Last week, hundreds of students in DC’s publicly funded schools demanded democracy—specifically, for the U.S. Senate to vote down a continuing resolution (CR) that deprived DC of the right to use its own tax dollars and forced DC to revert to the prior year’s spending levels. The resulting $1 billion budget hole would mean layoffs of teachers, police, fire fighters, and other essential personnel (yes, in the school year). 

Yet despite adorable democracy in action (and with police attention!) and despite dozens of DC PTAs begging for relief in a letter delivered to senators, the Senate approved the CR, albeit with a dubious parting gift: passing a separate, stand-alone measure that would restore DC’s budget autonomy IFF approved by the House. 

So next week, after Congress returns from its break, expect hundreds of DC residents and elected officials to AGAIN flood House offices, AGAIN begging for the right to control our own money (every cent of which we will need given that the president appears poised to get rid of federal school funds and the entire department of education with nary a peep from Congress). Indeed, this Saturday March 22, there is a townhall meeting on restoring DC’s preK funding; see here.

Right now, the CR is in effect, DC’s forced $1 billion hole is with us, and DC leaders are contending with cuts. The only question is how long this ugliness will last. Perhaps unsurprisingly, no budget oversight hearings have been posted by DC’s council as of this blog post (though we at least do have audited enrollment numbers). 

In the meantime, the council is moving forward with several hearings and new legislation on a variety of topics:

–On March 25 at 2 pm, the council will hold a hearing on legislation to ban cell phones in DC schools. About half the council co-introduced the legislation in January. But while the measure seems destined to pass, not everyone is on board. For instance, the DC state board of education held a vote last month on the idea, and its student members all opposed it—as did the majority of its student advisory committee. 

While it is unlikely that charter board members who enjoyed use of their cell phones during a public meeting (i.e. while they were supposed to be paying attention to other stuff) will weigh in on this legislation, maybe someone can ring DC council members on their cells and tell them it’s never a good idea to succumb to Stockholm syndrome no matter how grim one’s (budgetary) future may be. 

–In the wake of the Eagle Academy implosion and right before the council’s December 5, 2024 hearing about it, at large council member Christina Henderson proposed legislation that would require charter LEAs to have board member training. The legislation went nowhere in that period—so Henderson re-introduced it in January.

Now there will be a hearing on the re-introduced 2025 legislation on March 26, at 2 pm. 

Little appears to have changed between the first iteration of this legislation and its newer version. The 2025 version has more co-sponsors and a deadline for implementation of the training by SY26-27 (as opposed to SY25-26 in the original bill). This rinse and repeat is notable inasmuch as no one listening to the December 5 Eagle hearing could have rationally concluded that the main problem with Eagle was lack of training for its board! 

Specifically, not only was there a lot the charter board could have (and didn’t) flag that would have resulted in a different outcome quite irrespective of whatever Eagle’s board did (or didn’t do), but this legislation would do nothing to prevent a head of school keeping important fiscal matters away from an LEA’s board and/or not representing fiscal matters truthfully to an LEA board—all of which occurred with Eagle. 

Thus, it remains to be seen whether this legislation is a first step in actual fiscal oversight—or a one and done attempt to stand in for such oversight.

–On November 20, 2024, the DC council held a hearing on legislation introduced by at large CM Henderson on special education—specifically, that June 2024 legislation was to ensure that special education students can stay in their feeder schools. 

But the 2024 legislation did not go anywhere. In January 2025, CM Henderson introduced a newer version of it. The two bills are similar, although the 2025 version has a bit more about notification to adults—parents, staff, teachers—regarding changes to a student’s special education services. No hearing has been scheduled yet.

The 2024 legislation apparently arose out of concerns expressed by Henderson at an April 11, 2024 oversight hearing, wherein she noted that DCPS’s model demands special education students go back to their neighborhood schools at certain transition years. Henderson noted this appeared to be re-segregating schools and violating school choice. 

But what the re-introduced version of this legislation leaves out is a much bigger story:

The November 2024 hearing featured hours of horrific testimony about special education failures in DC. Absolutely none of the testimony can be construed as surprising, given DC’s long and terrible history around special education. At that hearing, DCPS’s chief of teaching and learning, Corie Colgan, testified that the 2024 bill created a right that federal law around special education (IDEA) doesn’t recognize; would require more resources than DCPS has to implement; and would present uncharted legal difficulties. (See her testimony here, starting at 3:35:10.) DCPS’s re-location of special education students appears to be mainly confined to those in self-contained special education classrooms, ostensibly borne out of an effort to keep these students as close to home as possible. (Given the ongoing class action lawsuit around DC’s longstanding troubles of bussing students with disabilities, that is not exactly undesirable on its face.)

A few weeks after that hearing, the U.S. commission on civil rights released a December 2024 bombshell report on failures in DC’s special education services. Basically, the report’s table of contents and list of recommendations reads like a transcript of the November 2024 hearing (indeed, some of the source materials are positively hair-raising**).

So here we are in 2025—and the new iteration of this bill apparently doesn’t take much of that into account. Indeed, the first (and potentially only) priority of this legislation is validating school choice for special education students, by way of ensuring stability. 

But while stability is a good goal, the effect of this legislation on the provision of special education services overall is an open question–particularly within DCPS, which has the most special education students and self-contained classrooms for them. There is no fiscal impact statement for either version of this legislation, but plenty within both the December report and the November hearing suggests that doing this appropriately would entail resources not currently available. Given the threat now to DC’s ability to spend its own money and federal money drying up for anything that doesn’t promote privatizing and/or religion in public schools, it may prove entirely unviable without directly jeopardizing the budgets of individual schools. (And that’s not even mentioning the unmentionable: the fiscal consequences of school choice, which in DC have exacted tremendous, if almost completely unacknowledged, costs.)

[**Because we never know when some unelected, unvetted, and unaccountable tech bros will cause our publicly owned data to go poof, you can also access the December 2024 report here and access some of the source materials here.]

–A bill was introduced in January to provide free or reduced-cost out-of-school-time programming for kids in DC’s publicly funded schools by 2036. No hearing has been scheduled yet.

–A bill was introduced in January to prevent schools from paying for swing space out of their renovation budgets. No hearing has been scheduled yet (though a lot of us sure could have used this as a law about a decade ago, when we got renovations to fit budgets cut thusly).

–Adding to a long line of hopeful legislation (and actual law!), a bill was introduced in January to mandate nurses in every publicly funded school for 40 hours/week. A bill that had a hearing in 2024 would have mandated 30 hours/week—and went nowhere. An (old) law mandated 40 hours/week. (Do I hear 25 hours? Going once, going twice. . . . ) To be sure, at no point in at least a decade have all DC schools gotten to the 40 hour/week mark for school nurses. No hearing has been scheduled yet.

(But hey! At least the charter board maintains a nurse schedule for all our schools, both charter and DCPS. Here’s the latest—and here is the website with links to prior charter board newsletters that contain links to web pages on past nurse schedules because it’s impossible—impossible, I tell you!—to just have one website publicly available with this information updated regularly by, you know, the agency that is actually responsible for schools nurses and their scheduling.)

–A bill was introduced in January to provide universal free meals—breakfast, lunch, and snacks–for all students at publicly funded schools in DC and some private schools. Right now, school breakfasts are free to all students. The estimated cost in 2022 for this program was $8 million annually, with a lower total possible if USDA subsidies are taken into account. A hearing was held in November 2023 on an earlier version of this bill. No hearing has been scheduled yet on this version–and to be fair, no one can speak to USDA anything now, much less the cost of food (thank you, tariffs!), so the cost of this program is completely TBD.

–A bill was introduced in February to standardize arts instruction and curricula in publicly funded schools. No hearing has been scheduled yet—and no word on the disparities in the availability of arts instruction across schools.

–A bill was introduced in February to allow the DC state board of education to amend policies of the office of the state superintendent of education (OSSE) or simply initiate its own without OSSE. No hearing has been scheduled yet.

Finally, a host of bills have been introduced around recreational and athletic facilities. Back in November 13, 2024, the council held a hearing on the use of athletic fields and facilities owned by DC—so perhaps we can see what has transpired since by way of future hearings on these bills:

–In January, the FUN act was re-introduced—but no 2025 hearing has been scheduled yet. 

Recall that an earlier version of this bill had a hearing way back in March 2022, in the wake Jelleff being signed away for years to Maret and the Ellington field seized from Duke Ellington School of the Arts in compensation to the public (while unironically also screwing the public).

This 2025 bill requires public engagement on, and council oversight of, all exclusive use or license agreements for DC recreational properties for a term of 3 years or more (used to be 1 year or more—but inflation has apparently hit the council hard). Without this bill, the mayor can continue in darkness to spirit public recreational property away from the public for years in deals with private entities—much like what happened with Old Hardy and a public park in SW DC.

–In February, a bill was introduced to ensure better, more uniform access to DCPS fields by community-based sports leagues for youth. It would require that DCPS and DPR work together to ensure rational access. No hearing has been scheduled yet—and no word on how this would apply to DC charter schools, which have been lamenting their lamentable state for years WRT fields, buildings, money, etc. (Because they were forced—forced, I tell you!—to exist in DC.)

–Also in February, a bill was introduced to expand operating hours of DPR facilities, including those at DCPS. No hearing has been scheduled yet.

[Confidential to the DC council: Do you get the funny feeling sometimes that you are actually doing the mayor’s job, except with less pay and more work because instead of one person saying to her deputies, “Yeah, let’s open that center for 2 more hours/week,” you have to write it up, get a bunch of people to agree with you that it’s important, then hold a hearing, listen to hours of testimony, get your colleagues to vote on it, THEN if it passes, send it to the mayor and IFF she signs it, send it to Congress, after which and IFF it approves the measure, you get another 2 hours/week at your local rec center—well, providing anyone enforces the law. I mean, I am tired just typing this.]

–Finally, a bill was introduced in February that says it is also about expanding access to DCPS fields and recreational spaces—but appears to be mostly about . . . sanitation therein. (Perhaps unsurprisingly, this legislation was introduced by the W2 CM.) No hearing has been scheduled yet.