Month: January 2020

U.S. House Speaker Pelosi and D.C. Delegate Norton shortchange District children by $15 million a year

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In about a month, on February 24, 2020, we will celebrate the birthday of Joseph E. Robert, Jr. Had he not passed away at the end of 2011 from brain cancer, Mr. Robert would be 68 years old. When he was alive he was a ferocious supporter of D.C.’s Opportunity Scholarship Program that provides to children living in poverty free tuition to private elementary and secondary schools. For years Mr. Robert’s organization, the Washington Scholarship Fund, was the administrator of this federal initiative.

Beginning in 2020 the OSP was up for renewal. Supporters, such as Republican Senator Ron Johnson and Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein, sought to make these scholarships available in perpetuity and increase funding to $75 million annually. In the legislation’s early days, Mr. Robert drove bipartisan support for the scholarships by promoting the three-sector approach that gives equal dollars to DCPS, charters, and the voucher plan. Under the most recent proposal, $25 million would have gone to the three groups. Mayor Muriel Bowser, to her tremendous credit, was a strong supporter of the measure.

Now some background. Since 2004, the three-sector initiative has resulted in more than $787 million for Kindergarten to twelfth grade education in Washington, D.C.

Despite the additional funding that this legislation would have brought our city, and ignoring local wishes, U.S. House of Representative Nancy Pelosi and U.S. Representative for the District of Columbia Eleanor Holmes Norton blocked the recent bill. Lost to charters, traditional schools, and the OSP is an additional $15 million each and every year, money that could have gone to support teachers. The most that they would agree to was a four-year extension.

After 20 years of public education reform in the nation’s capital, the achievement gap is holding stubbornly steady at about 60 points. Thousands of kids sit on charter school wait lists. Many traditional schools register English and math proficiency rates in the teens. Despite heroic efforts my many these issues are not going away any time soon.  At this point, it makes perfect sense that we should do whatever we can to extend to families all possible options to obtain a quality education for their children.  This includes providing private school vouchers to low income students.

I just don’t understand what is going on here. We are talking about our neighbors, with some of the most at-risk kids living in eyesight of the Washington Monument. Where is the sense of justice, equity, and decency that we seek for our society?

Why, in this one simple case, can’t adults just do the right thing?

KIPP DC PCS plans to create a $90 million educational complex in Ward 8

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Monday came the exciting news that KIPP DC PCS was awarded the former Ferebee-Hope Elementary School so that it can create its second high school. The transfer of the closed DCPS facility represents the first traditional school building turned over to a charter by Mayor Muriel Bowser in her five years in office. In this area Ms. Bowser has been a tremendous disappointment.

The request for proposal for Ferebee was highly unusual in that it included a requirement that the winner renovate a community center on the property that includes a swimming pool. Cost is most likely the major factor that contributed to only KIPP bidding on the project. However, I do believe there is a reason for everything, and a note from Allison Fansler, the KIPP DC president, only reinforced my belief. She wrote:

“Along with the high school facility, KIPP DC will build a brand new recreation center to replace the existing one located at Ferebee-Hope. This facility will be operated by the Department of Parks & Recreation and include an indoor pool, boxing gym, and more. Also on the site, KIPP DC will construct a community center for partner organizations to provide various community benefits. We were excited to submit a proposal to the city along with Washington Nationals Youth Baseball Academy, Training Grounds adult education program, and MedStar Georgetown University Hospital’s Department of Psychiatry who will provide mental-health services for neighborhood residents and KIPP DC families. Partnership was at the core of our proposal for the site and we are excited to work together with these exceptional organizations. . . We listened to the needs and dreams of the community, our families, and students throughout this process and I’m so proud of the proposal we put forward with them at the heart of the plan to redevelop Ferebee-Hope.”

The school will open at the start of the 2021-to-2022 school year, becoming the permanent home to Somerset College Preparatory PCS that KIPP took over last fall. The announcement stated that KIPP will enter into a $40 million capital campaign using private funds to support the development.

There always has to be a naysayer out there and in this case it is the Washington Post’s Perry Stein. In her piece covering the rejuvenation of Ferebee she felt the need to point out:

“The city’s decision to lease the vacant Ferebee-Hope Elementary School building in Southeast Washington means citywide enrollment on KIPP campuses could grow to more than 7,600 students in coming years — representing about 15 percent of the city’s charter sector and 7 percent of all public school students. . .

The opening of a KIPP DC high school in Southeast Washington could pose competitive troubles for the three high schools in the traditional public school system east of the Anacostia River, which are struggling with low enrollment. If the KIPP school reaches the projected maximum enrollment of 800, it would exceed current enrollment at each of the three neighborhood high schools.”

As a steadfast proponent of regular schools, Ms. Stein should have more confidence in the product that they are offering instead of assuming parents would move their kids to KIPP. But in reality this is exactly what will happen.

In order to focus on the positive let’s conclude with the final sentence from Ms. Fansler’s message:

“The strength of our vision for Ferebee-Hope came about through true partnership and I am excited to continue this as we bring this vision to fruition for the students of KIPP DC and broader community.”

This is an exceptionally exciting opportunity for the future of our children.

At monthly D.C. charter board meeting Mayor Bower demonstrates who’s boss

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Mayor Muriel Bowser shocked the DC Public Charter School Board and those in the audience by showing up in person Monday evening to address its monthly meeting. She dominated the opening public comment portion of the session, first introducing the Deputy Mayor for Education Paul Kihn, who was sitting in the first row, and then going on to thank Scott Pearson for the excellent job he has done in his role as PCSB executive director. Ms. Bowser commented that “I don’t know what Scott will do next but I know he will be excellent at it.”

The Mayor went on to say that she wished the current board well because they have to select Mr. Pearson’s replacement. Ms. Bowser predicted that they will have a good pool of candidates from which to choose because D.C. public schools are the envy of the nation thanks to the progress this urban school district has made in reading and in math across all subgroups of children. She said that we cannot “let up one bit” on demanding what all of our kids need.

Ms. Bowser then revealed the reason she was present. “I’m here to check on you,” she asserted. She pointed out that the city is now working on its 2020 to 2021 budget. The Mayor boasted that her school budget has gone up in each of the five years that she has been in office.

She spoke on a wide variety of topics such as school safety, student transportation, and making additional resources available for charters for concerns such as teacher salaries.

Ms. Bowser then turned to the board for questions. Chairman Rick Cruz started the conversation by stating that many of the areas that the Mayor raised have been discussed by his board. He then gently brought up the facility issue by thanking the Mayor for awarding Ferebee-Hope Elementary School to KIPP DC PCS and said he hoped that other buildings would be turned over to charters. The announcement that KIPP had won the request for proposal for this school was made earlier in the day. The move marks the first time the Bowser Administration has provided a closed former traditional school to a charter.

Mr. Cruz then quickly pivoted to a discussion regarding filling the executive director vacancy. When other board members were asked for questions, member Ricarda Ganjam inquired bravely as to the school the Mayor would like her daughter to attend. The answer was Shepherd Elementary, the one in Ms. Bowser’s neighborhood. Steve Bumbaugh shyly wanted to know the one or two things the PCSB could do to improve its performance.

The audience was then asked to participate. The sole taker was Appletree Institute for Education Innovation’s president and CEO Jack McCarthy. This is the same Jack McCarthy who had to shutter a campus for at-risk three and four year old’s when the Deputy Mayor for Education failed to find a replacement site for one of Appletree’s campuses when the building was closed as part of a DCPS school renovation. His cause was taken up by the editors of both the Washington Post (twice) and the Wall Street Journal. His question: Could the city work with developers to have them include space for schools in their projects?

This was the extent of the facility discussion. The Mayor failed to bring up the subject despite the fact that she has faced tremendous pressure over the past several months in the form of the DC Association of Public Charter School’s End the List campaign to release an estimated over one million square feet of excess space controlled by DCPS that by law should have been turned over to charters. No one from the board or others in the room challenged her. Not a single person brought up the FOCUS-engineered charter school funding inequity lawsuit.

After a thirty minute performance Ms. Bowser and her entourage proudly strutted out of the room. And strut she should have done. The charter school community was put in their place. The Mayor entered the epicenter of our local movement and emerged without even one verbal scratch.

Now the quandary becomes, if even the DC Public Charter School Board will not defend charters, who will?

D.C. school buildings need to be turned over to an independent agency

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I read with supreme interest yesterday’s Washington Post story by Perry Stein about the decision by DCPS Chancellor Lewis Ferebee to close Washington Metropolitan Opportunity Academy, a poor performing alternative public school serving 150 middle and high school students near Howard University. It is the first school closed by the system since 2013. My immediate question was whether the building would be turned over to a charter. My answer came in the last paragraph of the reporter’s article:

“A spokesman for Deputy Mayor for Education Paul Kihn said the District does not yet know what it will do with the building. He said keeping it in the school system’s inventory is one option.”

This response is totally unacceptable. Friends of Choice in Urban Schools and others have estimated that there is currently over a million square feet of excess building space that the traditional school system is holding that should be available to charters. Other D.C. Mayors have turned scores of excess buildings over to the sector that educates 43,556 students or 46 percent of all public school pupils in the District. Mayor Muriel Bowser is talking about providing one in her five years in office, as long as the winner of the request for proposal agrees to renovate a community center on the site that includes the complete refurbishing of a swimming pool. A final decision on who gets this land has yet to be made.

Enough is enough. If this Mayor and Deputy Mayor for Education cannot objectively assess whether it needs to maintain classroom structures in its inventory then we need an independent agency to manage the properties.

Charters are desperate for buildings in which to operate. For those of you who are not familiar with the exciting charter movement in the nation’s capital you really need to visit one of these locations. These are public schools that resemble private schools in setting high expectations for both students and staff. They are on a life or death mission to close the academic achievement gap because they are held accountable to meet stellar standards set by themselves and the DC Public Charter School Board. They have to operate in this manner because they are institutions of choice in which perceived weaknesses by parents will drive them to take their children somewhere else along with their scholarship money.

The Mayor is over DCPS but not charters. Therefore, I can see in a twisted, distorted way why she would want to keep the school buildings she has control over. But for someone who represents all citizens of our great city this really does not make any sense. There are an estimated almost 20,000 children on wait lists trying to obtain admission to a charter school.

If Ms. Bowser cannot make the right decision because of politics, personal bias, or poor judgment, then we desperately need an independent, nonpartisan, government body that is empowered to do the right thing. New charters are ready to open their doors and others are dying to expand. The moment to act is now.

It is about to get much harder for opponents of school choice to block parental freedom

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Today, the United States Supreme Court will hear Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue, a case argued by the libertarian nonprofit Institute for Justice. Here’s the background of this litigation which is explained by the Institute much better than I could ever do:

“In 2015, the Montana Legislature passed a program that provided a tax break to Montanans if they contributed to charitable organizations that provide scholarships for children. The program allowed families to use those scholarships at any private school in Montana—religious or nonreligious. But the Montana Department of Revenue interpreted the state constitution to forbid the participation of religious schools. Representing families who were unable to participate in the program because they send their children to religious schools as well as one family who was able to use the scholarship before it was suspended, the Institute for Justice sued and won on their behalf at the trial court. But the Montana Supreme Court reversed that ruling and declared that the entire program was invalid because it included religious options for parents. By striking down the entire program, even for those children attending secular private schools, the court made the impact of the discrimination even worse. Thankfully, families were permitted to continue receiving scholarships through the 2019-2020 school year.”

Espinoza is relevant to two of the twenty seven amendments to the U.S. Constitution.

Amendment 1: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

The families involved who sought to use the scholarships to attend a Catholic school claim that their free exercise of religion is being obstructed.

Amendment 17, section 1: All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

The action of the Montana Supreme Court, according to the Institute for Justice, denied equal protection of the law simply based upon their religious beliefs.

In addition, the organization argues that restricting families from sending their children to parochial schools under the scholarship plan represents discrimination against religious beliefs that is prohibited by the Establishment Clause.

The heart of the today’s argument will revolve around the concept of the Blaine Amendment. Blaine Amendments were included in the constitution of 37 states in the 19th century. During this period, schools were dominated by Protestants and there was a rejection of the new wave of Catholic immigrants to this country. Blaine Amendments are named after U.S. Senator Blaine who in 1875 attempted to get a constitutional amendment passed mirroring those that were later adopted in state constitutions preventing public money going to religious institutions. Public schools at the time were already religious, according to the I.J., teaching nondenominational Protestant ideas. Catholics sought to influence the nature of instruction taking place in schools, and when that effort failed, sought funding for their own educational institutions.

While opponents of school choice have over the years successfully utilized state Blaine Amendments to block implementation of school choice programs that have included sectarian facilities, there have been two important legal developments that have weakened this line of attack.

First, in Zelman v. Simmons-Harris, another school choice case argued by the Institute for Justice, the Supreme Court in 2002 found that a Cleveland private school voucher program that included Catholic schools provided tuition money to students and did not directly support religious entities. Then, in 2017, the Court ruled in Trinity Lutheran Church of Columbia, Inc., vs. Comer that preventing a church from getting access to a state grant available to other nonsectarian schools in order to improve the safety of public playgrounds was discriminatory against the religion.

School choice advocates were disappointed that Trinity did not invalidate state Blaine Amendments. This will come from the ruling this summer in Espinoza. Watch for the conservative-leaning Supreme Court to overturn the actions around the scholarship program in Montana.

According to I.J. president and general council Scott Bullock, “If we’re successful in Espinoza, we’ll remove the largest legal obstacle standing between thousands of children and their chance to receive a better education.”

Successful they will be.

D.C. Auditor misinterprets study on school enrollment and education reporters follow

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Last week the Office of the District of Columbia Auditor, together with the Johns Hopkins School of Education Center for Research and Reform in Education, released what it referred to as a comprehensive study on annual enrollment projections for DCPS and charter schools in the nation’s capital. While it found that these estimates are oftentimes inaccurate, this turns out not to be the major conclusion of the voluminous report.

The Washington Post’s Perry Stein quotes Kathy Patterson, the D.C. Auditor as stating, “the findings illustrate the unintended consequences of having a city with many school options for families.”

Not to be outdone, WAMU’s Debbie Truong includes this line from Erin Roth, research director in the auditor’s office, “Everything you do is going to impact other schools. Nothing is in isolation.” 

So now let me tell you what is actually going on here. The District has an exceptionally active school choice environment in which it has been estimated that 75 percent of children attend a school other than the one in their backyard. The investigation found that parents who chose a school other than their neighborhood school tend to pick a facility that has a lower proportion of at-risk children than the one their offspring would be assigned to attend. This has the impact of lowering the number of students attending the neighborhood school, thereby decreasing the amount of revenue this school receives since in D.C. money follows the child. The authors worry that the loss of dollars will harm the very students that need the most financial support.

Ms. Patterson refers to this as an unintended consequence. She has this exactly backwards. The cause and effect are operating exactly as planned. The only problem here is that the government is failing to react according to the voice of the consumers. Instead of keeping the neighborhood school operating as it has in the past, it needs to heed the demands of families and either close the school, merge it with one that is instructing at a higher level, or turn its management over to a charter school.

Please allow me to illustrate my point. The following paragraph comes directly from Ms. Stein’s article:

“For example, only 9.8 percent of students who live in the boundaries of Anacostia High — a neighborhood school in Southeast Washington — have elected to attend the school. It has an at-risk population of 81 percent, and 35 percent of students require special education, according to city data. By comparison, Thurgood Marshall Academy — a charter high school near Anacostia High — has an at-risk population of 54 percent. Twenty percent of its students have special education needs.”

Now every parent knows that you do not want your child to attend Anacostia High. The school has been a train wreck for decades. The logical conclusion would be to get your child into Thurgood Marshall if you can, a Performance Management Framework Tier 1 school that is successfully closing the academic achievement gap. Ms. Stein failed to mention that while Anacostia has empty hallways, Thurgood Marshall has been consistently at full enrollment. The movement of students is as intended as possible.

The researcher from the Auditor’s office seems to imply that Thurgood Marshall has somehow negatively impacted Anacostia High. Nothing could be further from the truth. What the charter school has done is provide a life preserver to kids who would probably end up in jail or worse. Instead, graduates of Thurgood Marshall go on to college.

The study is a vehicle to impact public policy in a way favored by the authors. Here we have a review of enrollment projections being turned into an polemic for more taxpayer earnings being given to failed educational institutions.

The paper has many other findings, such as charter schools tend to lose students during the school year while DCPS sees the opposite trend. We have known about this mobility issue for 20 years. What I was most shocked to find contained in this work is that in 2020 there is still no correction to a DCPS’s school budget, as is the case with charters, when the May estimate for the following school term turns out not to be true the following October.

You have got to be kidding.

D.C. charter board receives applications to open 4 new schools

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The DC Public Charter School Board announced yesterday that it has received four applications for new schools that, if approved, would open during the 2021-to-2022 term.

The applicants include:

Capital Experience Lab (CAPX LAB): A 700-student school going from grades six through twelve that wants to locate in Ward 6 and is based upon “inquiry-based learning experiences.” Fascinating to me is that Patricia Brantley, Friendship PCS’s chief executive officer, is listed as a board member. This, combined with the fact that the school has been incubated by CityBridge Education significantly raises the probability that it will be approved.

Global Citizens: The other CityBridge-sponsored applicant, this 525-student pre-Kindergarten through fifth grade charter would be based in Ward 7 or 8 and would offer a dual language immersion program in either Mandarin and English or Spanish and English. There are people with extremely impressive credentials associated with Global Citizens. The principal of the charter would be Jenifer Moore. I interviewed Ms. Moore when she was the interim head of school for Sela PCS and she blew me away. Listed as advisers are my friends Daniela Anello, head of school of DC Bilingual PCS, Maquita Alexander, executive director of Washington Yu Ying PCS, and Erika Bryant, executive director of Elsie Whitlow Stokes Community Freedom PCS.

The Garden School of Business and Entrepreneurship: A charter for 410 students in grades nine through twelve that would operate in Ward 8. The school’s executive summary states that it “will be the ultimate soil for building consciously aware, financially free, and holistically intelligent high school students in Washington, D.C. Our business and entrepreneurship model activates the voice, ideas, and confidence in students that are needed to economically succeed in their world.”

Washington Arabic: A second dual immersion school that applied in 2019. This school wants to open in Ward 1, 4, 5, or 6, with a preference on 6, and would teach 544 students in grades pre-Kindergarten three through fifth. Last year’s proposal received enthusiastic support from several board members so the hope is that it can make it across the finish line this time.

It appears that what this list lacks in number it makes up in quality. Let’s sincerely hope that progress is made on the permanent facility issue by the time these schools need to find space.

The applicants will have a public hearing in February and be voted on at the March monthly meeting of the DC PCSB.

Exclusive Interview with Rick Cruz, chair DC Public Charter School Board

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I had the great privilege recently of interviewing Rick Cruz, chair of the DC Public Charter School Board.  I had also spoke to Mr. Cruz about a year ago.  I first asked him to reflect on the resignation of Scott Pearson, the PCSB executive director.  Mr. Pearson has stated that he will leave his position at the end of May 2020.

“It is bittersweet, there is no other way to describe it,” Mr. Cruz said solemnly.  “We have a really good partnership.  Scott has worked very well with the Board and with our many stakeholders.  He has done so while significantly raising the quality of our systems, processes, and data.  He has built an outstanding team and prepared them for his transition.  The job of the PCSB may sound bureaucratic, but Scott developed a solid environment of trust and for being fair and transparent and steadfast.  Charter schools in D.C. understand the expectations of the PCSB and the standards to which we hold them. The work of authorizing charter schools has advanced greatly under Scott’s leadership and he leaves quite a legacy for us to build upon.  Scott has said that he lives his life in chapters and now we enter a new chapter for the PCSB.”

I then wanted to know from Mr. Cruz what characteristics he would like to see in the next executive director.  “I don’t want to jump the gun,” Mr. Cruz answered, “since there are multiple round tables being held in which students, parents, teachers, school leaders, and the general public can provide input on what is important to them about the next executive director.  However, I do think it’s important that we do much more work to share how public charter schools are successfully impacting the lives of students. I believe we could do more around communication and because we haven’t this has resulted in some push back from certain constituencies.  For example, the 2019 DC Report Card was just released by the Office of the State Superintendent of Education and it showed that KIPP Promise Academy PCS and the Congress Heights campus of Center City PCS are the only five star ranked schools east of the Anacostia River.  This is great news and every family and D.C. residents should know that public charter schools are providing a quality education to students living in Wards 7 and 8. Alternatively, we have some people saying that we do not need more charters, and yet we have schools like Friendship Technology Preparatory PCS, Mundo Verde PCS, and District of Columbia International School PCS offering differentiated approaches to educating our youth and parents want these distinct programs.  Others may say that charters are wasting scarce  public funds, but charters teach the same percentages of at-risk and special education students that the traditional schools do.”

One area I was especially interested in was Mr. Cruz’s opinion about the relatively similar standardized test scores charters reported this year in measures such as PARCC and NAEP compared to DCPS.  Mr. Cruz was ready with his response.  “DCPS has had steady improvements that is a fact.  We still score higher with African American pupils and our results continue to improve year after year.  One possible explanation is that over the past several school years we have asked much of our schools.  For example, there are new requirements around exclusionary discipline policies.  However, I am confident that over the next few years we will see charter schools continue to drive increases in academic performance and innovate. For example, we have a crop of new schools that are opening in fall 2020,  each of them offering new types of programming, and most of them founded by local education leaders.  These schools have innovative models that have the potential to spur academic growth.”

We then moved on to the recent controversy regarding DC Prep PCS purchasing a property on Frankford Street Southeast as a possible site for its Anacostia Middle School.  I asked Mr. Cruz if he thought this matter was handled appropriately by school leadership.  “In a perfect world, we would be able to match facilities to new schools early in the process which would markedly smooth engagement with communities and make things easier for families. However, the situation with DC Prep is a stark reminder that we desperately need clarity regarding the freeing up of surplus DCPS building for use by charters.  In addition, we really must consider solutions such as co-locating charter schools with underutilized DCPS schools.  Research shows there are many benefits to doing so. While in the past charter school leaders were uncertain about the feasibility of co-location, I have spoken to many school leaders who now express they are open to this solution for classroom space.”

Next, we pivoted our discussion to Councilmember Charles Allen’s transparency bill before the D.C. Council.  I asked Mr. Cruz for his opinion regarding requiring opening charter school board meetings and the call for individual charters to respond to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests.  Mr. Cruz had a firm stance on each issue.  “I’m comfortable with our policy that dictates schools have designated open board meetings,” the PCSB chair asserted. “I do recommend that when there are certain topics before the board, such as school budgets, the changes need to be discussed in public.  Open meetings are a great opportunity for school leaders to experiment with how their families are engaged in important decisions.”

Mr. Cruz continued, “Regarding FOIA, after receiving input from school administrators, I really agree with them that these inquiries should be handed by PCSB.  To be honest, I have yet to see data points, except for individual teacher salaries, that cannot be found in the information the charter board posts on its website, especially considering all of the documents available on the Transparency Hub.  We certainly do not want to cripple schools due to them trying to comply with FOIA requests.  Also, we have to be sure that concerns focused on individual students are kept confidential.  The PCSB has the staff to redact sensitive information that individual schools do not possess.”

When the two of us got together it was the day after FOCUS and the DC Association of Chartered Pubic Schools announced that they were merging.  I asked Mr. Cruz if he had a view on this change.  “I do,” Mr. Cruz reflected.  “As a sector over the last five years or more we have become complacent regarding adherence to the [D.C.] School Reform Act.  There has definitely grown a void in the advocacy space.  So the decision to bring these two groups together makes a lot of sense to me.”

I wanted to conclude our meeting by raising the topic of the student safety issues that took place at Monument Academy PCS and Rocketship Rise Academy PCS.  My comment to Mr. Cruz revolved around whether the public should have known about these incidents earlier.  The PCSB chair explained.  “Regarding Monument there were a set of occurrences that ranged from minor to serious for a school that also includes a boarding component.  There were many interactions between the school’s board and the PCSB several months before the media was involved.  Unfortunately issues do arise, but this is not an excuse.  In the case of both Monument and Rocketship the charter board staff followed its policies.  In each instance we followed our Community Complaint policy. ”

As I talked to Mr. Cruz, I’m reminded of the truly significant role public charter schools now play in our community and the important work facing the next executive director.  

D.C. Deputy Mayor for Education doubles down on illegal holding of excess school facilities

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Right before the Christmas holiday the editors of the Washington Post came out swinging against Mayor Bowser’s refusal to turn surplus former DCPS buildings over to charters for use as permanent homes. They wrote:

“’Special interest group.’ That’s how the District’s deputy mayor for education recently characterized those behind a spirited public information campaign urging that more of the city’s buildings be made available for use by worthy public charter schools. At first, we thought the description derisive but, upon further thought, we decided Paul Kihn was right.

The interests being advanced by this effort are indeed quite special. They are those of the nearly 44,000 children — most of them black or Hispanic, and many of them economically disadvantaged — who are enrolled in public charter schools, and the thousands more who languish on waiting lists because of a lack of facilities. The administration’s churlish response to this problem is troubling, another sign it doesn’t have the same sense of obligation to public charter school students as it does to those enrolled in the traditional school system.”

The column appears to have had an impact on Paul Kihn, the city’s Deputy Mayor for Education, but not the one intended by charter advocates. Just before the start of the New Year, Mr. Kihn responded to the Post in a series of five tweets entered in rapid succession:

“Disappointed to again see false claims promoted by @PostOpinions. Readers should also be surprised that misleading information about school waitlists and facilities made its way onto the @WashingtonPost editorial page.”

“Must focus on unique students & not combine multiple schools’ waitlist. Students often waitlisted at multiple schools. In SY19-20, because duplicates, total waitlist of 33,876 (K-12) reduced to 10,891 individual students at DCPS & charters.”

“Waitlist numbers inflate demand. Approx. 25K applications in SY18-19, 84% received matches/offers, 57% accepted offers and 43% declined.”

“@mayorbowser admin. works tirelessly & impartially for students in both the traditional & public charter sector. Pace of improving outcomes in DC’s two-sector system is leading the nation. #DCProud of this progress & know there’s more to do”

“DC continues to invest in students, including the annual increase of funds for buildings in both sectors. Suggesting otherwise ignores our values, actions and ongoing support for ALL of DC’s public school students in both sectors. #FairShot“

But all of these words evades the main point in a wholly dishonest manner. There are structures that currently exist out there, likely as many as 13, that by statute should have been turned over to charters for use as classrooms. Another six have already been given away for other purposes. These surplus properties are rotting away instead of being filled to the brim with the laughter, excitement, and learning of children.

There can only be one explanation for what is going on here and it was perfectly captured by the Washington Post editors:

“No doubt assessments can differ of what may be available, and there may be reasons for the city, with school system enrollment increasing, to hold on to some schools. But only once in Ms. Bowser’s nearly five-year tenure has she proposed a lease of a city building to a charter. Some buildings stand empty and in disrepair even as top-ranked charters scramble for space. It makes no sense — unless, of course, the aim is to hinder the growth of charters, which now account for 46 percent of D.C. public school enrollment.”

The charter school facility issue is not getting off to a good start in 2020.