–On July 9, the DC council is holding a hearing on a bill to “require charter schools to offer a preference to any applicant who, during the current or immediately preceding school year, attended a school that was closed.”

The ostensible reason for this legislation is that school closures are hard on students—which is indisputable. But the presumptions behind this bill are pretty incredible. 

For one, the legislation completely leaves out DCPS, which is required by law to have seats available for any students in bounds for them 24/7/365. The presumption appears to be that those DCPS seats are inadequate in some manner and/or that the chance to be in the lottery for a charter seat (and, notably, not a DCPS seat of choice) is at least equal to (or perhaps better than) those DCPS seats of right.

For another, the legislation reserves this preference even if the school closure happened in the preceding school year, such that students could have had a chance at some point to participate in the lottery anyway. 

So instead of appearing to help students, this legislation appears to be about giving charters (and only charters) preferential access to more students. While this indeed may help some students, the jury is out on whether it will help all (or even any) students thusly affected. 

The irony is that charter advocates do not appear exactly eager for this. For instance, starting at minute 25 of the April 30 lottery board meeting (scroll down to the April 30 video link), the discussion devolved by minute 41 into how charters could be inconvenienced by this legislation because the charter schools themselves could not select this as a preference. (Ah, that autonomy bit.)

Then, at minute 52, Shannon Hodge (CEO of KIPP DC and lottery board member) mentioned the possibility that a charter could be penalized by this in the charter board’s ASPIRE rating system if the school ends up with lots of students who, say, are not working at grade level. (Ah, the bite of that autonomy bit.) 

To be sure, anyone employed in DCPS schools of right that have taken in students that charters pushed out after the October count day probably would laugh aloud at that concern. (Welcome to 30 years of charters in DC!) But in truth, it is no laughing matter that there was almost no mention in that lottery board discussion of DCPS itself enrolling those students—even as DCPS also has many seats of choice across DC. After all, if the idea of this legislation is to help kids whose schools close, then why wouldn’t you have this preference also for DCPS seats of choice? 

At least the lottery board’s parent advisory council sees this legislation for what it is. 

In the meantime, it remains to be seen what a council member with only 1 charter school in his entire ward thinks he is doing to help students by co-sponsoring a potential money grab for the charter sector disguised as a help for students. Maybe it is guilt—after all, the expansion of schools in Ward 3 well beyond what in boundary students could fill means that closures will happen in DCPS, too. Thus, it perhaps follows that this legislation talks about this preference applying to *any* school closures while allowing the preference to be enacted *only* for charters. (The old “heads we win, tails you lose” game.)

–Recently, the charter board breathlessly reported that four charter schools are on the list of the 10 best publicly funded high schools in DC per U.S. News & World Report. Let us look at the demographics (as reported via audited enrollment for SY25-26) of these schools and of the top four DCPS high schools also on the list:

BASIS: 699 students; 323 white (46%); 55 at risk (7.9%) (no differentiation between high school & middle school)
Latin (upper school): 361 students; 172 white (47.6%); 51 at risk (14%)
EL Haynes: 457 students; 3 white (0.66%); 210 at risk (46%)
DCI: 1670 students; 379 white (23%); 283 at risk (17%) (no differentiation between high school & middle school)
Walls: 602 students; 301 white (50%); 48 at risk (8%)
Banneker: 763 students; 86 white (11.2%); 156 at risk (20.4%)
McKinley Tech: 715 students; 34 white (4.8%); 254 at risk (35.5%)
Duke Ellington: 608 students; 79 white (13%); 183 at risk (30%)

As each of these schools is a school of choice, to the extent that the U.S. News & World Report list shows academic excellence (via high test scores), we need to ask if that is also an indication of excellent household income (which is correlated with test scores)–not to mention a shining signal of a distinct lack of randomness in lottery applications and admissions, given that 45% of students at DC’s publicly funded schools are at risk, while only 13% are white. 

(Perhaps now is a good time to remind everyone that after 30 years of charters here, stuff like this was supposed to have vanished by now. Oops.) 

–Lewis Ferebee is leaving DCPS as chancellor, with his last day June 19. He will become the leader of the privately funded educational materials assessment organization EdReports. An interim chancellor will be appointed until a new mayor can appoint a permanent replacement. 

Given the student population drop DC will soon experience, it may be that Chancellor Ferebee’s greatest achievement was not closing more schools (RIP Wash Met). OTOH, the chancellor’s willingness to leverage public buildings out of DCPS control was not good (RIP Wilkinson, Spingarn, Winston, Ferebee-Hope, all of which were in DCPS’s portfolio at the start of Ferebee’s tenure). To be fair, the mandate for all of that could have come down from the mayor—but Chancellor Ferebee has been at least a very willing partner in the privatization of DCPS buildings, much like his predecessor.

For his part, the chancellor did not seem to much like DCPS. The happy photos of him meeting with PAVE over the years, for instance, provide quite a contrast to his meeting with teachers and DCPS advocates in 2019; the regular defunding of schools EOTR; and, in 2024, forcing negotiations with DCPS teachers at 5 am. (Memories!)

–The DC auditor recently came out with a report on spending increases in DC education. Mirroring council chair Phil Mendelson’s obsession with DCPS spending (to the almost complete exclusion of any inquiry into charter spending), the report examines only the growth of spending in DCPS. Ironically, the report acknowledges the growth of charter spending–and then precedes to ignore it. (Eh, what’s >$1 billion annually between friends anyway?)

OTOH, we now can channel the late great Mary Levy in applauding the promise (per page 1 of this report) that the DC auditor will study charter school facilities funds! After funneling >$1 billion in just the last decade into this black hole of charter spending (no tracking, no strings, no word), maybe we will have some accountability (you know, like this or this or this).

–Budget machinations will continue until at least June 9, when the first vote on the FY27 budget is scheduled. For an outline of what’s been occurring, we have the excellent words of EmpowerEd’s Caroline Pryor, from her May 26 weekly email (see here to sign up for it):

“Luckily, many victories were funded in [council] committee: the restoration of Community and Connected Schools; the popular experiential learning fund for classrooms, Bridge the Gap; restored funding for extended DPR hours; partial funding for the Youth Mentorship in Community Act; restoration of New Heights program for pregnant and parenting students; an extension of the DHS truancy pilot; the Educator Wellness grant program; and many other items left out of the mayor’s budget proposal. . . . [But] the Council has not replaced funding for DCPS’s immigrant educators. It’s a deeply hurtful decision, but more importantly a dangerous one, to pull away support for educators in this climate (no, DCPS didn’t spend the earmarked funding this past year, but oversight levers could have pressed harder, especially with a change in chancellor).”

SHAPPE also has a good write-up of the budget (and other issues) in DCPS high schools.

–Finally, it is worth noting that when we talk about student absences (and, not coincidentally, criminalizing youth for–checks notes–appearing in public), we need to also note that the parents of more than 100,000 students across the country have been abducted by ICE. That number includes students in DC.

So, if for no other reason, make sure you vote so that our students can have a better world. Here’s a guide.