FOCUS DC News Wire 8/20/13

 

 

Teachers in the District’s traditional public schools earn more than their counterparts at nearly every D.C. charter school, according to a Washington Post review of teacher salaries across the city, with many city teachers earning salaries that are thousands of dollars higher.

 

School officials say high pay is a key part of the city’s strategy for attracting talented people to teach in some of the nation’s most challenging schools. For charters, however, it creates an additional challenge. Unable to match the school system’s salaries, many charters instead rely on other factors to recruit and retain candidates, including small class sizes, professional development opportunities and strongly defined missions and cultures.

 

The wide variation of school environments and pay scales shows how the District has become a closely watched experiment in its use of charters and school choice, not just for parents seeking the right education for their children, but also for teachers seeking work. Charters now enroll more than 40 percent of the city’s public school students, and they are growing.

 

The pay difference is largely the result of a landmark 2010 union contract, in which traditional public school teachers gave up longstanding job protections in return for 20 percent raises over five years, plus merit bonuses. Although that contract pushed many charters to increase wages, almost every charter’s minimum, average and maximum salaries lag behind traditional schools.

 

“Teaching is one of the hardest jobs — period, the end,” Chancellor Kaya Henderson said. “And teaching in D.C. Public Schools is even more difficult than in some other places where conditions might be more ideal. We want to be a place where people want to come and want to stay and not worry how they’re going to take care of themselves.”

 

The school system’s minimum salary for a teacher with a bachelor’s degree and no experience was $51,539 in 2011-12. More than two dozen of the city’s charters started their salaries at less than $43,000 that year, the Post review found. Some charters’ maximum pay was below the average pay in the city’s traditional schools.

 

DCPS teachers can earn a maximum base pay of $106,540 plus bonuses of up to $25,000 each year, far higher than the best-paid teacher at many charters, most of which have maximum base salaries of less than $80,000.

 

The District’s average teacher pay of $77,512 in 2013 is the highest in the region. Montgomery County is second, at $74,855; Fairfax County is sixth, at $64,813.

 

D.C. public charters operate as independent school districts, not tethered to the teachers union and free to set salaries and hiring standards. Although charters receive the same per-student tax funding, they do not get some of the government resources that benefit the traditional school system. That has contributed to charters touting intangible benefits instead of high salaries.

 

“It really is that whole ecosystem of things that make our schools special that contribute to being attractive to teachers,” said Rick Cruz, chief executive of D.C. Prep, a local charter network.

 

 

 

Most D.C. charter schools pay teachers less the traditional school system, but minimum and maximum salaries do not tell the whole story. The starting-salary data for some charters include relatively low-paid teachers-in-training, who work alongside a mentor, gradually taking on more responsibility as the year progresses.

 

AppleTree Early Learning, for example, a well-regarded charter with seven campuses for preschool and kindergarten students, staffs every classroom with three adults: a teaching assistant, whose salary began at $21,000 in 2011-12; a teacher-in-training, or fellow, whose salary began at $32,000; and an experienced lead teacher, whose salary began at $43,000.

 

The school retained 77 percent of its fellows this year but only 38 percent of its lead teachers.

 

Some of the departing teachers moved out of the area or went on to graduate school, while others jumped to higher-paying positions at traditional public schools in the District, said Jack McCarthy, AppleTree’s executive director.

 

“Rather than lament that, that’s a way in which we’re having a positive impact on the quality of teaching in early education,” McCarthy said.

 

McCarthy said teaching candidates are drawn to AppleTree in part because of its affiliation with a nonprofit organization that works to develop effective instruction for young children. The school offers extensive professional development worth tens of thousands of dollars each year, he said, and training teachers is a key part of its mission.

 

Teacher training is also part of the mission at Inspired Teaching Demonstration School, where teaching residents earn $25,000 while simultaneously earning graduate credits.

 

Residents then are placed in other D.C. schools, or they might be hired at Inspired Teaching, where starting pay for experienced teachers is $50,000.

 

Mundo Verde Bilingual Public Charter School also employs teachers-in-training, who began at $30,000 in 2011-12. Lead teachers began at $45,000, with a salary schedule patterned loosely on Fairfax County’s. Maximum pay in 2011-12 was $56,000, a figure school officials say should increase with time, as the school matures.

 

The District’s traditional school system has its own way of providing teachers who are new to the job alternative routes into the classroom, including Teach for America and D.C. Teaching Fellows.

 

Those new teachers usually have the same responsibilities as a more seasoned teachers, and they earn the same starting salary as a new D.C. public schools teacher with a bachelor’s degree and no experience: $51,539.

 

 

Today the Washington Post's Emma Brown has two articles that demonstrate as clearly as possible the unequal public funding that D.C.'s charters receive compared to the traditional schools. First, the reporter reveals that DCPS pays teachers substantially higher than charter schools do. She comments,

 

"D.C. public charters operate as independent school districts, not tethered to the teachers union and free to set salaries and hiring standards. Although charters receive the same per-student tax funding, they do not get some of the government resources that benefit the traditional school system. That has contributed to charters touting intangible benefits instead of high salaries."

 

The intangible benefits Ms. Brown is referring to for teachers employed in charters include working longer school days, longer school years, and being available for students 24/7. All of this while practicing their profession in store fronts, church basements, and warehouses.

 

Charters would love to pay instructors more for having to teach under these conditions. But they cannot. This is because on paper charters and the regular schools get the same funding under the Uniform Per Student Funding Formula, but in reality this is not true. Charters get to pay for legal fees, school maintenance, and other administrative costs that DCPS facilities do not incur. Mary Levy estimated the difference in revenue between the two systems at around $100 million a year.

 

To add insult to injury the other Washington Post story celebrates the opening of the new Dunbar High School. Apparently it was a party over there yesterday as our city's leaders rejoiced at the glamorous building that cost taxpayers $122 million. I have real news for you. Charters would love to spend even a third of that amount of money on their classrooms, but this is impossible. No, not at $3,000 a child for a facility allotment that has not been increased a dime in years.

 

We keep hearing that something will change. Charters leaders are told to be patient because actions are about to be taken and studies are being done. But I declare that the waiting is over. After all, the school system that now educates 43 percent of all public school students did not tell anyone to stay quiet as we painstakingly spend every bit of our being successfully striving to close the academic achievement gap.

 

 

Two Rivers Public Charter School is interested in expanding into the former Charles Young Elementary School in Carver-Langston, according to the school's executive director, Jessica Wodatch. Wodatch's comments came Tuesday night at a meeting of Advisory Neighborhood Commission 5D.

 

At the meeting KIPP DC, a local charter network, also reiterated its interest in converting another closed DCPS campus, the former Hamilton school near Gallaudet, into a centrally located state-of-the-art high school. The high school would serve students from KIPP DC's four middle schools, with additional slots available to other District students through a lottery.

 

But ANC 5D Chair Kathy Henderson challenged DCPS's plan to allow charter schools to bid on closed properties such as Young and Hamilton. At the meeting Henderson told Department of General Services (DGS) representative Jackie Stanley that the ANC should have had more say in the school system's decision to excess the sites.

 

Henderson has called a special ANC 5D meeting to consider a resolution opposing the "surplus status" of the two school buildings. The meeting is scheduled for Thursday, August 22, at 6 p.m., and will be held at the 5th District police headquarters at 1805 Bladensburg Rd. NE.

 

KIPP DC recently opened a new campus in a third former DCPS school, Webb Elementary in Trinidad, which currently houses 3-year-olds through kindergarten students. Once the campus is fully renovated in 2014, it will begin serving pre-K through 8th grade students, who would then feed into the high school at Hamilton if KIPP's bid for the site gains approval.

 

During the Tuesday meeting, several residents expressed concern that DCPS had mismanaged the Webb campus. The building has reportedly been the site of break-ins and a fire that may have been caused by arson, which caused extensive damage.

 

Stanley said that awarding former DCPS properties to qualified charter schools would prevent further vandalism. And allowing Two Rivers and KIPP DC to move into the vacant properties would bring high-performing schools to an underserved part of the District. Nevertheless, Henderson insisted that the bidding process needed to be halted for further review.

 

Young and Hamilton, along with two other former DCPS schools, the Shaed and Winston campuses in Edgewood and Hillcrest, were included in a DCPS Request for Offers announced in July. Offers for Young, Hamilton, and Winston were due August 14. The deadline for submitting offers for Shaed has been extended to August 30. Awards are expected to be announced this September.

 

DGS will hold official public hearings on the disposition of each school on the following dates:

 

6pm August 20: Hamilton hearing, at the Trinidad Recreation Center, 1310 Childress Street NE 

6pm August 21: Shaed hearing, Edgewood Recreation Center, 3 Evarts Street NE 

6pm August 27: Winston hearing, Hillcrest Recreation Center, 3100 Denver Street, SE 

Young Campus hearing: TBA

 

 

 

When D.C. officials announced earlier this year that they would close 15 public schools over the next two years, they promised to work aggressively to ensure that students returned to the school system.

 

But with one week to go until classes resume, only half the number of students expected to re-enroll in traditional public have actually done so, fueling fears that they may be defecting to the growing charter school system.

 

According to figures provided by school officials, 44 percent of students at 10 of the 13 schools that closed in June have re-enrolled in a public school. That’s just over half of the 80 percent goal set by D.C. Schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson when she finalized the school closures earlier this year.

 

Re-enrollment rates run the gamut from 31 percent of students who attended Marshall Elementary School in Ward 5 to 72 percent of those that were at Shaw Middle School in Ward 1.

 

According to the figures, re-enrollment of students from closed schools exceeds 50 percent in only three cases, and in only one closed school have more than half of students re-enroll in their designated receiving school. Over 2,000 students were affected by this year’s school closures.

 

School officials say that parents sometimes wait to enroll children until closer to the first day of school, a problem that is evident as children get older. According to figures provided by DCPS in late July, enrollment in high schools averaged 55 percent, while elementary and middle school enrollment stood at 81 and 67 percent, respectively.

 

But critics of the school closures say that the low re-enrollment figures follow the pattern set in 2008, when D.C. closed 23 public schools. According to Mary Levy, an education policy and budget analyst, the city’s public school system lost 3,000 of the 5,200 students that attended those schools that year, and overall enrollment in the system dropped by more than 4,000 students.

 

Part of that has to do with the challenges of mixing schools from different neighborhoods, says Levy.

 

“They’re very apprehensive, and so you close their neighborhood school that’s familiar to them, you send them to another school, certainly when the kids are older they’re worried about turf problems. It’s a hard job integrating schools with each other. The people who have had kids at schools that have been consolidated say that it takes about three years,” she says.

 

Additionally, during the school closure process, some parents complained that their designated receiving school posted lower test scores than the school that was closing. During a June D.C. Council hearing, Council member Marion Barry (D-Ward 8) said that some parents weren’t convinced by the options they had: “It’s hard for me to market something that can’t be marketed,” he said.

 

Henderson announced a plan to close 20 schools in late 2012, narrowing the list to 15 schools after a round of town halls across the city. She said she sought to close schools that were under-enrolled, and promised that more adequately enrolled receiving schools would have more resources for teaching and programming. In June, Henderson said that all elementary students at receiving schools would receive 45 minutes of daily art, music, physical education, and language instruction, something they didn’t get before.

 

In seeking to ease the transition for students from closing schools, Henderson promised an “aggressive, integrated marketing and family recruitment campaign at each receiving school in coordination with the closing school leaders” with the aim of keeping 80 percent of the students affected by the school closures—1,762 students, all told. Some of that marketing seems to have worked—in June, only 13 percent of students from closed schools had re-enrolled in DCPS.

 

But with the school system only halfway to Henderson's goal, some worry that parents may be opting for the growing charter sector—which now enrolls 43 percent of all public school students in the city—and that any enrollment decreases in D.C. public schools could complicate school-by-school budgeting and staffing. Enrollment at DCPS has stabilized over the last two years, while charter school enrollment has grown by over 10 percent each year over that period. (The D.C. Public Charter School Board does not keep a keep a centralized tally of ongoing enrollment, though it announced last week that seats were still available at various schools.)

 

For Council member David Catania (I-At Large), who chairs the Council’s education committee, the uncertainty in enrollment—especially of students from schools that closed—could have impacts stretching over the coming school years.

 

“We've staffed up at Hendley for Ferebee-Hope students,” he says, referring to two elementary schools in Ward 8, the latter of which was closed and will feed into the former. “But if those students go someplace else, to a charter school or some other school, Hendley is now staffed up for those students, and if those students don't appear, next year Hendley's budget will be cut and their staff will be cut, and that can affect programming, the numbers of art teachers, for instance.”

 

According to school figures, that may come to pass: only 20 percent of students from Ferebee-Hope have enrolled in Hendley and 13 percent have opted for other schools, leaving just under 70 percent that have not yet enrolled in DCPS at all.

 

The fate of the displaced students stands in contrast to overall enrollment in D.C. public schools for the coming year: as of early August, 78 percent of the expected 46,060 students had enrolled, three percent ahead of the same point last year. School officials have reason to be optimistic, as test scores over the 2012-2013 school year jumped by the biggest margins since 2008.

 

Still, Catania says that the process of enrolling students is overly cumbersome and should be changed. Parents have to re-enroll their child every year, even if they stay at the same school, and have to show various documents to prove D.C. residency. That means that some students don’t enroll until school starts, which Catania says is unacceptable.

 

Catania says he is concerned with enrollment levels, and will hold hearings in the fall to see what DCPS could do better. “We are where we are, which is… we really don't have a true picture of where these where these children will appear and whether we will have the resources to accommodate them,” he says.

 

Update, 5:30 p.m.: Hendeson wasn't able to comment by press time, but she sent in the following statement after publication: “Overall, enrollment at DCPS is up this year compared with this time last year. Traditionally, a flurry of enrollment happens right as school is about to begin and during the first week. We are working hard to enroll students from consolidating schools and while the numbers are lower now, we are confident that come the start of the school year, they will grow.”

 

 

Students enrolled in the District of Columbia Public Schools system will return to classes on Monday, Aug. 26 to a host of changes aligned with Chancellor Kaya Henderson's mandate earlier this year to shutter 15 under-performing or underutilized schools.

 

Some of the schools slated for closure under the chancellor's controversial "Consolidation and Reorganization Plan" announced in January have been merged with high-performing public charter schools, and as a result of one of the most aggressive school reform agendas in the nation, many of the school system's 45,000 students will find themselves adjusting to new school environments, buildings and schedules.

 

"We did community meetings in every ward with every group and every parent about the proposal we put on the table [in November], and one of the resounding things that we heard from the community was 'what is the vision,'" Henderson, 43, said in an interview in late June.

 

She added that with the closing of neighborhood schools — many of which were in Wards 7 and 8 — the community wanted to know what to expect from a rapidly expanding charter school system.

 

"People knew that the boundary and feeder pattern work was kind of coming soon, and we heard the community sort of saying, 'paint us a picture of how this works together,'" Henderson said.

 

Beginning with the 2013-14 school year, the public schools and charter systems "will be working in tandem in ways we've never seen before," she said.

 

Here's a rundown of how the system will work next week, with the following schools gaining or losing grades:

 

Capitol Hill Montessori 215 G Street PS-6th grade (gaining a 6th grade)

 

Cardozo Education Campus 1200 Clifton Street NW 6th-12th grade (gaining 6-8th grade)

 

Eastern High School 1700 East Capitol Street NE 9th and 10th graders, and first time 11th graders (gaining 11th)

 

Langley Elementary School 101 T Street NE PS-5th grade (losing 6th, 7th, and 8th grades)

 

McKinley Technology Education Campus 151 T Street NE 6th- 8th grade (gaining all)

 

School-Within-A-School 920 F Street NE PS – 2nd (gaining PS and 2nd grade)

 

Feeder Pattern Changes:

 

Barnard Elementary School Truesdell will feed Education Campus or West Education Campus

 

Browne Education Campus Eastern High School

 

Burrville Elementary School Kelly Miller Middle School

 

Cleveland Elementary School Cardozo Education Campus

 

Columbia Heights Education Campus (8th grade) Cardozo Education Campus (9th grade)

 

Garrison Elementary School Cardozo Education Campus

 

Houston Elementary School Kelly Miller Middle School

 

Langdon Education Campus Dunbar High School

 

Langley Elementary School McKinley Education Campus (6th grade)

 

Marie Reed Elementary School Cardozo Education Campus

 

McKinley Education Campus (8th grade)* Dunbar High School

 

Powell Elementary School Columbia Heights Education Campus

 

Ross Elementary School Cardozo Education Campus

 

School Without Walls@ Francis-Stevens (8thgrade) Cardozo Education Campus (9th grade)

 

Seaton Elementary School Cardozo Education Campus

 

Thomas Elementary School Kelly Miller Middle School

 

Wheatley Education Campus Dunbar High School

 

• 8th graders attending Columbia Heights Education Campus (CHEC) are not guaranteed a seat in 9th grade at CHEC. CHEC (9-12th) is a citywide, specialized high school. Students interested in attending CHEC for 9-12 grade must go through the schools' admission process.