–The DC Council is teeing up some more education hearings, to accompany previously scheduled ones:

1. On November 13 at 1 pm, the council will hold a hearing on the use of athletic fields and facilities owned by DC. Expect outrage from DCPS families over lack of control of their school assets—and unhappiness from charter advocates over lack of control of the same.

(Also, expect silence about the FUN bill (Fairness in Use and Negotiation for All Recreational Property Act of 2022), which requires the council to approve all long-term leases of publicly owned fields and buildings. The legislation was prompted because the mayor can do (and has done) whatever she likes with these public spaces without a single photon of public sunshine (ie publicly owned spaces at Jelleff and Old Hardy and a SW DC park were all signed away, under cover of darkness, for YEARS to private entities). Because such legislation means the public, not private entities, would be in the driver’s seat regarding public assets, naturally it’s gone nowhere.)

2. Also on November 13 (but at 2:30 pm), the council will hold a hearing on chronic absenteeism and truancy oversight. (The timing of two education hearings on the same day within a couple of hours of each other can only be called pathetically ironic, given that one hearing is on absenteeism.)

3. On November 21 at 10:30 am, the council will hold a hearing on out of school time (OST) programming—and a bill to (eventually) have robust free or affordable OST programs in every publicly funded school.

And now, a brief note on two recent hearings:

The council held a DCPS budget oversight hearing on October 23 (previously scheduled for October 17). Not only did it start an hour late, but it was held during the school day so teachers and students could not readily testify. (The chair of the council, Phil Mendelson, noted the late start was a result of an unexpectedly long, but unspecified, meeting with DC’s inspector general.)

The next week, on October 29, the council’s hearing on teacher and principal retention started half an hour late, at 4:30 pm, and went past midnight. The good news was that it came after the DCPS teacher contract was apparently settled.

–On November 12 at 6:00 pm, DCPS will hold at Brookland Middle School what it is calling a public budget forum around next year’s school budgets. For this event, DCPS has teamed up with the Local School Advisory Team (LSAT) Collective, which is comprised of LSAT members across DCPS who advocate on all matters budgetary at their schools and across DCPS. More information on the meeting is here.

–On November 20 at 6:00 pm, DCPS will hold its annually required public budget hearing, to hear from all school communities in shaping next year’s school budgets. More information about this online meeting is here.

–Every Tuesday, Parents United For School Health asks for help with a real-time survey of nurse staffing in our publicly funded schools. This is because our schools do not have full-time nurses (read more here and here). On October 9, the council held a hearing on this subject (see here for clips). Contact the group at parentsunitedforschoolhealth@gmail.com

–In September, a working group started meeting for advising on the uniform per student funding formula (UPSFF). The group has a few more meetings before issuing a report, as have UPSFF working groups done once every 2 years.

According to the deputy mayor for education’s (DME) office, which is facilitating the working group with the office of the state superintendent of education (OSSE), the group’s focus is on “how to best implement the DME’s School Funding Study recommendation to add a new additional UPSFF weight for the highest need students with disabilities who require dedicated aides, behavior techs, or health techs/nurses.”

Here are the UPSFF working group members, which the DME’s office said were chosen for “expertise in special education students and related services”:

Hannah Blumenfeld-Love, Special Education Hub
Allen Francois, DCPS
Julie Camerata, Special Ed Cooperative
Chelsea Coffin, DC Policy Center
Victoria Glick, OSSE
Jeffrey Grant, Monument Academy PCS
Regina Grimmett, DCPS
Robert Hanna, OSSE
Rochanda Hiligh-Thomas, Advocates for Justice and Education
Madeline Houck, DC Public Charter School Board
Louis Hubner, The Children’s Guild
Quibilah Huddleston, The Education Trust
Jake Lappi, DCPS
Rory Lawless, Office of the DME
Tameria Lewis, DC Charter School Alliance
Alonso Montalvo, Office of the Chief Financial Officer
Michael Olivarri, St. Coletta PCS
Mayank Palod, Appletree PCS
Leila Peterson, School Talk DC
Stephen Regis, Office of the Chief Financial Officer
Jennifer Rosenbaum, DCPS
Valeria Sanders, DC Public Charter School Board
Catherine Sanwo, Friendship PCS
Daniel Hanower. Office of Budget and Performance Management
Jonathan Weinstein, KIPP DC
Megan Williams, OSSE

–The council has (still) not scheduled a hearing around what went down with Eagle Academy—though the charter board seems to have stepped up its fiscal oversight of late, with scrutiny around Capital Village.

Regardless, the latest long-form Post article on Eagle leaves out some curious things. For one, it mentions that former CEO Joe Smith recently loaned the school $50,000. If true, that payment would be illegal per IRS rules. (Maybe this is what Mendelson discussed with DC’s inspector general on October 23?)

For another, the story doesn’t mention a payment from DC given to Eagle in July, for this school year. When I asked Evan Cash, the director of the council committee of the whole, what happened to that money, he admitted that he didn’t know but guessed that it went to creditors. (Now, one can hope this is what Mendelson and the inspector general discussed on 10/23—but I doubt it, given that no one in DC government apparently cares about a whole lot more public funds missing at KIPP DC.)

The Post story also doesn’t mention the lawsuit brought by two former Eagle employees for unlawful termination. As the plaintiffs were just granted permission to pursue class certification, DC could be on the hook for any payout. The defendant’s address is the home of CEO Joe Smith—possibly because Eagle Academy itself in DC has apparently disappeared (as has its DC website).

Finally, the Post story doesn’t mention Eagle problems in Nevada, illegal construction in Ward 8, and Smith’s charter venture into Ohio—all of which implicate DC taxpayers in some manner. Given that a subtext of the Post article was that Eagle’s takeover by Friendship was necessary and unfairly denied by the charter board, one might think these omissions were, well, purposeful.

Sadly, the DC charter board had many bites of the apple to correct course with Eagle over the span of years—and didn’t. Indeed, the board failed to exercise its most basic function, which was rescinding Eagle’s charter when evidence of fiscal mismanagement was overwhelming years ago.

Thus, perhaps the best part of the Post story was this comment by an anonymous reader:

“A private charter school is not about the hopes and dreams of a community. It’s about the hopes and dreams of individual parents who believe that they’re better and more deserving than their community. Real education is a community responsibility because while education benefits the kids themselves, it ultimately benefits the community.”

[Update November 20: The council has scheduled a hearing for Eagle for December 5. See the hearing notice here. While it says it is for invited witnesses, one can request to be invited. ]

–At its October 28 monthly meeting, in addition to taking notice of Capital Village’s fiscal issues the DC charter board approved a notice of concern for SEED over issues with special education and data compliance. Special education noncompliance is a huge deal–but data noncompliance underscores a longstanding problem running through DC’s charter sector. Specifically, data collection and dissemination varies by LEA such that publicly available data is rendered almost meaningless.

What is new here is the charter board’s apparent acknowledgement of the problem. The charter board’s report on SEED, for instance, outlined serious discrepancies of data from various sources on expulsions and suspensions at the school. As unlikely as it is that the charter board will make headway on this for all DC charter schools, it’s a welcome change from years of insisting it is one of the best and most rigorous authorizers in the country.

–In his most recent newsletter, W5 council member Zachary Parker mentioned visiting Center City charter school’s new “maker space” in Langdon, at 2335 18th St. NE, housed in a former warehouse that the charter school bought. I looked on the charter board website for the school’s application to be located there—and couldn’t find anything. Information from the school’s board indicates no charter board involvement whatsoever regarding this property.

To be sure, while the property was mentioned on p. 65 of the most recent FAR and on p. 19 of the school’s most recent fiscal audit, absent charter board approval of this location there was literally no way for the public to know about this beforehand and no way to weigh in about the use of public money for this purpose. (Though it appears that the local archdiocese weighed in; see these notes from an OSSE meeting in February 2024.)

Anyhoo, I asked the council member about all of this—and didn’t get a response as of this post. A key member of the company behind this work is connected to the Federal City Council, which wields undue influence around charter school development and power in DC. That company has also built out this DC building for education use, which may show up in some way with/as a DC charter school (although we the little people may be out of that loop, as we now know that not all charter properties used for school purposes are brought before the public, despite being paid for with public money).

–And speaking of bait and switches:

Yesterday I got this newsy email from PAVE. Notwithstanding that I don’t think I ever signed up for anything from PAVE, this missive was helpful in outlining what the organization is doing and how they are portraying their work.

In contrast, I and many other DCPS parents have trekked alone or with a small group of fellow parents to the Wilson Building to testify or meet with council members. While I am pretty sure that I didn’t have any overt support for my emails and phone calls (well, besides my own convictions), I certainly cannot recall any pictures of me doing this work that were then posted in emails addressed to hundreds, if not thousands, of people unaffiliated with us or our schools.

Possibly that’s because the affiliations of those of us doing this work were always as unpaid parents or advocates concerned about X, where X = something that intimately and specifically affected the schools where we sent our kids. There was never a larger group supporting us beyond the communities of those schools–much less powerful foundations or corporations with millions of dollars set aside just for us or for addressing the larger, structural issues behind our concerns.

Weirdly, folks in DC government have treated us at worst like nuisances or at best like a boutique research shop (ie Mary Levy’s budget work, Grace Hu’s tech work)–like some lefty version of the DC Policy Center or PAVE except with no staff and no food spreads for DC government officials.

But whether DC government officials understand (or care) about DC residents doing this work in an independent manner, we need to ask why corporate and foundation involvement is necessary for any representation in and of our public schools—and what such corporate and foundation involvement in our schools has come to mean here in DC. It’s most certainly not empowering the public interest–but as in previous years, it is empowering DC campaign coffers.