NEWS
- D.C. schools budget includes wide range in per-student spending
- Many protest D.C. schools capital plan
- More families are waitlisted at neighborhood preschools
- D.C. Charter Board has its own revenue equity problem [Options PCS and the Dorothy I. Height Community PCS mention]
D.C. schools budget includes wide range in per-student spending
The Washington Post
By Michael Alison Chandler
April 23, 2014
Proposed spending ranges widely in the D.C. Public School system’s budget for the next school year, from $16,467 per student at Eliot-Hine Middle School on Capitol Hill to $8,312 per student at Wilson High School in Upper Northwest, according to an online budget tool released Wednesday.
The interactive tool — at fy16budget.ourdcschools.org — was designed by Code for DC, a volunteer group, in partnership with a new citywide group of public school advocates called the Coalition for DC Public Schools & Communities. It shows a mostly predictable pattern in which per-student spending declines as enrollment grows. Eliot-Hine is projected to have 239 students next year, and Wilson, the city’s largest school, is expected to enroll nearly 1,900.
“The larger schools are going to get less. That’s understandable. But there should not be such a big gap,” said Cathy Reilly, executive director of the Senior High Alliance of Parents, Principals and Educators, one of the groups involved in the coalition.
The budget details were released in advance of budget hearings scheduled Thursday before the D.C. Council’s Education Committee. So far, more than 140 people have signed up to speak.
Many are concerned about proposed cuts to Wilson’s budget, as enrollment is expected to continue climbing. While most comprehensive high schools are receiving substantial investments this year, Wilson is expected to lose funds, as is Ballou High School in Ward 8.
The tool shows total school-by-school funding broken down, including spending for special education, English-language learners and at-risk students, a category that includes students on food stamps or welfare, as well as those who are homeless or more than a year behind in high school.
It also shows a stripped-down “general education” budget for each school, which aims to show how much is spent on staffing and administration. Some advocates are concerned that basic instructional needs are not being adequately funded and that supplemental funds meant for students with special needs are subsidizing broader school needs.
The city allocates funding for the public school system using a per-student funding formula, which changes based on grade level and whether a student receives specialized services. Individual schools, in turn, mainly are funded according to a staffing formula, which provides a baseline of course offerings and services and takes into account the number and needs of children in schools.
For multiple years, Wilson received an extra budget allocation to keep its per-pupil funding from falling too low, but this year that extra allocation was removed.
[See D.C. High School Budgets - School by School]
D.C. Public Schools also released an interactive tool this year to help people explore school budgets and make comparisons between schools. Christopher Rinkus, deputy chief of student enrollment and school funding for the school system, said he thinks this additional tool will further promote transparency in school spending and “advance the conversation about the budget.”
The coalition behind it includes education advocacy groups from all eight wards and is organized to promote strong neighborhood schools with equitable programs and a well-rounded curriculum in all parts of the city, as well as more coordinated planning between charter and traditional public schools.
“Decisions made in Ward 3 affect Ward 7, and things that happen in Ward 7 affect Ward 3,” said Eboni Rose Thompson, chair of the Ward 7 Education Council, which is also part of the coalition. “These schools belong to all of us.”
Many protest D.C. schools capital plan
The Washington Post
By Michael Alison Chandler
April 23, 2015
A marathon school budget hearing kicked off Thursday morning with a group of elementary school students from Orr Elementary. Third-grader Rontay Hall told the Education Committee that the D.C. Council made a promise when he was in first grade that he would have a new school.
This spring, funds for Orr Elementary got pushed back in Mayor Muriel E. Bowser’s proposed capital budget, along with funds for nearly 20 school renovations. At the same time, the plan added $30 million to the budget for the Duke Ellington School of the Arts, making it the most expensive high school project to date.
Orr Elementary has had its capital funding delayed multiple times over the past decade. At the hearing, the students talked about mice-infested classrooms, an outdated open-floor plan and a 40-year old boiler that makes some rooms unbearably hot.
“I want a building I can be proud of,” Hall said. “A building that will help us learn.”
More than 140 people signed up to speak at the budget hearings Thursday. The first hearing started at 10 a.m. and lasted well into the afternoon. The second was scheduled to start at 5:30 p.m. Students and parents spoke about proposed cuts to Wilson High School and after-school programming, among other proposed changes. Many focused their comments on the capital plan.
D.C. Council member David Grosso (I-At Large), the Education Committee chairman, said at the beginning of the hearing that he is concerned that some projects have spun “out of control” and are too costly. He also said he is “deeply concerned about equity in capital spending.”
He cited 26 schools that have not been touched despite seven years of intensive investments in school modernizations. The majority are elementary schools, including many east of the Anacostia River, he said.
“I can’t in good conscience urge my colleagues to pass this capital budget as is,” he said.
Grosso said he is working with others to come up with a plan for evaluating the capital budget, taking into account some objective factors, including enrollment, building condition, building utilization and projections about population growth in the area.
Both winners and losers in the capital budget have taken to Twitter in recent weeks to showcase their progress or needs.
The following are tweets from two members of the State Board of Education. Murch, a crowded elementary school in Ward 3, was funded to begin a long-awaited modernization next year. Eliot-Hine, a Ward 6 middle school, had its funding pushed back from 2016 to 2019.
More families are waitlisted at neighborhood preschools
Greater Greater Washington
By Natalie Wexler
April 23, 2015
In some parts of DC, it's getting harder to snare a seat at your neighborhood preschool. The map below shows how the number of preschool applicants at many DC Public Schools has been increasing in recent years.
DC residents are guaranteed a slot at their neighborhood DC Public School beginning in kindergarten, but only a few schools guarantee admission to preschool. All DCPS elementary schools offer preschool for four-year-olds, and most also offer it for three-year-olds.
Eventually, DCPS plans to guarantee preschool slots for neighborhood children at all its high-poverty schools, but for this coming school year that policy is in place at only five schools. Generally, families need to apply for preschool slots through the school lottery.
The graphic above, published on District, Measured, shows that most DCPS preschool programs have recently gotten more popular. The green circles on the map indicate schools that saw an increase in the number of preschool applications from in-boundary families, while the red ones indicate schools where such applications decreased. DC's Office of Revenue Analysis produces the District, Measured blog.
After the first round of this year's school lottery, almost 7,000 students found themselves on waitlists for at least one DCPS school. Many of those are students in kindergarten or above, applying for slots at schools other than the neighborhood one they have a right to attend.
But those waitlists are including more and more families who weren't able to get preschool spots at their neighborhood schools. The graphic below shows which schools have the most in-boundary families on their preschool waitlists. The larger and darker the circle, the longer the waitlist.
Preschool waitlists for in-boundary families aren't a new phenomenon. In fact, 14 schools have waitlisted in-boundary preschool applicants during each of the past three years. But this year, as the table below shows, 11 more DCPS schools joined their ranks.
Have you been waitlisted for your neighborhood DCPS preschool program? Let us know in the comments.
Visit link above to view images.
D.C. Charter Board has its own revenue equity problem [Options PCS and the Dorothy I. Height Community PCS mention]
The Examiner
By Mark Lerner
April 24, 2015
This week the vice chairman of the Public Charter School Board Don Soifer testified before the D.C. Council's education committee as part of a fiscal 2016 oversight hearing. What he revealed was fascinating. It seems that the board which oversees the finances of over 100 charter schools in the nation's capital is having its own problem balancing its books. From his remarks:
"However, in light of slowing enrollment growth in public charter schools, as well as a decrease in philanthropic giving to PCSB, we anticipate a decrease of $258,185 in our budget – or 3% – from FY15 to FY16. In preparation for this anticipated decrease, we believe we have found cost savings that will allow us to improve the quality of our oversight despite the spending reduction.
For example, by hiring an additional data analyst, we were able to greatly reduce our reliance on outside consultants for the implementation of the Performance Management Framework (PMF) as well as our spending on ProActive, PCSB’s primary tool for collecting enrollment, demographic, attendance and discipline data from public charter schools. Together, these decisions will result in a savings of $230,000 for FY16."
Remember that the PCSB has taken a couple of steps recently to increase cash flow. In 2012 the board increased its revenue by $500,000 by charging charters 0.5 percent of all revenue instead of excluding Federal grant dollars. Then in 2013 Mayor Gray, along with education chairman Councilman Catania, doubled the amount charged to schools to 1 percent.
But keep this in mind. While the charter board has hired a legal staff to handle problems such as those that surfaced at Options PCS and the Dorothy I. Height Community PCS, if DCPS runs into legal issues there are city attorney's to handle these matters in the Office of the Attorney General. Just as charters are now suing over inequitable funding compared to the traditional schools outside of the Uniform Per Student Funding Formula, perhaps the PCSB should argue that it should have access to the same services that DCPS is provided at no charge.
It would be fascinating to calculate the amount of money DCPS receives from the city for administrative functions compared to those that the charter board has to pay for itself.
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