FOCUS DC News Wire 11/19/13

 

 

Last evening at the monthly meeting of the D.C. Public Charter School Board Democracy Preparatory and Harmony Public Charter Schools were granted conditional approval to open franchises in Washington, D.C. Democracy Prep was given the green light based upon their application and their presentation at last month's session. The story was a bit more complicated regarding Harmony.

 

Remember that at the November meeting during the public comment period there were a couple of individuals who testified that Harmony was part of the Cosmos Foundation, a group tied to Fethullah Gulen, a Turkish Islamic preacher. The New York Times printed a long 2011 story questioning Harmony's contracting principles because many of their vendors and employees were associated with this group. The concern was that there was a conflict of interest regarding business practices with contracts not necessarily going to the lowest bidder in an effort to do work with individuals belonging to the Foundation.

 

The PCSB would have none of this. According to Deputy Director Naomi DeVeaux all allegations against Harmony were thoroughly investigated by her organization. They looked carefully into each of the criticisms contained in the New York Times piece. Staff talked to Texas education officials where the charter network teaches 25,000 children on 40 campuses. They communicated with the U.S. Department of Education which awarded Harmony a $30 million Race to the Top grant. In addition, the PCSB hired the National Association of Charter School Authorizers to review the school, as they do regarding all experienced operator applications.

 

After all of this work, some of which was completed by executive director Scott Pearson, no evidence of wrong doing could be identified. It certainly helped that before deliberations began Harmony offered that if given the opportunity to open in D.C. it would hire a third party to objectively evaluate all of the school's contracts.

 

In fact, the only unusual portion of the last night was that board member Sara Mead abstained from voting on either of the experienced operator applications. No explanation was provided.

 

The meeting also offered some improvements in the way the session was managed. A security officer greeted guests at the building's front door which eliminated the frequent problem of getting access into the space. Microphones were available for participants so the sound was greatly improved. Furthermore, I could not help but notice that Chairman Skip McKoy seems to have come into his own as a leader demonstrating a new assertiveness and confidence in his role. However, the room is still inadequate in size. People were cramped sitting in the audience and it was difficult to see the proceedings.

 

So while things at the monthly PCSB meeting are gradually getting better there is still some work to be done.

 

 

The opening of the new Brookland Middle School in Northeast Washington will be delayed one year, until fall 2015, because of construction issues and concerns about recruiting enough students, according to D.C. officials.

 

D.C. Council Member Kenyan McDuffie (D-Ward 5) and Chancellor Kaya Henderson announced the change of plans at a community meeting Saturday.

 

“I think that this is the right decision,” McDuffie said in an interview Monday. “We ought not rush the opening of the school for the sake of having a new school building opening. We need to get it right.”

 

The school was initially slated to open in fall 2014, but construction crews have been slowed by the unexpected discovery of a gas line on the site, next to Turkey Thicket Recreation Center.

 

The line needs to be moved, and accomplishing that while maintaining the target opening date would have required extended work hours, 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. six days a week and a shorter period on Sunday, which drew opposition from residents living nearby.

 

In addition, D.C. Public Schools officials were not certain that they were prepared to fill the 540-student school, which will emphasize arts and world languages. Another new Ward 5 middle school — McKinley Tech, a science- and math-focused school that opened this fall — has only filled about 60 percent of its seats.

 

Pushing back Brookland’s opening date will give the school system time to ramp up outreach and marketing efforts, said spokeswoman Melissa Salmanowitz. “The chancellor made a commitment for an aggressive marketing and outreach campaign,” she said.

 

Faith Hubbard, president of the Ward Five Council on Education, said she is disappointed by the delay but agrees that — with enrollment lottery season fast approaching — the school system didn’t appear to have marketed the new school broadly enough to ensure a strong start.

 

“You can’t expect the Field of Dreams — build it and they will come,” Hubbard said.

 

The delay comes amid questions about how the city school system plans to strengthen weak middle-school options, which have driven many children in grades six through eight into charter schools, private schools or the suburbs.

 

City officials agreed to build McKinley Tech and Brookland Middle in response to lobbying by Hubbard and others for a stand-alone middle school. The ward is home to several K-8 education campuses that advocates argue don’t have enough middle-school classes to offer the full complement of academic and extracurricular offerings that students need to compete for admission to the city’s selective high schools.

 

“A lot of those schools are lacking the resources they need to educate our middle-grade students,” said Hubbard.

 

Hubbard said the Ward 5 council had proposed that McKinley Tech be an application-only middle school. Instead, it is a neighborhood school with only one elementary school — Langley — feeding into it. That is one reason for the low enrollment, she said.

 

 

D.C. Council member David Catania has proposed a tuition-assistance program that would help lower-income D.C. students pay for college. So-called “Promise” scholarship programs have been tried elsewhere, with mixed success.

 

Catania’s program, unveiled a month ago, would provide scholarships of up to $20,000 a year to students who both graduate from a DCPS or charter school and have spent at least four years in the system. Reaction to the plan at a public hearing last week was generally favorable, although some officials questioned how the District would pay for it. On Thursday, Catania said it would cost at most $50 million a year, but other estimates have gone as high as $75 million.

 

Dubbed the “DC Promise,” Catania’s proposal bears some similarities to the “Kalamazoo Promise,” launched in Michigan in 2005 by a group of anonymous private donors. It has inspired programs, or at least discussions of programs, in perhaps 25 other places around the country.

 

Catania proposes to provide tuition subsidies to families earning up to $250,000, although those with higher incomes and fewer years in the school system would get less than others. The maximum of $100,000, spread over five years, would go to those whose kids have been in D.C. public schools since sixth grade and who earn below 200 percent of the federal poverty threshold. The minimum award would be $3,000 a year.