- D.C. charter board member has $195,000 contract with D.C. charter school [Friendship PCS and Options PCS mentioned]
- Barbara Nophlin should resign from D.C. Charter Board [Friendship PCS, Community Academy PCS, and Options PCS mentioned]
- Shining Stars Montessori scrambling to find new home after charter’s building deal fails [Shining Stars Montessori PCS and Bridges PCS mentioned]
- Popular charter school readies for Edgewood move [Inspired Teaching Demonstration PCS and Lee Montessori PCS mentioned]
D.C. charter board member has $195,000 contract with D.C. charter school [Friendship PCS and Options PCS mentioned]
The Washington Post
By Emma Brown
July 18, 2014
A member of the D.C. Public Charter School Board is receiving $195,000 to do consulting work for a network of schools that the board is responsible for overseeing, according to a list of recent contracts the board published on its Web site.
Barbara Nophlin, who joined the board in July 2013, already received $85,000 last year for consulting work with the Friendship Public Charter School network, according to the board’s published list of contracts. Nophlin, a former charter school leader, said her work with Friendship involves coaching principals.
The arrangement meets the legal requirements of D.C. School Reform Act, which prohibits board members from being employees of a city charter school, said Scott Pearson, the board’s executive director. But he acknowledged that Nophlin’s relationship with Friendship is unusual and said the board has asked the city’s Board of Ethics and Government Accountability to issue an advisory opinion on whether it is appropriate.
“We felt in this case it was important to get BEGA’s opinion on it,” Pearson said. “That's what they’re there for.”
Board staff members are prohibited from working for city charter schools without Pearson’s written permission, a provision added to the employee handbook after Jeremy Williams, the board’s former chief financial officer, was accused of using his position to aid an alleged fraud scheme at Options Public Charter School.
Many board members have some professional connection to schools the board oversees. Board Chairman John H. “Skip” McCoy, for example, works for the nonprofit Fight for Children, which distributes grants to schools, and member Sara Mead works for Bellwether Education Partners, a nonprofit that advises charter schools, among other clients.
Pearson said it would be impractical to limit the seven-member board to people without any connections to charter schools.
“What we have found over the years is that when you get a board that has the kind of expertise that we want, very often that expertise comes from the fact that they’re in education, so they may have some involvement with charter schools,” Pearson said.
All board members are required to recuse themselves from votes that directly affect schools with which they have an outside connection, Pearson said. Because Nophlin is receiving money directly from a school, she is further restricted. She may not take part in or listen to any board discussions about Friendship.
“If there’s a board conversation about those schools, I can’t be in it, I can’t vote on it, I have to recuse myself from anything that has to do with it,” Nophlin said.
Nophlin said that as long as she recuses herself from those decisions, she doesn’t think her work with Friendship poses a conflict. But, as a board member, she can vote on policies affecting schools that compete with Friendship for students and on policies that affect all schools. Pearson said it wouldn’t make sense to keep board members with specific conflicts of interest from voting on sectorwide policies.
“It would effectively render the board, in many cases, without enough members to vote on the matter,” he said. “The only alternative would be to get board members who have nothing to do with any charter schools in the District of Columbia, which we think would deprive the board of the expertise we want.”
Nophlin disclosed her work with Friendship before Mayor Vincent C. Gray (D) nominated her for appointment to the board and before the D.C. Council confirmed her, according to Pearson and a copy of Nophlin’s résumé made public at the time.
Pearson said Nophlin — the only board member who has led a charter school — has been an important addition to the board. She retired from Paul Public Charter School in 2009.
Barbara Nophlin should resign from D.C. Charter Board [Friendship PCS, Community Academy PCS, and Options PCS mentioned]
The Examiner
By Mark Lerner
July 21, 2014
Last week the Washington Post's Emma Brown revealed that D.C. Public Charter School Board member Barbara Nophlin is being paid $195,000 under a contract with Friendship Public Charter School to coach principals. She received, according to the Post reporter, $85,000 from the charter in 2013.
Ms. Nophlin recuses herself from any board votes regarding Friendship PCS, and is not even permitted to be present in the room if matters regarding the school are being discussed. Scott Pearson, the PCSB's executive director, explained to Ms. Brown that the arrangement is not in violation of the School Reform Act which prohibits board members from being employed by charters. In addition, she apparently is also in compliance with a new policy that board members cannot do work for charters without Mr. Peason's permission, a rule developed after it was learned that as the PCSB' chief financial officer Jeremy Williams was at the same time behind the scenes supporting Options PCS. Still, Mr. Pearson believes that the contract between Ms. Nophlin and Friendship is "unusual" and therefore he has asked for an advisory opinion from the D.C. Board of Ethics and Government Accountability. Ms. Nophlin should not wait for a decision to be handed down before deciding what to do.
We now have two recent concrete examples, Options and Dorothy I. Height Community Academy, of charters getting in legal trouble regarding contracting arrangements. Moreover, the CHARM report issued last week failed to resolve details about the financial relationships between other schools and their Charter Management Organizations. Now I do not want to be misunderstood. No one is saying that Ms. Nophlin did anything wrong. However, there is another consideration that needs to be taken into serious consideration in this case.
The situation reminds me of a talk I heard given years ago by Ed Crane, the past president of the CATO Institute. He said that when he was hiring policy analysts for his group one of the qualities he stressed for someone in this position is that their published work had to be completely accurate. The reason, Mr. Crane asserted, was that as a libertarian think tank, people already found its ideas out of the mainstream. Therefore, any slight deviation from the facts could be used by others as an excuse to disparage the political philosophy.
A similar analogy applies here. Because charters are the alternative school system people get nervous over the millions of dollars in taxpayer money that goes to these institutions. For this reason the spending of funds must rise to a higher standard than is customarily applied to nonprofits.
Ms. Brown also brings up the examples of board members John "Skip" McCoy, who works for Fight for Children, an establishment that provides grants to charter schools, and Sara Mead, whose Bellweather Education Partners consults with educational organizations. But these instances are much different than the case with Ms. Nophlin in that the majority of her work on the board can have an impact on Friendship PCS from which she is receiving direct remuneration.
The right thing for Ms. Nophlin is to resign from the PCSB or end her consulting relationship with Friendship PCS. The step is consistent with the financial transparency those of us in the charter movement are striving to achieve.
Shining Stars Montessori scrambling to find new home after charter’s building deal fails [Shining Stars Montessori PCS and Bridges PCS mentioned]
The Washington Post
By Michael Alison Chandler
July 19, 2014
When his daughters’ school announced plans to move to a new building a few blocks from his Petworth home, Wayan Vota thought he had achieved an elusive dream in his search for a charter school: a great one in a convenient location.
But Vota and other parents at Shining Stars Montessori Academy recently learned that the school’s building deal fell through when the owner accepted a more lucrative offer from another charter school at the last minute, before Shining Stars’ lease was finalized.
Shining Stars is now scrambling to secure a new location in time to open its doors next month, and families are reeling and frustrated, unsure where they will send their children to school and how they will get there. “It’s definitely a shock and a setback and a challenge,” Vota said.
The confusion highlights a common struggle for charter schools as they work to plant roots across the city.
Charters receive a taxpayer-funded facilities allotment of $3,072 per student. But advocates say charters remain at a disadvantage because they must hunt down appropriate campuses as the public school system invests heavily in renovations and maintains a list of surplus buildings.
“They are letting buildings lie empty and deteriorate and requiring charter schools to look to the private market,” said Scott Pearson, executive director of the D.C. Public Charter School Board. The result is that many charter schools set up shop in “really inadequate facilities,” he said.
City officials acknowledge that charter advocates feel the process of obtaining space in public school system facilities is too slow, but they also note that 30 former school system buildings now house charter schools, with half a dozen leases or building awards coming in the past year.
“There are many charter schools that do have homes in [D.C. Public Schools] buildings,” Deputy Mayor for Education Abigail Smith said this month on “The Kojo Nnamdi Show” on WAMU (88.5 FM), responding to a question about contentions that the city is hoarding empty school buildings. “I think that we certainly can do more on our end to ensure that . . . charter schools are in good school space and that we’re making use of these DCPS buildings for the purpose they were designed.”
Because of the facility challenges, charters often find spaces that require them to make do without gyms or playing fields and rely on public playgrounds nearby, Pearson said. There are charter schools in church basements and old warehouses, and one is above a CVS pharmacy.
“We are a small school. It’s a challenge competing in the commercial real estate market” with deep-pocketed developers or other charter schools, said Kamina Newsome, director of operations for Shining Stars, which expects to have 124 students this fall and has a waiting list with more than 100 names.
Newsome said the school is in final negotiations for a location that school officials hope they will be able to announce soon.
“I can tell you that we are going to open school on time and we will have a quality space,” she said. “We are packed and ready to go.”
There are a limited number of buildings that are potentially usable and offer space to grow, Metro accessibility, access to play space, and a price tag that doesn’t sap all their resources, Newsome said.
This will be the third location for Shining Stars, which opened in 2011. For the past two years, the school has had classes in an annex of a former industrial laundry near the U Street Corridor.
Many parents were relieved when a search for new space focused on an office building at 1246 Taylor St., in Petworth, because it was not too far — about a mile and a half — from the school’s current location.
But the school’s executive director, Regina Rodriguez, notified parents last weekend that the deal, more than two months in the making, had fallen through.
“Essentially, we were the ‘victims’ of what is known in the real estate industry as a retrade,” Rodriguez said in an e-mail.
The school had completed rounds of negotiations, signed a lease and submitted a deposit by June 25, she said. It had also obtained a building permit from the city for renovations. But the owner had not signed the lease. And on June 27, school officials were informed that the owner had decided to pursue an unsolicited offer from another charter school.
Donald E. Kinser, managing member of JRK Family Investments DC, which owns the property, said in an e-mail that the broker and others had worked “diligently and in good faith” to complete a lease negotiation with Shining Stars starting in April. But in June, once negotiations were completed, they waited for “nearly two weeks” to receive the signed lease and deposit from the school.
In the meantime, Bridges Public Charter School, which has a campus next door to the building, came to JRK and made “a far more compelling economic offer” and was able to complete negotiations and execute a lease in a week.
Kinser said the lease with Bridges represents a “far lower risk to us as a building owner” because, among other things, the school has a 10-year track record of success.
Rodriguez said there was never any intent by Shining Stars to stall and that attorneys on both sides were working out final details of the lease well into June.
The director of Bridges said she was not available for an interview. Pearson said the school had planned to expand its second campus at a former DCPS building but recently learned it couldn’t and went looking for new space.
Shining Stars’ letter to parents said school officials delayed sharing the “devastating news” because they hoped to find an alternate location quickly. In a meeting with parents Wednesday night, officials said they are focusing their search on a site near the Maryland border.
Several parents said they love Shining Stars’ Montessori model, not commonly found in a public school, and the tight-knit community of families that has grown up around the school. But they also said location is crucial.
Tabitha Bennett, a Ward 8 mother, said she commuted 45 minutes each morning to drop her twin girls at Shining Stars last year and would then continue on to her job at a nonprofit organization in Georgetown. A new location near the Maryland border would be unmanageable, she fears, as it would add more than an hour to her round-trip commute. She turned down the chance to enroll the girls in another charter school after the city’s annual lottery.
“Now I’m kicking myself,” Bennett said.
Shining Stars officials said that if they do finalize a deal in a less-central location, they plan to provide shuttles or offer enhanced before- and after-care to help parents.
“We are aware of the inconvenience,” Newsome said. “They won’t be on their own to sink or swim.”
Popular charter school readies for Edgewood move [Inspired Teaching Demonstration PCS and Lee Montessori PCS mentioned]
ElevationDC
Amy Rogers Nazarov
July 18, 2014
Driven by demand for classroom seats from D.C. parents and a quest for ample green space for its students, the Inspired Teaching Demonstration Public Charter School is counting down the days until its move to 301 Douglas St NE in Edgewood.
“I was checking on the construction [progress] this morning,” says Deborah Williams, whose title changed from executive director to head of school effective July 1. “Our families are waiting with bated breath to hear that the work is finished.”
The task of converting the former Shaed Elementary School in Northeast to the permanent home of ITDPCS is currently scheduled to finish the day before school starts – September 2, 2014. Perkins Eastman is the architect of record, while Brailsford & Dunlavey, which also worked on the renovation of Wilson High School in Northwest, is overseeing the project.
Lee Montessori, a new charter school opening, will also temporarily lease space in Shaed, shuttered since 2011 due to low enrollment.
Charter schools in D.C. enroll about 44 percent of the city’s public-school students.
The move from ITDPCS’ first site – 1328 Florida Ave NW – was spurred by the dearth of green space there for students. The new site will offer access to a field owned by the District’s Department of Parks and Recreation as well as other play areas immediately adjacent to Shaed.
What’s more, the new site will be able to accommodate more students than the downtown location can. Williams projects that by the school year 2020-2021, the school will have enrolled about 500 students from preschool through 8th grade.
“Right now we have 268 students, from three-year-olds to 5th graders,” she says. “Next year we will add 6th grade.” The projected enrollment for the coming school year is 318 students.
ITDPCS has a lengthy wait list, and Williams says it’s due to the school’s “progressive model of urban education in a public-school setting.”
Among other things, student-led inquiry is at the heart of the classroom, as are efforts to continuously link learning back to areas of students’ interests and passions.
“Our students experience every day the sense that they are the most important people in the building,” she adds.
A partnership with the Philips Collection supports ITDPCS’ quest to tap into students’ creativity in the support of all areas of study. “Throughout the building, we display student-generated artwork,” nothing pre-printed, Williams says. “Those art pieces are often related to the writing and math and social studies happening in the classroom.”
While D.C. native Williams attended parochial schools when she was a student here, her husband is a “proud graduate of DC Public Schools.”
“Education may even come before eating and sleeping for my family,” says Williams, who has worked in the field for decades at schools ranging from UDC to Beauvoir (the elementary school at the National Cathedral) to Sidwell Friends.
ITDPCS is an outgrowth of the Center for Inspired Teaching, a D.C.-based training institute for teachers.