It is a sobering exercise to let your eyes glance over the recently released list of students waiting to get into many of D.C.’s charter schools.

Basis DC, 553.  Capital City lower, 608.  Creative Minds International, 1,217.

We go to work, come home, have dinner, and perhaps watch some television. We do not give one thought to the families whose future is being determined by whether their children can get into one of these schools.

DC Bilingual, 832.  E.L. Haynes elementary, 585.  Elsie Whitlow Stokes Community Freedom French language school, 583.

The DC Public Charter School Board states that there are “8,640 individual students on waitlists to attend one or more participating public charter schools in the 2016-17 school year, a 1.3% increase over last year’s 8,526 students.”

Elsie Whitlow Stokes Community Freedom Spanish language school, 894.  Inspired Teaching Demonstration, 892.  KIPP DC Promise Academy, 284.

In the nation’s capital, once you include DCPS, there are 21,000 kids trying to get into the school of their choice.  Parents of 21,000 individuals who desperately want to make better lives for their offspring.  If you have money there is an easy solution to this problem.  You move to a locality where there is a good neighborhood school or you pay tuition at a private institution.  This is not so simple for those living in the vicinity of the White House, Washington Monument, and Lincoln Memorial.  Many of these people are poor, and just keeping a home is their main concern.

Latin American Montessori, 835.  Lee Montessori, 482.  Mundo Verde Bilingual 1, 295.

Almost defensively, the PCSB states that over the last three years 11 new schools have been approved and over a dozen Performance Management Framework Tier 1 facilities have grown their enrollment.  But for the vast majority of the scholars on these waiting lists their admission to a high performing school will never come.

Shinning Stars Montessori Academy, 367.  Two Rivers 4th Street, 1,388.  Two Rivers Young, 474.

I am mentioning only those with the greatest numbers.  Other charters have waiting lists of 50, 100, or 150.  However, it feels like there is no urgency to do anything by anyone.  We wake up in the morning, have our breakfasts, perhaps kiss our loved ones, and head out for another day.

Washington Latin middle, 787.  Washington Latin upper, 256.  Washington Yu Ying, 944.

It is not uncommon to hear leaders involved in school reform talk about this issue as a civil right.  Nevertheless, today, there are no rights for people on these rolls.  There is only waiting.

Ryan Tauriainen, leader of the AppleTree Institute Early Learning Public Charter School’s Columbia Heights Campus, has won the Washington Post’s 2016 Principal of the Year Award.  It appears that Mr. Taurianen is an outstanding choice.  From the Post article by Perry Stein:

“When Tauriainen started as the principal at the Columbia Heights campus in the 2013-2014 school year, 66 percent of students were meeting the school’s target goals for language and literacy, and 82 percent were meeting math goals, according to Anne Zummo Malone, AppleTree’s chief of schools.

In his second year as principal, 95 percent of students hit their language and literacy goals, and 91 percent reached their math targets.”

Ms. Stein describes Mr. Tauriainen as a teacher’s principal meaning that he especially enjoys getting into the classroom and participating in instruction directly with the children.  He is also apparently extremely supportive of his staff, helping others to improve their pedagogical skills, and even paying for pedicures for educators that are having a bad day.

The 2016 Washington Post Teacher of the Year received some excellent training here in the nation’s capital.  He started out at KIPP DC and did a principal fellowship at one of the Friendship Public Charter Schools.  He then realized that he could have his biggest impact focusing on early childhood education.

The award is only the first step in Mr. Tauriainen’s future plans.   Ms. Stein quotes the AppleTree principal as asserting, “I just want to keep moving.  I wanted to run a building. Then I want to run a school system. And then after that, I want to work at the Department of Education so I can have an impact nationally.”

I have been a tremendous fan of AppleTree PCS for years and the institution’s effort to close the academic achievement gap.  I interviewed its founder and CEO Jack McCarthy back in 2014.  In addition, and not to take away from Mr. Tauriainen ‘s outstanding achievement, gratitude should be offered to  Fight for Children for the group’s strong support of improving the lives of low income kids.  Fight for Children was an early financial backer of Appletree, and Friendship PCS is a participant in the non-profit’s Joe’s Champs program for training teachers in early childhood education.

Congratulations Mr. Tauriainen on your award.

The D.C. charter school movement is leading the nation in transparency and accountability regarding our alternative schools.  The DC Public Charter School Board’s Performance Management Framework has been recognized as a best practice regarding data around academics.  Equity Reports provide almost any piece of demographic information about a school that the public would want to know.  Finally, the Financial Audit Review includes metrics on the health of schools regarding its use of money.  But after 20 years of public school reform there is still one important piece missing.

When the PMF was first envisioned it was being designed to provide a grade on governance.  Of course, how a school is governed by its board of directors is crucial.  The failure of individual charter schools has been directly linked to how that school is governed.

The subject never made it into the PMF but that doesn’t mean that metrics on quantitative measures in this area are unavailable.  Both the PCSB and Charter Board Partners have tons of knowledge about how our 62 Local Education Agency non-profit boards are operating.  They receive feedback on membership, turnover, self-evaluations, and whether they have in place the documents and procedures necessary to perform at a high level.  All of these factors could be assembled into some type of report card that could be made available to anyone seeking this kind of understanding.

The nation’s capital has led this country in the area of school choice.  It has been estimated that only 25 percent of our children attend our neighborhood schools.  Our charters now educate 44 percent of public school students with an enrollment of almost 39,000 pupils.  Hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars each year are spent on this sector.  A natural question with this much invested is why can’t we at this point evaluate each school’s board of directors?

As more and more young families move into the District of Columbia the focus on the quality of the public schools will sharpen even greater than in the past.  Couples will find the inability to gain seats for their children in high performing charters so frustrating that it may drive them to relocate to the suburbs.  Even more disappointing to these residents may be the fact that even if an excellent charter school is located near their homes their kids may not get admitted because these are institutions of choice.

Simultaneously, Chancellor Kaya Henderson has been working nonstop on enhancing her brand.  All of these factors: the lack of availability of quality seats, the fact that charters are choice schools, and the significant improvement in the traditional schools, may shift public opinion and then public policy away from the alternative sector that now educates almost 39,000 pupils in 62 schools on 102 campuses.

Add to these pressures the severe lack of permanent facilities, the $100 million a year that the DCPS gets to which charters do not have access, and a regulatory body that only approves new  charters that will be Tier 1 on Day 1, and we have a situation in which our locality may decide that the whole charter experiment is just not worth all the effort.

Now don’t get me wrong.  I am not calling for the Public Charter School Board to turn their attention away from superior academic performance of their portfolio.  But at the 20 year mark of school reform I would have expected to be much further ahead.

By now the facility issue should have been solved, the revenue equity issue fixed, and a sufficient number of charters in operation so that their student bodies approximate those of neighborhood schools.

It is time to kick-start our local movement.

I recently caught up with Mary Shaffner, the executive director of the District of Columbia International School which is now in its second year of operation.  Ms. Shaffner explained to me that 404 students now attend the charter, with 176 children in sixth grade, 126 pupils in seventh grade, and 102 kids in eighth.  During the 2015 to 2016 term there was a student body of about 200.  Next year it is anticipated that there will be about 500 kids attending DCI.

Anyone who has met Ms. Shaffner knows that she is the definition of a go-getter.  Her story about landing at DCI is one of the best examples of this character trait.  After having her first child, the DCI executive director looked around for possible schools in which to send her offspring.  Although she visited some of the best public schools available at the time, little excited her about the environment.  She thought that there must be a way to make educating kids dynamic, more relevant to the outside world, and less about preparing for a test.  So she got together with about 11 other like-minded parents who had an interest in international education and the Chinese language.  “In the group was a lawyer, Andrea Lachenmayr; a writer, Lisa Chiu; an elementary school educator, Amy Quinn; and a special education specialist, Carmen Rioux-Bailey,” related Ms. Shaffner.  “It took us two years to create the charter.  We received fantastic assistance from FOCUS in forming the application.  Washington Yu Ying PCS opened its doors in 2008.  Amy Quinn is still the International Baccalaureate program coordinator at the school.”  Ms. Shaffner served as Washington Yu Ying’s executive director from the beginning until the end of the 2011 to 2012 school year.

Ms. Shaffner explained that the same problem that existed when she was trying to find a school for her child played itself out for the parents of students at the city’s bilingual charters.  There were simply no satisfactory public or private middle schools once the elementary years were completed.

In an unprecedented charter collaboration, five elementary school leaders joined to start DCI: DC Bilinqual PCS’s  Myrna Peralta; Elsie Whitlow Stokes Community Freedom PCS’s Linda Moore; Latin American Montessori Bilingual PCS’s Diane Cottman; Mundo Verde Bilingual PCS’ Kristin Scotchmer; and Mary Shaffner from Washington Yu Ying PCS.  They all received permission from the PCSB to extend their charters so that DCI would exist, with Ms. Shaffner and Yu Ying the first of the group to ask permission to expand.

One of the major driving forces for creating another new facility that would go through the twelfth grade was the desire for kids to be able to obtain the IB diploma, which is the gold standard in international education.  It was the combination of IB with language immersion that was behind the motivation to create DCI.  Carmen Rioux-Bailey, the special education teacher referred to earlier who was one of those behind the start of Yu Ying, reprised her role again for the new middle and high school.  Andrea Lachenmayr, the attorney who was also part of the Yu Ying founding group, worked pro-bono on DCI.  The team spent a year ironing out the final proposal.

But not all went exactly as planned.

The original concept of DCI was that each graduating senior would get their diploma from their member school.  But Ms. Shaffner related that after the school was formed the Office of the State Superintendent of Education and the Office of the Chief Financial Officer informed her in May of 2014 that the city could not pay for educating their enrolled pupils.  The issue was that the school was not its own Local Education Agency.  Ms. Shaffner cringed at the thought of telling the parents that that they had to find another middle school for their sons and daughters at such a late date.  But then Councilmember Phil Mendelson and Deputy Mayor of Education Abigail Smith pushed through emergency legislation that corrected the problem.  Now all students at DCI attend one institution and will receive their commencement from DCI high school.

Now that the charter has had the experience of a year of instruction, Ms. Shaffner described the school as heading in the right direction.  “We have built a great culture,” the DCI executive director attested.  “Students have a lot of freedom here.  There are speaker presentations they can take advantage of participating in.  There are numerous clubs and after-school sports.  When a student comes here they will find a lot of choice, a sincerely caring environment, great intellectual thinkers, and an opportunity to join the IB program.  As part of the IB program students complete a community project in the eighth grade and a personal project in tenth.

The population of the school,” Ms. Shaffner added, “is exceptionally diverse, which is something the students greatly appreciate.”

Looking at sample student schedules, it appears that the kids are taught approximately 40 percent of the day in the language they are studying other than English.  Of course, they take classes dedicated to the second language as well as a class entitled Approaches to Learning, art, and history, as examples.

Ms. Shaffner is especially proud of the grant provided by the CityBridge Foundation as part of its Breakthrough Schools DC competition.  The award has contributed toward DCI developing student-led inquiry in which each scholar can create their own curriculum and course of study.

The DC International executive director stated that she and her staff consistently strive to find a balance between personal interests of the students and academic standards.  Everything the school does, according to its executive director, is geared toward advancing its mission to foster “inquiring, engaged, knowledgeable and caring secondary students who are multi-lingual, culturally competent, and committed to proactively creating a socially just and sustainable world.”  This includes, according to Ms. Shaffner, benchmarks that students must meet that are consistent with the mission.

The DCI community is excited that this summer ground will be broken on the school’s permanent facility on the site of the old Walter Reed Army Medical Center.  The building will be 170,000 square feet with a 25,000 square foot wing dedicated to an expansion of LAMB.  The new space will permit the charter to grow eventually to the 1,450 students included in its charter.  As Ms. Shaffner would say, the future of DCI looks exceedingly bright.