You may have missed last week’s May 18 deadline to submit public testimony to the DC council around applications from Friendship, DC Prep, and Harmony for DC revenue bonds. 

But that may have been because the record was open for a mere 2 business days after the May 14 hearing on the revenue bonds–and a mere 2 weeks after the hearing was announced. 

Why the rush? In truth, it is not unusual. For years, the council and mayor have put forth so-called “emergency” revenue bonds legislation for many charter schools, depending on their immediate financial needs. Though these three current applications for revenue bonds are not being considered on an emergency basis, DC revenue bonds have provided a timely and thrifty method for DC charters and other nonprofits to get cash for large expenses, as the bonds allow those entities to access financing at lower interest rates than they might otherwise get. 

But what is interesting here is how these three examples provide a view of charter real estate ventures in real time—along with many unanswered questions.

–According to its March 2026 revenue bonds application, Friendship wanted $90 million in DC revenue bonds for capital refinancing, capital improvements, and acquisition of a property at 4069-4089 Minnesota Ave NE (square and lot 5080 0031). That property, with apartment buildings, is directly next to Friendship’s Collegiate Academy high school. It was bought for $10 million on December 26, 2025 by an investment firm with a North Carolina address. (Presumably, the property’s current assessment of $1.6 million reflects the decrepit state of the buildings on it.)

But at the May 14 hearing for the revenue bonds legislation, Friendship personnel said that the bonds would be used only for refinancing ($65 million) and repair ($25 million), not acquisition. Friendship had apparently submitted a bid for the property when it applied for the revenue bonds (the legislation vaguely called the property the “Minnesota Avenue Project”). But at some unspecified time between its application and the May 14 hearing, Friendship’s bid for the property was rejected.

Not mentioned was what Friendship intended to do with a property that is clearly not a school. Nor was it mentioned that Red Oak Capital provided loans for this and other properties in DC and is now being sued by the DC attorney general for unfair practices.

(And perhaps unsurprisingly, we still have no public word on Friendship’s plan for another high school.)

–That same May 14 hearing also featured the April 2026 revenue bonds application from DC Prep for $25 million in DC revenue bonds. DC Prep is planning to use the bonds for the building at 711 Edgewood Street NE (square and lot 3636 0005), next door to its existing Edgewood Street school buildings at 701 and 707 Edgewood. (DC Prep has not yet applied with the charter board to be located at 711 Edgewood.)

The DC property tax database shows that DC Prep bought the property on September 9, 2025 for $13.9 million (current assessed value is $9.4 million). The prior owner (711 Edgewood Street LLC, with an address of 8120 Woodmont Ave., Suite 160 in Bethesda) was apparently a developer. At the hearing, DC Prep personnel said they were hoping to close on June 17. 

While the tax database shows that more than $94,000 of property taxes there are unpaid at this moment, it is an open question whether those unpaid taxes will ever be paid. Like Friendship, DC Prep is an experienced property owner in DC, having purchased the following properties in addition to 711 Edgewood NE:

701 Edgewood NE (3636 0807)
707 Edgewood NE (3636 0006)
1409 V St. SE (5780 0975)
1619 Frankford St. SE (5830 0061)

Fascinatingly, DC Prep doesn’t operate a school at the latter two properties. 

Back in 2019, DC Prep bought 1619 Frankford with the intention of locating its Anacostia middle school there. But because so many in the community pushed back against any school there, DC Prep’s CEO, Laura Maestas, noted at the November 2019 charter board meeting (at the 2 hour, 52 minute, 40 second mark of the charter board meeting video) that “if we can secure an alternative site for our permanent location [of the Anacostia middle school], we will resell the Frankford Street site.”

Not long after, DC Prep was awarded the former DCPS school Wilkinson in a deal that was clearly engineered for the charter. DC Prep then proceeded to locate its Anacostia middle school at Wilkinson. Yet now, years later, DC Prep still owns the (apparently unused) Frankford St. property and does indeed pay property tax on it (amounting to more than $100K since owning 2019: see here and here.)

By contrast, after DC Prep moved its Anacostia elementary out of its 1409 V St. SE building to relocate to Wilkinson, the charter rented the V St. building to DCPS as a swing space for Ketcham. As DC Prep will likely be acting only as a landlord at that location until SY28-29 (per DCPS plans), it follows DC Prep should be paying property tax there—but is apparently not. 

–Also discussed at the May 14 hearing was the April 2026 revenue bonds application of Harmony for $17 million in DC revenue bonds to purchase and renovate the building at 2917 8th Street NE (square and lot 3839 0813). Harmony applied in September 2025 with the charter board to relocate to this facility (the former home of Hope charter school), and the board approved it on December 8, 2025.

In between, the public has been treated to obfuscation.

For instance, the charter board’s November 17, 2025 report for this move stated that the school was going to finance it with “bond proceeds.” But neither Harmony’s application to the charter board to be at that site (nor the charter board’s posting of that application in September 2025 for public comment) made any mention of bond proceeds. There was also nothing posted with that September 2025 application around financing details. Instead, the application referenced a spreadsheet attachment (in response to query #14) and had a link to a 5-year operating budget template. However, that link connected only to an empty template and there was no attachment made available. The only spreadsheet I could find with actual financial information about Harmony’s move was posted in the materials for the 11/17/25 charter board meeting, where this relocation was first publicly discussed. But those materials were made available only a day or two before that meeting—and I could not find on the spreadsheet included there (see here) any information about purchase price, interest, or financing. 

However, the November 17, 2025 charter board meeting itself provided some insight. Starting at minute 24 of the meeting video, Harmony’s representatives explained (in response to a query about whether Harmony had gone through the revenue bond process with DC) that mentioning those bonds in the application was a “mistake” and that Harmony would be obtaining financing through CIVICS FIF.

All of this begged the obvious question: Where was Harmony’s application (or other materials) in which revenue bonds were mentioned? Clearly, there had been something that charter board staff and board members responded to regarding Harmony using revenue bonds—especially as Harmony actually did apply for revenue bonds (eventually)! 

After sending the charter board further questions (and getting no answers), I requested documents by FOIA for correspondence by charter board staff with Harmony personnel; Harmony’s complete application mentioning bond financing; and information about the purchase price, interest, and financing. 

Here’s what I got by FOIA a few months ago. If all this seems rather, uh, unilluminating, that seems to be the point. While there is nothing about revenue bonds in Harmony’s application, there is also no clarity about who is actually financing this venture (both CIVICS FIF and Masterson? One? Neither?). 

In the end, nothing—not the FOIA dump nor the revenue bonds legislation nor Harmony’s September 2025 application to the charter board to be at that site–explains who is providing the financing that permitted Harmony to purchase the property on March 11, 2026 for $15 million (as the DC tax database notes). The DC deed database shows that Harmony recently obtained financing from EagleBank and the office of the state superintendent of education (OSSE). Will that bank be the entity financing the revenue bonds now? Who knows?

Complicating matters for the public is Harmony’s board meeting record. For instance, in February 2025 I reported to the Office of Open Government (OOG) a number of charter schools for which I could find spotty (or sometimes no) board information. Harmony was one of them. OOG then proceeded to work with a number of schools to ensure better compliance with DC’s Open Meetings Act—and indeed, by September 2025 when Harmony submitted its application to relocate to this facility, its board meeting information seemed much more robust. 

That said, Harmony’s board had no reported discussions of this new school building until its June 2025 meeting, and all such discussions (at its June, July, August, and September board meetings) were held in closed session, such that only board members were present and nothing was reported OF those discussions. Indeed, the minutes of the September 9, 2025 Harmony board meeting, included in its application, stated only that board members approved the purchase of the Hope building.

Naturally, none of this made the May 14 hearing, at which Harmony’s portion lasted less than 5 minutes. 

Finally, a coda on DC revenue bonds and DC charter schools:

Given that our recent budget hearings featured much angst from the charter sector around money, it is worth examining that oft-cited truism that DC revenue bonds are not an obligation of DC, but rather of the entities that are granted them. There are two unspoken, but important, reasons that DC charter schools are not like other organizations granted DC revenue bonds: 

1. DC’s charter schools are financed mainly by DC taxpayers. If a charter defaults on revenue bonds or goes out of business, the people picking up that tab are, inevitably, DC taxpayers.  

2. DC charter schools negotiate their own terms for financing or leases, and those terms have nothing to do with DC’s financial situation (despite DC taxpayers paying DC charters the majority of their revenue). So while charters decry any lack of increase in the annual charter facility allotment (as the mayor has proposed again this year), DC taxpayers had no say in charters’ (privately) negotiated leases and/or financing, including any escalations based in part (or wholly) on ever-increasing facility allotments from DC. 

Now that DC is facing severe budget constraints—and a decreasing student population—those terms negotiated in private but paid for with public money are likely to be problematic in the near future. For its part, the charter board appears vague about all of this, having recently renewed the charters for several LEAs that have financial pressures from decreasing enrollment (this year, Rocketship, Shining Stars, SEED, Thurgood Marshall, WLA—and, arguably, Children’s Guild and Bethune last year). 

So it is that even the relatively easy money of DC revenue bonds cannot prevent a bumpy fiscal ride in the future for DC charter schools. Good luck with that.