NEWS
- Financial oversight by D.C. Charter Board improves, however [Options PCS and Dorothy I. Height Community Academy PCS mentioned]
- Prince Charles visits adult education school in D.C. [Carlos Rosario PCS mentioned]
Financial oversight by D.C. Charter Board improves, however [Options PCS and Dorothy I. Height Community Academy PCS mentioned]
The Examiner
By Mark Lerner
March 20, 2015
As the Washington Post's Michael Allison Chandler revealed this week, a report by the D.C. auditor finds that the Public Charter School Board's regulation of the finances of the schools it oversees has improved in recent years. This is vitally important in the aftermath of the severe money problems that were eventually uncovered at Options PCS and Dorothy I. Height Community Academy PCS. Both schools, as I have pointed out, received clean bills of health on the CHARM report compiled by the charter board and the Office of the State Superintendent of Education that inspected their balance sheets. This document has been renamed the Financial Audit Review and delves much deeper into the financial condition of schools compared to the recent past.
It is also vital that the PCSB improve its funding oversight because, as the auditor's study states, the city is spending over $600 million a year on the local charter school movement.
But there was one aspect of the review that I found troubling. Charter schools are required to submit to the PCSB all contracts of $25,000 and above. These agreements must be put out for bid and the rationale for a school's selection of a particular vendor must also be forwarded to the board. The PCSB posted these contracts on their web site for the years 2012 and 2013. 2013 was the last year included in this report.
The auditors asked for 60 of these contracts, with about 60 percent coming from 2012 and the rest from 2013. The total dollar amount of these agreements was $17.5 million. What they found was not good:
"The PCSB could not provide 26 of the 60 requested contracts. . . Of the 34 contracts the PCSB provided, several were missing key elements and did not comply with contracting requirements in the D.C. Code and the PCSB’s Fiscal Policy Handbook. It was unclear whether the charter schools never submitted the missing documentation or whether the charter schools did submit the documentation and the PCSB could not locate it. For example,of the 34 contracts we found information missing in the pricing of rejected bids for 12 contracts; lack of justification for 5 contract awards; evidence that 15 contracts were submitted to the PCSB less than 10 days prior to the effective date of the contract; and no evidence of competitive bidding for 2 contracts."
Scott Pearson, the executive director of the PCSB, did recognize the problems detailed above and offered this rebuttal which is contained in the auditor's report:
"PCSB acknowledges its past challenges with compliance reviews and with obtaining and maintaining records pertaining to public charter school contracts larger than $25,000. However, since the conclusion of the audit period PCSB has taken steps to resolve this. First, PCSB has implemented a new contracts submission policy to clarify requirements for LEAs in submitting contracts. We have also created an annual review of LEA’s expenditures that may be subject to contracting requirements, to ensure contracts are properly bid, awarded and submitted to PCSB for review. In addition, PCSB publishes contracts for more than $25,000 on its website here, http://www.dcpcsb.org/charter-school- contracts. PCSB has also hired a full-time School Finance Specialist for the first time. Previously, this responsibility was handled by a full-
time equivalent,who was also tasked with managing PCSB’s own finances."
Let's sincerely hope that these issues around the oversight of charter school contracts $25,000 and above have truly been resolved.
Prince Charles visits adult education school in D.C. [Carlos Rosario PCS mentioned]
The Washington Post
By Michael Alison Chandler
March 19, 2015
When Adenike Adeliyi immigrated to the United States from Nigeria four years ago, she spoke only broken English and did not know how to read. But on Thursday, she welcomed His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales to her school on behalf of her classmates.
“When I came, I could not write my name,” she told Prince Charles. “Now I can read. I can speak. I can write.” She was one of hundreds of immigrant students who lined the hallways to greet the British prince at Carlos Rosario International Public Charter School, the nation’s first public charter school dedicated to adult education and an often-cited model for immigrant integration.
Prince Charles stopped at the Columbia Heights campus during his whirlwind Washington tour, between visits to Lincoln’s Cottage and the Armed Forces Retirement Home and the White House for a meeting with President Obama. His wife, Camilla, visited a forensic science lab to learn about new sexual assault investigation approaches.
Wearing a dark, pinstriped suit and a handkerchief in his pocket, the prince was greeted by a mariachi band and an international crowd of students holding balloons and waving miniature American and British flags. A giant handmade sign said, “Welcome to Carlos Rosario School Prince Charles!”
He toured several classrooms and stopped to watch students practicing vowel sounds in a beginning English class and learning how to open a checking account in another. He made the students laugh when he said it looked “complicated.”
In a computer lab, students were searching for jobs on Craigslist and writing down promising job announcements, such as “bilingual secretary” and “barback.”
Maza Assefa, wearing a gold dress from her home country of Ethiopia, introduced herself and told the prince that she was looking for work as a home health aide.
“I hope you have great success,” he told Assefa, after asking whether she was learning job application and interview skills. “Marvelous. Well done.”
Next, he stopped in the school’s kitchen, a culinary arts classroom, where three student chefs in white coats and hats had prepared a feast fit for a (future) king, including prosciutto with fresh mozzarella and figs, warm mushrooms with truffle oil wrapped in puff pastry, and pound cake with orange marmalade and shaved chocolate.
The prince sampled one of the pastries: “A bit of orange in it! Makes a whole difference,” he said.
After Prince Charles left, Erminia Mejia, 26, said she came from El Salvador 10 years ago with no English and that she “never thought in my life I would cook for a prince.”
Carlos Rosario was founded 40 years ago and enrolls about 2,500 students aged 16 or older from more than 100 countries. The school offers courses in literacy, English, technology, GED preparation and citizenship as well as workforce training with programs for nurses’ aides, computer repair and culinary arts.
Bilingual counselors help alleviate challenges such as child care and transportation that can interfere with their schooling.
“Our students are the working poor,” said Allison Kokkoros, the school’s executive director and chief executive. “It’s a juggling act to work all night, then come to school before leaving for your second job.”
Delegations have come from other states to study the model, she said. More than a month ago, she was forwarded an e-mail from British embassy staff saying they were considering possible sites for a visit from a “VVIP.”
“Not just a VIP,” Kokkoros said. She knew it was a member of the royal family, but not which one. After an advance visit from embassy staff and weeks of logistical gymnastics resulting in a minute-by-minute site visit plan, they got final confirmation about a week and a half ago that the prince was coming.
“The entire school community mobilized,” she said. They had some learning to do about how to host a prince. One lesson: Don’t offer to shake hands. Wait and see if the prince offers first.
They also had some teaching to do. The school posted a video to its Facebook page of an interview with a Welsh teaching coach at the school. A student asks the coach: “Who is the Prince of Wales?” and “What does he do?”
By Thursday, the students were all dressed up and excited to meet the prince.
Kokkoros said the visit felt like a validation of the hard work the students do every day to build new lives in a new country.
“I see our students walking tall and proud today,” she said.
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