- D.C. Council members fear schools near tipping point as students flee system
- Video + story: Closing DCPS schools could push students to charters, council members warn
- DCPS Chancellor faces lawsuit, angry City Council
- SIMMONS: Mendleson puts school truancy on D.C.'s front burner
- Time for serious action by charters on city's budget [FOCUS mentioned]
D.C. Council members fear schools near tipping point as students flee system
The Washington Post
By Emma Brown
January 23, 2013
The District’s traditional public school system is in danger of shrinking significantly unless officials make changes that persuade parents to stop fleeing to public charter schools, D.C. Council members said Wednesday.
“I believe we are within a year or two of hitting an irreversible tipping point,” said David Catania (I-At Large), who chairs the council’s Education Committee, during a hearing on Chancellor Kaya Henderson’s plan to close 15 under-enrolled city schools.
“If we don’t become very serious about marketing and competing” with charter schools, Catania said, “traditional public schools, as we know them, will become a thing of the past.”
Charter schools have grown quickly in the District during the past 15 years and now enroll more than 40 percent of the city’s public school students, leaving the traditional school system with half-empty buildings in many neighborhoods — and something of an existential crisis.
“On the one hand, we all support high-performing charters, and we support choice for our families,” Henderson said. “But at the same time, we want [the school system] to be robust and to provide everything under the sun.”
Henderson says that closing some small schools will allow her to redirect resources from administration and maintenance to teaching and learning, creating the kind of academic offerings — such as art and music programs, modern libraries and elementary-school foreign language classes — that will attract families.
But on Wednesday, the chancellor offered few details about how she intends to redirect savings to strengthen schools. Such specifics won’t be available until school budgets are determined for the 2013-14 school year, she said.
Schools officials said they expect the closings to save $8.5 million annually, a little more than 1 percent of the system’s total $800 million budget. But critics of the chancellor’s plan question whether the system will save even that much, particularly given the costs of mothballing school buildings, including moving and storing furniture and materials.
Some council members and activists fear that closing traditional public schools will push students into charters, leading to further enrollment losses and future closures. Previous closures have not resulted in demonstrably stronger schools, increased enrollment or leaps in student achievement, they say.
“At best, under-enrollment is a symptom of an underlying disease of inattention and neglect,” said council member Yvette M. Alexander (D-Ward 7), whose ward is home to four of the 15 schools slated to close. “Long-standing neglect should not be used as a justification to close schools and shift the problem without first adequately addressing the root cause.”
When the city shuttered 23 schools in 2008, students from the closed schools were more than twice as likely to enroll in a charter school as students from other schools. This time, 2,600 students are to be displaced, and Catania asked Henderson to explain how she would ensure that they wouldn’t leave the system.
“You’re absolutely right in that many charter schools, because of their proficiency rates, offer, at least on the surface, a better opportunity,” Henderson said. “We’re going to have to work really hard.”
Henderson said she would submit a transition plan to the council by Feb. 15.
The hearing was Henderson’s first appearance before the Education Committee, constituted this month to bring new focus to oversight of city schools. Education had been handled since 2007 by the council’s Committee of the Whole, a forum in which other issues often overshadowed the subject.
“We have been missing in action for six years,” Catania said. A key committee priority will be helping establish a comprehensive plan for the coexistence of charter and public schools, he said.
While council members focused on avoiding future school closures, activists announced Wednesday that they plan to challenge in court the latest round of closings. They say the closures disproportionately affect African American children and students with disabilities.
Black students make up 72 percent of the school system’s total enrollment but account for 93 percent of the students affected by the closures, said Mary Levy, a longtime school system watchdog.
“Folks are losing access to walkable schools, to public resources. What we feel it is about is pushing low-income and moderate income people of color out of the District,” said Daniel del Pielago, of the community group Empower DC, which has called for a moratorium on school closures.
Johnny Barnes, a lawyer who is leading the legal challenge with Empower DC, said he plans to file a complaint with the Office of Human Rights, which could force the school system to share information about how school-closing decisions were made. If the school system fails to respond to the group’s concerns within 30 days, Barnes said he will sue the city for violating a number of local and federal anti-discrimination laws.
“The people who live in Anacostia have the same right to an education as the people who live on Albemarle,” said Barnes, who went on to invoke Democratic Mayor Vincent Gray’s “One City” motto. “You can’t have one city if you don’t have one standard.”
Video + story: Closing DCPS schools could push students to charters, council members warn
The Washington Examiner
By Rachel Baye
January 23, 2013
DC Public Schools needs to work hard to keep the nearly 2,500 students who will leave their current schools when 13 campuses close in June, D.C. Council members told schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson on Wednesday.
Henderson's plan to close 15 underenrolled schools -- 13 in June and two a year later -- would allow DCPS to better concentrate resources on programs like art, music and language, Henderson said. Students in the closing schools would relocate to other DCPS schools nearby.
But at the hearing Wednesday, members of the council's newly formed Education Committee worried that the closings would drive more students into the District's rapidly growing public charter schools.
"Taking [2,500] students out of the system and hoping they will re-enroll -- it's anyone's guess whether we will be successful," said committee Chairman David Catania, D-at large.
Charter schools now enroll 41 percent of the city's 76,753 public school students. Since 2008, when the District closed 23 schools, the number of students in public charter schools has grown 60 percent.
If DCPS continues to lose students to charter and private schools, the school closings may continue, Catania warned. "They are, in fact, luring our children from traditional public schools."
Since schools are funded based on the number of students they enroll, students leaving schools in an individual ward means the dollars for those schools also are leaving. That was of particular concern to Councilwoman Yvette Alexander, who represents Ward 7, where four schools are slated to close because of low enrollment. But Alexander questioned why DCPS schools in her ward are underpopulated when charter schools nearby are popular.
There are 22 charter schools in Ward 7.
To some extent, Henderson said she can't help that there's competition. "If it were up to me, there would not be three high-performing charter middle schools placed around a traditional public middle school," she said.
Catania pointed to charters' relatively high test scores compared with neighboring DCPS options. If DCPS schools had higher levels of academic achievement, they would be more competitive.
"I want a traditional public school system where students are dying to get into our schools as opposed to leaving," he said.
The difference, said Henderson, is that when a student enters a charter school at a below-grade reading level, the school can require the student to get extra help during the summer. DCPS cannot do the same.
At the end of the day, though, parents are going to do what they can to ensure that their children get the best education, said Ward 8 Councilman Marion Barry.
"I don't blame those parents," Barry said of parents who choose charters.
DCPS Chancellor faces lawsuit, angry City Council
The Examiner
By Jane Kreisman
January 23, 2013
Shortly before embattled DC Public Schools (DCPS) Chancellor Kaya Henderson met with the DC City Council's new Education Committee inside the John A. Wilson Building today, Empower DC and attorney Johnny Barnes announced a legal injunction to block her plan to close 15 city public schools from the freezing steps of the same building.
Protesters brought many of their colorful and provocative signs inside and filled seats at the City Council committee hearing. The proceedings indoors aired live on City Cable TV 13 and DC Council member David A. Catania kept other citizens apprised of developments by tweeting live on Twitter.
D.C. Council members finally had their chance to question Chancellor Kaya Henderson in person and in public about her latest school consolidation plan.
David Catania, the Independent At-Large Council member who is Chair of the new Education Committee has said that one of his top priorities is improving the school system’s budget transparency and ''understanding how every dollar is spent.''
Catania said that DC education committees have been ''missing in action for six years,'' and that lack of oversight has detrimentally affected DCPS.
For example, the closure of 23 D.C. schools in 2008 cost nearly $18 million, according to an audit released in August, nearly double the $9.7 million originally reported by the school system.
Catania has already introduced three bills this year for city reform, most notably one for DC CFO budget transparency.
Council and Committee member Yvette Alexander represents Ward 7, where four of the Chancellor's 15 schools are slated to be closed. She demands that any savings from the closures of those four schools, Ron Brown Middle, Kenilworth Elementary, Davis Elementary and Winston Education Campus, must remain in Ward 7.
While Alexander made a visible effort and succeeded in remaining civil and constructive throughout the meeting, the Chancellor did neither.
The most notable comments about her contentiousness came from Marion Barry, Council member for Ward 8 and former DC Mayor, who criticized the Chancellor for giving the council a ''facetious'' answer to their questions. He also took her to task for interrupting him and for ''cutting (him) off'.''
At one point, Henderson lost her composure and raised her voice over soft-spoken Barry.
''Why the hostility?'' he asked.
Half-way through the Chancellor's answer to his next question, he retracted it, complaining, ''No, I don't want your answer.''
He ended his attempt at a civil discourse with the Chancellor with a statement of disgust, insisting, ''You're not telling the truth!''
Instead of releasing the anticipated data of studies already conducted to support her case, Henderson was mostly on the defensive today.
Although Henderson again promised ''more robust'' programs across the city, she was reminded how she has orchestrated a systematic downsizing and ''excessing'' of Art, Music and other 'special subjects' programs and teachers during her tenure.
Council member Alexander stated, ''I want to see Art , Music and P.E. in every school in Ward 7. I want to see language offerings in Ward 7, modern libraries in Ward 7, and a STEM focus in every school in Ward 7.''
As the end of the meeting approached, Chairperson Catania gave his ''recap,''
'We are hoping to embark on a new era of collective responsibility, giving out honest information, so that the public can make informed decisions.'
The Chancellor was allowed the final word:
''This is complex, frustrating and difficult,'' she said, but she agreed to ''work on these budget issues.''
Notably, this is how the Chancellor chose to end the nearly 3-hour meeting.
Dripping in flashy, bulky gold jewelry, the Chancellor bragged about all her other standing job offers and implied that she could be making a lot more money ''without all of this,'' gesturing with both arms at the City Council and the cameras.
SIMMONS: Mendleson puts school truancy on D.C.'s front burner
The Washington Times
By Deborah Simmons
January 23, 2013
Phil Mendelson is of a mind that his city’s government is obligated to curb the school truancy problem. To that end, the chairman of the D.C. Council is in line with his colleague, David A. Catania, who is legislatively poking at the issue by proposing that parents of chronically truant children be punished.
Holding parents accountable for their children’s behavior would add a new twist to an old conservative core value, but the general direction of the Catania proposal is rooted in big government.
A crackdown on truancy is a good thing, since local, state and federal monies are allocated by schools enrollment — not parental engagement.
Parents, for sure, must be engaged when children mount unexcused absences.
“Sometimes [high school students] are truant because of illiteracy,” Mr. Mendelson, a Democrat, said, adding that “government has an obligation” to make sure children attend school.
“I really believe that truancy is a gateway to all kinds of government services that have been lacking,” he said.
And it’s a lengthy list — from child welfare and food stamps to health care and prison re-entry programs. Programs that, like public education, suckle tax coffers.
While breaking bread with Mr. Mendelson on Wednesday morning and after listening to Mr. Catania, at-large independent, and reading the anti-truancy legislation that he proposed Tuesday, it’s obvious that cracking down on parents reeks of government overreach at this juncture.
The council knows why students are chronic truants, so that’s off the check list.
The council does not know — and this is critical — why the school system’s sister agencies, such as the ones that subsidize families, do not.
They just don’t appear to communicate with one another on behalf of children’s education.
And that’s not new.
Authorities in the District disengaged parents a very long time ago — even after Al Gore invented the Internet.
Indeed, since the 1990s, officials have been merely putting on facades about school reform.
Under the guise of public engagement, lawmakers and school officials get public input by holding tightly structured klatches on school closings, on school budgets, on curricula changes and graduation rates, and on other school-related topics.
And schools engage parents after the fact — after a child has been labeled a truant.
Getting agencies involved with a child’s health, education and welfare could be smart public policy, if lawmakers rethink the to-do list.
After all, progressives don’t establish government sanctions on parents when their 17-year-old daughter has an abortion, or contracts HIV or another sexually transmitted disease.
Liberals don’t punish parents whose sons impregnate young girls without benefit of marriage or daughters who have babies without benefit of marriage.
Dining on an all-American breakfast at Old Ebbitt Grill, Mr. Mendelson talked about parental engagement, good schools and school resources. And, by the way, he mentioned that he has no designs on running for mayor in 2014.
However, he and Mayor Vincent C. Gray don’t see eye-to-eye on targeting anti-truancy programs.
Mr. Mendelson sees third- to eighth-graders as crucial, while the mayor launched his program at Anacostia High School.
Let’s hope that doesn’t become a political or financial impasse, because the mayor, the council chairman and Mr. Catania are missing a finer point: Many parents haven’t a clue as to what’s actually taking place in a schoolhouse because authorities do not tell them.
Open the doors and let them in.
Time for serious action by charters on city's budget [FOCUS mentioned]
The Examiner
By Mark Lerner
January 24, 2013
Robert Cane, the executive director of Friends for Choice in Urban Schools, had an editorial in the Examiner yesterday congratulating the Mayor for providing a stable revenue source for the $3,000 a student charter school facility allotment. Never mind that DCPS may spend double this amount each year on school modernization. Moreover, when it comes to operations the Levy Study estimated that annually the traditional system receives between $72 million and $127 million more than charters even though by law there is supposed to be funding equity through the Uniform Per Pupil Funding Formula.
There was not one word in the piece about Chancellor Kaya Henderson's plan to keep the 15 school buildings in her portfolio that she is about to shutter. It is a crazy decision, especially because in the past it has been shown that when DCPS closes sites students are more than twice as likely to end up in a charter compared to a regular school.
So now it's another budget year and FOCUS will ask charter school leaders to leave their pupils and march down to the Wilson Building so they can beg once again that their revenue is not reduced. I say enough is enough.
FOCUS was founded on the idea that a high quality education was a civil right. Now that long-time chairman Malcolm Peabody is stepping down perhaps the organization has lost some of its drive. But Martin Luther King knew that it took more than words to change America. It's time for action and one place to start is in the courts.