As DC celebrates 30 years of charters here, it seems fitting to point out that at no time in any of those decades have DC taxpayers enjoyed timely and complete public financial data around the schools that now educate nearly 50% of DC students.

For DC leaders, however, that lack of fiscal (and democratic) clarity has almost always been beside the point. What has instead held sway in the Wilson Building and beyond are what have been collectively termed “outcomes”: mainly (though not exclusively) test scores, graduation rates, and discipline data. If such “outcomes” in our charters are good, the thinking goes, it necessarily follows that public money has been well spent (however it is spent).

Unfortunately, we now have 30 years of “outcomes” to show that DC cannot be sanguine about the $1 billion we spend on our charter schools annually. (For a primer of recent data, see here and here to start—and see here for the idea of “quality” in education. You might also check out the anodyne press release on DC’s latest test scores.)

So as DC leaders pat themselves on the back for bending to Congress’s will about charters in the first place, let us outline what we know—and don’t know—about DC charter finances. 

That means first dispelling a few myths:

Myth 1: The charter board publishes lots of financial data!

Yes—but as the inestimable Mary Levy would say: Garbage in, garbage out.

Literally anyone can publish lots of data. But whether that data is timely; fulsome; AND connected such that reasonable conclusions may be drawn is entirely another thing. Unfortunately, much published DC charter data is not timely, fulsome, or connected. (See here for a primer.)

Myth 2: Publicly available charter financial data identifies fiscal problems!

In the wake of the Eagle Academy fiscal implosion in 2024, the charter board instituted regular documentation of individual LEA fiscal concerns on its website and a standing fiscal memo (and discussion) for each monthly meeting. Before that, regular public airing of fiscal problems in charters was not much publicized. Indeed, despite years of problems, DC officials began to exercise greater scrutiny of Eagle Academy only after Nevada (where Eagle had started a school) took action to claw back that state’s public funds from Eagle’s Las Vegas school.

But there is still no way for anyone outside the charter board to connect appearances on these lists of fiscal concern and fiscal monitoring over time–and thus no way for anyone outside the charter board to track patterns or recurring problems in specific LEAs. Ditto for schools not meeting specific financial floors: while every annually published FAR (financial analysis report) that the charter board produces has the number and percentage of charter schools not meeting fiscal floors, there is no direct public accounting of which schools these are. The charter board knows—but this information is not directly disclosed to the public. (Perhaps unsurprisingly, even the charter board’s rollout of the new and improved fiscal monitoring lists featured obfuscation.)

Myth 3: DC leaders use publicly available charter financial data to make informed decisions!

For at least a decade, if not longer, the DC council has spent a small fraction of the time it has invested overseeing and regulating DCPS finances doing the same for charter finances (this, despite the two sectors receiving almost equivalent amounts of public funds). In that period, the council has also often overruled any mayoral brake on giving charters yet more money.

Functionally, this means that for 50% of DC’s students, there is no independent backstop for fiscal problems in their respective LEAs unless and/or until the proverbial stuff hits the fan. Taken with the public dearth of timely, actionable financial data for our charters, the council’s cheery fiscal oversight for DC charters appears largely faith-based. None of this is to say that DCPS is flawless—but public reporting of finances and fiscal oversight around the education of the 50% of DC students in DCPS is by design more robust, well-defined, and public-centered than it is for the other 50% of DC students. 

Recently, the charter board has proposed a new financial oversight policy. But the proposed policy is short on specifics, with no clearly defined oversight processes, timelines, or metrics. (OTOH, the proposed policy reiterates the word “judgment” with respect to charter board actions no fewer than 13 times in a 9-page document.) A vote is slated for September 28.

Ironically, the scope of the problem can be illustrated with one $4 million expenditure.

In July 2024, Eagle was given $4 million by DC in preparation for SY24-25. But the next month, Eagle went out of business in DC without opening for classes. There was no public word about what happened to that $4 million until the December 2024 DC council hearing on Eagle. There, we learned that while the charter board apparently knew the fate of that $4 million, it didn’t previously disclose it to the public:

$1 million was frozen by an unnamed bank;
$1.3 million paid off a line of credit; and
$1 million was used to prepare the school for the school year that never happened.

That still left about $1 million publicly unaccounted for—and since that December 2024 hearing, there has been utterly no public word about the “frozen” bank funds nor the missing $1 million. However, in March 2026, there was a settlement in a class action lawsuit brought by former Eagle staff. I asked the plaintiff’s lawyer where the settlement funds were coming from—and got no response. Fascinatingly, the lawsuit provided an address for the defendant—Eagle Academy—that was the personal address of the school’s former CEO. 

So:

Was the March 2026 settlement money the remaining $1 million (still) publicly unaccounted for from July 2024?
Or was it the $1 million “frozen” by the bank sometime in 2024?
And if not the latter, then where is that “frozen” money?

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Eagle is not the only DC charter school associated with missing public money that no DC leader apparently cares to discuss fulsomely or publicly (yeah—see here). But characterizing such persistent fiscal black holes as accounting issues or just isolated problems is like calling a firebomb a gardening tool. For decades, DC taxpayers have been marks for private enterprise that has successfully captured its regulators. And by allowing this state of affairs (heck, pretending it doesn’t even exist!), DC leaders are not just saying that 50% of DC’s students do not count. They are also saying that democracy itself doesn’t count. 

What We Know—And Don’t Know—About DC Charter Finances (And Related Fiscal Items)

1. Charter facilities funds reporting is nonexistent, obscuring value for massive investment of taxpayer funds.

DC has spent >$1 billion in the last decade on charter facilities funding without anyone in DC government able to say what it was used for. This is by design: charters can use these funds for whatever they want and are not required to report their use.

Even annual audits do not specify what the funds are specifically used for. Instead, money for renovations is bundled under “occupancy expenses” with maintenance expenses for the entire LEA. There is some reporting of facilities expenditures in annual FARs—but it is generally bundled for the whole sector, not individual LEAs.

2. Overpayment of charter facilities funds is happening.

Current W3 council member Matt Frumin in 2020 testimony compared DCPS and charter coverage of maintenance and operations, calculating that DC charters were annually overpaid by millions for their facilities. The UPSFF (uniform per student funding formula) itself is supposed to cover maintenance costs for charters as it does for DCPS. At a March 2023 DC council hearing, Frumin noted that charter facilities allocations that year were $25 million less than reported occupancy expenses—but that maintenance expenses that year for charters were $50 million, which could lead to some concluding that the facilities allowance that year was actually $25 million too much.

The 12/23 adequacy study noted the following on p. 18 of this link (p. 16 of the study itself, boldface mine): “The study team found that FY23 total budgeted charter building costs ($149M) was less than the amount allocated through the UPSFF charter facilities supplement funding ($169M). Charter facilities funding appears to be sufficient in total, but the distribution mechanism can be improved. Variability in the cost of buildings is high, and just over half of charter LEAs reported spending under $3,513 (the FY23 UPSFF facility supplement) on buildings, with acknowledgement that year-to-year funding can vary dramatically as LEAs may save up over time towards facility upgrades.”

Some charters have stated they do not need all the facilities funding they get from DC. I discovered this only in statements that charters have made about it—nowhere else—and it doesn’t seem anyone in DC government has reacted to it:

–In 2019, Rocketship applied to have a new Ward 5 campus, its third. Its application noted that eventually, the total facilities costs for all three of its DC campuses would amount to $6.5 million per year, for about 2100 students. The application noted that comes out to about $3068 per student–less than what the school expected to receive in per student charter facilities funds (in FY20, that was $3335 per student).

–In 2019 Meridian applied for a new location and noted they would be realizing about $500K per year beyond what they needed to make payments for leases. Specifically, the school noted that “costs are projected to be significantly below Meridian’s allowance. Meridian anticipates our per pupil facility costs for SY20-21 to be around $2600 per student, compared to a facilities revenue of $3460 per student, and this includes rent, occupancy, and debt service.”

–At the April 4, 2024 budget oversight hearing (at the 12:32:50 mark of the video), the leader of DC Wildflower decried a proposed zeroing out of the annual increase in the facilities allowance to charters because of “increases built into our lease.” Weeks later, at the April 22, 2024 charter board meeting, the same Wildflower staff member noted (starting at the 2:18:35 mark of the video) that the school was electing to fund renovations to its new facility in W8 without financing—and with the potential help of funding from OSSE—in the wake of signing an 11-year lease.

–The Family Place bought a second property around the corner from its 16th St. NW site, which it also owns. The charter’s April 2024 application with the charter board to have that second location states that the purchase occurred in December 2023. Per the DC deed database, on March 20, 2024 the charter school got a grant from OSSE to help fund the purchase of that new property. The school apparently paid off its 16th Street location in 1993. The budget worksheet included with its application for the new location and facility showed little fiscal difficulty around the new location.

—Early in 2024, the Sojourner Truth charter school planned to purchase a large church building, and its April 2024 application to the charter board to locate there suggested no difficulty paying for it while simultaneously subletting part of the former Taft from Perry Street Prep.

There very well may be more—but no publicly posted fiscal documents for charters outline any of this overpayment.

3. Charter facility planning and financing are completely disconnected from the public that pays for it—and that costs DC taxpayers dearly.

Most DC charters regard their facility planning/purchasing as private determinations and discussions—so loan terms, leases, escalations, bids, and selling prices are not subject to public oversight or feedback or any fiscal analysis of its benefit to DC. The charter board approves locations and expansions for charters as a lagging action, with no role in locations except approving them after purchase or lease.

The newly posted application of EL Haynes, to open a new campus, is a good example. It explains that a lease for an 89,000 square foot building was signed in May 2026 by the school. The school’s application, however, is dated August 10, 2026 and was publicly posted on August 17, 2026, for a charter board vote in October 2026.

The application answers specific questions from the charter board, suggesting that it is not simply a filled-out form, but an actual response to charter board questions from an earlier (and publicly unspecified) interaction between EL Haynes staff and the charter board. In addition to this public opacity, there are blacked-out portions of the application–and while a lease is mentioned as included in the application, it is not anywhere posted on the website. The only indication of actual costs for the new facility is a table on p. 23 of the application, which denotes that the school has $10 million of its cash reserves set aside for renovations and that no additional money is needed because of $11 million in rent abatement. 

This in turn suggests not only that facilities funding is superfluous for this facility, but that there is almost no likelihood the charter board would vote against it, especially as there is nothing in the application that suggests any opposition from the community (which apparently was informed about it after the lease signing).

4. There is no fiscal clarity or clearly defined value around DC-owned buildings leased to charters, costing taxpayers and students. Some examples:

–The DC-owned former DCPS school Taft is huge: 201,000 square feet. It has been leased for many years to Perry Street Prep. But as I documented years ago, there is no clear accounting for costs and profits therein, such as How much is DC receiving in straight rent for Taft from Perry Street Prep? How are Perry Street Prep’s occupancy costs related to its sublets of Taft and renovations therein? Has DC made any valuation of Taft’s completed renovations, to determine the value of the $21 million lease credit extended by DC for those renovations? And how much money is DC realizing from the 50% proceeds it should have from Perry Street Prep’s sublets of Taft?

–Chavez closed its campus at the DC-owned former Bruce school and allowed the building to remain empty for SY19-20 because they hoped to “monetize” the asset that was the city’s own lease for it. Meridian then presented a winning bid for that lease, which included $2 million in cash, without taxpayers knowing how much of that winning bid was going toward paying off the remaining $22 million of Chavez’s DC revenue bonds versus profit for the school. Taxpayers also could not know whether a new lease with new terms for that city-owned asset would provide better return on investment for taxpayers, as Meridian hinted it would merely assume the same lease terms Chavez had. Chavez’s revenue bonds were used to, among other things, renovate the former Bruce school. The closure of Chavez there resulted in financial losses, such that Chavez eventually defaulted on its DC revenue bonds. But Meridian then got new DC revenue bonds to renovate the same building.

–A few years ago, I discovered that DGS has no records for any recent modernizations in DC-owned buildings it leases to charters and for which it grants rent credits (see my testimony about it). That is a violation of the law—and ensures that DC taxpayers are not getting full value for their investment in facilities owned by DC and leased to charters. I calculated that DC taxpayers lose at least $10 million annually because of it.

5. Some DC charters are landlords of property not used for their own educational purposes, obscuring income and charter status.

DC Prep is leasing its otherwise unused Anacostia building to DCPS for a 10-year period. In addition, DC Prep owns an acre of undeveloped property in W8 that it bought in 2019 and promised to sell years ago; the charter has paid >$100K in property taxes in just 4 years for this property. KIPP DC owns a 12 acre tract in W7 that is undeveloped but where it had intended to build a high school (against the wishes of neighbors).

There very well may be more—but no publicly posted fiscal documents for charters outline any of this.

6. Charter FCAs (facility condition assessments) are neither independent nor reliable.

DC charters self-assess their own facility conditions, which is reported in the master facilities plan. Ironically, many DC charters are in DC-owned former DCPS schools—so as owner and landlord, DC ought to know the condition of its own buildings.

Functionally, this means that we do not have reliable, independent information about the buildings in which 50% of DC students are educated. Yet charter lobbyists have pushed for more facilities funding, claiming that it is needed. 

7. Unrestricted cash in DC charters is growing every year and is untracked by anyone in DC government, making understanding value impossible and permitting potential abuse.

Totals per LEA and across the sector are outlined in the annual FARs. But it is unclear how fast each LEA’s is growing or shrinking over time and what each has been, and is going to be, used for. These numbers are also publicly untethered to what each charter LEA is doing at any given year/moment.

DC Prep provides a good example: 

A few years ago, DC Prep hired an investment manager to invest $30 million. That was public money, but this investment was outlined only in a DC Prep board meeting in May 2022. 

At that same May 2022 board meeting, DC Prep’s board declined to give permanent raises to staff—even though teachers there were at that time paid on average less than $70,000 per year; the school struggled at that time with staff retention (that topic alone took up almost half of the May 2022 board meeting discussion); and the school’s top administrators were at that time paid more than the mayor. The school also at that time had a fairly high debt load, as noted in the FY21 FAR.

It is impossible to know whether hiring an investment manager at DC Prep is good for DC or for students–and impossible to know whether other charter schools are similarly investing public money (and paying private money managers to do so).

8. Grants and donations in DC charters are poorly tracked and not properly accounted for, obscuring spending per class, grade, and school.

Charter 990s have places to outline grants and donations—but often do not specify what or who those donors are nor whether this is recurring money and what it is to be used for. This makes understanding what expenditures are being made in each class, grade, and school at any given moment difficult. For instance, KIPP DC’s most recent 990 shows about $31 million in grants that year, amounting to >$4K/student (7400 students total). That is a significant sum—but what does it mean? Where does it go?

It used to be that the charter board had a line item for “philanthropic revenue” in annual FARs. But that stopped after 2017—and now all grants and donations are lumped together for each charter LEA in charter board reporting, which effectively hides from the public not only huge philanthropic contributions but also most revenue outside DC taxpayer funds. (AFAIK the charter board itself *does* separate out philanthropic revenues for each charter LEA—but doesn’t publicly report it.)

9. Charter teacher pay increases as a result of the WTU bonuses at DCPS are inherently inequitable because we do not know if all the money is going to charter teachers.

While charter salary scales are published on each charter website, we do not know what individual teachers get because salaries themselves are not disclosed and we have no idea how many teachers are at each part of the salary scale. Charters are supposed to attest to OSSE about their use of this money, but OSSE has never (AFAIK) published what it promised with respect to what it terms “alternative” uses of this money.

Moreover, because we do not know how many teachers are at each part of the pay scale, if a charter loses in one year 25% of its highest paid teachers (which is possible, given annual turnover rates) and they are replaced in the next year with teachers paid less (also very possible), that extra money is not going to teachers.

10. Oversight, connection, and publication of charter fiscal records is extremely poor, enabling corruption.

Until Eagle Academy flamed out, the charter board did not have any clearly and regularly published public-facing documentation of fiscal concerns outside of annual FARs. While the charter board now has regular documentation of individual LEA fiscal concerns on its website and a standing fiscal memo discussed at each monthly meeting, it is unclear how often or deeply anyone in DC government looks into, and actually connects, charters’ published audits, 990s, and other fiscal documentation.

For instance, no one anywhere cited Eagle for self-dealing with interest-bearing loans from staff members to the LEA, despite it being a clear violation of law. This information was in several years of Eagle’s audits, posted on the charter board website (see here and here). Importantly, these loans were not listed in their entirety on Eagle Academy’s 2018, 2017, or 2016 990s. It begs the question of whether anyone in DC government actually reads these annual audits in their entirety—and, if so, what is being ignored in the process.

11. At risk funds are not tracked in DC charters, allowing for potential loss of services.

At risk funds are supposed to have specific uses, and both DCPS and charters report their uses to OSSE. But AFAIK that agency has not reported out what charter LEAs are doing with those funds—and AFAIK no one in DC government is demanding that information.