My name is Elsa Falkenburger. I am the Communications co-chair for the Tyler Elementary PTA, chair of the newly formed Tyler Advocacy Subcommittee, and parent to one first grader, Lucie, and a rising preK-3 student, Theo.

As my fellow Tyler parents have testified, I would like to reiterate how critical it is to ensure a safe, healthy learning environment for our children. I hope that we can also focus our efforts on enriching the educational opportunities as well.

Tyler Elementary offers DCPS a unique opportunity to showcase what it is truly capable of. First, Tyler is in the heart of capitol hill, a large elementary school of 520 students with a very small boundary catchment area. This means that students outside of the immediate neighborhood have an opportunity to attend, unlike many of the other Ward 6 elementary schools. A true example of “school choice in action” in the midst of a school lottery system that is failing many families.

Second, Tyler is both racially and economically diverse – a title 1 school in the center of a rapidly gentrifying part of the city. Parents chose to send their children to Tyler because of this diversity in the student body and the programming offered.

Finally, Tyler offers three programs under 1 roof: a traditional program, a dual language Spanish program, and special education program.
Investing in Tyler means investing in a single school that offers a chance to create innovative solutions and approaches needed across our entire school system.

My testimony today focuses on the dual language program.

Our family is in-bounds for Tyler. In fact, we bought our house back in 2010 in great part because we would have access to Tyler and the dual language program it offers. We have had an excellent experience thus far, but have also uncovered a number of challenges that make the Tyler experience uneven for different families and weaker in the older grades that lead to significant reduction in enrollment.

I know that you heard from the Director of the DC Language Immersion Project last week, Vanessa Bertelli. I agree with her testimony and will not repeat the strong points she made and that Patrick just highlighted about the value and merit of a dual language education. For our children, the city, employers and other stakeholders to reap these benefits, we must invest in and strengthen DCPS’s dual language program infrastructure and the support and oversight it offers dual language schools. I have four primary suggestions:

1. Outreach to all Tyler families to ensure they understand the value of a dual language education, how this approach can benefit their child, and meeting the demand for this kind of program.

Research shows that a dual language education can help increase racial and socioeconomic diversity and integration in schools, help close the achievement gap, and significantly increases employment opportunities and earnings for students in the long- term, meeting employer demands for multi-lingual employees with high levels of cultural competency. And yet, the Tyler community often refers to the dual language program as the “resource families” and the traditional program as the “non-resource families”. This is highly problematic.

Ensuring all Tyler families have access to strong programming and the information
necessary to make the right decision for their child will ensure equity and a stronger sense of community among Tyler families, teachers and administration.

As we strive to ensure all families have access to full information about the program they
chose for their children, we must also ensure we can meet the demand for that programming. As a first step, we should have access to better data on how many families are applying to Tyler’s dual language program.

2. Assessments designed for dual language programs. Students come and leave Tyler Elementary with a wide range of language proficiency. But I can only say this anecdotally due to a lack of assessment tools and data. Teachers need better tools to assess language proficiency and ensure that the pathway to biliteracy is scaffolded from PK3 all the way through 5th grade. Given that parents who chose a dual language program are prioritizing that component of their child’s education but often do not speak that language themselves, it is critical that they are able to monitor their child’s progress with assessments that provide data consistently throughout the elementary school years. Currently, teachers are left to design their own methods of assessment that do not demonstrate progress over time.

2. Guidance, training and supports for teachers. Currently ECE at Tyler is Spanish immersion (90% Spanish), Kinder is 50/50, and starting in 1st grade the students are taught certain subjects in Spanish and other in English, half the day in each language. This requires a solid methodology that is highly coordinated between teachers who are teaching the same students but in different languages. Our dual language first grade has 2 teachers. One teaches in English, the other in Spanish. Each classroom spends half the day with one teacher, and half with the other. This means that each teacher is responsible for nearly 50 students – 50 assessments, communication with 50 sets of parents, and the additional lift that is not required but necessary for teachers to coordinate to ensure that they are reinforcing what their student’s other teacher is covering. Compare this with the arts immersion teachers who have smaller classes, and the same students throughout the day. With the right training, guidance and support from DCPS, a team approach to teaching in the dual language program could be a real strength rather than a challenge.
3. DCPS must offer Tyler families in the dual language program a better middle school option to continue their Spanish language education. Suggesting that children, many who live in Wards 7 and 8, commute to McFarland Middle School with no offer of transportation is not a viable option. This is yet another factor that leads families to leave Tyler early, as they seek out spots in charter or other schools that offer continuity of education through middle school and in some cases, high school.

Thank you for the opportunity to testify today.

My name is Patrick Jackson. I am the current PTA President at Tyler Elementary. I’m a parent to a first grader at Tyler, and a parent of a hopefully incoming PK3 student as well. I am a lifetime resident of DC, and a 20 year resident of the Ward 6 neighborhood within Tyler’s boundary.

Our public schools, and our community schools are critically important to me as a resident of DC, not only because I currently have children enrolled, but also because I know they are a unifying common service in our community. I believe that strong public schools are essential in making us all better citizens of the city, and can be a force for community engagement, and greater integration across the city.

I am here today to testify on two issues that are facing the Tyler Elementary community, where we feel as though the performance of DCPS and DGS can be greatly improved.

The issues I would like to speak to today are facility repairs and greater support of the existing dual- language Spanish program at Tyler.

I am joined today by two other parents who are also dedicated to Tyler, who will be speaking in more detail about these two issues as well.

Tyler Elementary received the early stages of modernization roughly 10 years ago now, and since that time it seems as though the largest elementary school on Capitol Hill has been largely ignored. Resources have been since placed on other school in Ward 6, and Capital funding is budgeted for most of the other schools in our area, but not Tyler.

Meanwhile the building disrepairs and lack of adequate outdoor play areas are impacting the 500+ children who attend Tyler. The improvements that are urgently needed for Tyler are not insurmountable, in fact they seem rather small and manageable by comparison to updates being made to other schools- yet the benefit to children’s education in making the repairs would be huge.

The most critically needed improvements are the need for a new and enlarged playground, and updated water fountains.

When the playground was last renovated, Tyler had an attendance of around 200 children. Well, Tyler has grown- and due to its own success in the past decade our student population is now more than twice that.

Tyler currently has one badly broken play structure for K through 5th grade, surrounded by a massive area of underutilized, hot and barren concrete and asphalt. There is more than enough space on the Tyler playground for a play structure that would provide adequate space for the larger population, as well as more opportunity for children to actually get the needed exercise during free-time.

In addition to being inadequate in size, the equipment is badly broken, and at times dangerous. While other schools in the area are displaying gleaming new play structures- the 500+ children at Tyler have been playing on a play structure partially wrapped in police caution tape for the majority of the year.

Dangerous, ad-hoc, repairs have been made by adding bolts and rough wood in places, and the image of watching children stare at unusable play equipment wrapped in police tape has been a daily reminder to Tyler parents of how inadequate the facility is. As recently as this month there is less tape, but the repairs made are temporary. We expect police tape to wrap the main playground again before spring is really here.

The playground, and outdoor area at Tyler has historically been improved by PTA and parent funding. It has gotten us this far- but at this point the growing school needs full support from our city. Tyler is a Title 1 school with a large population of at-risk families, and our ability to fundraise to build our own school ground has limitations. The PTA currently works very hard to raise roughly $30K per year, which largely goes to support the FoodPrints program, mini-grants provided directly to classroom teachers for supplies and class improvements, and our thriving drama clubs, including a musical program, and a Spanish Film Club that creates and shows a movie each year at a local theater, paying for our own playground is currently out of reach.

On the next pages I’ve included some pictures showing:

• The broken play structure
• Torn soft surface- chunks of which are often lying around and coming home in kids clothing
• Fences and concrete in disrepair next to playgrounds
• Puddles filled with broken cement
• Unused open cement spaces where more new play structures could be added

In addition to our terrible playground, Tyler is facing a drinking water-access issue.

Since the beginning of this year parents at Tyler have been working with DGS and DCPS to get working water fountains to replace the often broken and outdated units in the school.

For many months this school year the second floor had no working fountains, and often the 3rd floor, and cafeteria fountain would also be broken for weeks at a time.

Thanks to the advocacy, and support from our Ward 6 Council member’s team, and lots of pushing, the water fountains are mostly working today. But week-by-week they break. Our facility manager opens a work tickets at DGS, and we wait, this cycle repeats itself continuously.

Meanwhile we still have a school with a large population of students, who have one outdated, frequently broken fountain in their cafeteria, with a makeshift step so that shorter children can access it.

At Tyler we often have 2 working water fountains for 500 + kids spread across 3 floors. This often means that all our students do not have access to water. Which is a basic requirement of DC law for schools. We urgently ask the city to upgrade the fountains, and finally provide Tyler with an adequate solution. We cannot wait until the next stage of modernization for drinking water.

On the next page you will find pictures of the fountains on the 2nd floor and one on the 3rd floor.

Tyler urgently needs these upgrades for our highly enrolled building. We believe that our city government needs to provide these improvements in addition to the full-school renovations that are currently budgeted.

These are two needs where the performance of DCPS and DGS are impacting the health and wellness of Tyler students.

And these are two relatively small asks for improvements, where attention would have a massive return on investment. These are improvements that cannot wait until the next stage of modernization for Tyler.

The next topic I would like to raise is the challenge of the stranded programs at Tyler.

At Tyler we currently have two strands- a dual language program, and a traditional program, operating within our school. Today the strand approach creates several challenges for our community. I believe that the current way of operating multiple programs within one school is unnecessarily diverting valuable time and energy away from education and reduces our ability to create a more visible and immersive environment benefitting all children.

I also believe that the current approach to strands affects the ability of the dual language program to fully reach it’s potential, ranging from things as simple as preventing signage and common spaces curated in 2 languages, to issues as large as negative impacts to overall school culture with the perceived difficulties of a “school within a school.”

I strongly feel that now is the time to provide much more support- and dedication from DCPS- to bolster the dual language program at Tyler. I feel that this could be done both to benefit Tyler families, as well as grow the dual-language program to meet the rising demand for immersion programs that is increasing every year.

There is little doubt in the academic and research communities about the positive impact of dual language education on achievement. We believe that DCPS can rely on its internal data on achievement in these programs to support, and invest more in the dual language program at Tyler. Additionally, research shows that the benefits of dual language are independent of language spoken at home or socioeconomic status, making the case for expansion to primarily English speaking populations even stronger. The additional opportunity brought by bi-literacy is of course an added incentive.

Greater support of the dual-language program would provide many advantages:

1. Rapid increase in highly desirable dual language program seats (at this year’s new parent open houses at Tyler, over 95% of the parents attending were interested in the dual-language program)
2. Increase in achievement
3. Significant improvement in unsustainable school culture issues
4. More efficient use of school based resources
5. Equity of access. We know from research by the University of Maryland Foreign Language Center, that dual language programs bring socio-economic and racial diversity to classes and schools.
6. Clearer and more robust feeders. By doubling the number of students in dual language programs at schools that already have a dual language strand, DCPS can create clearer and more robust feeders

I truly feel that there is a huge opportunity for DCPS to invest in the Dual Language Spanish-Immersion option for DC families – by investing more in the program that already exists, and brings with it a very dedicated group of families, at Tyler Elementary

I would now like to let my fellow Tyler parents continue these topics, including specific ways in which DPCS could enhance the performance of the programs at Tyler.

Councilmembers, thank you for holding this hearing and for inviting the public to testify. As I think you know, I have two children at citywide DCPS elementary School Within School at Goding. You are probably expecting me to talk about how SWS needs our modernization, but I’m going to leave that to my fellow SWS parent Beth Bacon today.

I’d like to talk about the need to provide robust, well-funded and well-staffed programming for social-emotional learning, special education, and wraparound services at every school. There are a number of reasons I’m feeling deeply disappointed in our mayor and her education staff today. One of them is that I was so very hopeful that we were seeing such a focus on social-emotional learning in the last year—and that’s now been derailed.

But to get back to the kids. My concern about funding these services at every school is twofold. One, there are kids that need those services at every school, not just schools with large populations of at-risk students. And two, when kids who need those services have to go to a Title I school where the economies of scale make it possible to fund robust services, you are segregating those students. But under current funding models and policies, it is extremely difficult for a small school without a large population of at-risk students to fully fund and provide SEL, SPED, and wraparound services.

I want to share my own family’s story with you. My youngest son was first referred for evaluation two years ago when he was in PK3 and his perceptive preschool teacher noticed something was amiss. At that time, the process was to have him evaluated at the Early Stages assessment center, by people who did not know him and spent just an hour or two observing him and asking us questions. That process resulted in the recommendation that he did not need services. But by the end of PK4 last year, it was clear to us and his teachers that he was struggling, so we held him back to repeat PK4. This year, he was again referred for evaluation, but I’m told the process has since changed. He is being evaluated by teachers and staff at his school. They know him, he knows them, they have had multiple interactions and opportunities to observe him over an extended period. And they can see that he needs significant supports, although he doesn’t necessarily fit into an expected pattern. This change in the way evaluations are done, moving them into his home school, was huge for my child.

But I wouldn’t be here if that were the end of the story. At my school, we have a staff that is especially devoted to social-emotional learning. The school was founded by teachers and a social worker who believed in the importance of that. We have also developed a particular emphasis on special education. We have two classrooms of students who are severely disabled, and we have a high-functioning autism program. What we don’t have is a lot of funding or additional staff for special education and social-emotional learning. Our dedicated teachers and staff dig deep to keep providing the high quality, intensive services they are providing, but they really need our help. Honestly, I am worried that they are going to burn out.

We can’t expect that teachers and staff at schools like mine keep burning the candle at both ends. But we also can’t expect that students who need extra services congregate in Title I schools where there is extra funding available. This is a flawed funding model, and something has to be done about it.

I understood that the former chancellor wanted to do something about it. I’m as frustrated and disappointed about the interruption to that work as I am about the abuse of power and apparent cover-up by the mayor’s administration. But we can’t let that distract us from the urgent work of educating our children. We must pick up the ball and go on. We must improve the way we fund SEL, SPED, and wraparound services in every school.

Thank you.

Anne Fitzpatrick

Parent at School Within School at Goding

annefitz

360-565-6381

I am Valerie Jablow, a Ward 6 DCPS parent.

In our latest lottery scandal, at least two public school leaders bypassed lottery rules and thus expressed contempt for the schools they oversaw and the public they served.

Yet, instead of resigning when they thusly abused their power, they did so only months later, when it became politically unacceptable to remain.

Who voted for such anti-democratic public school governance?

During the first documented lottery abuse last year,[1] no city leader called for an audit of waitlists and the lottery—despite the importance of both to school choice. And no leader has called for an audit now, despite evidence that waitlist jumping and cheating are common.[2]

Who voted for such anti-democratic school governance?

As my representatives, you need to recognize this latest scandal as one of the many prices my children pay for our failed public school governance.

Education reform’s language of competition, choice, and demand is not that of residents like me, who pay for and send our kids to DC’s public schools.

Rather, it’s the language of political operatives including our mayor,[3] who appoints and supervises our school overseers, as well as of private interest groups who, unlike me, are paid to influence you and to testify at hearings.[4]

Together, they have prioritized the needs of private interests over the welfare of my children and the by right system of municipally run schools that ALL DC kids are entitled to. We are now at a place where our municipally run school system is slowly but surely being destroyed by closures, charter poaching, diminishing marketshare, and neglect.[5]

Tell me: who voted for such anti-democratic school governance?

As just one example, the deputy mayor for education’s office has missed many legally mandated deadlines for school facilities reports.

Instead of fulfilling those legal duties, the deputy mayor’s office is shopping around cross-sector task force recommendations that do not even recognize the need for, much less the value of, a by right system of municipally run schools in every neighborhood!
Who voted for that lawless school governance?

Some weeks ago, I found out that DCPS offered its closed Kenilworth Elementary to North Star charter school, without a word to the public.

To get details, I asked the council’s education committee; the deputy mayor’s office; DCPS. I even testified about it last week!

All I got was silence.

So our education overseers decided in secret to give away MY children’s public asset on YOUR watch–and everyone’s cool with it!

And, while saying she knew nothing about the Kenilworth offer (other than it happened), the acting deputy mayor for education told me that her office had asked DCPS “to meet with newly opening charter schools to discuss and understand their needs.”

So my children’s right to their municipally run schools is less than charter needs!

I call on you now to stop this shameful, anti-democratic school governance:

Undo your vote for mayoral control and bring back an elected school board: this time, with term limits, no private financing of campaigns, and oversight of both charter and DCPS schools. Instead of school overseers with contempt for my children and their RIGHTS, we need school overseers who embrace and deliver the democratic guarantee—not chance, not choice—of excellent DCPS schools in every neighborhood. Thank you.

(Please note that supporting details and evidence are in the footnotes.)

[1] That was in 2017, when an investigation found a number of instances when former DCPS chancellor Henderson offered slots outside the lottery process to politically connected parents. See here for more information: https://educationdc.net/2017/04/30/so-can-we-have-an-audit-of-the-lottery-now/

[2] One parent (whose child was on the Wilson waitlist when the chancellor’s child was offered a slot) told me that a DC high school with a waitlist pulled a student from the bottom of the 2017 waitlist because he was a good athlete, while a school without a waitlist could not pull a student in until after their post lottery application was completed. The parent also told me that a school enrolled a student at the end of the school year to circumvent the most recent lottery that year, so technically that student didn’t “jump” the line. Now imagine the lottery stories of the 20,000 or so families who participate in the lottery every year. Or the 90,000 families in our system of “choice.”

[3] Immediately after news that Chancellor Wilson resigned, I got an email from the mayor, via DCPS, touting education reform in the last decade in DCPS. That decade was when my school’s PTA spent thousands of dollars to buy food, print brochures, host childcare, all to sell my school at our open houses—all the while our city approved charter schools willy nilly without a commensurately growing student population, saying that the old schools were “failing.” As a result, my school, like most DCPS schools, had budget fights every single year for that decade because of charter poaching of students. That’s something to celebrate?

[4] This power mismatch was illustrated recently by the efforts of KIPP DC to secure revenue bond funding from DC. The mayor proposed millions in revenue bonds for KIPP DC to expand in wards 7 and 8, without one word to the public about it. When Ward 7 residents found out, they took time from their jobs and came, unpaid, to the Wilson building to demand their elected representatives not approve those bonds. At the exact same moment, KIPP DC sent its paid representatives to fight the community over how the community’s own schools and tax dollars would be used—because KIPP DC wanted the money, not because it cared about democracy. KIPP is not only among the wealthiest charter operators in DC, but also one of the most generous in donating to our politicians. See more information here: https://educationdc.net/2017/11/29/so-while-apparently-not-worrying-about-ballou-our-mayor-requested-230-million-in-dc-bonds-for-kipp-dc/

 

[5] DCPS is losing 1% of market share every year. By 2021, absent any real change, it will be the minority school system. Moreover, there are entire neighborhoods without a by right school because of closures—as well without a clear by right pathway. The utter neglect of DCPS’s Sousa Middle School that I documented in the fall and asked for help with was not addressed by anyone until I posted pictures on my blog (see here: https://educationdc.net/2017/10/13/no-response-sousa-middle-school/) And even now, the school has a mere skeleton of a PTO and LSAT, while no one has ever responded to me about publicly stated plans for the use of empty spaces in the building. And that’s merely scratching the surface of DCPS neglect: at last week’s performance oversight hearing for the charter board and DME, we heard about lack of door locks in a school such that an active shooter could not be stopped; vermin in our schools; and sewage spills during school lunches. ALL of that has been documented for years running for both the council and mayor by DCPS parents and staff who have to live with it. This is the deeply disrespectful way we treat our children and the municipally run by right schools they are entitled to, all the while our city has a surplus and spends money on entirely optional things (see here: https://educationdc.net/2015/11/20/stuff-we-spend-our-city-money-on/). Trust me: no one voted for that. There is no demand for that.

 

Thank you for the opportunity to testify this morning. My name is Suzanne Wells, and I am the founder of the Capitol Hill Public Schools Parent Organization, a group that serves Ward 6. My daughter is in 7th grade at Eliot-Hine Middle School, our family’s in-bound neighborhood DC public school.

The recent revelation that Chancellor Wilson abused our city’s public school lottery is indeed unfortunate. As I’ve thought about what happened, I’ve tried to step back and look not only at this individual action, but at what has brought our city to this point. The forces that have shaped our city’s education landscape predate the current administration. But, the Mayor and City Council have continued to support the establishment of a choice public education system that has at its core a lottery many families feel compelled to enter and anxious to win in order to send their children to what they perceive is a quality school. While Chancellor Wilson skirted the rules of the lottery, it is not a system he created.

Our neighbors in Virginia and Maryland don’t have to compete in lotteries or send their children across town to charter schools or other DCPS schools in order to send their children to high performing schools, and neither should the families in the District. Our city can do better for children. It is time to re-evaluate the education reform policies our elected leaders have been promoting for the past twenty years.

Chancellor Wilson absolutely should not have by-passed the lottery system for his own child. What is as troubling as by-passing the lottery system is the fact that the head of DCPS did not feel his in-boundary schools were the right choice for his children. Families, like mine, from across the city are working hard to support our by-right neighborhood schools. We have learned how to advocate for our neighborhood schools, and worked hard to improve them for all children. Unfortunately, Chancellor Wilson, in his own words, is “agnostic” when it comes to families choosing between their by-right neighborhood schools and charter schools. Think what a powerful message it would have sent if Chancellor Wilson’s family had chosen to attend and support their in-boundary schools.

In light of the Chancellor abusing the city’s public school lottery, there will be temptations to place blame on a few individuals and not on the decisions that led our city to create a system of choice between the DC public schools and privately managed charter schools, and the reliance on a lottery. There will also be some who think this is a DCPS issue while ignoring all the decisions that have gotten our city to the place it is today where only half of the students attend DCPS and the other half attend privately managed charter schools; thus threatening the viability of our by-right neighborhood public school system, something families in our city have repeatedly said they support.

This latest scandal is a serious setback for a school system that cannot afford another serious setback. We need an urgent strategy to strengthen and support our by-right neighborhood public schools. To that end we need leaders who will guarantee in plan, policy and budget that the city will maintain and grow our public sector DCPS schools, intentionally strengthening our neighborhood schools so residents in every Ward have matter-of-right schools from Pre-K through 12th grade that fully serve them with strong programs and buildings.

In a statement Councilmember Cheh wrote on Sunday she said “On a journey it is not always clear when or where you’ve made a wrong turn. But then the evidence piles up that you are going in the wrong direction. That’s the case with our school system now.” The question for me is whether the Mayor and the City Council realize we’ve been heading in a direction that fundamentally doesn’t support sustaining and growing a by-right neighborhood public school system, and whether they are willing to fight for fundamental changes in the governance structure or whether they plan to continue the same flawed strategies.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak today at the DCPS Oversight hearing. I am Danica Petroshius, a parent of a second grader and a fourth grader at Capitol Hill Montessori at Logan (CHML) and Co-Vice President of the Capitol Hill Public Schools Parent Organization (CHPSPO).

I echo the calls of my fellow CHML parents for the Council to fully fund our school’s modernization and to call for funding to fix all schools urgently.

This week we got pretty real and raw. Now, owning and accepting our truths can help set a new course for improvement and progress for all.

Truth #1: Trust with our city leadership has been cracking and is now fully broken. We have had a political ecosystem that allows scandals and cheating to be covered up, percolate and fester. The Mayor has a long road ahead to rebuild the trust of parents. Trust is not a privilege or assumed – it is built over time, and are back to the starting line. The top-down-only model no longer works.

Truth #2. We need to resist quick-fix “changes.” Change is easy – change your clothes, change your hair. What is hard – and what we need – are leaders who will focus on and support long-term improvement and progress with integrity and urgency.

Truth #3: The former Chancellor’s actions illuminated that while we describe DC as a choice system, at its core, DC is a neighborhood school system. If choice doesn’t work because you don’t get a spot in the lottery for a school you want, you have a child that has special needs not being served, or the school your child is in is just not working for you, then you attend your neighborhood school. Neighborhood schools all over our city that are educating generations of families-some well and some need additional resources. I could not get into my neighborhood school during the lottery. Yet the former Chancellor has left a cloud over our neighborhood schools – naming one not good enough for his child. Our reality is that the DCPS schools are the backbone of our education system – the schools that on any day have to and will welcome every child. That is the truth that should be the base of our policies and practices.

Truth #4. Our system of public accountability and oversight is broken. Incompetence and scandal has been the headline. We must take stock of the roles we have played in being too quiet and too complacent for too long.

We have a tremendous opportunity now to turn the corner and all play our appropriate roles and urge a more authentic, parent-, educator-, and student-based approach.

I ask the Mayor to start now to earn back our trust beginning with building a leadership team focused on honesty, transparency, deep community and parent engagement, equity and measured, continuous improvement. We must never again accept backroom deals, breaking the rules and promoting gaming the system in the name of success. I echo Councilmember Robert White’s calls for “a thorough examination of the strengths and weaknesses of our education strategy” and take that deep look across both of our public systems equally. As Councilmember Silverman said, “We can’t treat these as two separate education silos.” It’s time to have the same transparency, accountability and oversight over both DCPS and charter systems.

I ask the Council to re-energize its role in oversight and to exercise it vigilantly and vigorously. The tradition of giving new staff or new Administration officials a “honeymoon” on oversight must end. Oversight has been given a bad name when it should be a welcomed and revered part of the process that gives voice to further understanding, additional data and honesty. Oversight may seem hard when there is wrong-doing. At that moment, for students and families, oversight is our savior.

I ask the Council to consider ways to empower the elected State Board of Education more in oversight. This is an all hands-on-deck moment and we need everyone asking questions and fueling transparency.

Finally, we members of the public must engage more too. We must share our experiences, give voice to concerns and celebrate our successes with you.

Our two systems will only work for all kids if everyone is focused on improvement, working to earn and build trust and maximizing their role in the process.

Thank you for the opportunity to testify.

Thank you for the opportunity to testify at this Performance Oversight Hearing for DCPS. I am Iris Bond Gill, a parent of two at JO Wilson Elementary School and chair of the Upper Grades Committee of our school’s PTA.

I’ll start by saying that for the first year I can recall, DCPS has listened to the calls of many in our parent community and is now offering much more central office support and attention to the issues and concerns around culture and climate as well as teaching and learning at our school. There have been years of stagnant test scores even with many investments from DCPS and community support and involvement. I attribute that attention to Chancellor Wilson who told me that he was fully aware of these issues and was committed to helping us. I hope that the support and attention continues under Dr. Alexander’s leadership.

I am also here to talk about some larger issues in the education of our children.
We need a clear vision of where our education system is headed, grounded in the reality of our education context.
We have lulled ourselves into believing that we live in a total “choice context” in DC. I think, if anything, what Chancellor Wilson’s resignation has taught me is that’s not the case. It’s as though he didn’t realize that zip code and neighborhood dictates, in a very fundamental way, where your child will go to school in DC. Why is that? I think it’s because, for too long, we’ve acted as though neighborhood schools don’t matter in DC. I’m not against choice– I was a founding teacher at the first charter school in New Orleans in the 90s and am proud of the work we did there. But we need to be honest about the context in which we exist in DC and embrace that the backbone of our system is a system of by-right neighborhood schools. If lottery choices don’t pan out or you move here mid-year or you need to change schools in September, the public option is your neighborhood school, a lesson that was recently hard- learned. We need to understand and embrace this and only then will we invest in improving them to where anyone of our leaders would send their kids there.

Speaking of school improvement: We also need to ask ourselves whether we believe school improvement is possible. We have decades of chronically low-performing schools (I don’t have to call them by name), and so far the actions in DC’s education leaders reflect a belief that it’s easier to create a new school than to fix a broken one. When I reviewed the ESSA state plan that OSSE put out last Spring and the state board approved it was clear that the “school

improvement” was non-existent. I commented as such throughout the fast review process. I wonder, is the underlying belief of the mayor and this council that instead of improving schools we should create new ones? Is that what’s shaping our education system? If so, can we hear that articulated and have a discussion about that as a city and community? If we believe, as I do, that school improvement, albeit difficult, is possible and necessary, we have to change our priorities and systems of support for these schools. That’s more evident now than ever. The students at Dunbar deserve to know that their school is good enough and that we are serious about making the investments and improvements they deserve.

I agree wholeheartedly with the council members like Robert White, Mary Cheh, and Elissa Silverman who have called for a step-back and thorough review of our education strategy and I ask you to clearly articulate the underlying beliefs shaping that strategy. Engage the community that has the most to gain and lose with any education strategy.
Let’s stop churning out talking points and articulate a real vision for our city’s education system. The experience that Chancellor Wilson had is not unique among families in DC. Let’s use this as an opportunity to learn, communicate, and build it together.

Thank you for the opportunity to testify.

The Advisory Group on Community Use of Public Space will hold a public meeting on Tuesday, February 20, 2018 at 6:00pm at the Capitol View Library, 5001 Central Ave SE, Washington, DC 20019. The Advisory Group, called together by the Office of the Deputy Mayor for Education and comprising residents of the District of Columbia who utilize public spaces, will discuss the bylaws for the group, prioritization of issues, its mission statement, and the development of a work plan for the Advisory Group.

The role of the Advisory Group is to provide advice and recommendations to the DME regarding District policies and procedures related to community use of public spaces, including fields, gyms, classrooms, meeting rooms, and other District facilities.

Goals of the Advisory Group include ensuring equitable access to public space, streamlining the reservation of public spaces, increasing transparency around processes and fees, and encouraging greater use of public spaces overall.

Individuals and representatives of organizations who wish to comment at the public meeting are asked to notify Alex Cross in the Office of the Deputy Mayor for Education in advance by phone at (202) 727-9543 or by email at alexander.cross. Individuals are asked to provide their names, addresses, telephone numbers, and organizational affiliation, if any, by the close of business on February 16, 2018, and, if they so choose, to submit one (1) electronic copy of their testimony in advance for the permanent record. Public comment is not limited to those who submit written testimony.

Date: February 20, 2018

Time: 6:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m.

Location: Capitol View Library
5001 Central Ave SE,
Washington, DC 20019

Contact: Alex Cross
Office of the Deputy Mayor for Education
(202) 727-9543
alexander.cross

I have been a member of the Deputy Mayor for Education’s Cross Sector Collaboration Task Force for the last two years and am testifying on the efficacy of the proposals currently being considered.

There are many recommendations from the Task Force being pushed out for public comment at the same time and only one meeting for the Task Force to consider that feedback and make changes before passing them on to the Mayor. The policy issues being considered are extremely complex and have the potential for serious unintended consequences. It will be primarily up to the Council to ensure any policies that advance are thoroughly considered, which is why I’m here today.

It’s important for Council to know that there were critical issues that should have been discussed by the Task Force but were not, because they were taken off the table from the outset. As a result, the recommendations will not only fall short of their stated goals, but in some cases may actually do more harm than good.

My assessment, which is shared by many education advocates from around the city, is that these recommendations are not going to improve education for the vast majority of students, particularly the 44% of our students considered at-risk, and could actually exacerbate the current problems created by our divided system.

The Task Force focused on three important goals during our two-years together:

1. Promoting enrollment stability

2. Improving education for at-risk students

3. Coordinating the opening, closing and siting of schools

In my brief comments today, I will focus on just a few of the higher level policy issues that were not discussed, which should therefore be thoroughly considered by Council.

I. Promoting Enrollment Stability

The policy that the Task Force focused on to address mid-year mobility was the creation of a centralized system for managing mid-year transfers.

I support creating a centralized system; however, the system as proposed is not designed to promote enrollment stability, and could actually facilitate greater mid-year mobility, particularly for at-risk students.

The central flaw in the policy is allowing schools to maintain waitlists throughout the year, a topic that was taken off the table for discussion. Maintaining waitlists ensures that:

1. Higher risk students will continue to have the least choice in school placement, and

2. That you will create a cascade of voluntary mobility throughout the school year.

This isn’t just a theoretical concern. This impact was actually documented by the City of Denver, which had a similar policy, but then eliminated waitlists for exactly the reasons stated.

By allowing schools to maintain waitlists throughout the year, you ensure that the highest demand schools will fill open slots from their waitlists, rather than taking the higher risk students who need to leave their current school for reasons such as housing instability or expulsion. Those higher risk students can then only be placed at schools with no waitlist. Also, by allowing schools to pull from waitlists throughout the school year you create a cascade of voluntary mobility – when one school invites a student off of their waitlist to take advantage of a transfer opportunity, that transfer creates an open slot at the student’s current school, which will then be filled by someone invited from their waitlist, and so on, and so on.

If the centralized system is implemented, it must be measured against the goal of reducing mid-year mobility, particularly for at-risk students. If mobility of at-risk students does not decline, waitlists should be eliminated for all schools after October.

II. Improving Education for At-Risk Students

The recommendations being advanced by the Task Force for at-risk students are largely focused on redistributing a small percent of students between schools, rather than on identifying strategies to improve education for all at-risk students.

For example, the recommended policy to provide a preference in the lottery for at-risk students was shown to only benefit 600 students in a mock lottery. There are 40,000 at-risk students in our school system, yet the Task Force spent months discussing a policy that would benefit 600 of them.

Meanwhile, very little time was spent identifying and analyzing ways to replicate educational approaches that have actually proven successful in improving achievement of at-risk students in DC. We have a handful of excellent examples in both DCPS and Charter sector, including schools with high concentrations of students living in poverty. Repeated requests from Task Force members to analyze these success stories and discuss replication strategies were disregarded by the Deputy Mayor.

With 44% of our public school students at-risk of school failure, creating policies that shuffle them between schools is not a solution.

III. Opening, Closing and Siting Schools

The Task Force recommendation to compile data from both sectors into one city-wide analysis is fine, but there was no broader agreement on policies that will guide the use of that data, and no agreement on changes to the separate governing structures that could actually facilitate coordinated planning and decision-making.

Critical issues, such as how to measure and manage excess capacity in order to align school growth with student population growth, were completely taken off the table for discussion.

Currently there are over 21,000 excess public school seats – roughly half in each sector – yet the Public Charter School Board stated explicitly that it would not manage its development of new schools to align with student growth, but would instead continue to build new schools as long as there are students in the District scoring below basic on the PARCC exam.

We are spending limited tax dollars to not only maintain 23% excess capacity, but to continue to expand that capacity further beyond population growth. By necessity, this results in reduced enrollment and budget in existing schools regardless of their quality, undermining the success of both charter and DCPS schools.

These broader policy and governance issues must be dealt with for cross sector collaboration to be meaningful and for there to be significant improvements to education in the District and any real progress in closing the achievement gap for our 40,000 at-risk students.

Chairman Grosso and Members of the DC Council Committee on Education, My name is Mark Simon, longtime DCPS parent and public education advocate, and now an education policy associate at the Economic Policy Institute.

The DME’s Cross Sector Task Force represents one of her major responsibilities and hopes. It had big problems to address: Inefficiency duplication and lack of communication between two sectors and 67 LEAs; Schools not communicating about whether strategies are working. In fact, they treat what they’re doing with students as proprietary information and other schools as competitors. Schools locate wherever they choose or can find buildings, not where they’re needed. Both sectors maintain underutilized schools.

And there are intractable problems in both sectors, like teacher turnover, and disruptive mid-year departure or entry of students… I could go on. We all hoped the DME would address the rules of the game that you, the Council, and the Mayor have the power to write for both sectors. That’s why we have a DME and Mayoral Control.

The Task Force’s preliminary recommendations are underwhelming. They took two years and its astounding what they didn’t address. They took off the table most of the big issues and only addressed the narrow range of what representatives of the charter sector and DCPS allowed for discussion.

I wish there had been more members of the public on the Task Force. It just didn’t have the expertise or the will to grapple with what needed their attention.

Four crises they needed to take up and develop proposals to address:

1. Mid-year transfers of students and the instability it causes.

2. Inefficient and duplicative locating of charter schools about which parents have little say.

3. The teacher turnover crisis in both DCPS and charter schools — we can’t keep our teachers.

4. The lack of credibility and need for transparency on school data.

What’s the problem with the approach taken by the Task force on each of these crisis issues?

1. On student Mobility: Students moving out of one school and into another mid-year is disruptive – a problem covered in the press. Instead of trying to lessen it the task force seems to have come up with a plan to facilitate more midyear transfers of students. This could only have been proposed by a group of people representing the business side of charters, not students’ or teachers’ interests.

2. On Siting of Schools: The PCSB continues to maintain that granting charters has nothing to do with where they locate. This is insane. The PCSB could say that granting a charter is a two-step process, that the location must be acceptable to citywide planners otherwise the preliminary charter will not be granted. This just wasn’t taken up as a problem by the Task Force.

3. On Data Transparency: The Graduation Rate scandal that has befallen DCPS could easily have included the charter sector. Both sets of schools try to game the narrow set of data used to evaluate schools: graduation rates, attendance, and PARCC scores. Parents want different information about schools – about the quality of the teaching and learning climate – but it’s not available. Evidently the Task Force doesn’t see this as a problem. If it had concern, as members of the Council do about more spin and marketing than truth about our schools, it could have considered the need for greater transparency and independent research, but that wasn’t the concern.

4. On Teacher Turnover: Everyone in DC charters and DCPS knows the fact that they can’t hang onto teachers is a huge problem. It makes students cynical about why they should show up if teachers don’t stick around and its expensive to train teachers and then have them walk out the door. Why is DC such an outlier in this regard. It was never discussed by this task force.