By Robert Cane
May 6, 2009
On May 12, the D.C. Council will hold its first reading on Mayor Adrian Fenty's budget. Every public service provider has been concerned about likely cuts after the city government announced it had a shortfall of some $800 million. But in education, the mayor's cuts had a nasty twist. D.C. public charter schools — which educate about 33 percent of D.C. children — were singled out for 100 percent of the mayor's education cuts.
The mayor's attitude contrasts sharply with that of President Barack Obama, who has now visited two District public charter schools — Capital City in Northwest and the SEED School in Southeast — and praised their achievements. The mayor's approach also contrasts with D.C. parents: Student enrollment in D.C. charters was up 17 percent last school year. Meanwhile, student enrollment in the mayoral-run schools fell by 9 percent.
The mayor has targeted charters' facilities allowance — which public charter schools use to lease, buy and renovate buildings — with a $24 million cut, while also proposing a $13 million increase in school building funds for the cityrun schools. This will make school building funding per charter student $2,341, less than half the $5,829 school building funding per student in the city-run schools.
Current readers will know that the D.C. government is entertaining bids from condo and office developers on 11 former public school buildings, including the Stevens and Grimke buildings in Northwest. This is despite the fact that D.C. law says that the charters have the right to negotiate to buy or lease surplus D.C. public school buildings before deep-pocketed commercial real estate developers can offer the city millions for them.
Thanks to the administration's intransigence over facilities for charters, many are forced to occupy often-inadequate space in nonschool buildings. Many charters are housed in commercial, retail or warehouse space and church annexes and basements and have had to take out expensive bank loans to renovate and acquire high-priced commercial real estate.
The net result of successive administrations blocking charters from acquiring appropriate facilities is that non-residential public charter schools (two charters are boarding schools: one in Northeast and one in Southeast) have less than half the square footage per student of the city's traditional public schools.
Despite these challenges, middle and high school students from low-income families in D.C. public charter schools are almost twice as likely to be proficient in reading and math as their peers in city-run neighborhood schools. Their parents oppose the mayor's unfair and discriminatory education cuts. Will members of the D.C. Council?
Robert Cane
Executive director, Friends of
Choice in Urban Schools (FOCUS)