[Ed. Note: Today marks the first of two DC council hearings this week on handing $4.4 billion of DC taxpayer funds to billionaires for a football stadium at the RFK site on the eastern edge of Capitol Hill. As of this post, more than 500 public witnesses have signed up to testify today, including DC resident and DCPS parent … Continue reading What The Stadium Deal Really Means

[Ed. note: The following was submitted as written testimony to the DC council for the budget hearing on May 30 for various education agencies.] I am Valerie Jablow, a DC resident and education analyst, commenting on the mayor’s proposed budget with respect to charter facilities funds.  In the face of cuts to essential social services … Continue reading Saving Millions In Charter Facilities Funding

A few months later than normal (mainly because of fascist impoundment of DC local tax funds), the DC council has scheduled hearings for the newly released DC budget: Public charter school board, deputy mayor for education (DME), state board of education, education ombudsman, office of the student advocate: Friday May 30, 9:30 am; sign up and more information is … Continue reading Budget Oversight Hearings (And Other DC Democracy Concerns)

[Ed. Note: On May 5, the Capitol Hill Community Foundation held its 41st annual recognition of those who have served our community with distinction. One of the awardees this year was Stephanie Byrd, Payne Elementary’s principal since 2016. Byrd's brief speech that evening—reprinted below with her permission—not only underscores how vital her service has been to so many, … Continue reading “We Know Who We Are By The Way We Treat Our Children”

As life-threatening due process violations continue (abetted by a feckless high court), and DC is left to stew budget-less in the ugly place Congress has forced on us (which the mayor reportedly is going to address), Congress went on vacation. (Naturally.) So let us look to other local (and education-related!) events that may on some … Continue reading So Congress Is On A Nice Little Vacay–And Here We Are!

So as we DC residents wait for the U.S. House of Representatives to pass a bill to allow us to use our own local tax dollars and correct the $1 billion hole Congress callously (and undemocratically) forced into our (previously balanced) budget, the mayor and DC council wait to get a new fiscal year budget … Continue reading The Ides Of (Late) March

Last week, hundreds of students in DC’s publicly funded schools demanded democracy—specifically, for the U.S. Senate to vote down a continuing resolution (CR) that deprived DC of the right to use its own tax dollars and forced DC to revert to the prior year’s spending levels. The resulting $1 billion budget hole would mean layoffs of … Continue reading Before The Coming Fiscal Storm: Hearings & Legislation

Until the DC council held a hearing on Eagle Academy’s demise, on December 5, 2024, what was publicly available of the DC charter board's fiscal monitoring list was simply a quarterly list of school names. The schools were identified for inclusion on the fiscal monitoring lists by the charter board’s finance committee—without any specific explanation … Continue reading The Education Mysteries, Tale #5: Shell Games Of Fiscal Distress

--The DC council has now (kinda) posted its hearing schedule for performance oversight. Although some of the hearings below have not (yet) appeared on the hearing management system as of this blog post, I got all of this information from the folks at the committee of the whole and have linked wherever possible to the … Continue reading Slithering Into February: Recent Events

On December 5, the DC council held a hearing on what went down at Eagle Academy. It was an unusual moment, if for no other reason than the council has never exercised any extensive oversight of DC’s charter sector. As it is, at least some of what little the council has done on that score, … Continue reading Can’t See What You Don’t Want To See: The Eagle Academy Hearing