- More Than 17,000 Names on D.C. Charter School Waiting Lists [EL Haynes, Two Rivers, and Capital City PCS are mentioned]
- DC Public Charter Schools Count 17,000 Student Names on Waiting Lists Seeking Enrollment [EL Haynes PCS is mentioned]
- Charters May Merge at Walter Reed [Washington Yu Ying, LAMB, Mundo Verde, and Elsie Whitlow Stokes PCS are mentioned]
- Talks Revive on Grimke Redevelopment
- Barras: DCPS Kicks Students Out the Door
- Mendelson Will Tackle Campaign Finance, Education in D.C. Council
More Than 17,000 Names on D.C. Charter School Waiting Lists [EL Haynes, Two Rivers, and Capital City PCS are mentioned]
The Washington Examiner
By Lisa Gartner
June 25, 2012
Students on the waiting list for admission to E.L. Haynes Public Charter School's earliest grades are in good company -- if more than 3,000 children count as "company" rather than Disney World on a sunny day.
Waiting lists for the city's public charter schools are running a total 17,396 names deep, according to the DC Public Charter School Board. That's 51 percent of the total number of students successfully enrolling in the city's public charter schools in the fall, or 33,699 children. This year, 31,562 students attended charter schools, while 45,630 attended DC Public Schools.
"These numbers are a powerful indicator of D.C. families' demand for more quality school options," said Scott Pearson, executive director of the Charter School Board. "We realize there is a large gap between that demand and available slots, and we remain committed to ... transforming public education so that more D.C. children can attend the school of their choice."
While some charter schools still have open seats after the citywide admissions lottery, 32 of 98 campuses have more than 100 students on their waiting lists. After accepting its 2012-2013 batch of students, E.L. Haynes' preschool-second grade campus in Petworth still has 2,927 children waiting. An additional 1,240 are waiting at its campus for grades three through eight, and 652 are waiting for the charter's high school.
Two Rivers Public Charter School and Capital City Public Charter School both have campuses with more than 1,000 names on their waiting lists, as well.
"I don't want to discourage parents because we have found that seats open up after the school year begins -- especially in the upper grades," said Jessica Wodatch, executive director of Two Rivers. The charter has 94 students at its middle school, compared with 1,091 students waiting with fingers crossed for its elementary school.
Forty-one percent of the District's public school students attend charter schools -- a rate second only to New Orleans', and one that's likely to keep increasing. Enrollment is expected to increase 7 percent next school year, in step with consistently large increases over the last decade. Meanwhile, enrollment in the city's traditional system, DC Public Schools, has declined every year since 1969, except for the 2010-2011 school year.
Deputy Mayor for Education De'Shawn Wright released a report in January recommending three dozen failing public schools be closed or turned around, likely as charter schools. No decisions have been made, but the findings scared some communities, which fear the loss of neighborhood schools. Mayor Vincent Gray has warned that school closings are high on his radar.
David Pickens, executive director of DC School Reform Now, said he wasn't sure whether he supported the deputy mayor's findings but "I am a strong proponent of the expansion of quality seats in D.C. and we want to do it in the least painful way," he said. "Our kids just can't afford to wait."
DC Public Charter Schools Count 17,000 Student Names on Waiting Lists Seeking Enrollment [EL Haynes PCS is mentioned]
The Washington Post
By Associated Press
June 26, 2012
More than 17,000 names are on waiting lists for the District of Columbia’s charter schools, and more than 700 slots remain available at some schools.
The D.C. Public Charter School Board has compiled self-reported data from the city’s 98 charter school campuses. One school, E.L. Haynes Public Charter School, has about 3,000 students waiting to enroll.
The waiting list of 17,000 announced Monday represents about half the 33,700 students already enrolled in public charter schools for the fall.
Charter school board Executive Director Scott Pearson says the numbers show D.C. families’ demand for quality school options.
For the first time, the charter school board is posting information about waiting lists online with available openings by school and grade. The lists will be updated in July and August.
Charters May Merge at Walter Reed [Washington Yu Ying, LAMB, Mundo Verde, and Elsie Whitlow Stokes PCS are mentioned]
The Dupont Current
By Elizabeth Wiener
June 20, 2012
The halls of a 1933 nurses’ residence at Walter Reed could one day ring with the sound of teenagers speaking Chinese, Spanish, French — and English — under a still unfolding proposal for a languagebased charter school at the former Army hospital campus in Ward 4.
Washington Yu Ying Public Charter School, with its Chinese immersion program, has already won conditional approval to place a middle and high school in 100,000 square feet of the old Delano Hall at the former Walter Reed Army Medical Center. And the Latin American Montessori Bilingual charter school, which teaches children in Spanish and English, has dibs on 35,000 square feet in the same building.
The two are in discussion with two other language immersion charters — Mundo Verde Bilingual, which offers Spanish and English instruction near Dupont Circle; and the Elsie Whitlow Stokes Community Freedom School in Brookland, which has an English/French and English/Spanish program — about the four institutions forming a cooperative middle and high school that could eventually enroll about 1,000 students at Walter Reed.
All four schools now teach younger children, and leaders and parents are eager for a way to continue their programs into the upper grades, said Mary Shaffner, founder and director of Yu Ying, at a recent D.C. Council hearing on the planned redevelopment of Walter Reed.
“All are lower schools, and looking for middle and high school space together. Our families would like them to continue this great education,” she said.
Under the still-preliminary plan, Yu Ying and Latin American Montessori Bilingual would control the allotted space at Delano Hall, but collect rent from other members of the “cooperative high school.” Shaffner said the goal is to serve students from all four schools, and perhaps other District children.
As an International Baccalaureate school, Yu Ying is part of a program that requires a second language and promises a rigorous education for “world citizens” from the primary grades though high school.
The goal is to open a “language-based IB” secondary school once the Walter Reed property is transferred to the city and necessary alterations are made to the 80-year-old building. “It needs major renovation,” Shaffner said in a phone interview.
Yu Ying, which has relocated several times since its 2008 founding, now teaches pre-kindergartners through fourth-graders at a former monastery in Brookland.
It is D.C.’s only Chinese immersion charter. Diane Cottman, executive director of Latin American Montessori Bilingual, said the school now teaches 263 students in pre kindergarten through fifth grade on its main campus at 1375 Missouri Ave., and 80 more at a temporary site in Michigan Park.
The school enrolls children at age 3 or 4 so they can “gain full biliteracy” by the time they move on, Cottman said.
The program tries to add one grade level each year. But adding a full high school is an expensive proposition, and the idea of combining with other charters makes it much more feasible.
The Walter Reed facility could provide “a language-rich secondary program, which none of the schools could afford to do on their own,” Cottman said.
The Dupont Current
By Katie Pearce
June 20, 2012
As the city prepares to open up the old Grimke School building near U Street to charter school bids, a community group has mobilized to push for other uses.There have been years of talks about how to redevelop the 1937-era Grimke site.
Of its three current occupants, two — the Fire and Emergency Medical Services Department and the Department of Corrections — are expected to leave the building by this December. That leaves only the African American Civil War Museum, which moved into a portion of the Grimke building last summer and is expected to remain there.
The city plans to offer space in the building at 1925 Vermont Ave. to D.C. charter schools through a request for proposals. That solicitation is expected to go out within the next 60 to 90 days, according to Darrell Pressley of the D.C. Department of General Services.
A working group of neighbors, however, is hoping to see other uses in the Grimke building, ideally through a public-private partnership.
Jeffrey Willis, representing that group, said neighbors are emphasizing “daytime uses,” as opposed to the late-night alcohol-oriented activity that’s saturated the neighborhood. He mentioned the idea of a “welcome center” to the U Street and Shaw neighborhoods, as well as arts uses modeled after the Torpedo Factory in Alexandria.
Willis said the group of about 20 neighbors has met several times for discussions, and they’ve voted unanimously to oppose a charter school. There are already three other schools in the area, notes a draft document from the group, and the Grimke site contains no indoor or outdoor play areas.
A federal law requires vacant public school buildings to be offered first to charter schools, but Ward 1 D.C. Council member Jim Graham said Grimke’s case isn’t so clear-cut.
“What makes it complicated is that this has not been a school building for a very long time. This has been government offices,” Graham said. He said he wasn’t prepared yet to “give a legal opinion to whether the law applies full force” in this situation.
The D.C. Department of General Services held a public a hearing late last month on whether to declare the Grimke building “surplus,” meaning that it’s unnecessary for public uses.
Pressley said there hasn’t yet been a decision on that. Graham noted that D.C. Council approval is necessary for surplusing the property, but he said the council generally reaches that decision when reviewing a specific development proposal for a site.
Graham said at this stage, there’s “a welcome opportunity for the neighborhood to have a real say in what [Grimke] is going to be used for.” He said neighbors have had problems with government employees taking up parking spaces around the site.
The corrections agency and fire department are slated to relocate into the Reeves Center at 14th and U streets, according to Graham. Moving plans for those agencies have been up in the air for years. By all accounts, the African American Civil War Museum is expected to remain in place in Grimke.
“We’re encouraging the museum to reach out to potential respondents, to be a part of that process,” said Pressley of the General Services Department. With funding help from the council, the museum moved into part of Grimke last July from its former storefront space at 1208 U St. Both Graham and Willis said the museum hopes to expand within the Grimke building.
Museum director Frank Smith was unavailable for comment yesterday. The District has released numerous solicitations for Grimke’s development over the years, but none have come to fruition. Willis said his group has talked to two past respondents — the Torti Gallas architecture firm and the Community Three development firm — that remain interested in Grimke.
The Washington Examiner
By Jonetta Rose Barras
June 25, 2012
Can you believe DCPS is kicking children out of school after being tardy for 20 days? The new attendance policy targets only out-of-boundary students, however. That's discriminatory.
Could this be DCPS' response to the pressure it's under at certain schools to provide more seats to neighborhood families?
"Being an out-of-boundary student is not a right," said Melissa Salmanowitz, DCPS' spokeswoman. It's "an accommodation" requiring students "adhere to the school and DCPS policies."
Actually, the out-of-boundary system is indisputable evidence of DCPS' historic and continued failure to provide each child a quality education at his or her neighborhood school. An attendance policy assaulting out-of-boundary students is added injury.
"Every policy is grounded in what is in the best interest of students," Salmanowitz asserted.
That's questionable.
The policy is implemented -- apparently without a formal appeals process -- at principals' discretion. DCPS didn't know how many children have been affected citywide. One school had "156 students with unexcused absences or tardies." Many children learned as school was closing they couldn't return.
D.C. Council Chairman Phil Mendelson, who oversees DCPS, said a series of interventions are supposed to be provided, and only when the distance a child travels is the primary basis for tardiness should a child be returned to the neighborhood school.
"The rule may be reasonable," Mendelson continued. "But implementation may be arbitrary, punitive and retaliatory. DCPS has proved it is insensitive to due process."
Consider Althea Forrester and Howard Wilson. Their daughter, who is a good student, attended Bancroft Elementary; it's walking distance from their home. She is asthmatic and has been twice treated for pneumonia. They admitted she has been tardy several times -- not 47 days as Bancroft's principal, Zakiya Reid, claimed.
"She usually is going through the door at 8:50 or 9 o'clock; breakfast is still being eaten in the classroom," explained Wilson. When his daughter had doctors' appointments, he notified the school.
After receiving a second "form letter," he asked the classroom teacher for an explanation. She told him attendance was being handled by the "office." A staffer there referred him back to the classroom teacher.
"[Bancroft] teachers take attendance, then report information to the registrar;" that information is entered into DCPS' computerized system and "cross-referenced with the tardy sign-in sheet," said Salmanowitz.
Interestingly, as PTA president, Wilson met several time with Reid; she never mentioned any problem with his daughter's attendance. But two days before the June 14 closing of school, Reid scheduled a meeting with Wilson and his wife. They assumed it was to discuss their daughter's tardiness. Shockingly, at the conclusion, Reid presented a previously prepared letter kicking their daughter out of Bancroft.
They alerted others in their school community, Mendelson and Councilman Jim Graham. Unsurprisingly, last week, DCPS sought to resolve the problem. "We recognize there are always going to be extenuating circumstances," said Salmanowitz.
"Every child who has been kicked out doesn't have a parent like me," said Wilson. "These are children they are treating this way."
Jonetta Rose Barras' column appears on Tuesday and Friday. She can be reached at jonetta@jonettarosebarras.com.
The Washington Times
By Tom Howell Jr.
June 25, 2012
Newly appointed D.C. Council Chairman Phil Mendelson said Monday he will tackle campaign finance and education reforms after the legislative body’s recess from mid-July to mid-September.
Mr. Mendelson, a Democrat, will preside over his first legislative meeting as chairman on Tuesday. His colleagues voted him into the role after former chairman Kwame R. Brown resigned and pleaded guilty to bank fraud and a misdemeanor campaign finance violation related to his 2008 re-election bid for at-large member of the council.
“I promise you, we will be moving aggressively right after the recess,” Mr. Mendelson said at a pre-legislative press briefing on Monday, continuing a tradition carried out by prior chairmen as he settles into his role as chief lawmaker.
Mr. Mendelson said there is nothing wrong with the council taking its normal summer recess amid a transition of leadership and heavy legislative docket. The break, he said, is routine and allows staff to catch up on important work.
Mr. Mendelson said he expects to take up campaign finance reform in the latter part of the year.
Mayor Vincent C. Gray has said he is working with D.C. Attorney General Irv Nathan to fashion a slate of reforms, but nothing has been formally proposed. The issue is considered a pressing one for the council, after FBI agents in March raided the home and offices of a prolific contributor to D.C. campaigns as part of an apparent probe into his network of donors.
Mr. Mendelson also said he will retain control of the Committee on the Judiciary and the Committee of the Whole until the end of the year.
Responding to a reporter’s questions, he said he understood the perspective that he is holding onto the judiciary committee in case he is unsuccessful in his bid to keep the chairman position during a special election this November. However, he said another reorganization during this council period — changes were made last summer and in recent weeks — of the council would have a harmful effect on staff who are trying to build momentum toward legislative goals.
“Is it a great situation? No,” he said.
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