While individual education budget hearings are now over and Wilson Building money-wrangling continues, inequities in DC’s education budget and systems loom very large—albeit seemingly without a lot of sense. 

For one, most of the dozens of hours of those budget hearings had very few council members in attendance. For his part, council chair Phil Mendelson was there most of the time. While that was helpful, and even possibly heroic, it was also slightly terrifying, inasmuch as it seems just one elected official in DC is exercising oversight of more than $2 billion in DC taxpayer funds.

For another, while the proposed budget is tighter than last year’s, with significant cuts to connected and community schools and school-based behavioral health services, it represents more spending per student than will be possible in subsequent years. Making all of that worse, there appeared to be no recognition by those charged with oversight of the true inequities in our education landscape. 

Take high-impact tutoring (HIT). This idea was the brainchild of a variety of actors who were ostensibly concerned with learning loss during the pandemic. Setting aside the reality that DC students faced decades of tremendous barriers to learning before the pandemic, the idea was that if you provide students with individualized tutoring, you can ensure that they learn better, and faster. 

Fair enough. But as realized in DC, this idea has meant, among other things, 

–A variety of private actors and organizations literally profiting from funds dedicated to HIT;
—Not a lot of data showing HIT has made a large difference overall; 
–Little to no money for classroom aides and other forms of direct, proven educational assistance in schools; and
–No feedback on HIT from the people who are actually teaching our kids full time (teachers).

Regardless, HIT was touted by PAVE activists at, among other budget hearings, the May 7 budget oversight hearing for the office of the state superintendent of education (OSSE). But what was not mentioned at that hearing about HIT was far more interesting.

For instance, at the 10:02:50 mark of the hearing video, Michelle Yan of CitySchools Collaborative testified about the need for HIT in DC’s publicly funded schools. But not only did Yan not identify herself as a charter board member (ie someone with power over DC’s publicly funded schools), but she also did not mention that the U.S. Department of Education recently granted her organization—instead of OSSE–money to pursue HIT. 

In fact, in hearing after hearing, equity was most often portrayed by way of charter advocate talking points, including funding all expenses through the uniform per student funding formula (UPSFF) and ensuring that charters get what DCPS gets for early stages, bonuses, and facilities fixed costs (calculated at $96 million for this year alone, working out to $2,000 more per charter student than already allocated).

To be sure, all of that seems equitable (pay for each student equally!)—well, until you really look at it.

For instance, starting at the 12 hour, 20 minute mark of the complete video** of the May 7 OSSE budget hearing, the council chair asked the head of OSSE for the reason to use UPSFF funding for the advanced technical centers (ATCs), which had been funded with grant money. Dr. Antoinette Mitchell responded with a one-word reason: stability. OK–but AFAIK no one has done any analysis to show that funding ATCs only through the UPSFF (as opposed to a dedicated, constant funding stream) would work well or even at all–and what its effect would be on LEA funding. [**There are multiple videos of the May 7 OSSE budget hearing, because the one on the council website and the one on the chairman’s own website were initially incomplete and then supplemented with additional videos. This one, from the DC office of cable television, has public as well as government witnesses. My time stamps are linked to the video link provided nearest them.]

As it turns out, there are many reasons that funding everything through the UPSFF—and giving charters almost $100 million more than already granted—is misguided. All of those reasons center on the fact that charters and DCPS have different roles, responsibilities, and outside funding, none of which such a simplistic (and yet hefty) ask ever mentions, much less tracks. (See, for example, here and here and here.)

But none of that seemed to matter. In fact, after several charter teachers (from DCI) and parents (from DCI and Yu Ying) testified multiple times at multiple hearings about problems (including allegations of poor leadership and abuse), Mendelson could only reply that they needed to do what they had already done (contact their school boards, leadership, charter board, multiple DC agencies). 

(Yes, really: See the video of the deputy mayor for education hearing on April 23 at 2:27:15; 3:39:22; and 3:56:14; also see the video of the OSSE hearing on May 7 at 4:01:56; 6:31:07; 9:06:55; 9:52:10; 10:05:55; and 10:08:50.)

To his credit, Mendelson took 10 minutes during the charter board government witness hearing on April 24 to question the charter board executive director, Michelle Walker-Davis, about the allegations. (See the whole discussion, starting at minute 39 and 30 seconds of the video.)

Now, 10 minutes may not seem like a lot–but given that the entire government witness hearing for the charter sector lasted 59 minutes (or what works out to >$1 billion/hour), that 10 minutes was almost 17% of the whole hearing.

Walker-Davis said the charter board was aware of and monitoring what was mentioned about DCI (staff departures, vote of no confidence in director, etc.) and engaged with the school’s board, while wondering about substantiation of the allegations. She noted that the responsibility for all of what occurred sat with the board of that school. 

Mendelson then said there were three possibilities about the public witness testimony:

What the council was told was not correct;
What the council was told was correct; or
The truth was somewhere in between.

Mendelson then asked that if the allegations were correct, shouldn’t the charter board be more involved?

Setting aside the fact that by the time teachers and parents testify in public about potentially horrific experiences is probably waaaay past the time to wonder whether any allegations are true, Walker-Davis offered that the DCI problems could show up in . . . academic or financial outcomes. (Yeah.) The implication appeared to be that problems could fester until such a time when the kids take tests or drop out or otherwise show the, erm, “outcomes” on standardized tests, enrollment, and/or the charter board’s own annual reviews. 

Then, when asked about testimony about possible physical abuse at Yu Ying, the charter board’s executive director said that the charter board did all they were supposed to do through their community complaint process—which does not, apparently, include reporting allegations directly to CFSA. Instead, the executive director said they “worked with” CFSA and that “we are not an investigative body” and (as far as I could tell) did not respond when asked whether the charter board reported the allegations directly to CFSA. But Walker-Davis promised to get back to the council on that—and then noted it was possible the charter board told the parents to report it themselves to CFSA. 

(Ironically or not, the charter board’s community complaint process was outlined at the March 9 charter board meeting (see the video, starting at the 2:13:30 mark). Note the lack of clarity in the slide presentation around health and safety complaints (does a health and safety complaint mean a gun; a lack of appropriate hand washing; or both?); lack of specificity in disaggregation of complaints such that a complaint could be categorized as a non-complaint; and misleading pie charts (the complaint chart for SY24-25 has numbers on it that add up to 99, but the narration in the video (at 2:21:07) says there were 115 complaints, while the SY25-26 pie chart has the number 55 in the middle, which the presenter said was the total of complaints at that time, but much less than the 83 the pie chart itself shows). It is unclear whether any of that will be clarified.) 

The take home, for me anyway, is that the charter board has no duty to parents and teachers around specific problems at specific LEAs beyond simply noting those problems (somewhere, somehow), all the while the presumption (at least in the minds of the council chair and charter board executive director) appears to be that people articulating such allegations may be wrong; late; mistaken; or in some way not credible (at least until proven so by LEA boards and/or DC agencies). 

For a sector that literally had dozens of people testify across dozens of hours at multiple hearings about how unfair their funding is, this 10-minute interlude rather eviscerated those arguments. (Indeed, after 30 years, it seems a bit much to keep digging the same hole.)

Finally, at the May 1 DCPS government witness hearing, Mendelson could not help but credit the Schools First legislation for the relative calm around DCPS funding of individual schools. (Well, notwithstanding loss of kindergarten aides and out-of-school-time programming money—details!)

Naturally, the closed DCPS school Winston was unmentioned even when at large CM Christina Henderson brought up dual language programming (and the contraction of money for it) at minute 49 of the May 1 hearing video. Recall that the just-released study for dual language programming in wards 7 and 8 determined that Winston’s most “feasible” use was as a charter, despite recommendation 17 of the March 2024 boundary report and a decade of Ward 7 residents asking for the school to be re-opened as a DCPS school. (Apparently, the erasure of Winston from DCPS really stuck.)

A few minutes later, at the 1 hour 5 minute mark of the May 1 hearing, Henderson asked about the vacated early childhood spaces in DCPS schools. The chancellor responded by noting that they are looking for “partners”—without a word about who or what those partners might be.

(If any of this gives you pause, maybe before voting next month you might check out the graphics made by DCPS parent Betsy Wolf on where at large candidates and mayoral candidates stand on education issues—and read the responses to education questionnaires from C4DC (see here for responses from candidates for mayor; here for responses from council candidates; and here for responses from candidates for U.S. delegate).)