So as we peruse DC’s newly released audited enrollments (see also here; all the data was held for two months until released last week) AND as we wait (again!) for the mayor to bring forth a new budget, let us take a moment to see where we are regarding education governance ahead of the June 16 DC primary election. 

1. On March 5, a coalition of DC education advocacy groups held a candidate forum on education issues featuring candidates for the council chair, mayor, and U.S. delegate. The video is here. (Back in January, the WTU also held a forum focused on education, albeit only for mayoral candidates; see here.)

2. Relatedly, C4DC recently got responses from a variety of 2026 candidates to its education questionnaires. See here for responses from candidates for mayor; here for responses from council candidates; and here for responses from candidates for U.S. delegate. (Fun fact: In the wake of at least 5 charter schools recently being renewed that also had declining enrollments (Rocketship, Shining Stars, SEED, Thurgood Marshall, WLA), the majority of council candidates responding affirmed that they were good with restrictions around new or expanding schools. Smart move! Maybe they can educate the other candidates on good stewardship of public resources.)

3. On March 17, W6PSPO (the W6 ed council) sponsored an informative presentation on federal threats to public education and what it all means for DC’s publicly funded schools. The video is here; see the presentations by EdTrust; EmpowerEd; and former Department of Education analyst and DCPS parent Betsy Wolf at the links here. (Also, be sure to check out how the feds want to “help” with a DCPS modernization.) As depressing as this all is, remember that to defeat this stuff, you gotta know it–and the folks presenting it are among the best to learn it from.

Finally, a coda:

Despite running for mayor now, former at large council member Kenyan McDuffie was a no show in the candidate forums and questionnaire above. Not clear why a major DC mayoral candidate would turn away from education—but here are a few of McDuffie’s turns in DC education:

—Disposition of public property connected to the closed elementary Malcolm X was the subject of an October 2022 hearing co-chaired by Robert White and Kenyan McDuffie. The record of that hearing featured a staggering 57 (by my count) identical letters of support for the property’s development, signed by at least that many different people whose affiliations and residence were not noted. As chair of the committee on business and economic development, McDuffie likely knew quite a bit about the property’s potential for business–which appeared opposed to its potential for schoolchildren nearby, whose commutes were considerably lengthened as a result of Malcolm X’s closure. (At about the same time of that hearing, McDuffie became a direct beneficiary of a dark money group as he sought the at large seat he recently left.)

–During his council tenure, McDuffie was a parent at the private Georgetown Day School—and as part of its facilities committee, McDuffie helped broker the 2021 sale of that school’s old building (at 4530 MacArthur Blvd.) to DC, for a new Ward 3 DCPS high school. It was a masterful move for the private school: DC bought the building for $45 million (twice its assessed value at the time) after it had sat on the market for 3 years. (A short time later, McDuffie attempted to run for DC attorney general, but was disqualified because he was deemed not in active practice as a lawyer.)

–Around the same time that DC spent millions more than it probably should have on that building, the council approved a deal to spirit away the closed DCPS school Wilkinson to DC Prep. As chair of one of the council committees handling this action, McDuffie knew it went outside the law governing such transfers of closed DCPS facilities. As it was, the deal handed a publicly owned facility with more than 130,000 square feet to a private nonprofit’s middle school that had (at that moment) less than 100 students. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this happened even after a report by the council’s office of racial equity that noted the offer “reinforces the structures of racially segregated schools . . . [and] the past and present practice of excluding Black residents from policymaking. By waiving the requirements of existing law, the majority Black residents of Ward 8 were refused opportunities for substantive community engagement, declined a transparent process, and denied the right to hold the government accountable.” (Oops.)