FOCUS DC News Wire 5/27/2015

• D.C. Council passes $13 billion budget focusing on schools, homelessness
• Can DCPS stem the middle school exodus?
• Ballou High School to be reconstituted for the second time in five years

D.C. Council passes $13 billion budget focusing on schools, homelessness
The Washington Post
By Aaron C. Davis and Abigail Hauslohner
May 27, 2015

The D.C. Council passed a $13 billion spending plan Wednesday that pours record tax revenue into school improvements and new police body cameras and directs the largest infusion of money ever to combat the city’s crisis of homelessness.

After weeks of disagreement between Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) and the council chairman, Phil Mendelson (D), both walked away claiming victory in a budget battle that Bowser said would lay out a blueprint for her term.

The mayor secured $7 million for free Metro transit passes for all traditional public and charter school students a day after she refused to bend on one of the city’s smallest budget items.

Mendelson held firm in refusing to fund a citywide rollout of body cameras without more transparency and clearer guidelines on their use, or to expand a youth jobs programs up to age 24. But he promised to revisit the idea if a one-year trial run this summer is wildly successful.

“I don’t believe providing six-week jobs to 24-year-olds at minimum wage is the way to get them good, meaningful jobs. I just don’t believe it,” Mendelson said. “But prove us wrong, and it will force us to reconsider.”

Even as Bowser and Mendelson negotiated, a federal court ruling threw the budget vote into question. The ruling, by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, reopened the issue of a voter-approved ballot proposal that would allow the city to bypass congressional approval of its budget.

Currently, the city’s entire spending plan, including more than $7 billion in locally generated tax revenue, must be submitted to Congress for approval. There, D.C. laws on gun rights, abortion coverage and other social policies routinely come under attack from conservative lawmakers.

The ruling sends the Budget Autonomy Act back to D.C. Superior Court for consideration. City leaders disagreed on its effect, however.

Bowser issued a statement calling the court ruling the “biggest victory for District autonomy since the end of the federal control board era.” Mendelson said he believed that the ruling would force the council to hold a second vote on the budget next month. That would for the first time codify the city’s budget as a local law, instead of a budget proposal, akin to that of a federal agency that must then be sent to Congress for approval.

But the city’s chief financial officer, Jeffrey S. DeWitt, and attorney general, Karl A. Racine, issued a joint statement late Wednesday that the ruling did not address the legality of the Budget Autonomy Act.

Previously, DeWitt has maintained that the 2010 referendum improperly altered the city’s congressionally approved charter and could expose him to federal prosecution for appropriating money not approved by Congress.

In their statement, DeWitt and Racine promised to seek “judicial clarity” before they participate in enacting and implementing an independent city budget.

“Proceeding with the budget process without such clarity would endanger the District’s finances and cause unnecessary uncertainty as to the manner in which the District manages its financial affairs,” they said.

Meanwhile, the D.C. Council passed the spending plan unanimously Wednesday, and Mendelson said he would work to keep council members from tinkering with it if a second vote on a final budget document is scheduled.

The mayor and council reached agreement only after a flurry of last-minute text messages and phone calls between aides and lawmakers.

In a series of final budget maneuvers Wednesday, Mendelson added almost $10 million to Bowser’s already record request for spending on homeless services. The city will spend at least $146 million, or 30 percent more, on services to house and feed the homeless — and try to connect homeless individuals and families with jobs, apartments and counseling.

On top of that, the District will direct almost $178 million to affordable-housing programs, an increase of 35 percent.

Another $40 million in borrowing will begin to build a new network of smaller homeless shelters.

Council members said some of those expenditures will come at the cost of another top Bowser priority to move more quickly in pushing school improvements.

Council member David Grosso (I-At Large), who heads the Education Committee, said the problem with the education budget “is that the mayor cut so much money out of it.”

Bowser vowed during last year’s mayoral race to transform the District’s middle schools, saying she would bring the kind of extracurricular options and academic programs featured at the District’s high-achieving Alice Deal Middle School to middle schools throughout the District.

But last week, Grosso said Bowser’s budget had not made a new commitment to middle schools at all. “I would say that it was the same, steady investment, but not an overwhelming amount of money,” he said. “And I would say that she only invested in one middle school construction project.”

Pressed about that shift in an interview on Tuesday, Bowser said: “I never said that what it would take, would be to increase the budget for middle schools.”

The council also handed the District’s beleaguered Metro transit agency $42 million more than last year to fund its operating expenses, and the District committed to helping Metro buy 220 new 7000-series rail cars.

Metro has until mid-July to buy the new railcars before the manufacturer’s price offering expires.

In the public safety budget, however, the council halved Bowser’s request to buy 2,400 police body cameras next year, enough for every patrol officer.

Council member Kenyan R. McDuffie (D-Ward 5) said the slower rollout would force the administration to come up with a plan for how to allow greater access to the video captured by officers’ cameras. Bowser had proposed exempting all of the footage from public records laws.

“This is going to be an opportunity for the District to roll out one of the most robust body camera systems in the country, and it’s going to be an opportunity for us to do it in a way that is measured, thoughtful,” McDuffie said.

Bowser, however, won some concessions on other priorities Wednesday involving Metro rides for school students and the Marion S. Barry Summer Youth Employment Program.

Bowser had proposed expanding the program permanently for residents up to age 24, from a current cap of 22. Mendelson refused.

Council member Vincent B. Orange (D-At Large), who helped broker a compromise Wednesday morning in calls and texts, said that if the city can find permanent jobs for 350 of the 1,000 people in the program, he is sure Mendelson will reluctantly fund the program next year.

Council member Jack Evans (D-Ward 2) said the city was spending so much on many fronts that lawmakers and the public needed to demand results.

“We are funding in our homeless area more money than we have ever done in our history,” Evans said. “Next year, when we come back here again, we have to have results. . . . The followup is much more important than the passing of this budget.”

Can DCPS stem the middle school exodus?
Greater Greater Washington
By Natalie Wexler
May 27, 2015

Students have been leaving DC Public Schools in droves after the elementary grades because of a dearth of appealing middle school options. A series of graphs from DC’s Office of Revenue Analysis shows what’s been happening and suggests that things could change in the future.

Looking at the DCPS cohort that entered kindergarten in 2006 and is now in 8th grade, there’s been a dramatic drop: from about 4,000 in kindergarten to a little over half that number in 6th grade. Much of that decline occurred between 5th and 6th grade, the first year of middle school.

While a number of DCPS elementary schools have improved in recent years, parents have complained that the system’s middle schools suffer from low achievement, discipline and safety issues, and a limited range of academic and extracurricular offerings.

Only one DCPS middle school, Alice Deal in Ward 3, has proved widely attractive. And with an enrollment of 1,300, Deal is overcrowded.

Drop in elementary enrollments after 4th grade

At some elementary schools, parents begin leaving after 4th grade for private schools, other DCPS elementary schools that feed into Deal, or charter schools, many of which start their middle schools at 5th grade. Some leave the District altogether.

At Ross Elementary School in Dupont Circle last year, for example, the number of students fell from 19 in 4th grade to nine in 5th. In the previous three years, only one of the 47 students graduating from 5th grade went on to the middle school that Ross feeds into.

On Capitol Hill, where some parents have made a concerted effort to retain students in neighborhood schools, enrollment can drop as much as 50% between preschool and 5th grade.

And a Washington Post poll last year found that only 24% of District residents would choose to send their children to a DCPS middle school. Among white and college-educated parents, only 20% would make that choice.

During last year’s mayoral campaign, both leading candidates made improving middle schools a key issue, with Muriel Bowser adopting (at least for a while) the slogan Deal for All.

And DCPS Chancellor Kaya Henderson has focused on middle schools this school year, ensuring a standard baseline of academic offerings that includes algebra, foreign language, art, music, and physical education. She pledged more of an emphasis on students’ social and emotional needs as well.

Henderson also promised more field trips, and recently she and Bowser unveiled a plan to offer middle school students who are taking a foreign language the opportunity to travel abroad.

Will DCPS’s efforts result in more middle school students?

It’s too soon to know if any of those efforts will bear fruit. The current DCPS 6th grade cohort started out smaller than the 8th grade one, but its decline has been less precipitous. So the number of students remaining in DCPS at 6th grade is about the same in both cohorts.

The DCPS cohort now in 4th grade shows the least attrition of all. Although it started out smaller than the cohort of current 8th graders, it’s now about the same size that cohort was in 4th grade.

It’s hard to say how many of these students DCPS can hold onto. A wider array of courses and more field trips, even international ones, may not be enough to do the trick.

Mixed results on middle school improvements

There have been some bright spots. One middle school east of the Anacostia River, Kelly Miller, has made dramatic improvements under a dynamic principal.

And the new Brookland Middle School, which opens this fall with an arts focus and a project-based learning approach, drew more applicants than expected in the school lottery. That may be a vote of confidence in the school’s incoming principal, who is transferring from the well-respected Janney Elementary School in Ward 3.

The interest in Brookland is particularly encouraging because DCPS delayed the school’s opening by a year, partly out of concern that it wouldn’t attract enough students.

But Hardy Middle School north of Georgetown is still struggling to draw neighborhood students, even after DCPS installed a school leader who seems to inspire confidence.

And Ward 6 families are disappointed that long-promised renovations at two of the neighborhood’s middle schools, Eliot-Hine and Jefferson, won’t be happening for several more years. Those schools have also been slow to implement a plan to adopt an International Baccalaureate curriculum that could draw neighborhood students.

It can be hard to turn a struggling school around, and even harder to change public perceptions. The experience at Brookland suggests that DCPS might have more success with brand new middle schools, and the plan for new school boundaries and feeder patterns calls for the construction of several.

But DCPS has been spending hundreds of millions building and renovating buildings, particularly high schools, and it’s not clear how much more money will be available for such projects.

Some DC parents who have taken the plunge into what seems like a less desirable middle school have been pleasantly surprised. One Capitol Hill mother who passed up a well-regarded charter school for her daughter in favor of Eliot-Hine told the Post that her concerns about safety were unfounded and that she and her daughter are happy with the school.

“I feel like we wasted a lot of time and effort fretting for a year on the pros and cons of the school we considered,” she wrote in an e-mail. “We could’ve focused that energy on [Eliot-Hine]!”

If more parents were willing to give their neighborhood middle schools a chance, the pace of change might well speed up. And then we could turn our attention to an even thornier problem: improving the quality of DCPS high schools.

Ballou High School to be reconstituted for the second time in five years
The Washington Post
By Michael Alison Chandler
May 26, 2015

Teachers and staff at Ballou High School in Ward 8 must reapply for their jobs after D.C. school officials announced that the school will be “reconstituted” next year, meaning that up to half of that staff could be replaced.

Ballou’s students returned from winter break this year to a newly built school — a $142 million “new Ballou” that embodied the promise of a fresh start for the long-struggling school.

Now, District officials are detailing a major restructuring of the programs within the school for next year, including a new hospitality and tourism career academy, and they are planning for an overhaul of the staff as part of that.

Reconstitution has been a common method of overhauling low-performing schools in the District, built on the notion that turning over a large portion of the staff will help drive a restart of the school’s culture.

A Washington Post analysis found that the school system reconstituted more than two dozen schools between 2008 and 2013 and that at many of them, academic performance continue to decline.

Ballou, which enrolled nearly 700 students this year, has been reconstituted once before, in the 2010-2011 year, but it has remained a low-performinng school.

According to its most recent standardized test scores, 17 percent of test takers scored proficient or higher in math and 15 percent scored proficient or higher in reading.

Ballou’s suspension rate last year far surpassed city averages, with 45 percent of students suspended at least once. And just 50 percent of its students graduated in four years, compared with 61 percent citywide.

“We are trying to figure out what the value of reconstitution is,” said Latisha Chisholm, who teaches English and special education at Ballou and is a representative to the Washington Teachers’ Union.

“We already lose a lot of our staff every year,” she added.

She noted that the system already has an evaluation system that is designed to weed out low-performing teachers.

Frederick Lewis, a spokesman for D.C. Public Schools, said the reconstitution is part of the sweeping changes planned for Ballou.

“When we restructure a school to this degree, we also reconstitute,” Lewis said in an e-mail. “This allows us to have conversations and interview staff members who want to be a part of this large-scale change.”

Principal Yetunde Reeves, who started at Ballou this year, will stay in her job, but the school will have a new administrative structure in which assistant principals will oversee grade-level academies and career paths and have responsibility for groups of teachers, Lewis said.

The restructuring includes more “defined” expectations for teachers and students, more alternatives to out-of-school suspensions and more training for teachers in “proper classroom management strategies,” Lewis said.

The Youth Services Center program, an alternative school in a youth-detention facility, also will be reconstituted for the 2015-2016 school year in an effort to “focus more intensely on academics and high instructional expectations,” Lewis said.