With a new DCPS chancellor mulling changing the school system’s budget model and the DC public charter school board (PCSB) executive director leaving, the two school agencies are asking for more public feedback. DCPS Two upcoming public meetings are being billed as community budget forums. They were announced at DCPS’s mandated public budget hearing on … Continue reading Feedback Time: DCPS And Charter Board

In a charter board meeting on October 28 filled with incredible events, perhaps the most incredible was when the charter board did not even let a kidnapping from the Rocketship school where they were meeting slow down their approval for a new Rocketship campus in Ward 5. In the first (and at the time only) … Continue reading Neither Snow Nor Rain Nor Kidnapping (Stays DC Charter Real Estate Ventures)

For hours on October 21, supporters of Maret--the private school with whom DC’s department of parks and recreation (DPR) recently signed a 9-year extension of a previous 10-year, exclusive use agreement for prime hour use of the publicly owned field Jelleff--testified to the DC council about the brutal way in which their school had been … Continue reading Fields Of (Broken) Dreams: Jelleff & Ellington

Next Tuesday October 29, our city will hold two events important for community engagement in our schools: --From 6-9 pm, at Maury Elementary (1250 Constitution NE), DCPS will hold its annual, mandated, budget hearing. Sign up by TOMORROW October 25 at 3 pm to testify. See here for more information and see here to sign up. … Continue reading October 29: Engaging On Schools

This Wednesday evening, October 23, at 5:30 pm, the DC state board of education (SBOE), DC’s only elected body with a direct (if relatively powerless) voice on our schools, will take public testimony on teacher retention in DC’s publicly funded schools. (See more information here.) While public voice is sorely needed in every conversation about … Continue reading Let’s Be Clear: DC Teacher Retention Isn’t Just A Problem. It’s A Crisis.

Perhaps the oddest moment of the 5+ hour city council hearing on October 3, dedicated to sussing out why we have actionable lead levels on DC public playgrounds and recreational spaces with synthetic surfaces, was when the director of the agency responsible for those public places and all DCPS facilities (DGS) noted that lead is … Continue reading Toxic Brew: DGS & Child Safety

[Ed. Note: This blog post is an update of one written by Grace Hu in July 2018 on technology challenges in DCPS. A Ward 6 parent who serves on the Amidon-Bowen Local School Advisory Team, Hu is also the founder of Digital Equity in DC Education, a volunteer coalition of DCPS parents dedicated to closing … Continue reading Moving The Needle Together On DCPS’s Computer Challenges

[Ed. Note: The following call to action is from Cathy Reilly, one of the organizers of C4DC, a coalition of ward-based education councils and education organizations dedicated to the support of DCPS. The call is to ensure that in the school budgeting transparency bill (0239) being marked-up by our city council right now and voted … Continue reading The Time To Call The Council For Transparency In Our Schools Is NOW

Until the mayor announced in May that closed DCPS Ward 8 school Ferebee-Hope would be put up for charter offer (RFO), there had been no public notice that anything new was happening with the school, which had been closed since 2013. In fact, official silence to the public regarding this facility--which contains (on more than … Continue reading Game Of Insiders: Ferebee-Hope

[Ed. Note: This, the second of two blog posts on DCPS budgeting, compares DCPS's comprehensive staffing model and school-based budgeting--with needed cautions relative to the shock doctrine school budgeting currently being imposed on DCPS (as outlined in the first blog post of this series). This blog post was created in July 2019 by two DCPS parents, … Continue reading Toward Better DCPS Budgets