FOCUS DC News Wire 1/27/12

By Examiner Editorial

January 26, 2012

 

By proposing a $24.1 million supplemental funding increase for D.C. Public Schools -- but not for the city's public charter schools -- Mayor Vincent Gray not only broke his own campaign promise, but the law as well.

Equal funding for charters is not just a good idea. It's a statutory requirement under the D.C. School Reform Act of 1995. Yet the District has consistently underfunded its charter schools anywhere between $72 million and $127 million annually over the past five years, according to a study by Mary Levy that the city commissioned but refused to release.

 

Levy's study only became public after two charter advocacy groups asked her to write the same report for them, which they then released to the mayor's Public Education Finance Reform Commission. One of the study's key findings makes it obvious why the District government tried to keep it under wraps: "[T]he use of projected rather than actual enrollment figures ... results in $4 million to $45 million higher annual funding for DCPS." In other words, DCPS consistently overestimates its own enrollment to gain an unfair advantage in the uniform per-student funding formula. This is one of the accounting tricks that put charters at a disadvantage.

 

This statistical gamesmanship is particularly egregious given the fact that charter schools are the ones doing the educational heavy lifting in this town. They serve 41 percent of the District's public school children, but account for 39 of the city's open-enrollment, high-performing schools -- as objectively measured by the combined reading and math scores on the DC-CAS test. DCPS runs only 26 high-performing schools.

 

Charters are also most likely to be located in neighborhoods where the city's most disadvantaged children live. For example, there are four higher-proficiency charter schools in Ward 7, compared with just one higher-proficiency DCPS school. The same pattern can be found in Ward 8, which has six higher-proficiency charter schools, but not one traditional public school performing at a similar level. Charter school teachers not only outperform their DCPS counterparts academically, they do it for less pay in shabbier facilities. In contrast, affluent Ward 3 has no charter schools, but receives higher per-student funding under this lopsided system than charters east of the Anacostia River, which are educating mostly at-risk minority students.

 

Charters are also still being unlawfully deprived of their "right of first offer" on surplus DCPS property. The current situation is neither equal nor fair, and far from the "One City" promised by Gray.

 

 

 

 

By Bill Turque

January 26, 2012

 

So what does it mean if your child attends a school designated as Tier 3 or 4 by the newly released IFF study? Short answer: difficult to say at this point.

 

What’s important to remember is that despite all the buzz it has generated, for both its findings and ties to the charter movement, the study produced by IFF (formerly known as the Illinois Facilities Fund) is still just a stack of data — not a policy. And there are shelves in the Wilson Building filled with similar volumes that never amounted to much.

 

What IFF did do was shine new light on a number of vexing policy questions. One is DCPS’ capacity to turn around schools that have been impervious to improvement in the five years since mayoral control began. Another is the extent to which DCPS and the D.C. Public Charter School Board (PSCB) — the city’s sole authorizer of charter schools — are willing or able to collaborate in the kind of centralized planning that IFF appears to envision.

 

In some instances, a Tier 4 designation is merely a spot on a list. Cardozo High School may be Tier 4 for poor academic outcomes, but it’s clearly not going to be closed after a $100 million modernization. Same for Anacostia and H.D. Woodson high schools. More at risk are the schools afflicted with a combination of poor academic performance, light enrollment and buildings that would cost more to renovate than replace. There are a bunch of those in the neighborhoods profiled by IFF.

 

“Evaluate the condition of each building, estimate the cost of renovation and assess the feasibility of modernizing or rebuilding the facility,” the report said in its recommendation section. “Then, evaluate the location of the building in the context of trends documented in this report, the current grade configuration of the school and the service gap of each grade division for alignment with the needs of the neighborhood. Based on this needs assessment and on resource constraints, select a realistic number of DCPS schools for turnaround.”

 

So what does that mean? What’s a realistic number? For that matter, what’s a turnaround? Most of the schools in Tiers 3 and 4 are years deep into various stages of NCLB improvement, corrective action or restructuring. Staffs have been reconstituted, principals serially replaced. What else is DCPS going to bring to the table?

 

“Solving the education service gap in these neighborhoods will require a sustained and coordinated effort between DCPS and PCSB,” the study said.

 

Again, what does that really mean? It goes on to say: “As necessary, authorize a charter school within the same building or in the immediate vicinity before school closure. With cooperation and coordination between DCPS and PCSB, PCSB can use the buildings as incentives to recruit the highest-performing charter operators into the Top Ten priority neighborhood clusters.”

 

This suggests that the PCSB will take on a more proactive role in selecting and steering charters into targeted neighborhoods. It also seems to suggest that charters, which draw citywide for their enrollment, would somehow replace neighborhood schools. And is there really is a deep bench filled with the “highest performing” charter operators yearning to take over distressed public schools?

 

Much more on this in the coming days.

 

 

 

 

Delayed School Modernizations Rile Ward 4

The Northwest Current

By Deirdre Bannon

January 25, 2012

 

A school modernization meeting last week drew ire from Ward 4 residents when Deputy Mayor for Education De’Shawn Wright announced that plans to modernize Coolidge and Roosevelt high schools would be delayed by one year under the city’s new proposed capital budget. The standing-room-only audience at Coolidge High School had expected modernization plans at Roosevelt to begin this summer, with Coolidge to follow in 2013. 

 

But when school improvement team meetings — which the city typically initiates in the months before modernization projects begin — weren’t scheduled for Roosevelt, community members wanted answers. The room erupted Wednesday when the deputy mayor outlined the new proposed timeline. Wright, along with D.C. Public Schools chief operating officer Anthony DeGuzman and Department of General Services director Brian Hanlon, said current budgets for school modernizations citywide are inadequate for the projects’ estimated costs. 

 

They now propose that the city hold off on all modernization plans that haven’t yet started until full funding for individual projects is secured in the next budget cycle, at which time planning meetings can resume. For Roosevelt High School, Wright now says it will take $127 million to modernize the school built in the 1930s, rather than the $66 million currently allocated in the capital budget. Instead of beginning construction this year, the project would be pushed back to 2013, with a completion date expected in 2016. Coolidge High School’s proposed modernization budget is $96 million, up from the $86 million now allocated. 

 

Instead of beginning this fall, the planning process would be moved to fall 2013, with construction to start in 2014 and complete in 2017. Community members at the meeting weren’t convinced of the merits of the new plan. “We waited patiently for our turn,” said Terry Goings, parent coordinator for Coolidge High School, who noted that Ward 4 families watched neighboring schools get overhauls but agreed to abide by the original modernization schedule.  “I trusted in the system that the money would be there for us … and now they tell me it will be pushed back even further? I think that’s a slap in the face.” 

 

A study by 21st Century School Fund, a local nonprofit that looks at school planning and capital budget issues, shows that in a ward-by-ward comparison, there is inequity among school investments. Ward 4 schools have received the least amount of recent funding for modernization.Between 2000 and 2010, Ward 4 schools were allocated just over $72 million for renovations. 

 

In comparison, Ward 3 schools received almost $317 million; Ward 5 was allocated nearly $226 million; and Ward 7 received almost $194 million.Meanwhile, advocates for Roosevelt and Coolidge say the two buildings remain in disrepair. At the meeting, community members expressed frustration that for more than a decade, students at Roosevelt have had to enter their school through the back door because the front doors won’t open. Windows are broken and won’t close, they say, bathrooms are missing stall doors and sinks, and leaking pipes protrude from moldy walls.

 

One Roosevelt student said he was confused about why a meeting like this was happening after members of the school community had campaigned for a year to get their front door fixed.“It’s undignified to have to enter in the back door every day,” he said.  “Why are we here to once again to ask you to fix the bathrooms and get rid of the rats in the ceiling? Why are we repeating this process? If there is money there now, why can’t we start now rather than wait until we have double in the bank that might not ever be there?” Hanlon responded by saying he would look into the door and window issues, but noted that since the building is historic, it could take about a year to fix those features. Because construction is expected to begin next year, Hanlon argued that it makes more sense to conduct those repairs “concurrently” with the entire building’s modernization. 

 

While school community members lined up to testify to the urgent need for modernization at both schools, students in a photography group at Roosevelt handed out postcards with images documenting the building’s disrepair. Teachers at the meeting also voiced serious concerns that the working conditions in both schools constitute health hazards. Lauren McKenzie, who teaches social studies at Coolidge, said paint chips from her classroom’s ceiling and walls fall onto her desk and into her keyboard, and she believes the paint is now “in her system.”“We made a choice to be here; we want to teach your kids,” she said. “But we can’t teach if we’re not healthy enough to be here. We want decent working conditions.” Another  teacher said ceilings in the locker rooms leak when it rains. 

 

In response to the laundry list of complaints about the two schools, Wright, who doesn’t have children, said he wouldn’t send his godsons to either high school due to the poor building conditions. Kamili Anderson, the Ward 4 representative on the D.C. State Board of Education, said Wright’s reaction doesn’t help the students who attend those schools now.“It’s [Wright’s] responsibility, as it is everyone’s responsibility, to look at the conditions in these schools now and do something about it,” Anderson said in an interview. She argued that a phased development plan could be the solution. “It seems reasonable to start the construction now with the funding that is already allocated, and trust that if we have a responsible government, they will fulfill their promises and finish this project,” Anderson said.

 

Though many at the meeting argued for similar plans, Hanlon called the idea of a phased development “unpopular,” saying the city prefers to modernize with a project’s guaranteed full budget.Anderson said she is concerned that delaying modernization is really a smokescreen for a city plan to close one of the two schools. When asked about that issue at the meeting, Wright could not guarantee that both schools would remain open, but said there is no active plan to close either.

 

Ward 4 D.C. Council member Muriel Bowser, who co-moderated the meeting with Anderson, made it clear that changes to the capital budget require council approval. “The next budget meeting should be full of Roosevelt and Coolidge stakeholders,” said Bowser. “You need to make your voices heard with the city council so that these schools are modernized as quickly as possible.”