- Partnership aims for hybrid traditional-charter school in Southeast Washington [Achievement Prep PCS and Septima Clark PCS mentioned]
- Lawmakers cut $16m from Malcolm X renovation [Achievement Preparatory Academy Public Charter School mentioned]
- For D.C. Council, politics and governance collide in the budget process
- EDELIN: District must be fair in funding charters
- Jonetta Rose Barras: At last, D.C. Council finds its voice for education reform
- Charter school equity with DCPS finally makes an appearance
- Activists head to court in effort to block D.C. school closures
- DCPS school closings face challenge
- Study: D.C. mental health system failing city's youth [Friendship PCS mentioned]
Partnership aims for hybrid traditional-charter school in Southeast Washington [Achievement Prep PCS and Septima Clark PCs mentioned]
The Washington Post
By Emma Brown
May 9, 2013
Chancellor Kaya Henderson is seeking to merge a long-struggling Southeast Washington elementary school with a high-performing charter school, creating what she describes as a first-of-its-kind partnership between the two types of schools. Malcolm X Elementary was among five city schools that Henderson proposed to close last fall but later decided to keep open. Now, after a proposed renovation next year, the school will become part of Achievement Prep Public Charter School, which will run the school in a unique arrangement with D.C. Public Schools.
Henderson announced the partnership Wednesday, describing it as an effort to produce neither a traditional school nor a charter school but something in between. Neighborhood children will have a right to attend the new Malcolm X, she said, but the school’s leaders will have charter-like freedom in running it. Charter operators have won contracts to run city schools in the past, but this — a charter school moving into a public school building and serving its neighborhood children — would be different, Henderson said. It also would fulfill competing desires, as charters wish to expand in the city and as residents clamor for neighborhood schools that can help define communities.
“It’s an animal that we’ve never seen before,” Henderson said. “If I can provide a set of high-performing seats, an opportunity where kids are going to get more than we were able to give them at Malcolm X, I’m good. I don’t care whose shingle they’re under.” She called the “new school model” a blueprint for change in some of the city’s most challenging neighborhoods. But Henderson could not answer critical questions about who will oversee and finance the hybrid school, saying those are details still to be worked out.
Also yet to be settled is how to pay for the renovation of Malcolm X. Mayor Vincent C. Gray (D) set aside $21 million for that work in next year’s budget, but the D.C. Council’s education committee threw a wrench into that plan Thursday when it voted unanimously to redirect $15 million of those funds to other schools. The change was suggested by Council member Marion Barry (D-Ward 8), who has said for months that he wants to close Malcolm X to make way for a mixed-use development. Barry did not answer requests for comment Thursday. David Catania (I-At Large), chairman of the education committee, said details of the schools’ partnership were too sketchy to justify the investment.
“What we were confronted with was something that had no meat on the bone — an aspiration, not a concrete plan,” Catania said. Henderson and Shantelle Wright, Achievement Prep’s head of school, said they were disappointed by the council’s actions but are committed to the venture. Some community leaders said the announcement fuels concern that the city is losing its public school system. Parents and activists can influence the direction of the school system through the political process, said Ward 8 Education Council Chair Absalom Jordan, but have no such power over charter schools.
“There are certain rights that we have in public schools that are not afforded to us in charter schools,” Jordan said. Trayon White, who represents Ward 8 on the State Board of Education, said he admires Achievement Prep’s success with neighborhood children. But he said there needs to be a plan for improving education for all of the city’s children.
“The overall agenda is still moving forward without a comprehensive plan explained to the public,” he said. Henderson said this could be the first of many similar arrangements between D.C. public and charter schools. “We are in multiple conversations with a number of schools about very interesting partnerships,” she said. But she pushed back against critics who say that she is hastening a transfer of power from the school system to fast-growing charters, which now enroll 43 percent of city students. Charter schools are not the sole answer to fixing education in the city, she said, but they can help.
“I’m interested in radically improving my neighborhood schools. Where I can’t do it fast enough or good enough but there are other people who can, I want to partner with them,” she said. Achievement Prep’s mission is to serve children in low-income Southeast. It won permission this year from the charter board to absorb students from Septima Clark, a charter school slated to close in June.
“We are supportive of this kind of collaboration and we have full confidence in these two leaders,” said charter board spokeswoman Theola Labbé-DeBose. Achievement Prep officials said they intend to retain their charter agreement with the D.C. Public Charter School Board. That agreement expires in 2023, suggesting that the charter board will continue to be responsible for overseeing the merged school’s academic performance, fiscal health and legal compliance. The school system has not signed an agreement with Achievement Prep. The two sides have a thicket of issues to tackle, including how to deal with the rules and regulations that require charter schools to be open to children across the city.
“We’ve had real strong philosophical alignment, lots of talk about what we want to do for the District’s children,” Wright said. “We’ll just leave it up to lawyers to figure out how we get past the bureaucracy to make that happen.” It is also not yet clear whether the school’s teachers will be subject to collective bargaining – a key difference between the unionized school system and non-unionized charters. “It’s up in the air,” said Washington Teachers Union President Nathan Saunders. “We’re pushing for it.”
Fewer than one in five Malcolm X students are proficient in reading and math, according to their scores on the city’s standardized tests. Meanwhile, at Achievement Prep — a middle school that serves children in the same part of town — 86 percent of children are proficient in math and 69 percent are proficient in reading. Under the proposed partnership, the schools would share space at Green Elementary next year. Then they would merge into one K-8 school housed at the newly renovated Malcolm X and run by Achievement Prep. Students and teachers at both schools were notified of the planned merger this week, and school leaders will ask for parent feedback at a community meeting scheduled for May 21.
Lawmakers cut $16m from Malcolm X renovation [Achievement Preparatory Academy Public Charter School mentioned]
The Washington Examiner
By Rachel Baye
May 9, 2013
A panel of D.C. lawmakers on Thursday voted to cut nearly $16 million from a proposed renovation of Malcolm X Elementary School, a move that schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson warned would be "detrimental" to the school's planned partnership with Achievement Preparatory Academy Public Charter School. Henderson announced the partnership as a way to avoid closing the under-enrolled elementary school in June as originally planned. Several details of the partnership have not been worked out, and nothing has been committed to writing, according to Shantelle Wright, Achievement Prep's founder and head of school.
Under Henderson's plan, current Malcolm X students would move to Green Elementary School with Achievement Prep students in kindergarten through third grade while the Malcolm X building undergoes a $21.9 million renovation in the 2013-2014 school year. Malcolm X students would return to their building in the following year, the first year in which the school would be run by both Achievement Prep and DCPS.
The amendment passed Thursday by the D.C. Council's Education Committee shifts all but $6 million of the proposed $21.9 million to other school renovation projects.
Though committee Chairman David Catania supports the idea of the merger, "the committee is faced with the prospect of spending $21 million on a concept while we need modernizations at schools with students in them today," said spokesman Ben Young.
The Washington Post
By Tim Craig
May 9, 2013
Mayoral politics and governance collided Thursday as several potential contenders in next year’s race pushed through major changes to Mayor Vincent C. Gray’s goals.
The moves set the stage for a contentious two weeks as the D.C. Council rushes to complete work on the budget and mayoral hopefuls face a Democratic primary in April.
On Thursday, the council slowed redevelopment projects near the Anacostia River, added money for school librarians, increased the ranks of parking-enforcement officers and raised street-sweeping fines.
With at least four council members considering bids for mayor, the potential candidates are challenging both Gray (D) and one another as they jockey for position.
“Democracy is about elections,” said D.C. Council Chairman Phil Mendelson (D). “It is impossible to separate politics from an issue as important as the budget.” Council member David A. Catania (I-At Large), chairman of the Education Committee, limited cuts to schools with lower enrollment and added money to ensure that every school with more than 300 students has a full-time librarian.
Catania, who is considering a bid for mayor, also pushed to slash funding for the office of the deputy mayor for education, who serves as Gray’s top liaison for school issues.
The city’s 2007 school-reform law gives the mayor oversight over public education, but Catania has vowed to be an aggressive overseer. Calling the deputy mayor’s office duplicative and unfocused, Catania persuaded the committee to cut four of 11 staffers from the deputy mayor’s office, for a savings of about $357,000.
“We had to go through [the budget] very strategically, in a calculated way, and make choices,” Catania said. But Gray spokesman Pedro Ribeiro said Catania’s actions will hamper the mayor’s efforts to combat truancy and foster cooperation between charter and public schools. “If Mr. Catania actually cares about coordination, it makes no sense why he would do that,” Ribeiro said. “It looks to be petty and political.”
Meanwhile, council member Muriel Bowser (D-Ward 4) appeared to challenge Gray and Tommy Wells (D-Ward 6) when she transferred money from two projects near the Anacostia River on Wells’s home turf and diverted a large chunk of it to her political base in Ward 4. As chairman of the Economic Development Committee, Bowser withheld $8 million for the relocation of D.C. Water storage facilities on industrial land near the Yards. The move would make way for new apartments and a movie theater, but Bowser said it wasn’t clear where the D.C. Water facilities should be located. Instead, Bowser directed the money to the modernization of Coolidge High School in Northwest, as well as to other projects in Ward 4, including the redevelopment of the Walter Reed Army Medical Center campus. Bowser also transferred $3.5 million slated to help plan redevelopment at Poplar Point, an area both Gray and Wells are eyeing for future growth, including perhaps as a future home of the FBI. Bowser directed those funds to Walter Reed.
Bowser, who has announced her candidacy for mayor, is also spending $5 million to restart an Adrian M. Fenty-era Neighborhood Investment Fund that gives grants to neighborhoods. Gray, who has not announced but is said to be considering a run, is largely doing the same thing with his “One City Fund.” mRibeiro criticized Bowser’s budget decisions, noting the federal government still hasn’t turned over the Walter Reed property to the city. “She is hampering development in other parts of the city to make it look like she is furthering development in her ward,” Ribeiro said.
Next year’s mayoral race also appeared to seep into decisions made Thursday by the Committee on Transportation and the Environment. mCouncil member Mary M. Cheh (D-Ward 3), chairman of the committee, moved her plan toincrease fares for the Circulator bus to expand it to Glover Park, U Street, Shaw and Southwest. But Wells, who is considering a run and is trying to burnish his credentials with black voters, questioned why the planned expansion did not include any areas east of the Anacostia River. “I don’t think we can pass something that leaves out the most bus-reliant transit folks in the city,” said Wells, who teamed with council member David A. Grosso (I-At Large) for an amendment to study adding new routes in wards 5, 7 and 8.
Among other changes, the transportation budget calls for 30 new parking control officers to help boost the number of parking tickets. One of those fines — failure to move for street sweeping — will increase from $30 to $45 under the budget committee-approved budget. But council member Jack Evans (D-Ward 2), who is also considering a run for mayor, predicted the full council would scrutinize the proposal before giving final approval to the budget later this month. “My neighbors want parking ticket writers to be there, and to ticket out-of-state people,” Evans said. “They do not want parking ticket writers to ticket people who live there.”
The Washington Times
By Ramona Edelin
May 10, 2013
This week is National Charter Schools Week, an event promoted by the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools to celebrate the great work accomplished by charter schools across the country. Meanwhile, the D.C. Council is considering Mayor Vincent C. Gray’s proposals for funding D.C.’s charters, which educate 43 percent of the city’s public school students, as well as D.C. Public Schools. Operated independently of the city’s traditional public school system, D.C.’s charter schools can determine their own academics and school culture while being held accountable for improved student performance by the city’s charter board.
The District’s schools of choice have proved their value to local taxpayers. Charters’ high-school graduation rate is 21 percentage points higher than the city-run school system, and they have proved particularly effective for disadvantaged students. D.C. students eligible for federal lunch subsidies, who are enrolled at higher rates in the city’s charters than the school system, score an average of 14 percentage points higher than their city-run school peers on standardized tests.
Despite superior academic performance, which ensures a higher proportion of D.C. charter students are accepted to college than students enrolled in D.C. Public Schools, the city has consistently underfunded these independent tuition-free schools. In fact, under successive administrations, including the current one, the city has underfunded charters in direct violation of its own law, which states that public charter schools and D.C. Public Schools should be funded equally on a per-student basis.
How much does the city shortchange its public school students enrolled in charters? According to a recent report by respected independent education analyst and longtime D.C. resident Mary Levy, the District spends between $1,500 and $2,000 less in school operating funds per charter student than those enrolled in D.C. Public Schools. Additionally, the city allocates charters $3,000 per student annually in facilities allowance, but spends thousands more in facilities for each public school student.
Campaigning against former Mayor Adrian M. Fenty, Mr. Gray championed the cause of equal funding for all D.C. public school students, but this budget, like the previous two, proposes to entrench the unequal funding Mr. Gray inherited. The mayor’s budget proposes a 2 percent increase in funding for D.C. Public Schools and charters via the Uniform Per Student Funding Formula, which is supposed to ensure equal per-student funding. D.C. Public Schools, however, receive huge additional funds outside the funding formula.
The city’s unequal, anti-charter funding extends to other resources that are critical for schools, such as school buildings. Charters often have difficulty finding school space — unlike traditional public schools, the city does not provide them with a school building. Typically, they must lease or buy property and renovate it, competing for commercial real estate and securing significant loans to convert warehouse, office or retail space. Many opened their doors in church basements.
Despite the problems D.C.’s charters face finding a suitable home — often lacking playing fields, playgrounds, auditoriums, gymnasiums and cafeterias when they do — the city has for years allowed vacant school buildings to rot, or it sold them. Many former D.C. Public Schools buildings are now luxury condos; others became D.C. government office space, despite the more compelling needs of charter students. When D.C. Public Schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson announced 15 public school closures, charters were offered none.
The District also deprives charter students of access to other public resources. School crossing guards and nurses are routinely made available to D.C. Public Schools but not to charters. Charter schools receive their funding when their students are enrolled, but D.C. Public Schools are funded only upfront in a lump sum for estimated enrollment — some of which usually fails to materialize. They are not then required to return the money. D.C. Public Schools also receives city funds when it overspends, while charters have to live strictly within their budgets.
Unfair distribution of city funds has led to absurd consequences. The city is investing millions in under-enrolled high schools, while underserved charter students want for adequate school facilities. While city schools enjoy surplus space — and the traditional public school system has surplus buildings — some 15,000 applications for student spaces at charters were received last year, which the city’s oversubscribed charter schools lacked the capacity to accommodate.
I urge members of the D.C. Council — from the chairman of the newly created Education Committee, council member David A. Catania, to the Council’s most recently elected at-large member, Anita Bonds — to take the opportunity to revise the District’s budget to end anti-charter funding. Working together, they can ensure that every D.C. child is fairly funded. Mr. Gray campaigned on creating “one city.” Let’s start funding D.C. schools like we mean it.
Ramona H. Edelin is executive director of the D.C. Association of Chartered Public Schools.
The Washington Examiner
By Jonetta Rose Barras
May 10, 2013
The D.C.Council, through David Catania's leadership, began this week to find its education reform voice. It sent an unequivocal message to Mayor Vincent Gray, DC Public Schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson and others about the standard it expects. Further, it redirected taxpayers' money to programs residents have said matter to them and that will improve outcomes for the city's children.
Hallelujah!
In the past, council members' fear of being labeled micromanagers morphed them into timid bystanders. On Tuesday, they forcefully jumped into the game, passing a nonbinding resolution that expressed their dissatisfaction with the Gray administration's summer school policy and funding decisions.
While the administration identified 10,000 DCPS students as "struggling," Henderson created an "invitation only" system that would have denied the majority of those children the chance to participate in the five-week program. That enraged Catania and his colleagues. It also raised questions about Gray's commitment to the system's lowest performers.
The resolution lacked the force of law. Still, it was an effective mechanism for asserting the council's position. The legislation urged Gray to open summer school to all children who want to attend. Underscoring their intent, lawmakers provided, through the fiscal 2013 supplemental budget, an additional $4 million for the remedial program. Then, on Thursday, the Committee on Education and Libraries, headed by Catania, unanimously recommended changes to sections of Gray's 2014 budget that would have harmed children and eroded progress at several schools.
"I think this is an innovative and incredibly thoughtful response," at-large Councilman David Grosso said about Catania's recommendations. Peter MacPherson, a Ward 6 advocate and DCPS parent who has engaged in an intense battle to bring full-time librarians to all traditional schools, said the changes would go a "long way to stabilizing the situation."
Without substantially growing the overall education budget, Catania's committee recommended allocating $4.5 million to hold spending reductions to 5 percent at the school level. It also restored full-time librarians to schools slated to lose them because Henderson had, without notice, changed the definition of small schools from those with fewer than 300 students to those with fewer than 400 students.
The committee also recommended funds to implement the STEM science and technology program at Ward 7's H.D. Woodson High School. The city spent tens of millions of dollars renovating the facility but never invested in the vital academic program at the school.
Equally important, money was added to the DC State Board of Education's budget to fund an office of ombudsman. If effectively structured and competently staffed, that office could help parents and advocates navigate the system, give them a mechanism for venting frustrations and concerns, and encourage their active participation in education reform.
Despite those recommendations, the city is a long way from producing a high-quality public education system. Still, Catania and his committee members deserve accolades. After five years, it appears the council is now focused on a major public policy it implemented through an amendment to the District's Home Rule Charter.
Whew! Let's not complain that it took so long.
The Examiner
By Mark Lerner
May 10, 2013
With all the education news this week it is easy to miss a major story in which the charter school sector has finally been treated with equity in terms of supplemental D.C. Council funding compared to DCPS. The Washington Post's Tim Craig reported:
"As part of $100 million in new spending, the 13-member body unanimously agreed to allocate an additional $4 million for summer school, slated to begin in June. The money, which will be divided between traditional public and charter schools, was directed away from Mayor Vincent C. Gray’s plan to spend more money on affordable housing." Wow. Education Committee Chairman David Catania determines that the traditional schools need more money to reverse the decision by DCPS Chancellor Henderson that classes over the summer will be by invitation only, leaving those students furthest away from being at academic grade level out of luck, and he includes the same amount for charters. This may be a new day.
It is clear that our message of lack of charter access to shuttered DCPS buildings, the wide variance in facilities funding between the two school systems, and the dollars that the regular schools routinely receive that charters do not outside of the Uniform Per Student Funding Formula, is finally beginning to be heard. What will be most interesting to see is whether justice for charters will at long last arrive with Mayor Gray, or whether it will take another administration to bring about the transformation. Time will tell.
The Washington Post
By Emma Brown
May 10, 2013
D.C. education activists are expected in federal court Friday for a key hearing in theirlawsuit seeking to halt the planned closure of 15 city schools. The activists argue that the closures disproportionately affect poor and minority children and therefore violate a number of civil rights laws. “A local government may not, when it comes to equal access to education, treat some classes of its citizens different than it treats another class,” says the complaint, filed in March by five plaintiffs organized by the community group Empower D.C.
Thirteen schools are slated to close in June, and two more in 2014. The move will displace more than 2,700 children, almost all of whom are African American and Hispanic, according to the plaintiffs. District officials deny that the closures are discriminatory, describing them as an effort to improve education across the city. Chancellor Kaya Henderson, who announced her intent to close the schools in January, has long said that the school system must close buildings left half-empty after four decades of enrollment decline.
Those under-enrolled schools are expensive and inefficient to operate, Henderson has said. She argues that the closures will save $8.5 million a year, money that can be spent on improving classroom instruction and academic programs. The city’s attorneys argue that having children change schools is not a violation of their rights. “Plaintiffs have no grounds to argue that [D.C. public schools] must continue to educate their children in precisely the exact same schools they currently attend,” they wrote in response to the lawsuit. On Friday at 11 a.m., U.S. District Court Judge James E. Boasberg is scheduled to hear a motion for a preliminary injunction to block the closures from going forward. Boasberg is expected to rule on the motion this month.
The Washington Examiner
By Rachel Baye
May 9, 2013
A lawsuit scheduled Friday for federal court will determine whether the District can close 15 public schools. The case argues that D.C. Public Schools' plan to close 13 schools in June and two more a year later disproportionately affects minorities, students with disabilities and students from low-income families, therefore violating D.C. and federal laws preventing discrimination. The suit was filed by three parents of children whose schools are slated to close -- including two parents of children receiving special education services -- and two Advisory Neighborhood commissioners who represent neighborhoods containing schools slated to close.
Of the more than 3,000 students affected by the school closings, 93.7 percent are black, and only two -- 0.1 percent -- are white, according to data provided by Mary Levy, who formerly researched schools issues for the D.C. Council, and enclosed in the court documents. By comparison, 9.2 percent of DCPS students are white. The data also shows that 96.6 percent of students affected by the plan are from low-income families, compared with the 75.4 percent of students systemwide. Almost 28 percent receive special education services, compared with 14.2 percent across DCPS.
"Many of the students least equipped to handle the dislocation of school closings will bear all of the academic and social burdens associated with them," the group wrote in a memo filed last week. The group has asked the court to prevent the school system from closing all 15 schools, and Friday's hearing will determine whether the closings will be put on hold while the case progresses.
However, attorneys for the District say the group bringing the suit doesn't have the authority to challenge the closing of all the schools. At best, they can challenge the decision to close the three schools their children attend, Ferebee-Hope Elementary, MacFarland Middle and Sharpe Health. In addition, the racial makeup of the closing schools should be irrelevant, they said. An effort largely to save money on building maintenance, the plan closes "generally those [schools] that are under-enrolled, are in areas with less anticipated student growth, and have not been recently renovated," D.C. Attorney General Irvin Nathan wrote in the court documents.
Study: D.C. mental health system failing city's youth [Friendship PCS mentioned]
The Washington Examiner
By Eric P. Newcomer
May 9, 2013
Three-quarters of youth referred for mental health services in the District don't receive help within one week, as the law requires, a new study has found. Less than 50 percent of children with mental health issues are even seen within a month, according to a report by the Children's Law Center. That report, released Thursday, says "not much progress has been made over the last year in improving the timeliness or quality of service delivery."
Children's advocates say those delays are due, in part, to an unwieldy government bureaucracy and a shortage of mental health providers. According to the report, of the 3,121 children referred for mental health services, 819 met with a mental health provider in a week and 1,524 met with someone within 30 days. What happens when youth with issues ranging from extreme behavior problems to bipolar disorder don't receive the help they need?
"They're going to act out, and when they act out they're going to get suspended from school, they're going to get arrested," said Shannon Hall, executive director of the D.C. Behavioral Health Association. "You're going to have to deal with those [issues] rather than the underlying mental health condition." When teachers, doctors and others refer children for the city's mental health services, District regulations dictate that they see someone within a week. City officials readily admit they're missing the mark.
"We know it. We're working on it. We're going to continue to address it and show improvement," Stephen Baron, the director of the Department of Mental Health, told The Washington Examinerafter an event Thursday to mark the District's Mental Health Awareness Day. Baron appeared alongside Mayor Vincent Gray at Friendship Public Charter School, where the mayor issued a proclamation and talked to the school children briefly about suicide. It was part of more than a dozen mental health awareness events taking place at schools around the District.
But when it came to addressing the low share of children who receive speedy mental health service in line with the District's own mandate, administration officials did not offer specific targets to improve the number of children who receive help in a timely manner. There are several reasons for the delays, children's advocates say. For one, mental health professionals, including psychiatrists, are paid much less than family doctors, reducing the incentives for practitioners to work in D.C.
Furthermore, advocates say getting the proper credentials to practice in the District can be unnecessarily onerous. "It is a byzantine labyrinth of paperwork to provide mental health services to children in the District, and many mental health providers tell us they'll practice in Maryland and Virginia because of the complexity," said Judith Sandalow, executive director of the Children's Law Center.
Mailing Archive: