- D.C. Charters Shortchanged Again, With No End in Sight [FOCUS OpEd]
- Examiner Local Editorial: Charter Schools Are Forcing DCPS to Improve [Washington Math, Science, and Technology PCS is mentioned]
- D.C. Council Deadlocks on Amendment to Budget
The Washington Examiner
By Robert Cane
May 1, 2012
As the District of Columbia Council considered Mayor Vincent Gray's $77 million supplemental spending package last week, rumors began flying. One was that D.C. public charter schools' quarterly payment from the city might be stopped unless the council approved the mayor's package.
Hours before the mayor spoke at an annual gathering of D.C.'s public charter school community, his office announced $9.4 million for charters to cover "spending pressures." This was his way of falsely implying that charters, which are run independently of D.C. Public Schools and educate 41 percent of the District's public schoolchildren, had overspent the funds appropriated for them.
In fact, the money was already owed to charters under an automatic formula set in law. The mayor misleadingly categorized this money as a "supplemental" increase to charters' budget, despite the fact that the city would have to pay it anyway.
D.C. owes the charters $2.8 million because of increased special education enrollment, and an additional $6.6 million was earmarked for higher-than-expected summer school enrollment. When student enrollment increases, the city has to increase funding, as the charters and the parallel DCPS system receive money according to how many students they enroll.
The real reason behind the mayor's miscategorization appears to be to provide political cover for his proposal to supplement the budget for DCPS -- the regular public school system -- to cover $25.2 million of actual overspending. Unlike charter schools, which have to cut back if they overspend, DCPS routinely outspends its appropriation.
Eventually, the council approved a fraction of the mayor's supplemental request, including $7 million for charter schools. But under D.C. law, DCPS and the charters are supposed to be funded equally. In defiance of the law, the mayor wanted to pour an extra $25.2 million into DCPS while giving nothing to charter students.
This would widen the funding disparity between charters and DCPS, which has increased over the years as the city has poured money into DCPS outside the funding formula mandated by law.
Gray actually campaigned on a promise to close the disparity in funding between DCPS schools and charters. Over the past five years, each District charter student was allocated between about $1,500 and $2,500 less annually than his or her DCPS peers in city funds. This is despite the fact that a recent city commissioned study found greater need in the charters. Seventy-five percent of District charter students are eligible for free or reduced-price school lunch, compared with only 67 percent of DCPS students.
Public charter schools are a lifeline upon which D.C.'s disadvantaged students depend. The charters' high school graduation rate is 80 percent, compared with only 53 percent for DCPS.
The administration claims it has increased funding for charter schools' facilities from $2,800 per student to $3,000 -- a feat for which it relied upon federal money that could disappear at any time. No additional city money has been allocated for charters' facilities per student. Meanwhile, the mayor proposes to set facilities funding for DCPS at $7,992 per student -- over two and half times what the city provides for each charter student.
Gray created high hopes for equality for charter schools when he created a commission to make recommendations to end the funding disparity. It failed to make any. Perhaps the city's charter students could be forgiven for wondering what happened to the mayor's pledge to close the funding gap they face.
They need the council's help: The budget negotiations are council members' chance to force real progress toward what the mayor promised but hasn't delivered.
Robert Cane is Executive Director of Friends of Choice in Urban Schools, a D.C. nonprofit that promotes school reform.
Examiner Local Editorial: Charter Schools Are Forcing DCPS to Improve [Washington Math, Science, and Technology PCS is mentioned]
The Washington Examiner
By Staff
April 28, 2012
When Congress passed the 1995 D.C. School Reform Act, establishing charter schools, the law was attacked by the Washington Teachers' Union as a wasteful diversion of tax dollars. The union said the money would be better spent improving existing public schools. But more than a decade later, public charter schools are improving the District's regular DCPS schools by providing them with much-needed competition, just as charters' proponents predicted.
Proof of this was recently supplied by none other than D.C. Public Schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson, whose new five-year strategic plan contains "innovations" -- such as increased classroom time -- that are already mainstays of the District's 53 charter schools. In February, Henderson went so far as to seek authorization to open charter schools of her own within DCPS, in an effort to bypass her own unionized system's entrenched mediocrity. Henderson's imitation comes as high praise for her charter school competitors, who now educate 42 percent of all public school students in D.C.
Although both systems receive the same per-student subsidy, DCPS enjoys a significant advantage in capital funding, as its $812 million FY13 budget demonstrates, compared with $542 million for charter schools. Nevertheless, charter school enrollment grew 8 percent this school year, while DCPS enrollment declined 1 percent. One of Henderson's goals is to reverse this ongoing decline by increasing the DCPS high school graduation rate from the current 59 percent to 75 percent over the next five years.
Note that the charter schools have already surpassed that goal. According to the D.C. Office of the State Superintendent of Education, 80 percent of the charter class of 2011 earned a diploma. In many charter schools, the results are even more remarkable. Ninety-one percent of the Washington Mathematics Science and Technology Public Charter High School's predominantly low-income, African-American students graduated -- the same rate as their counterparts in affluent Fairfax County. D.C. charters have not achieved these impressive results by cherry-picking the best students, either. Their student population is 75 percent low-income, 83 percent African-American and 11 percent special education.
"The trajectory for charter schools has been positive in both academic quality as well as enrollment growth," D.C. Public Charter School Board member Don Soifer told The Washington Examiner. Demand for charter schools continues to outstrip supply, and four new charter schools have just been conditionally approved. Meanwhile, Henderson is talking about closing a dozen DCPS schools, given that 40 of them have seen their enrollment dwindle to fewer than 300. DCPS is right to respond to the competition and to try to stem this flight to quality by improving the education it offers.
The Washington Times
By Tom Howell Jr.
May 1, 2012
The D.C. Council on Tuesday failed to pass a midyear spending plan that would have compensated city workers for four furlough days in 2011 after it deadlocked on a patchwork of funding priorities and whether it made sense to put the District’s payroll over its other responsibilities.
The council split its vote, 6-6, on Mayor Vincent C. Gray’s $63 million supplemental budget plan for fiscal 2012, which also addressed spending pressures in the D.C. Public Schools and other agencies. It needed eight votes to pass as emergency legislation, so the council might consider yet another submission from Mr. Gray while it tackles the more pressing budget for the upcoming fiscal year.
The vote on Tuesday marked the second time the council convened to consider the mayor’s plan but could not reach a consensus on its priorities — even though it was considering the less arduous task of spending money, not making cuts. In mid-April, the council approved $8 million in funding to the unemployment compensation fund and $7 million to D.C. Public Charter Schools, while ignoring the rest of the priorities in Mr. Gray’s request.
“We need to put this issue behind us,” council member Jack Evans, Ward 2 Democrat, told his colleagues on Tuesday.
Mr. Gray’s spokesman, Pedro Ribeiro, said the mayor was disappointed by the council’s “shortsighted and irresponsible” decision not to approve the supplemental budget.
“Sometimes, it’s like eating spinach,” Mr. Ribeiro said. “There are things you have to do, as an adult, to keep the government running.”
Council Chairman Kwame R. Brown said he will turn his focus to budget talks for fiscal 2013 until Mr. Gray decides whether to submit a new supplemental budget plan.
Mr. Brown, a Democrat, was among those who argued city workers should be paid for the quartet of holidays they took without pay in 2011 as part of cost-cutting measures, only to see the city get a windfall of revenue by the end of the year.
But he also entertained a compromise amendment by council members Michael A. Brown and David A. Catania, at-large independents, that would have paid city employees for two furlough days now and split about $10 million between the Housing Production Trust Fund and the D.C. Healthcare Alliance. City workers would have been paid for the remaining two furlough days after revised revenue estimates arrived in June, according to the plan.
Mr. Catania, chairman of the Committee on Health, is trying to close a $23 million cut in Mr. Gray’s fiscal 2013 budget plan for hospital and specialty care for alliance members, who are predominantly from the city’s immigrant population and not eligible for Medicaid.
The amendment, which had Mr. Gray’s support, failed on a 7-5 vote.
“I didn’t think the tea party would come to Washington, and it did,” Mr. Catania said, chiding his colleagues for failing to “split the baby” and resolve the matter.
“I didn’t make any promises to organized labor,” he had told his colleagues at a pre-meeting breakfast. “I’m willing to share, but I’m not willing to concede.”
Mr. Brown, the at-large member, said colleagues who supported payments to city workers managed to work against their own interests by shooting down the proposal.
“What made my compromise so nice,” he said after the meeting, “is workers would have been guaranteed money today. Needy families would have been guaranteed money today.”
Phil Mendelson, at-large Democrat, showed little patience for the supplemental budget at all. It rewarded agencies for overspending their budgets, he said, and “the issue of the furloughs has been very, very politicized.”
Meanwhile, a group of unionized city workers who congregated on one side of the council chamber to watch the proceedings enjoyed unyielding support from council members Vincent B. Orange, at-large Democrat; Marion Barry, Ward 8 Democrat; and Yvette M. Alexander, Ward 7 Democrat.
“These workers had nothing to do with the budget gap,” Mr. Barry said. “Why should our outstanding workers suffer the consequences of something they had nothing to do with?”
Mr. Evans, who supported full compensation for the city workers, also failed in an effort on Tuesday to kill off a controversial tax on interest income earned by out-of-state bondholders.
He wanted to use the proceeds from a tax on food vendors to cover the repeal, but his attempt was thwarted by Mr. Barry and other colleagues who couched the effort as a way to aid people of a higher economic status.
“What about them?” Mr. Orange said, motioning to city workers in the audience. “We took their money.”
Mr. Evans, who was offended by the class-oriented remarks and argued he had done actual legwork to find a funding source for his initiative, conceded the debate and allowed the proceeds to go into the general fund.
“OK, Mr. Orange,” Mr. Evans quipped. “Does that make you feel a little better?”
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