–While the federal government has recently released billions in (illegally) impounded education money, and the DC council has ensured that many agency budgets are (kinda, sorta) made whole, loose fiscal ends are everywhere. For instance, funds were restored for the DCPS green card program, which allows educators on H1B visas to have a path toward a green card. But as we have seen repeatedly in 2025, there’s a gulf between assigning funding and that funding being used for its intended purpose. Likewise, while funding for community schools was restored, cuts to health care will ensure DC families will suffer—inevitably including many DC students. (OTOH, the council chair has spent a lot of time thinking up welfare for billionaires, so there’s that.)

–In addition to attempted kidnapping by ICE, DC’s school-based nurses now have a new employer, as Children’s Hospital ended its contract with DC. The DC Department of Health (DOH) is now managing the program. 

Presumably for greater clarity, the charter board has released memos about nurse staffing in its recent Wednesday bulletins (see here and here). Underscoring the apparently sensitive nature of this information, the July 30 bulletin cautions readers in boldface that the July 21, 2025 staffing memo (also see here if that link doesn’t work) is “not to be distributed to families.” 

Yeah.

It is hard to know what (or who) is behind this cloak and dagger bit. For more than a year, the charter board has been apparently the only DC-government-adjacent entity to regularly publish nurse staffing at all schools. That may be because what DC charters want and do is what the rest of us get (or something)–or because no one anywhere else thought families should know this stuff. Either way, it’s not a good look.

–The Post ran an article recently on truancy in DCPS. Both long and heartbreaking, the article outlined many reforms and legislation aimed at dealing with high truancy rates—while never mentioning the schools that educate the other half of DC kids. (That would be our charter schools.)

To be sure, truancy is a problem in DCPS (see the latest report on truancy in DCPS, from August 2024, here). The latest truancy information for charters also comes from August 2024. Unlike the DCPS report, this 2024 charter report lists actual truancy rates—albeit only for the 10 schools with the highest rates of truancy (all of which have rates >60%). 

Also unmentioned in the Post article is legislation enacted a year ago that required a preliminary report in March about five secondary schools with truancy rates greater than 50%. Here is the preliminary report, issued in May for those 5 schools (Anacostia HS; KIPP Legacy College Prep; Eastern HS; Digital Pioneers; and Woodson HS).

A final report on those schools is due in August (see here for more information)—at which time we may also get updated information in truancy in all schools in both sectors.

—DC’s inspector general recently released a report on combatting gun violence in DCPS—and concluded that in addition to numerous physical security issues regarding missing door locks, nonworking PA systems, and troublesome windows, there are “systemic weaknesses” that include “absence of a standardized definition of school gun violence across District agencies; reduced School Resource Officer coverage across DCPS schools; inconsistent implementation of safety measures across schools; and DCPS exclusion from some District-wide gun violence prevention initiatives.”

(No word on the state of combatting gun violence in DC’s charter schools because why worry about the safety of the other half of DC’s students?)

Unfortunately, the agency in charge of DCPS buildings (DGS) has a long track record of not doing due diligence regarding DCPS buildings and safety therein (see here and here and here for some recent issues.)

Indeed, in 2018 no fewer than two members of the DC council explored the topic of missing door locks in DCPS. While one council member, David Grosso, offered to put the locks on the school doors himself, months later the same offer was made (for a price!) by at large council member Robert White in the exchange below (see video of the hearing starting at 2:43:44): 

Robert White: On the school locks, it seems like a basic and important issue. Deputy Chancellor Gaal, I didn’t hear: the number of schools that don’t have the ability to lock their doors?
Michael Gaal: It’s 50.
White: Fifty. OK. And the cost for that is $15 million?
Gaal: That’s correct, that’s our initial estimate.
White: Are these diamond-encrusted locks?
Gaal: I don’t have a comment on that. But I see your point.
White: It doesn’t make sense to me. . . . Even if every door in the schools had no ability to lock, it would not cost $15 million. I would ask that you go back to DGS or whoever gave you this and get a better understanding of that cost. Alternatively, I guarantee if I tap out a message on Facebook right now we can get this done for $1 million in a month.

Given this 2025 report, it appears safe to say that over the past 7 years neither council member nor DGS has attended to the missing door locks in a fulsome manner–or possibly at all.

–The latest report on the uniform per student funding formula (UPSFF) was released in June. Most of the recommendations focused on increasing supports for special education students. 

–We are days away from DCPS enacting the city’s new ban on student cell phones (see here for details). At the end of SY24-25, the chancellor sent a letter to families about it.

–The deputy mayor for education (DME) has apparently scored a number of excellent media placements recently. 

Take this early July City Paper article on the equitable access lottery preference. Through the preference, schools can elect to set aside seats for at risk students in the lottery. Ostensibly, this is not merely to increase diversity at schools with seats of choice, but also to provide increased chances for at risk students to access schools that may have better test scores or programming. 

But even with the preference, DC’s schools are still wildly segregated–and most especially schools of choice. 

The article itself doesn’t much touch on that—or on facts that inform the entire concept. Take this bit, which leaves out entirely how many more at risk students are enrolled at participating schools over time (20? 200? 2000?), in favor of stating that there’s no data on how far they traveled:

“Early results revealed that more at-risk students applied to and and matched at those participating schools than those using the common lottery. More at-risk students ultimately enrolled in those schools, too. But it is not always clear from the publicly available data how far students travel from their homes to attend schools via this program.”

Then there is the concluding paragraph, which references “the district’s own analysis” without mentioning what that analysis is, much less how many at risk students are being thusly served:

“The District’s own analysis confirms that persistent socioeconomic and racial segregation in schools is inconsistent with its commitment to equitable school access for all students. Recent and ongoing efforts to adjust school attendance zones to address this issue include specific recommendations by a 2023 advisory committee (later approved by the mayor) that the preference for at-risk students should actually be increased.”

A few weeks after that article appeared, a July article in Education Week described the DME’s attempt, through the boundary process, to pair two socioeconomically different, but geographically close schools, Maury and Miner. The idea behind the pairing is to see if the racial and economic segregation in both can be reduced. 

The DME is quoted in the article as saying of the pairing that “it’s not clear what the benefits are for a model that hasn’t yet been developed.” That (true) statement just begs the question why do it—especially when one school community is (by the article’s own description) far less empowered than the other. 

While we get no clarity on any of that, the article also mentions nothing about whether such a pairing would have resources to serve every demographic of kids well (or at all) nor mentions the deep segregation throughout the city’s schools. 

Back in 2023, when this pairing was first floated by way of the boundary process and recommendations, I wrote about it thusly:

“If DC education leaders wanted to have “racially and socio-economically diverse schools” (as the boundary guiding principle goes), they could do so overnight: get rid of boundaries, make all schools follow the same rules, put every student’s name in a hat, assign all students randomly, and institute bussing.

“But they will never do this because DC’s current school segregation (and its fellow traveler, inequity) serves their interests far more. All of it provides a manufactured need for, and facsimile of, choice for many people who feel (and/or know) they have none, while ensuring a steady supply of bodies, real estate, and public money to the private interests that run our charters. That in turn pleases the private interests that back those charters and fund our DC leaders. Turns out, $2 billion of annual public funding to DC public schools is quite an incentive.”

Presumably, the DME can regard the current media silence around such inconveniences as a success.

–Speaking of political power:

This month, the Post profiled a parent group’s effort to expand the renovation of Chisholm Elementary in Ward 6 to accommodate a Spanish language immersion middle school. 

It is hard to know where to start with this:

The idea of expanding a Ward 6 elementary for a middle school when another Ward 6 elementary (Amidon-Bowen) was recently removed from the modernization list for lack of nearby swing space is pretty rich. Among other things, it would mean DC spending millions more on one renovation so as to allow students to remain on site through middle school. It also means another modernization–long delayed, at a school with a higher percentage of Black and at risk students–is postponed because DCPS doesn’t wish to invest in modular units to ensure those students can remain nearby.

Yeah.

While the chancellor has apparently said that DCPS will not make Chisholm into an education campus, the Chisholm advocates nonetheless got both the chancellor and Ward 6 council member to attend a public meeting in July about their aspirations. The public meeting was less than 2 weeks after the Post’s profile.

Yeah.

Perhaps predictably, the Post article doesn’t mention anyone from Ward 7—despite the fact that people in Ward 7 have been fighting to have a local middle school immersion program that Houston Elementary could feed into and have long desired to use the closed Winston school for that and other community-centered purposes. Nor does the Post article mention the (continuing) depletion of Ward 7’s high school, Woodson, by allowing students from its only feeder middle school to attend high school on Capitol Hill, at Eastern. Nor does the Post article mention the DC state board of education’s May vote to support the Chisholm effort, with the (lone) dissenting vote from the Ward 7 member, Eboni-Rose Thompson. 

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the state board resolution mentions none of that—nor the fact that Ward 7 and Ward 8 middle schools have capacity for more students; that both wards send their kids to Ward 6 schools in droves but not vice versa; and that creating more seats in Ward 6 simply adds to the inequity (not to mention putting enrollment pressure on all existing middle schools there and EOTR).

It really is always the same map here in DC, isn’t it?