- Critics: Charters cheated out of funds [Friendship and E.L. Haynes PCS mentioned]
- City closes door on KIPP DC charter high school [KIPP DC mentioned]
- Charter school waitlists hit 22,000 [Elsie Whitlow Stokes, E.L. Haynes, KIPP DC, and Capital City PCS mentioned]
- Charter schools owe thanks to Peabody [FOCUS mentioned]
- Gray, Catania have yet to discuss D.C. education issues
- D.C. spending plan cuts programs and staff at dozens of schools
- D.C. working to serve special needs pupils
Critics: Charters cheated out of funds [FOCUS, Friendship and E.L. Haynes PCS mentioned]
The Washington Examiner
By Rachel Baye
May 2, 2013
Public charter schools do not get the same amount of funds as their traditional public school counterparts, which severely affects their ability to acquire buildings and pay competitive wages, charter school leaders told members of the D.C. Council on Thursday. The District funds all public schools based on the number of students they enroll, so a public charter school and a traditional public school with the same numbers of students in the same grades should get roughly the same amount of money each year. But including construction costs, charter schools received an average $16,361 per student, roughly $13,000 less than the $29,145 that schools in the DC Public Schools system received, according to a recent report by the Walton Family Foundation.
The disparity results from other D.C. agencies providing services for free to DCPS schools that charter schools have to pay for, said Robert Cane, executive director of the advocacy group Friends of Choice in Urban Schools. For example, DCPS gets $40 million from the D.C. Department of General Services to maintain its buildings, said Public Charter School Board Executive Director Scott Pearson. DCPS also gets free legal services, while charter schools have to pay. As a result, charter schools have trouble paying for building expansions when enrollment grows.
Though charter schools get an additional $3,000 per student to pay toward their buildings, that amount has been held steady for four years while building costs rose, said Kimberly Campbell, chief of staff at Friendship Public Charter School. Offering competitive teacher salaries is also a struggle, said Richard Pohlman, chief of operations and policy at E.L. Haynes Public Charter School. "Last year, salaries and benefits represented approximately 70 percent of our operating budget." The issue is one that Deputy Mayor for Education Abigail Smith said her office is studying. The report is being produced by the Finance Project and is expected to be completed in September.
However, members of the Council's Education Committee criticized Smith's office's delay in fixing the problem. "We need the application of common sense," said Councilman David Catania, who chairs the Education Committee. "It matters that each child in our city is entitled to the same amount of money, period."
City closes door on KIPP DC charter high school [KIPP DC mentioned]
The Washington Post
By The Editorial Board
May 2, 2013
MAYOR VINCENT C. Gray (D) has pretty much shut the door on plans by KIPP DC to build a new high school on public land in Southwest Washington. His buckling to misguided opposition to the school imperils efforts by the high-performing charter operator to expand its facilities so that more students can benefit from a better education. We hope Mr. Gray will revisit his decision, or at least make good on his professed support for KIPP by helping it to find a viable alternative next year.
KIPP officials had eyed the Randall Park site, north of Nationals Park, as a replacement for its filled-to-capacity Southeast high school and had hoped the city would put the land out for bid so it could compete for its lease. The KIPP proposal, which would include a recreation center, athletic fields and swimming pool for community use, in addition to a state-of-the-art high school, would be financed with private money. (Donald E. Graham, chairman and chief executive of The Washington Post Co., is on the board of trustees of KIPP DC.)
Instead of putting the land — currently zoned for educational, recreational and health-care purposes — out for bid, Mr. Gray opted to undertake a study to map out a long-range strategic plan for the neighborhood. Administration officials defended the “Small Area Plan” as a way to make development decisions based on what the community wants. It’s clearly a stall to avoid controversy caused by the project. Particularly vehement opposition came from developers of a commercial project planned for an adjacent parcel; apparently a high school that serves low-income, mostly minority students is incompatible with new development, no matter how highly it is regarded.
The planning study won’t be completed until next year, which rules out the completion of new high school facilities in time for the 2014 opening envisioned by KIPP. The organization, which operates some of the city’s highest-performing schools, has been in search of new facilities for five years; to best serve its population, it needs a centrally located school that is Metro-accessible. Four hundred high school students are currently served by KIPP, and the organization wants to expand to 600 or 700. Every year that goes by means another missed chance to enroll an additional 50 ninth-graders and get more students off the waiting list.
Administration officials have hinted at plans in the coming weeks to make more surplus public school buildings available to facilities-starved charter schools. We hope that is the case and that a real priority is made to help a charter with a proven track record of getting underserved students to achieve, even if it means taking some flak.
Charter school waitlists hit 22,000 [Elsie Whitlow Stokes, E.L. Haynes, KIPP DC, and Capital City PCS mentioned]
The Washington Examiner
By Rachel Baye
May 2, 2013
The District's public charter schools saw a nearly 50 percent increase in the number of children on schools' waitlists this year, with roughly 22,000 students vying for seats, the Public Charter School Board announced Thursday. By comparison, the same waitlists had roughly 15,000 names last year."This is a depressingly high number that testifies to the continued strong demand for quality schools among D.C. families and the ongoing shortage of enough quality seats to meet parent demand," charter board Executive Director Scott Pearson said of the latest charter school hopefuls.
Charter school or Ivy League?
Some popular D.C. charter schools admitted between 3 and 7 percent of applicants this year, which made them tougher to gain entrance to than some Ivy League universities. The city's 57 charter schools enroll 34,673 students -- 43 percent of the District's public school students -- on 102 campuses. The majority of wait-listed students are waiting for seats at top-performing -- "tier 1" -- charters. Though there are 1,000 seats available at schools, according to Pearson, most students are waiting for seats at schools where no seats are available. The charter board plans to release more specific information about which schools still have seats and how many applicants each school had next week.
The most competitive seats are in the earlier grades, with roughly 14,000 students vying for seats in the four grades from prekindergarten-age 3 through first grade, according to Pearson. The chances of gaining entrance are more difficult for those without a sibling already enrolled. At Elsie Whitlow Stokes Community Freedom Public Charter School, a top-tier school in Ward 5, every prekindergarten seat went to a sibling of a current student this year, forcing every other applicant onto the waitlist.
The list of applicants includes some who have applied at more than one school, inflating the numbers, Pearson noted. At the same time, schools also continue to accept applicants after their lotteries are over. At schools like E.L. Haynes Public Charter School, a top-performing school in Ward 1 offering prekindergarten through 10th grade, that means the nearly 2,000-person waitlist is still growing, said Richard Pohlman, the school's chief of operations and policy. Waitlists like E.L. Haynes' or KIPP DC Public Charter School's 2,500-person list can make the charter school admission process daunting for parents, even causing some to turn away from charters.
Garvey McIntosh's first choice for his 3-year-old daughter, Anya, is E.L. Haynes, but she's roughly 40th on that school's waitlist. And she is behind more than 400 kids on the list at Capital City Public Charter School. That means Anya could very likely be at her neighborhood DC Public School, Garrison Elementary in Ward 2, when the school year commences, McIntosh said. Melanie Coburn said she would love for her son Dexter to get off E.L. Haynes' waiting list, but she does not know how likely that is. She has already enrolled him at two other schools, one public and one private, just in case.
Charter schools owe thanks to Peabody [FOCUS mentioned]
The Northwest Current
By Sharon Lockwood
May 1, 2013
Few people in their lifetimes have improved the lives of so many of D.C.’s young people as Malcolm “Mike” Peabody. Sixteen years ago, few thought there could ever be an alternative to D.C.’s public schools. Mike thought differently. He applied his considerable tenacity, intelligence and passion to fight audaciously for the development of charter schools in D.C. Now 43 percent, or nearly 35,000, of D.C. children are in charter schools.
Mike built Friends of Choice for Urban Schools to accomplish the task and has been the chair of the board of trustees ever since. Mike is retiring from the board after another one of his elegant galas, but Mike is not finished making the world a better place. His next passion is to reform campaign financing. Based on his past track record, expect this David to conquer the Goliath of campaign financing.
Gray, Catania have yet to discuss D.C. education issues
The Washington Post
By Tim Craig
May 2, 2013
When he ran for mayor in 2010, Vincent C. Gray (D) argued he’d be able to have far better relations with the D.C. Council than his opponent, then-mayor Adrian M. Fenty. When he lobbied to oversee education issues, council member David A. Catania (I-At Large), argued in December he could bring stakeholders together if Chairman Phil Mendelson (D) created a stand-alone Education Committee.
But five months after Catania was named chairman of the committee, he and Gray have yet to meet to discuss what both men consider the city’s most pressing issue. “I’ve never had a conversation with him, to this day,” Gray told the Washington Post, though he added that the chairman has spoken to members of Gray’s staff. Catania, who is considering running for mayor next year, said the lack of communication is not his fault.
“It may come as a surprise to the mayor, but the phone rings both ways,” said Catania. “I’ve been meeting frequently with the chancellor [Kaya Henderson] on the subject of education, and informed her of the items on my agenda. I think if [Gray] is interested in what we are doing, he can call me directly, and we can talk about them.” The obvious tension between the two men could foreshadow a rough few weeks in the District government, as Gray and the council hurry to complete work on the fiscal 2014 budget, including $818 million in schools funding.
Though 2007 school reform legislation gave the mayor control over the schools, Catania is moving forward with aggressive oversight. At a hearing on the D.C. Public Schools budget Thursday, Catania questioned several of the Gray administration’s school budgeting decisions. Among other concerns, Catania worried about scaled back summer school and reducing funds for some schools that have seen a dip in enrollment. “You are left to defend a budget that in many ways is indefensible,” Catania told Henderson. “The responsibility for this budget rests with the mayor, and the mark you were given, you are left to defend it.”
Pedro Ribeiro, a Gray spokesman, notes that Gray is proposing an overall increase in the schools budget. “Mr. Catania can’t be farther from the truth,” said Ribeiro, adding that Henderson is allowed to make specific decisions about how to allocate her budget. As for not speaking with Catania about education, Ribeiro said the chairman met last week with Deputy Mayor for Education Abigail Smith, the mayor’s point-person for school issues. “The mayor meets with council members all the time,” Ribeiro said. “If Mr. Catania wants to meet with him, the mayor is on the sixth floor [of the John A. Wilson Building.]…He can walk up to the sixth floor. Why would the mayor call him?”
D.C. spending plan cuts programs and staff at dozens of schools
The Washington Post
By Emma Brown and Tim Craig
May 2, 2013
When D.C. Schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson announced in January that she wanted to close 15 schools, she said the downsizing would help create a stronger school system with rich academic offerings, a system that could compete with the city’s charter schools. But Henderson’s proposed fiscal 2014 budget has raised concerns about her ability to fulfill that promise. The $818 million spending plan, an increase of less than 1 percent from this year’s budget, calls for some new investments, but it requires cuts to staff and programs at dozens of schools, including some where enrollment is holding steady or rising.
Henderson faced skepticism Thursday when she testified before the D.C. Council’s Education Committee. Committee members blasted the spending cuts and expressed concern that they could cripple efforts to persuade parents to send their children to the city’s traditional public schools. Henderson told the committee that she has little choice but to shift resources because of the system’s failure to meet enrollment projections. The system received per-pupil funding this year for a projected enrollment of about 47,000 students, but only 45,500 showed up. Mayor Vincent C. Gray (D) has said he was obligated to use a more realistic number for next year: 46,060. “We would have to take the money from somewhere else,” Henderson told the committee. “We are doing the best we can with the hand we were dealt.”
Parents and politicians say the reductions threaten families’ faith in the school system, particularly in nonselective high schools and middle schools, many of which are facing deep cuts. At Stuart-Hobson Middle School on Capitol Hill, where enrollment is projected to rise but the budget would be sliced by 12 percent, students would be able to take a foreign language only if parents raised enough money to hire an after-school teacher.
“The message that [D.C. Public Schools] sends to families looking for anything other than the bare minimum is, ‘Go to charters,’ ” said Laura Marks, a PTA member at Watkins Elementary, which is a feeder school for Stuart-Hobson. “It’s like DCPS has given up the game at middle school. They’re just walking away from it.” Council member David A. Catania (I-At Large), chairman of the Education Committee, said Henderson and Gray should have done more to reallocate resources so that no school experiences a cut of more than 5 percent. Catania said several schools — including Eliot-Hine Middle School, Ballou Senior High School and Stuart-Hobson — are looking at cuts of at least 10 percent.
“You are left to defend a budget that in many ways is indefensible,” Catania told Henderson. “The responsibility of this budget rests with the mayor.” Council member Tommy Wells (D-Ward 6), who, like Catania, is considering challenging Gray in next year’s mayoral election, said the school budget is unacceptable. Wells said many of the proposed cuts would hit schools on Capitol Hill, which he represents.
“The greatest cuts have been in the schools that we’ve had the greatest challenge getting the parents of Washington D.C. to trust them,” Wells said. “I am very concerned you will not be able to convince parents to stay in DCPS at the middle school level with this budget,” Wells said.
See link above for full article.
D.C. working to serve special needs pupils
The Northwest Current
By Hosanna Mahaley Jones
May 1, 2013
The Office of the State Superintendent of Education would like to provide additional context to The Current’s April 10 article on D.C. special education services and address concerns presented in Ms. Carol Grigsby’s April 24 letter to the editor on the same subject.
With respect to students with special needs, our office is responsible for ensuring our schools are in compliance with the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, a federal law that requires that all students with disabilities be provided a “free and appropriate public education in the least restrictive environment.” These two concepts intentionally strike an important balance:ensuring that students with disabilities receive a quality education as well as meaningful interactions with nondisabled peers in their communities to best prepare them (and their peers) for life beyond the
classroom.
It is important that the District work to strike this balance. The national average of placement into the “most restrictive” settings is approximately 4 percent; the District’s reported equivalent rate is 19 percent. While this is a marked improvement from the 28 percent rate in 2010, we still remain the
highest in the nation.
Mayor Vincent Gray has worked tirelessly to ensure that education leaders develop a thoughtful strategy for examining what resources are needed for students with disabilities to be successful in school communities closer to home, and has invested significant resources ($30 million annually) to put these resources in community schools. While it is true that placements of students in restrictive settings have decreased between 10 percent and 15 percent annually over the past three years, we have seen a reduction in parent complaints of 30 percent annually during this same period. We believe this shows that we are beginning to strike the right balance, as contemplated by the federal law.
Additionally, with the proposed $6.4 million enhancement for special education early intervention in the mayor’s fiscal year 2014 budget, the District can better position itself with high-quality offerings for students, starting with pre-kindergartners who are identified with a disability. The decrease in the nonpublic tuition budget does not mean that our students won’t have access to nonpublic services if needed. To the contrary, it is a direct reflection of a concentrated effort between MayorGray, the deputy mayor for education, my office, D.C. Public Schools, public charter schools and educational stakeholders to ensure students with special needs are in a local and least restrictive environment. Our collective mission is for D.C.’s students with special needs to receive quality services closer to home and in full compliance with the law.