A few months later than normal (mainly because of fascist impoundment of DC local tax funds), the DC council has scheduled hearings for the newly released DC budget:

Public charter school board, deputy mayor for education (DME), state board of education, education ombudsman, office of the student advocate: Friday May 30, 9:30 am; sign up and more information is here.

OSSE (office of the state superintendent of education): Wednesday June 4, 9:30 am; sign up and more information is here.

DCPS: Friday, June 6, 9:30 am, public witnesses (sign up and more information is here); Wednesday, June 11, 9:30 am, government witnesses (more information is here).

Given such a compressed schedule, some recent events are worth paying attention to:

–The May 19 charter board meeting began with a note about a closed meeting to be held 2 days later, on May 21. Fascinatingly, the video of the 5/19 meeting (posted well after both meetings) has a 5-second period where the speaker (board chair Shantelle Wright) is muted in the exact place where she seems to be explicating the content of the 5/21 meeting. (Yes: see here, starting at the 33 second mark.) By my observations, the actual notice of the 5/21 closed meeting was posted on the charter board website sometime in the afternoon of May 21.

The subject matter of that closed 5/21 meeting casts a curious shadow on this timing. One subject was Capital Village, whose charter was recently renewed but is currently experiencing fiscal distress. The closed 5/21 meeting also discussed SEED, whose charter was renewed in 2023 but has had a number of issues around disability law violation; assaults; and finances (see p. 3 here). In October, the charter board set benchmarks for SEED around special education compliance, to be completed by the end of June 2025. 

As a prelude to that closed 5/21 meeting, SEED was also discussed at the 5/19 charter board meeting (starting at the 17:43 mark in the youtube video). There was a reference to an “active” investigation by DC police and different dates given for an assault (May 5, May 6, and/or April). With nothing posted about this discussion in the board materials for the 5/19 meeting, however, stay tuned for more delayed and/or suppressed information.

–On May 15, the charter board posted two charter facility requests, for new facilities starting in SY25-26. One request is from YouthBuild and is dated March 2025. It shows that the lease on its proposed facility was approved in December 2024. This facility request is scheduled for a vote in August.

The other facility request is dated April 11, from LAYC, and is also scheduled for a vote in August. 

So: Under what circumstances would these requests be voted down right before the start of the new school year? And why present them so late, when there was obviously movement for these facilities months beforehand (unless the point was to ensure they would pass under duress)? 

–On April 7, at the first of the charter board’s three (!) meetings in April, the charter relinquishment of I Dream occupied a little space. 

A few weeks later, on April 24, the My School DC lottery board met and began discussing I Dream (start at minute 15 of the April 24 video, whose direct link is here and also listed on the page here). There seemed to be an implication that “new applicants” to the school could not be matched to any other schools if the I Dream seats were removed from the lottery, as the school had requested on March 20. That date was, notably, the day before the school voted to relinquish its charter and also the day before the lottery was run. 

Nonetheless, per minute 28 it appeared that the “new applicant” issue wasn’t really an issue. Despite the seats being removed, however, the school still had a waitlist, and I Dream families on the waitlist were notified about the school’s imminent closure. But how current families at the school were notified about all of this, and when My School DC notified the waitlisted families, was unclear. 

It was also noted at the 4/24 lottery board meeting that the charter board would hold an enrollment fair the next day, on April 25, for I Dream with “several representative schools.” How those schools were chosen—and what they were—remained unsaid.

To possibly elucidate some of this, I requested by FOIA information around I Dream and the most recent lottery. See here for the production from OSSE (with msg files translated to word); kudos if you can find meaning in any of it.

–The April 24 lottery board meeting also discussed Hope charter school, starting at minute 30 of the video here. Recall that a few days later, at the April 28 charter board meeting, the relinquishment of Hope’s charter was read into the record. 

The lottery board meeting on 4/24 made clear that the school had asked on March 26 for the lottery to remove its seats. The next day, 3/27, the seats were removed and, because the lottery was actually run days earlier (on March 21), the lottery was then rerun. At minute 33 of the 4/24 lottery board meeting, it was declared that some results changed as a consequence of rerunning the lottery. 

Incredibly, what changed, and how, was unmentioned.

At minute 38 of the 4/24 lottery board meeting, it became clear that Hope was still (then) on the lottery board website and had offered slots to 56 students on its waitlist. No one seemed concerned, as the lottery board discussion indicated that Hope was NOT going out of business and that school’s board had tabled its closure vote on April 4. (See page 19 of the 4/24 lottery board slides, which outlines the school continuing.) 

Now, that 4/24 lottery board discussion occurred in the 2 pm hour on that day. A mere 3 hours later, in the 5 pm hour, Hope’s board voted to close the school (see the video here).

So: What happened to those newly admitted Hope students in the hours and days following the 4/24 lottery board meeting and when the school voted to close? The school created a letter about its closure vote on 4/25, which was made part of the record of the 4/28 charter board meeting. Short of requesting information by FOIA (which as the I Dream FOIA dump above showed is no guarantee of clarity), answers remain elusive.

–But Hope (the charter school) lives on at least vicariously in a (still unannounced) new DC charter high school!

Recall that at one time, Hope had two campuses: Lamond and Tolson. In 2021, Friendship put out a successful bid to take over Hope’s Lamond campus, which was at 6200 Kansas Ave NE—right across the street from Friendship’s 6130 North Capitol NW campus of Ideal elementary and middle school (which Friendship had also taken over). Both properties (Kansas and North Cap) are now owned by Friendship.

The rationale for Friendship’s 2021 bid for Hope’s Lamond campus was that Friendship wanted an elementary campus for its Ideal school separate from its Ideal campus at 6130 North Capitol.

But according to My School DC’s website, Friendship does not run a school at 6200 Kansas—just what appears to be after/before care (see here or see here). That said, when I googled “friendship charter 6200 kansas avenue ne,” I found this item, about a 2025 grant for millions over 5 years from the U.S. Department of Education to Friendship to fund a new Friendship high school at—wait for it!–6200 Kansas Ave. (See here if the link immediately preceding isn’t working.)

It seems that this new high school is actually a thing, if we take seriously this social media posting from the National Alliance for Charter Schools (once retweeted by Friendship and now deleted–see here if the link above isn’t working). The proposed school has not (yet) made its way to the charter board for a vote.

So: Did the charter board feel free to unanimously reject at its May 19 meeting a new, unknown charter high school (NewU) because it already knows of Friendship’s well-funded but (for the moment) publicly unannounced gambit? And how did a charter get millions from a federal department that has simultaneously fired thousands of its own workers in the interest of cost-cutting?

–The DC school connect report (see here) was submitted to the council early in May, outlining the “DC School Connect transit program designed to address student safety during their commutes to and from school.” 

Fair enough—but for the fact that no one from DCPS seemed to be part of this effort. In a city regularly pelted with messages from the deputy mayor for education on down about how most students do not attend their in boundary DCPS schools and are forced (forced, I tell you!) to commute great distances, that omission seems a bit, well, rich. 

Per the latest data in the report, 429 students, mostly from charters, availed themselves of this program, with almost half being of elementary age. The introduction notes that in addition to success in getting students to school since its inception a few years ago, “the program also improved its efficiency over that time, with the cost per ride declining from $117.50 in 2021-22 to $84.62 in 2023-24.”

So: Is that cost per the entire vehicle? And what’s next for this program apparently helping only one school sector in DC? (I would say “stay tuned” but for the fact that no one is likely to get any information from DC leaders about it except that it was a smashing success.)

–Because I could not (easily, obviously, and/or at all) access them, I requested from the charter board the following via FOIA:

Quarterly finance committee report for FY22, quarter 4
Quarterly finance committee report for FY23, quarter 1
Quarterly finance committee report for FY23, quarter 2
Quarterly finance committee report for FY23, quarter 3
Quarterly finance committee report for FY23, quarter 4
Quarterly finance committee report for FY24, quarter 4

This and this is what I got. As a result, we know a bit more about recent charter board financial oversight—and none of it is good:

***There was apparently NO meeting of the charter board’s finance committee for a 7-month period between 6/15/23 and 1/17/24, when Eagle was financially imploding.

We know this because the FY23Q3 report reflects the 6/15/23 meeting of the finance committee, but per my FOIA, the next report (for FY23Q4) is NA. It would have been reflective of a finance committee meeting around Sept/Oct 2023. The next meeting of the finance committee (for FY24Q1) was on 1/17/24, and the report about that meeting is available with materials for the 2/26/24 board meeting.

***The FY23Q2 report, reflecting the March 8, 2023 finance committee meeting, had a broken link in the materials for the March 20, 2023 board meeting, where it was voted on. That link was corrected only in April 2025, when I told the charter board about it. 

That means the FY23Q2 report (ie when Eagle was financially imploding) was publicly posted more than 2 YEARS late.

***There was no posting until 8/19/24 of the next report (for FY23Q3), reflective of the finance committee meeting on 6/15/23. 

That means the FY23Q3 report (ie when Eagle was financially imploding) was publicly posted more than 1 YEAR late.

In fact, the metadata for that FY23Q3 report show that it was actually created on 8/9/24. But the report itself says, in a footnote, that it “inadvertently was not included to be read into the record in a Board meeting until now [ie 8/19/24].” 

That little note is the ONLY acknowledgement that anything was amiss. The August 19, 2024 board meeting mentioned nothing, even as the board voted against Friendship taking over Eagle due to severe fiscal issues. 

And no one has explained why this report itself was created more than a year after the time it purportedly represents.

***Per my FOIA, there was no FY23Q4 report; the next one was for FY24Q1, which was reflective of a finance committee meeting on 1/17/24. It was posted with materials for the 2/26/24 charter board meeting.

Thus, between the time the FY23Q1 finance committee report was publicly posted with board materials for the 12/19/22 charter board meeting (reflecting information from the 11/15/22 finance committee meeting) and when the FY24Q1 report was publicly posted with board materials for the 2/26/24 charter board meeting (reflecting information from the 1/17/24 finance committee meeting), there was NO public reporting of the finance committee. 

That period of time encompasses 14 months with NO publicly available finance committee reporting as the financial situation around Eagle Academy severely deteriorated.

(In any other place, this would be a major scandal prompting massive change overseen by an independent body. But this is DC and another day ending in “y.”) 

In the meantime, the FY24Q4 finance committee report (reflective of the December 19, 2924 finance committee meeting) still isn’t publicly accessible, either. Recall that the charter board swapped the original out in materials of the January 27, 2025 charter board meeting for one with the same date that dropped Rocketship. 

Fascinatingly, my recent FOIA production provided the FY24Q4 report with Rocketship on it—the original one posted, created on 1/17/25—as opposed to the second FY24Q4 report, without Rocketship, created on 1/27/25 and posted on the board meeting website (well, until it suddenly wasn’t there).

So: Incompetence or criminality? 

Those are the only choices here—and neither is a good look for DC or democracy.

–Finally, as fascist goons continue to terrorize America, you might want to keep handy this helpful aid.