FOCUS DC News Wire 2/21/2014

 

 

The D.C. Public Charter School Board has decided to allow Perry Street Prep’s elementary and middle school grades to continue operating but to close its high school, making Perry Street the latest in a string of charter schools to face sanctions for poor academic performance.

 

Perry Street Prep, founded in 1999 as Hyde Leadership Public Charter School, serves more than 900 students in preschool through 12th grade at its Northeast Washington campus.

 

The school has struggled to adhere to special-education laws, according to the charter board, which cited a “disturbingly high number of findings” of noncompliance by the city agency charged with monitoring services for children with special needs. Many of those violations have since been corrected, according to the charter board.

 

Perry Street Prep has also demonstrated problems with fiscal management, including failing to submit large contracts for the charter board’s review. And though its lower grades have met the school’s academic goals, its older students have struggled with attendance and with achievement on standardized tests: Fewer than 37 percent of Perry Street Prep high school students are proficient in reading, and just 41 percent are proficient in math.

 

“We understand all of this and accept it,” Cynthia Brown, chairman of Perry Street’s board, said Wednesday night. But the difficulty in building good high schools is an issue that extends beyond Perry Street, she said: “There’s a high school problem in Ward 5. As bad as our performance was, it was better than other high schools.”

 

The school’s executive director, Shadwick Jenkins, said Perry Street Prep has been committed to addressing past fiscal and special-education violations since new leadership took over two years ago.

 

“We understand that this is policy, that this is law,” Jenkins said. “We are very committed to moving forward and making sure no violations occur.”

 

The high school will stay open through the 2014-15 school year, but students currently in ninth grade and 10th grade will need to find another school to attend through graduation, an uprooting that upsets many parents.

 

“I’m not happy with the decision,” said Vanessa Woodard, whose daughter, a freshman, has attended Perry Street Prep since kindergarten. Woodard said her daughter has thrived there, and Woodward is concerned about finding another school that will be as safe, as nurturing and as academically challenging. “I don’t want her to be lost in transition,” she said.

 

Under D.C. law, the city charter board must review and decide whether to renew schools’ charters every 15 years. Perry Street Prep is one of seven schools up for that review this year. That list also includes Booker T. Washington, which the board voted last month to close for poor performance.

 

Two other charter schools, both large elementary schools east of the Anacostia River, are slated to close for poor performance at the end of the year. But each plans to stay open under new leadership. Both will be acquired by other operators who have promised to guarantee admission to current students, which the charter board and its staff hopes will minimize disruptions for children and their families.

 

Imagine Southeast has agreed to be taken over by Democracy Prep, a New York-based operator that recently won permission to run schools in the District.

 

And KIPP DC, one of the city’s largest and best-regarded charter school networks, will take over Arts and Technology Academy under an arrangement the charter board approved Wednesday night.

 

KIPP DC is known for starting and running high-performing schools but does not have experience turning around an existing school.

 

“It’s a new challenge for us,” said Chief Operating Officer Allison Fansler, who added that KIPP DC has been seeking ways to expand to meet the high demand for its schools.

 

ATA is known for its emphasis on the arts, and its leaders said that the way KIPP DC communicates its commitment to the arts will be important to families as they consider staying with the school. Fansler said that although KIPP DC’s schools are best known for academics, they also have strong daily arts programs.

 

KIPP DC will not accept new students through the lottery for the ATA campus next year and will instead serve only current ATA families there. The organization has committed to interviewing all ATA staff for positions but plans to bring in enough KIPP DC veterans to establish a strong culture, Fansler said.

 

 

If you live in Ward 6 and like your current councilmember's views on education, you'll probably like those of Charles Allen. There's a reason: Allen was Councilmember Tommy Wells' chief of staff. Opponent Darrel Thompson's ideas on education are less specific, but both (not surprisingly) support making all schools high-quality.

 

 

Both Allen and Thompson, whose background includes working for Senator Harry Reid, had similar answers on what to do about redrawing DC school boundaries and feeder patterns, and the anxiety caused by the process: make sure that every school is great.

 

As for how to do that, Thompson said we need to be "smart about our resources and our allocation."

 

Allen talked about the need to target additional funds to students with higher needs in order to bring up struggling schools. He also pointed out that current feeder patterns often don't make sense, noting that he could see Eastern High School from his front porch but was nevertheless zoned for Dunbar.

 

But he stressed the need to keep parents involved in the process and to keep politics out of it. The role of Councilmembers, he said, is to ensure some predictability for parents, as they did by requiring at least a full year's notice before any changes go into effect.

 

Many of Thompson's answers on education had to do with "looking at options" and "providing opportunities." He often responded to specific policies by saying "all options should be on the table."

 

On how to increase the proficiency rate of DCPS students on standardized tests, currently at about 51%, he mentioned "expanding our options for pre-K" and ensuring that "we provide opportunities for parents that have children with disabilities."

 

Other than that, Thompson called for increasing opportunities for students at all grade levels and closing the achievement gap between wealthier and white students and poor black students. Engaging parents, he said, is also crucial. "All options should be on the table," he said more than once.

 

Asked about ideas like expanding the role of high-performing charter networks or extending the school day, he expressed qualified support but also called for caution.

 

On expanding charters, he said there was a need for proper oversight to guard against low-performing schools. "Not every charter school is like KIPP," he said. On extended day, he said "we should look at it," but we need to make sure that teachers, administrators, and parents are on board.

 

Allen, who has clearly been steeped in DC education policy, had answers at the ready for a number of questions. Asked what he would do about middle schools, which have recently been the subject of concern for their difficulty attracting families, he rattled off a four-point plan.

 

The points he listed were modernizing school buildings; recruiting dynamic school leaders and giving them more control over their budgets and programming; introducing rigorous academic programs such as the International Baccalaureate; and vertically aligning programs so that there is continuity within feeder patterns.

 

On the role of charters, Allen called for greater coordination between the charter and traditional public school sectors. Each sector should learn from the other, he said. And, he said, "If we've got a charter that is looking to open up in a certain place, it shouldn't come as a surprise to DCPS."

 

Last year, he said, 40 families that had enrolled students at Stuart-Hobson Middle School in Ward 6 ended up going to BASIS, a newly opened charter school. The result, he said, was a significant loss of funds for Stuart-Hobson. He said the newly created unified lottery should help avoid such situations in the future.

 

Allen also came out against the recently floated plan to turn Dunbar into an application-only high school, expressing concern about what that kind of "skimming" of the best students would do to other neighborhood schools. Instead, he urged measures like creating different tracks, or instituting specialized "academies" within the school, to accommodate students at different levels.

 

To get your own sense of where the candidates stand and how they present themselves, you can watch the videos in their entirety by clicking on them below. Allen's runs about 21 minutes, and Thompson's about 13 minutes.