Yesterday, I attended perhaps the most exciting policy forum around public education that I have been to in decades. Sitting on the CATO Institute’s Hyack Auditorium stage were five educational entrepreneurs who have created highly innovative microschools. Three of the participants were able to take advantage of the existence of Educational Savings Accounts in the states in which they are located to fund their endeavors. ESA’s are dollars provided by states to parents for educational services for their children outside of those provided by the local neighborhood schools.

There is a new educational choice movement on fire in this country, much of it ignited by the closure of regular classrooms during the pandemic. According to CATO, “In 32 states plus Washington, DC, and Puerto Rico, many families can use school choice programs to select the learning environment that works best for their children.” I pictured Andrew Coulson, the former long-term director of CATO’s Center for Educational Freedom who passed away in 2016 at the age of 48 from a brain tumor, smiling ear to ear from above as he watched the event.

One of the panelists was Jack Johnson Pannell. Mr. Pannell had formed an all-boys charter school in Baltimore focused on helping those living in poverty. A friend introduced him to the universal ESA’s available in Phoenix. He decided to relocate his school across the country, establishing it as a Christian all-boys private school.

It was most likely not a difficult decision. By going the private school route this educator avoids all of the bureaucracy and regulation associated with chartering. In the audience was Shawn Hardnett, founder and executive director of D.C.’s Statesmen College Preparatory Academy for Boys Public Charter School. His eyes lit up as Mr. Pannell spoke, and why shouldn’t this be the case? His school had its five year review by the charter board recently and, for all its excruciatingly difficult work and the right to continue operating, here’s what it received:

“Statesmen PCS will develop and implement an academic improvement plan. At a minimum, the plan must include specific strategies the school will use to improve academic outcomes for all students. The plan must also include a description of how the school will measure its academic progress toward meeting its goals. Statesmen PCS will report on its progress implementing the plan in its annual report every year leading up to its 10-year charter review.”

“Additionally, Statesmen PCS will develop and implement a procurement contract compliance improvement plan. At a minimum, the plan must include strategies the school will use to improve internal procedures for both bidding and submitting procurement contracts. The plan must also include a description of how the school will measure the plan’s success. Statesmen PCS must comply with DC PCSB’s Procurement Contract Submission and Conflict of Interest Policy and Data and Document Submission and Verification Policy. Should DC PCSB recognize noncompliance, it will engage Statesmen PCS’s board about needed improvement or take additional action as appropriate under each policy.”

A shocking alternative to the energy I found at the CATO conference was observing Monday night’s monthly meeting of the DCPCSB. The sessions are held virtually, a reminder of the horrible days of the pandemic. The connection via Zoom made it clunky and awkward to connect sequentially the over 20 people who volunteered to speak as part of the public comment period. Almost all testified passionately against a proposal by the Mary McLeod Bethune Day Academy PCS’s plan to relocate its 16th Street, N.W., campus to Takoma Park Baptist Church located on Aspen Street, N.W. Apparently, the school failed to communicate or miscommunicated the move to those living in the area around the Church, including the ANC. The District’s charter movement is almost 30 years old but I found the entire two hour get together to be a replay of those that I first attended in 1999.

So, while listening to the back and forth discussion between members of the board and the school, I thought about the day that ESAs would come to the nation’s capital. Imagine a parent going on My School DC and picking a private school for their child instead of the regular one in their neighborhood. Then in the mail would come a credit card pre-loaded with almost $13,000 in educational dollars to pay for a year’s tuition in one of the 135 private schools that at one time operated as charters.

People are allowed to dream, aren’t they?