–On October 9, at 9:30 am, the council will hold a hearing on two bills, one of which is B25-0690, introduced in February. The bill would require 30 hours of nursing coverage per week at all DC publicly funded schools.

Ahead of the hearing, it may be worth recalling that the DC state board of education passed a resolution on September 18 demanding nurses in every school for 40 hours per week. Back in the olden days (specifically, 2018), DC had an actual law that called for 40 hours of nursing coverage per week in each publicly funded school.

To help avoid future legislation being similarly ignored and inform advocacy around current nurse staffing, be sure to complete a survey promulgated by parents (through Parents United For School Health) and students (Health Justice Club).

–On October 17, at 10:30 am, the council will hold a hearing on DCPS budget oversight. Expect lots of indignation from Chairman Phil Mendelson about DCPS budget shenanigans—and lots of silence from Chairman Phil Mendelson about the OTHER $1 billion we annually spend on our schools (including no hearing on unanswered questions regarding Eagle Academy).

–On October 22, at 10 am, the council will hold a hearing for, among other things, legislation (B25-0571) regarding dealing with seizures in schools. The bill had a hearing in July.

–On October 24, at 10 am, the council will hold a hearing on a bill regarding changes to vocational education. The bill was introduced in March.

Recall that the deputy mayor for education and the office of the state superintendent of education (OSSE) launched the Advanced Technical Center (ATC) in 2022 for vocational training. This bill appears to provide supplemental funding to such existing career and technical education (CTE) programming. See here for OSSE’s main page for CTE; here for specific programming in it; and here for the ATC.

–On October 29, at 4 pm, the council will hold a hearing on teacher and principal retention. It’s hard to say much new on this subject. Consider this was written 5 years ago before a hearing on this same subject. Since then, the only thing that appears to have changed is, erm, nothing.

–On November 6, at noon, the council will hold a hearing on oversight around math achievement and a bill on the same subject introduced in May. The legislation provides for an OSSE-led task force to research best practices.

In the meantime, DC parents continue to be not privvy to their students’ math and other standardized test scores in a timely manner.

–On November 20, at 12:30 pm, the council will hold a hearing on special education (SPED) oversight and a bill (B25-0847), introduced in June by at large council member Christina Henderson, that would give SPED students more freedom to remain in their feeder schools.

The legislation apparently grew out of questioning by Henderson during oversight this spring about the removal of SPED students in DCPS from their current schools for provision of SPED services, which the IDEA law allows.

(Not directly related, but concerning students being moved: DC students with disabilities who also have bus services continue to be poorly served. One can hope that the lawsuit parents have brought around the terrible bussing will bring change for the better; see here and here for the latest.)

–On December 4, at 1 pm, the council will hold a hearing on academic achievement. This annual hearing (the first around the new CAPE tests) may be illuminating–or just another recitation of why everything is great. (Yeah, nothing to see here or here or here.)

–Apparently at never o’clock, the council will hold a hearing on what went down at Eagle Academy; the years of failed oversight that led to Eagle’s implosion; how well schools are doing with Eagle students; and how all this ties into prior events involving odd charter board activities around charter schools that subsequently closed (hey there, Potomac Prep! hey there, WMST!).