible," said Brown chief of staff Megan Vahey.
The council didn't learn of pressure on the schools until March 29 and Tuesday would be their first chance to act on the problem, she said.
But Pedro Ribeiro, a Gray spokesman, said the council was the obstacle.
"The mayor has been warning the council for months," Ribeiro said. "They have known since March 23. They could have easily moved emergency legislation. ... It boggles the mind."
One political observer said the tense debate was a byproduct of the ethics probes that have enveloped the Wilson Building.
"These things have a tendency to balloon when the environment has already been caustic due to the scandals and the investigations and the previous carping," said Chuck Thies, who has previously consulted for Gray and clashed with Brown. "It seems like the one thing they agree on is the one thing they can do nothing about: voting rights."SClBThies added that the Gray aide's jab toward Brown signaled a deeper problem for the city's government.
"The tension isn't just between the mayor and the council. There's clearly tension between the mayor's staff and the council," Thies said. "And that is a potentially explosive situation."SClB
The Washington Examiner
By Lisa Gartner
April 15, 2012
More than 1,150 District students applied for vouchers to attend private school next year, on top of the 1,650 who are already participating in the federally funded D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program, city officials say.
The voucher program was flooded with 1,558 applications when Congress renewed it last year. But as the D.C. Children and Youth Investment Trust Corp. continues to count this year's applications, demand remains strong among parents looking to enroll their children in private schools.
"There are still a number of families that have a distrust of the public school system, whether it's D.C. Public Schools or charter schools," Ed Davies, CYITC's vice president of external affairs, told The Washington Examiner.
Not everyone who applies for the vouchers -- up to $8,000 for elementary and middle schools, and $12,000 for high schools -- ends up enrolling in private school. Of last year's 1,558 applicants, just over 1,000 were awarded scholarships, and 745 took them.
Meanwhile, enrollment in the District's public charter schools increased 8 percent this year. While D.C. Public Schools saw a 1 percent enrollment drop this year, applications to enroll in preschool, prekindergarten or a school outside a child's neighborhood increased nearly 10 percent for next year.
Davies said he believed the voucher program would remain popular even as public schools improved, because "even when public schools are great, there are private schools that are still highly sought-after."
But other factors could curb the program's growth. President Obama's 2013 budget does not include funding for the program, which was barely reauthorized last year. Congress renewed the scholarship program for $100 million over five years last April.
HyeSook Chung, executive director of DC Action for Children, said the vouchers are a "mixed blessing," depending on the perspective you take.
"In terms of advocating from the point of a parent, I think it's great that they're available," Chung said. "From a more systemic perspective, I worry we're not tackling some of the issues behind education reform and why we need this choice."
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