- District: Freezing Charter Pay Never the Plan [FOCUS is mentioned]
- The Charter School Facility Issue Is No Longer About Equity
- Council Chair Presses for Restrictions on Gray's Budget Power
- D.C. Testing Season Begins as Cheating Probe Continues
District: Freezing Charter Pay Never the Plan [FOCUS is mentioned]
The Washington Post
By Bill Turque
April 16, 2012
The administration of D.C. Mayor Vincent C. Gray has told charter schools that it absolutely, positively never intended to freeze the $100 million dollar plus April quarterly payment until the D.C. Council passed the smaller supplemental spending bill that will come up for consideration Tuesday. According to Gray chief of staff Chris Murphy, it all came down to a misunderstanding over that often confusing word, “freeze.”
It started when State Superintendent Hosanna Mahaley sent this e-mail late Friday afternoon to D.C. Public Charter School Board Executive Director Scott Pearson, who passed it on to school operators:
Hello Scott -
Per our conversation, I received confirmation from my OCFO [Office of Chief Financial Office Natwar M. Gandhi] that the 4th quarter payments to charter schools scheduled for April 15th will be delayed until the City Council approves the supplemental request. The City Council is scheduled to consider this request on Tuesday, April 17th. If the request is approved, processing will begin immediately and schools will receive payments no earlier than Friday, April 20th.
Thank you,
Hosanna
Gandhi’s office indicated Friday that this was all initiated by the mayor’s people. But a few hours later, Murphy sent this somewhat frantic note to the FOCUS DC chairman and founder Malcolm Peabody and government relations director Michael Musante:
From: “Murphy, Christopher (EOM)” <christopher.murphy@dc.gov>
Date: Fri, 13 Apr 2012 21:08:35 -0400
Let me be very very clear here. There was NEVER a decision to “freeze” the regular charter payments. NEVER NEVER NEVER.
What we were told by OCFO is that they were ready to make payments on the 17th but were a bit frozen because they didn’t know whether to make the checks for the smaller amounts, if the Chairman doesn’t get the Council to act, or the higher amounts if they approve our request. Not frozen as in the payments were frozen. Frozen as in they didn’t know how much to make the checks out for.
I would certainly hope you are sharing your concerns with the Council to ensure they act on Tuesday so we can get you the funding we would like to pay you and that your members deserve.
Chris
The Washington Examiner
By Mark Lerner
April 17, 2012
Yesterday, the editors of the Washington Post issued their strongest case to date regarding the need to turn closed or underutilized DCPS buildings over to charters:
"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."
Great points. But the editors miss the most compelling case for providing charters with adequate permanent facilities. These buildings must be handed over because charter schools are public schools.
Earlier in the column the Post makes the point that charters receive $3,000 per pupil for facility costs while DCPS gets almost $8,000. But I think we should shy away from the argument that there should be financial equity between the two systems. It appears that we are simply arguing over money.
Instead we should contend that based upon the value of justice charters need to be treated fairly. Many people in this town have personally fought for justice. Some know individuals close to them who have died over this ideal.
There is no justice in one school being provided a facility and another not just because one is labeled "DCPS" and the other is labeled "charter." We are not permitted to discriminate in this country based upon race, gender, and sexual orientation but somehow it is permitted and condoned depending upon a school's organizational structure?
Awards have been given, and statues have been erected, to brave women and men who have stamped out injustice in this world. It is past time for someone to bring basic fairness to where we as a society elect to education our children.
The Washington Examiner
By Alan Blinder
April 17, 2012
The chairman of the D.C. Council wants to force the mayor to receive the legislative branch's permission before reallocating public dollars during this year's budget review period.
Under emergency legislation Council Chairman Kwame Brown will move to a vote on Tuesday, Mayor Vincent Gray would be required to submit to the council for review any proposed changes of less than $500,000 to the capital budget. The mandate would only be in effect during the 56-day budget review period, which ends in mid-May.
"The current situation makes it extremely difficult for the council to make future capital budget policy decisions based on complete information," Brown wrote in a resolution accompanying his legislation. "This emergency legislation would improve budget transparency and enhance the council's ability to conduct rigorous oversight of the capital budget."
The proposed rules would require Gray to submit any changes, known as "reprogrammings," to the council. If no legislators objected during a five-day waiting period, the reallocations would be approved.
But if a lawmaker opposed the changes, the waiting period would be extended to 30 days. If the council did not vote for or against the requested reprogrammings during that time, the mayor's request would be allowed to move forward.
Pedro Ribeiro, a mayoral spokesman, said Brown's proposal is "immensely ill-conceived and raises some serious questions and could seriously damage the way government actually functions in the District."
But Megan Vahey, Brown's chief of staff, said the proposal isn't a power-grab and is similar to restrictions other governments have imposed.
"We can't have a moving target when we are doing our oversight," Vahey said. "We're not asking the administration to change the way they do business. All we really need to know is how the capital budget is being changed."SClBBrown's legislation would also require the mayor to disclose any holds or freezes on capital project spending.
"We have no idea that this money exists," Vahey said. "It just doesn't show up in the budget book."SClBAlthough the new rules as written would apply only to the current budget review cycle, Vahey said Brown would explore making the changes permanent.
The Washington Examiner
By Lisa Gartner
April 16, 2012
D.C. classrooms flagged for possible cheating on last year's standardized tests will be under "intensive monitoring" as the 2012 D.C. Comprehensive Assessment System exams kick off Tuesday.
Officials from the Office of the State Superintendent for Education, which oversees testing and regulates DC Public Schools and charter schools, will be at schools throughout the city. But the schools referred for further investigation last year will have multiple monitors, and the 71 specific classrooms under investigation will receive special attention from the extra sets of eyes, OSSE spokesman Marc Caposino said.
DC Public Schools also has assigned at least one full-time testing observer to each school, and required schools' test coordinators and principals to submit detailed test plans.
"Only the most secure system will exonerate our students, teachers, administrators and our school system," Chancellor Kaya Henderson wrote in an email to school staff.
The District has declined to identify the 71 classrooms spread across 30 DCPS schools and an unknown number of charter schools, maintaining that the teachers are innocent until proven guilty.
Indeed, the school system widened the scope of its oversight for the 2011 tests, recommending more classrooms for investigation than in the past for a broader variety of reasons: some had an unusual number of incorrect answers erased and changed to the right ones, while other classrooms simply made dramatic gains from one year to the next.
The decision followed increased public scrutiny after a USA Today investigation cast doubt on improvements seen at some of the District's struggling schools. At Noyes Education Campus, the odds of changing so many wrong answers to the right ones was compared to winning a Powerball lottery; the implication was that teachers were doctoring the tests to improve their students' scores.
Of 18 classrooms investigated last year, three had their scores thrown out for suspected or confirmed cheating. But when suspicions didn't die down, Henderson called on the federal government to develop national standards to investigate cheating.
DCPS is considering putting less weight on student test scores for teacher evaluations, but staff says that decision is not related to the cheating investigations, The Washington Examiner reported Monday.
About 43 percent of DCPS students currently demonstrate proficiency on the reading and math standardized tests. In a memo to principals, Henderson said her goal is that 75 percent will be proficient by 2017, with double the number of students scoring at the "advanced" level on the exams.
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