Committee on Whole and Education

Budget Oversight Hearing of the District of Columbia Public Schools

 Friday, March 29, 2019

As an education finance lawyer, a budget and policy analyst, and a DCPS parent, I have studied DCPS data and policies for almost 40 years, including the period when both our daughters were going through DCPS, from pre-kindergarten through grade 12.

For the last month, I have been studying local school budgets, first as initial budget allocations released by DCPS, then for the last week the Mayor’s budget versions.  For your information, these are two different sets of numbers that cannot be matched, because of differing assumptions on teacher costs and because the definitions are largely different.  A plea:  Please put a stop to this!  Why is DCPS keeping two different sets of books?

The initial allocations can only be described as inadequate, inequitable, un-transparent, and arbitrary.  Schools are affected very differently from each other, but cuts are disproportionately concentrated East of the River, and among at-risk, minority students, those most vulnerable to the ill effects of the de-stabilization caused by big budget cuts.

• Local schools collectively have a total increase on paper of $56.2 M, but that is completely absorbed by inflationary increases in costs of staff ($26.9 M), transfer of security charges from central ($20.7 M), enrollment increase (excluding new schools, $6.0 M), and new school openings ($14.2 M), a total of $67.8 M. The deficit of $11.6 M is covered by program cuts in the schools.
• Adjusting the budgets to eliminate the reduction in buying power caused by the inflation in staff costs and the security cost transfer results in each school’s “real dollars” for next year. Some still have enough to maintain current services, but some not enough for enrollment increase, and half must cut current services including schools with no loss or even increases in enrollment.
• Altogether half the schools lost funding in real dollars. Seven schools lost over $1 M, and 6 more between $500,000 and $1 million.  Nine of these are East of the River, almost all are 99-100% minority and heavily at-risk,
• The stabilization law limits dollar loss to 5% of each school’s budget this year, but doesn’t recognize inflation from staff cost increases and the new security charge. Even so, some schools have losses over 5% but no stabilization funds. Why?
• Most elementary schools whose extended year programs were eliminated lost hundreds of thousands of dollars, though program was funded by at-risk funds which they kept. Why are they losing money?  Two lost almost $1 million!  DCPS did not provide stabilization funds for any of them.
• When the special needs funding at each school is factored out, leaving “general education,” there is a general correlation in per pupil allocation by size, but still big differences not related to size or special needs. For example, there are pairs of schools in Wards 7 and 8, with the same enrollment, but a difference in allocations of $2,000 per pupil. Why?
• DCPS has not released information on the use of at-risk funds. Although amounts are now tracked in the Mayor’s budget, they are labeled only as “At-Risk.”  Analysis of the initial allocations shows that half the funding is used for resources that are targeted to at-risk students, but the other half is in resources to which all students in all schools are entitled, meaning that they apparently supplant regular funds.

The Mayor’s budget increase in local funds is about $48 M, and that budget shows an increase in local school budgets of $50.4 M, as opposed to the $56.2 M in the DCPS version.  but

As to central accounts, as opposed to local school budgets, the Mayor’s budget of a week ago provides the first data we have seen.  Central accounts do include services provided directly to students, mostly in schools, including utilities, food service, special education therapists and dedicated aides, athletics, plus a host of functions that are included in teacher cost in the DCPS versions of school budgets but are clawed back into central accounts in the Mayor’s budget.  These include background checks, IMPACT bonuses, extra year options, substitutes, and more.

The challenge in determining central office spending is to separate these costs out.  They are included in the parts of the budget labeled “Schoolwide” and “School Support,” but these also include security operations other than school security guards, parts of downtown business services like procurement, warehouse and budget operations, school planning, and all the operations that monitor teachers and principals.  Definitions are not available.  In any event, from analyzing employee rosters, it is clear that central offices are bloated, with far more employees than were in DCPS when enrollment was much larger.  DCPS has announced that it is cutting at least 70 central office positions, but the Mayor’s FY 2020 budget shows an increase of about 315  positions outside of local school budgets.  If I can eke out an answer, I will share it.

Committee on Whole and Education

Budget Oversight Hearing of the District of Columbia Public Schools

 Friday, March 29, 2019

Hello, I‘m Becky Reina, Chair of the Ward 1 Education Council. Our Education Council is a volunteer organization that advocates for a stronger public education system that supports all our students and families, while assuring we safeguard our by-right neighborhood schools and work for greater resources, equity, transparency, fairness, and safety across both public educational sectors.

I am also the mother of 2 Cleveland Elementary School students, where I have in the past served on the PTA and LSAT. Thank you for this opportunity to provide feedback on the DC Public Schools budget.

The proposed DCPS budget for FY20 is inadequate and inequitable. Some schools are winners and some are losers. Some of the schools losing money year over year face cuts so steep that they could literally destabilize the schools; those are largely the schools that serve the highest percentages of At Risk students. Even many of the schools that are not losing money cannot adequately meet the needs of their students who have the most needs. At Risk funding continues to supplant, not supplement funding for core functions.  Having spoken to many principals throughout the city, many spent a month focused almost entirely on negotiating their unreasonable initial budget allocations with Central Office and attempting to creatively fill remaining gaps. Schools use inadequate funds the best they can, making choices like cutting badly needed interventionists or hiring additional aides rather than teachers to stretch their budgets. DCPS school-based staff continue to fear discussing their seemingly now-adequate budgets out of fear that their jerry-rigged fixes will be pulled back or they will be retaliated against for speaking out.

This budget puts many of our DCPS schools in crisis.

These inadequate, inequitable budgets are formed through a broken process, which should be reformed by:

1. Creating targeted stimulus funds for by-right schools to ensure every school in our feeder patterns in every part of the city remain viable – say 30 million this year across schools serving the most At Risk students, with a focus on our under-capacity comprehensive high schools like Anacostia, Ballou, and Woodson. We cannot close more schools; to help struggling schools we must invest in them. We can and should provide these schools with funding to provide full teaching staffs for a truly comprehensive curriculum, wraparound services, interventionists, and adequate extracurriculars – all the things that attract families to a school. This stimulus could increase for FY21 and if successful, could gradually decline over a period of years as programs become more self-sustaining.
2. Beginning the budget process – in earnest, with actual numbers – in the fall with schools rather than weeks or days before they are due.
3. Ending or drastically reforming the Comprehensive Staffing Model.
4. Ending zero based budgeting, which creates wild swings from year to year.
5. Taking security costs back out of local budgets.  Individual schools have no control over security costs and it is inappropriate to use security costs to soften budget cuts, thereby preventing schools from receiving stabilization funds.
6. Fixing enrollment projections by:
   • Changing count day. October is when charter schools have their highest enrollment and DCPS schools have their lowest. The reverse is true in the spring. Many of our students are transient within the jurisdiction, with others moving into the system throughout the year.  We need to move count day to the spring or aggregate two count days, fall and spring, to adequately fund our DCPS schools to match the number of students enrolled in reality.
7. • Offering seats in the lottery based on school capacity and neighborhood and system needs, not based solely on a school’s current staffing level. There is a disincentive to release more seats into the lottery, if actual enrollment increases do not result in adequate additional funding to properly staff for the increases. If we staff our schools adequately, we can than bring them up to building capacity in neighborhoods where we are not yet filling them.
   • Admit that projecting enrollments is as much art as science. Project enrollment based on more than two past years and stop assuming that history is future. Neighborhoods are changing and our enrollment projections should track those changes.

Finally, I want to thank DCPS and Councilmember Grosso for your focus on technology this budget season. It’s badly needed. I hope the technology audit and systemwide plans include SMARTboards and ongoing maintenance for all types of devices. I am heartened to see DCPS listening to parents and I know we can continue this collaboration to affect larger improvements for all our students.

Thank you for this opportunity to testify.

Committee on Whole and Education

Budget Oversight Hearing of the District of Columbia Public Schools

 Friday, March 29, 2019

Good morning Chairmen and Councilmembers. I am Sandra Moscoso, a parent of students enrolled in Capitol Hill Montessori at Logan, and School Without Walls. I am also a former BASIS DC charter parent. I share this with you, because like many D.C. families, including those waking up to school lottery results today, mine is a “Cross-Sector” family.

I am happy we have become self-aware about equity in DC and commend Council for supporting legislation which begins to make funding decisions based on data and evidence. It’s time to evolve further and not let politics or fear of the well-funded education lobby stand in the way of students getting the resources they deserve.

I believe we can do this by taking a comprehensive approach to education planning – parents want this and will support you.

1.9 billion goes to fund public schools. How many students rely on public schools? How many schools are we funding? Are we making the most of limited dollars? Why is it every year, we can’t we seem to make schools whole?

I compared OSSE’s #s of overall 2019 enrollment with that of 2012.

• Our student enrollment has grown by 22%
• Our charter and DCPS school inventory has grown by 33% in that time

A study for the DME as part of the 2018 Master Facilities Plan revealed there are 22,000 vacant seats across DCPS and charter schools – that’s 20% under-utilization. 22,000 empty seats, yet here are 170 witnesses telling you our schools are underfunded.

Couldn’t we begin to resolve this by committing to take a sensible approach to planning, so that every school where students sit today is adequately funded? I think about the lack of coordination across DCPS and DCPCSB and wonder: if we owned more cars than we could maintain, our solution would not be to buy more cars.

Looking back at the DME study, I was struck by how the recommendations seemed so common sense.

• Utilize current educational space in the best ways possible
• Retain educational space for educational purposes
• Grow access to space for educational purpose
• Review enrollment policies to manage utilization
• Streamline planning processes, data collection and knowledge sharing

I go back to this study because although we are here to discuss DCPS’ operational budget, we cannot detach the teachers, staff, and materials required to educate students from the fact that we have chosen to open buildings, staff schools, and enroll students without a comprehensive strategy in mind. Without strategy and planning, we will continue to hurt our existing charter and DC public schools and will continue to underfund them.

We are in a unique position with the attention of the whole Council focused on education. It’s an opportunity to truly support every one of those 94,000 students enrolled in our schools today and sensibly, strategically plan for the 108,000 students projected to be enrolled in our schools 10 years from now.

And one more thing. School librarians are set to suffer a 10% cut across schools. School libraries are linked to improved standardized reading scores. DCPS’ literacy strategy includes in-class libraries and partnerships with DPL, yet somehow, we continue to forget the impact qualified librarians bring to a school. We went through this 6 years ago, concluded that we believed in evidence and data, and restored funding for DCPS librarians. There are a million reasons to support school libraries, but please do not take my word for it. I’ve attached a factsheet and links to a number of school library impact studies in this testimony. Please protect this funding.

Thank you for your time.

Enrollment/school inventory source: https://osse.dc.gov/enrollment

• Of school with enrollment of 131+* students, 227 DCPS+Charter in 2019, 170 schools in 2012. (*131 – the lowest enrollment in a DCPS was used as minimum enrollment cutoff for this exercise).
• ~ 94,000 students are enrolled DCPS + Charter 2019; ~76,000 enrolled in 2012.

School Librarian Impact Sources:

• http://blogs.slj.com/neverendingsearch/2013/03/06/school-library-infographics-research-and-advocacy/
• http://keithcurrylance.com/school-library-impact-studies/

Committee on Whole and Education

Budget Oversight Hearing of the District of Columbia Public Schools

 Friday, March 29, 2019

My name is Betsy Wolf, and I am representing Amidon-Bowen and all DCPS schools facing staffing cuts today. About this time last year, DCPS unexpectedly cut several staff from our school budget, and I started my side-job creating graphs showing how inequitable funding in this city is; I am an education researcher by day, after all. One year and hundreds of graphs later, I am still trying to understand how it is possible that in a city as rich as DC, schools are forced to cut staff from their budgets each year. Here is what I’ve learned.

DCPS has shifted costs to the school level over time

Since the reign of Michelle Rhee, DCPS has shifted costs to the school level, so while it may look like budgets increase over time, you have to account for shifting costs. Some examples include technology, social workers and psychologists, JROTC instructors, background checks, and most recently, school security funds.

Staffing costs rise faster than increases in school budget allocations

Another big problem is that costs rise faster than increases in school budget allocations, which means that some schools are faced with new staffing cuts each year. DCPS requires schools to use the average districtwide cost for a position, and the cost of each position increases annually. This is another example of why a budget “increase” may not actually be an increase in purchasing power.

Unpredictable fluctuations from year-to-year and unfunded mandates

DCPS also starts the budgeting process from scratch each year, so there may be wild fluctuations from one year to the next in a school’s budget. DCPS may also change its rules about how it allocates funds each year with no notice to schools.

There are also unfunded mandates. Schools at times are “strongly advised” or required to employ staff whose positions are not funded by the comprehensive staffing model (e.g., LEAP, sped managers). Schools must then use their extra funds (if any) to cover unfunded mandates.

Budgets are then made more complicated by additional rules, carve-outs, and supplements that may show up in one year and be taken away the next. DCPS giveth and DCPS taketh away.

Not following intent of law on stabilization funds

After the Mayor decides how money to allocate to DCPS, DCPS figures out how to make the numbers work, taking advantage of loopholes and loose interpretations of the law that says a school budget can’t be cut by more than 5% in a given year. DCPS is not able to fund schools at similar levels each year because DCPS is not guaranteed any amount in the Mayor’s budget.

Staffing cuts results in other negative ripple effects

As a result of unpredictable and inadequate school budgets, schools have less purchasing power over time and are forced to make staffing cuts. As a result of staffing cuts, there are negative ripple effects, including highly inequitable PTA funding, lack of resources like working computers, and low morale and declining enrollment in schools that can’t cover shortfalls with PTA funding. And of course declining enrollment means less money for next year, so more cuts.

DC’s school governance structures and funding formula are also to blame

But the blame cannot be placed solely on DCPS. Our city’s school governance structures and funding formula are also to blame. Which means the burden of fixing the problem isn’t just on DCPS, it’s on all of us. I’ve learned a lot from others in my journey this past year, but there are still questions I cannot answer as a member of the public.

Recommendation 1: Fund education at adequate levels recommended by study

The city commissioned an adequacy study of school funding in 2013, and the city isn’t adequately funding education, according to its own study. Why not? That seems like a relatively straight-forward fix.

Recommendation 2: Investigate root causes of staffing cuts each year

Why is it that costs rise more than school budget allocations? What are the root causes of this problem? Is it that DCPS doesn’t get enough money from the mayor’s budget to cover costs? Is it that there is inefficiency in spending in central office? DCPS separates money into three categories: school-based, school support, and central office, but school support is really an arm of central office, so is central office too large?

Recommendation 3: Investigate differences in purchasing power for DCPS versus non-governmental LEAs

A dollar in DCPS doesn’t go as far as a dollar in the charter sector. DCPS must use all of the city’s agencies and city-approved vendors. That may be desirable for the city except for there’s no recognition of this in the school funding formula that gives equal per-pupil amounts to the DCPS and charter sectors. There’s no acknowledgement that DCPS is a governmental agency that has to abide by different rules than a non-profit in the non-governmental sector.

Recommendation 4: Provide Council oversight that goes further than asking hard questions during hearings

I know these issues are complex. But we don’t we have answers to basic questions that would help guide legislation to make sure that schools are adequately funded. I’ve seen many of you ask hard questions in oversight hearings, and I appreciate that, but if that’s where the oversight stops, we have a major problem. On this note, I applaud Councilmember’s Allen recent push to make charter schools, which are public schools, also subject to FOIA.

How are we going to solve the school budget crisis without first getting down to the facts? My recommendation is to hire an independent school budget expert and start to investigate some of these issues and determine the root causes.

Cuts in staffing and other resources at the school level are costly for students

The reason we all drag ourselves to testify again and again is because the cost to students of school budget cuts is great. If you’ve ever served on an LSAT, you know just how painful the conversations around staffing cuts are. How do you choose between a reading specialist and mental health professional for students? A mental health professional and enrichment beyond math and reading for students? Don’t our students deserve both?

It is time to put our money where our mouth is and actually put students first.