[Ed. Note: The DC council recently held a hearing on charter reviews and renewals, the purported reason for which was to ensure the sanctity and sanity of school choice. As the hearing write-up and testimony demonstrated, however, the focus was not exactly on families as much as on advantaging private nonprofits. Below is my testimony on the subject, with 7 recommendations, including better and more timely communications around problems; reviews that include teachers, parents, and board violations; better lottery board communications and inclusive school fairs; using and disseminating all agency information around facilities and new school effects; and postmortem reports after closures. In a related development, the charter board will hold a November 17 hearing on its new mergers and acquisitions policy; that date is the last in which the public can comment on this new policy, which was opened for comment only last week, on October 27.]

I am Valerie Jablow, a DC education analyst, and the following is my written testimony for the October 22 hearing on charter school review and renewal.

As someone who has documented problematic issues in DC’s publicly funded schools and their governance, I think this hearing is a good idea. Three DC charter LEAs (Hope; I Dream; Eagle Academy) have closed in less than 2 years; others have publicly acknowledged financial and other difficulties; yet others have publicly unacknowledged problems; and DC’s school-age population is not increasing to the point of filling all DC’s publicly funded schools, much less meeting existing charter enrollment ceilings. 

But as the hearing itself demonstrated, its scope left a lot unexamined that is germane to the topic, including (and not limited to) the process for approving new charters and facilities; what charter reviews ignore (teacher turnover and granular student mobility); lack of timeliness in warnings; and public postmortems of closures. 

In fact, the write-up of this hearing on the council website suggests something very different was its intended focus: the abrupt nature of the most recent charter closures and the subsequent difficulty of parents to avail themselves of school choice. 

Thus, I want to first address assertions in the hearing write-up and then follow with 7 specific recommendations on how to strengthen charter oversight to empower families.

Hearing Write-Up Assertions

The following is from this council website (boldface mine):

“During School Year 2024–2025, significant concerns emerged regarding the DC Public Charter School Board’s (PCSB) charter review and renewal process. These concerns were heightened when two public charter schools opted to voluntarily relinquish their charters during the renewal process, leaving more than 500 students without a guaranteed school placement after the My School DC lottery had concluded.This disruption not only created uncertainty for families but also raised broader questions about the transparency, timing, and effectiveness of the PCSB’s oversight and decision-making process. The purpose of this hearing is to examine the charter review and renewal process for public charter schools in the District of Columbia. This hearing will focus on the criteria and procedures used by the PCSB to evaluate schools seeking charter renewal, including academic performance, operational effectiveness, financial stability, and community impact. The Committee wants testimony from education stakeholders, including school leaders, parents, students, and advocacy organizations, to assess how the current process aligns with the District’s goals for equity, accountability, and quality in public education. The hearing will also explore suggestions to strengthen oversight and ensure that all students have access to high-quality educational opportunities.” 

First, unlike what the statement above says, all DC students age kindergarten and up already have a “guaranteed school placement” at ANY moment 24/7/365. Some younger than kindergarten age have that right as well. Both are secured by DCPS throughout DC.

This does not mean that the DCPS schools at which students have a “guaranteed school placement” at any moment are those they want or chose or are even close to their homes. But to pretend this option doesn’t exist (as the hearing write-up suggests) is disingenuous, at best.

Second, while I Dream and Hope opted to close during their charter renewal and review period in SY24-25, both schools were within their rights to do what they did when they did it. The same is true for Eagle Academy, which also closed abruptly (albeit right before SY24-25). 

Specifically, the schools centered their actions on the best way forward for the private nonprofits behind the schools and NOT primarily on the communities of families in them.

It is vital that you recognize that this is not an aberration–nor evidence of incompetence, meanness, caprice, or anything not allowed by the charter board. Instead, it is how private charter nonprofits operate in DC.

Finally, the council statement above asks for “suggestions to strengthen oversight and [to] ensure that all students have access to high-quality educational opportunities.” 

That suggests that “access to high-quality educational opportunities” is not at all secured by the above-mentioned “guaranteed school placement”—and hence something is needed BEYOND that (current) “guaranteed school placement” (which is in DCPS only).

Now, this appears to go way beyond charter reviews! Indeed, if the council is truly interested in “access to high-quality educational opportunities,” it would focus on strengthening DCPS feeders and programming and enrollment, because unlike all DC charter schools, DCPS offers “guaranteed school placement” 24/7/365 for ALL DC students kindergarten age and up. And securing that is securing the public domain!

But that is not what is on offer here, which suggests that what the council is really interested in here is school choice–albeit not one in which parents are empowered, but one in which private charter operators are empowered to gain students in the wake of charter closures, often at the direct expense of parents and staff.

That is not securing anything in the public domain.

Strengthening Charter Oversight: 7 Recommendations

Because serious problems abound throughout DC’s publicly funded schools and in their governance, I take at face value the council’s solicitation of suggestions for better oversight around charter reviews and renewals. Thus, I offer here 7 recommendations for oversight that centers school choice as the choice of families, not that of private nonprofits; DC agencies; and/or leaders. Not all needed oversight is solely in the purview of the charter board, but shared among DC leaders and agencies.

1. Better and more timely communication to school communities, including staff and teachers, about charter LEA problems, especially those identified in review processes, must be mandated.

From my observations, most DC charter closures occur after multiple years of problems, most of which are fiscal. The charter board issues warnings of some sort to school personnel and/or boards, which for fiscal issues have been publicized only recently beyond occasional reports buried somewhere on the charter board website.

But those warnings are often not well (or possibly at all) communicated directly and timely to all parents and personnel AT the schools, as well as to the families who may (or actually do) choose those schools in the lottery. And sometimes the warnings come only after a long period of problems.

To be clear, it is not enough to have a report posted on the charter board website somewhere at some moment; a charter board staff member speaking about that report at a monthly charter board meeting; and/or charter board staff having private conversations with LEA staff and/or board members about an individual LEA’s problems.

Instead, fiscal and other problems identified by the charter board must be directly and timely communicated to LEA families and personnel by LEAs as well as by the charter board.

If doing any of this in such a timely and public manner seems too risky to an LEA’s fortunes, examine what is being prioritized by not doing so: people (including all DC taxpayers, who are funding this) or private nonprofits?

2. The charter board’s oversight and reviews must at all times prioritize families; staff; and taxpayers—and include, at a minimum, teacher and parent reviews; granular student mobility; and teacher turnover.

Years before it closed, Eagle Academy had multiple audits in which illegal self-dealing and other (frankly crazy) finances were outlined, along with multiple charter board fiscal reports of outrageously low cash on hand.

I have no idea if anyone at the charter board—staff or board members—ever read those documents, which were all posted on the charter board website. I do know that even after I and other DC residents pointed this stuff out repeatedly to a wide variety of DC government actors and agencies, we got no response—even as those documents are supposed to be part of charter fiscal oversight.

In fact, after years of reported problems, Eagle in DC had been repeatedly

–lauded;
–allowed to expand;
–allowed to build an entire school building without a permit; and
–given a green light at its charter board review in 2023.

That is real power over DC taxpayers, families, staff, and teachers.

The only thing that changed that narrative was Nevada acting against Eagle for financial impropriety. The ensuing publicity led DC actors to be much more attentive to Eagle’s fiscal adventures. Sadly, publicity—not oversight–is why Eagle Academy no longer exists here in DC.

Either the DC charter board works for we the people or it works for itself and private charter operators. The evidence of at least the last decade is that it clearly works for the latter. In fact, DC leaders seem to think the charter board can work for both in some manner—which is an impossible conflict of interest.

As it is, working for both taxpayers and private charter operators makes the charter board’s oversight exceptionally weak. This weak regulatory stance gives the charter board ample incentive to, among other things,

–overlook important information, as it did with Eagle;
—delay important actions, as it did with Washington Math, Science, and Tech HS;
–meet behind closed doors around charter renewals and reviews (SEVEN such meetings thus far in 2025; see here and here and here and here and here and here and here) and
–ensure charter operators are centered and prioritized in nearly all its policies and decision making (an incomplete list of just the last 10 years includes stuff here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here).

The end result is that school choice in DC is entirely the purview of private nonprofit charter operators, not families or teachers or taxpayers.

The first step toward centering families and staff and taxpayers is to NEVER do all of those actions listed immediately above.

The next step is to listen to entire school communities and taxpayers—and make teacher and parent reviews part of the charter board review process. The charter board often asks LEAs to get parent feedback whenever LEAs apply for a change in their charters, for instance, but those surveys are almost always conducted by the LEAs themselves and have no statistical robustness.

The next step thereafter is to include teacher turnover and granular student mobility in reviews. Noting teacher turnover and student mobility is one thing; making it a part of the ensuing review conversation is essential and currently not done. It will shed light on how the LEA operates; why students leave; and what improvements can be made for both, which are critical to students having a good educational experience.

3. Violations of the Open Meetings Act by charter boards must be a part of every review and renewal by the charter board.

In the wake of me presenting evidence earlier in 2025 that most DC charter LEAs do not abide by the Open Meetings Act (OMA) for their board meetings, DC’s Office of Open Government (OOG) determined that the charter board has a very limited role around the OMA and ensuring charter schools follow it.

This has meant that families and LEA staff are literally at the mercy of private nonprofits’ administrators and/or boards for basic information if individual LEA board meetings are not publicized and minutes posted. While parents and staff can raise complaints with LEAs and the charter board, the only recourse with any legal teeth in it (and without the possibility of retribution) is to file an OMA complaint with OOG–and then wait for months, even years.

Notably, both charters that closed this year (Hope and I Dream) were among the DC charter LEAs with what I considered poor publicity for their board meetings—disenfranchising already burdened families. In 2022, I testified to the charter board about how terrible this lack of board meeting information was with Eagle–and nothing changed. Recently, OOG determined that both I Dream and Hope had violated the OMA; a few years earlier, OOG also determined that Eagle did not abide by that law.

For all of those schools, those OOG decisions were too late to make a material difference for community members left out of the loop. As far as I know, in no case where such OMA violations have been adjudicated has the charter board ever taken that into account in its reviews.

This oversight structure advantages private charter operators at the direct expense of families and staff kept in the dark (as well as the DC taxpayers funding all of it) and can be remedied by ensuring potential and actual OMA violations are part of every charter review and renewal.

4. The lottery board needs to communicate quickly to accepted and waitlisted families at closing charter schools and should NEVER re-run the lottery on behalf of any school.

Publicly unresponsive actions by the lottery board affected families at both I Dream and Hope—as well as an unknown number of other families.

I Dream:

At the April 7, 2025, charter board meeting, I Dream’s charter relinquishment was read into the record. But a few weeks later, on April 24, the My School DC lottery board met and began discussing I Dream. Despite I Dream’s seats being removed from the lottery, the school still had a waitlist, and I Dream families on the waitlist were notified about the school’s imminent closure. But how (and when) current families at the school were notified about all of this, and when My School DC notified the waitlisted families, was unclear.

Hope:

The April 24 lottery board meeting also discussed Hope charter school, which had asked on March 26 for the lottery to remove its seats from the lottery, as it was considering relinquishing its charter but had not yet done so. The next day, March 27, the seats were removed and, because the lottery was actually run days earlier (on March 21), the lottery was then rerun. Some results changed as a consequence of rerunning the lottery. What changed (and how) was unmentioned.

That April 24 lottery board meeting also made clear that Hope was still on the lottery board website and had offered slots to 56 students on its waitlist. While lottery board members knew Hope going out of business was a distinct possibility, no one seemed concerned.

Yet a mere 3 hours later (!), Hope’s board voted to close the school—and a few days later, at the April 28 charter board meeting, the relinquishment of Hope’s charter was read into the record.

We cannot know what happened to those waitlisted Hope students in the hours and days following the April 24 lottery board meeting—except that they were not well served by the lottery board (as were students whose results changed because the lottery was re-run). In fact, the video of that April 24 lottery board meeting—once publicly available and on which my reporting here is based—is not publicly available anymore, for unknown (and unstated) reasons. 

[Ed. Note: Fascinatingly, I learned after turning in this testimony that selected lottery board meeting videos in 2024 and 2025 were destroyed due to an issue with expired time settings. In the case of the April 24, 2025 video, that was a pretty substantial loss to the public, because the posted notes and meeting slides do not get to the ugliness of what was discussed in the meeting as reported here.]

In all of this, it is hard to discern which public body—the lottery board or the charter board—cares less about school choice centered on families. Consider that the new merger and acquisition guidelines promulgated by the charter board ignore lottery deadlines in the case of so-called “emergency” situations. 

The only problem is that there is no such thing as an “emergency” acquisition or merger. That is a term of convenience for private charter *operators*, for whom the fiscal and other arrangements of a merger and/or acquisition can be a budget emergency.

Students themselves, however, have no “emergency” because all ages kindergarten and up have “guaranteed school placement” at ANY moment 24/7/365—the very thing that this hearing write-up pretends doesn’t exist! 

If a charter relinquishment feels like an emergency (and it clearly does to many), you need to enact recommendations #1-3 above and ensure both the lottery board and charter board are responsive to DC taxpayers first—not private nonprofits.

5. If “school fairs” are to be held after charter closures, they must be representative, not selective.

Per the April 24 lottery board meeting, the charter board was slated to hold an enrollment fair on behalf of I Dream families. It was noted that this fair would have “several representative schools.”

But how those schools were chosen—and what they were—remained unsaid. It is impossible to secure honest school choice if DC agencies are selecting the schools from which parents can make a choice. Both the lottery board and the charter board have never been open about this—and it is patently unfair to the entire idea of school choice. It comes down to *their* choice—not that of families.

6. The process for evaluating existing charters, and approving new charters and facilities, must include other agencies and must mandate the charter board publicly shares all information about charter expansion plans when it first gets it.

Absent a growing student population, opening new schools inevitably leads to enrollment declines overall, which contributes to financial difficulties that are at the heart of many charter closures.

Yet a year ago, the charter board approved a new BASIS elementary school, despite stated opposition arising from its effect on existing schools. The charter board made no effort to analyze that effect before approving the new school, and no DC agency had any analytical contribution.

The deputy mayor for education (DME) has both data and personnel to analyze the effects of new schools—and in fact does such analysis for DCPS. In addition, the office of the state superintendent of education (OSSE) has demographic data as well as mobility data, which could inform the public as well as the charter board.

But joint (and publicly centered) planning is not in private charter interests. It is not because privately run charter LEAs are being mean or unfair. It is because that is their “business” model: To maximize their own, private opportunity at all times. While that may occasionally overlap with public interest, it is most certainly not its equivalent.

Unfortunately, the charter board has conflated public interest and private charter business models—as have many DC leaders—and that does a grave disservice to DC.

When evaluating the proposed expansion of BASIS, for instance, the charter board was clearly impressed by BASIS’s “performance” as measured on standardized tests. What was not mentioned was the fact that BASIS does not, and cannot, educate all comers—the very cornerstone of public education. Not surprisingly, its attrition rate is high, and the students it educates are not diverse, while students with disabilities appear to be selected out at disproportionate rates.

Now, any data analyst at DME or OSSE could have done this analysis for the charter board ahead of its vote on BASIS—but no one at the charter board apparently wanted it. Instead, it fell to an education researcher doing it on her own time.

Possibly worse, the charter board does not reveal information it has about charter expansion plans in a timely manner. 

For instance, Friendship recently applied with the charter board to use its building at 6200 Kansas Ave NE as a space for its online students. But sometime in 2024 (per discussion at the October 27 charter board meeting), Friendship shared with charter board staff its application for a federal grant to create a new high school at that same location. In 2025, Friendship was awarded the grant (use this link if the prior one isn’t working).

But none of that was mentioned in the board report on Friendship’s application nor included in any of the materials Friendship provided. Instead, it was revealed only at the October 27 meeting in the wake of me repeatedly asking board members about the grant. (See the discussion starting at the 31:51 mark of the video here.) Indeed, the October 27 board meeting made clear that whether DC needs it or not, Friendship will move ahead with this new high school, which at least charter board staff knew about all along and elected not to reveal publicly.

This conflation of private business interests and public interest by the charter board is harmful to DC. Consider that BASIS had years of well-documented problems on a host of topics before its most recent application. For the charter board to approve the school’s expansion, it literally had to look away and pretend none of those problems mattered. 

If you value school choice, ask how that incomplete, purposefully obscuring view empowers parents or staff—or DC taxpayers, who are footing the bill for all of it.

7. For each closed school, there needs to be a postmortem report, with contributions from all DC education agencies.

Right now, there are no clear guidelines about public reporting after a charter school closure. This allows a lot to happen in darkness, for which the public literally picks up the tab—i.e. unpaid creditors; dispersal of assets; and even the disposition of the $4 million given to Eagle before its closure. 

Then there is the human element: where do the students go; what resources do receiving schools need; and how is it working out. This latter piece was most poignantly illustrated with the closure of Washington Met, after which a significant number of students were literally lost forever. These were students who were exceptionally fragile—underscoring how vital it is that you ask whose interest is served when DC leaders thusly turn away. It is certainly not the public’s—and if you truly value school choice, you will ensure that such choice in DC is always centered on the public, not on the interests and desires of private nonprofits as it clearly is now.