DC Council Hearing on DCPS SY14 Budget

April 17, 2013

Testimony by Martin Welles

Capitol Hill Public Schools Parent Organization

Thank you for the opportunity to testify today.  I am testifying on behalf of the Capitol Hill Public Schools Parent Organization about concerns we have with the DCPS SY14 budget.  Our testimony today focuses on 1) the impact most schools will see next year because of lower budgets, 2) specific concerns with librarians, foreign language instructors, and mental health professionals, and 3) suggested solutions for ensuring the DCPS budget includes a plan for stabilizing and strengthening schools.

Many schools across the city are projected to see fewer dollars in their school budgets next year and the reason stems from two factors:  1) projected drops in enrollment, and 2) raising the size of small schools from 300 to 400 students.  The DC Fiscal Policy Institute’s analysis of the initial local school allocations found $8 million less will be going to the individual schools in SY14 in spite of a 2% increase in the per student funding formula.  Less funding is going to the schools because there is a projected enrollment drop of about 1,100 students.  In addition, many schools will see their budgets decreased because DCPS arbitrarily raised the size of what is considered a small school from 300 to 400 students, and important positions like librarians, art teachers, social workers and psychologists are only budgeted for ½ time positions at small schools. It is important to note that in some cases schools with under 400 students are fully enrolled and some have waitlists, but are being hurt in the budget process because they have a building capacity for fewer than 400 students.

The impact of these lower budgets will be felt. Many schools will have larger class sizes and fewer staff in the school.  Libraries often won’t be staffed.  Middle school students won’t have foreign language instruction.  Evaluations and meetings requiring the presence of mental health professionals will be delayed.  Principals and teachers will be asked to do more with less.  You will also hear concerns from others today about the growing number of schools that do not qualify for DCPS aftercare, and the impact this has on working families.

The library programs will be impacted.  Based on the submitted budgets, of the thirteen elementary and middle schools in Ward 6, only five will have full-time librarians, all three middle schools will only have ½ time librarians, two elementary schools will have ½ time librarians, and three will have full-time library aides.  The lack of library media specialists will result in students being short-changed by not having access to quality library programming, and missed opportunities for collaboration between librarians and classroom teachers.

While DCPS is putting a new emphasis on foreign language instruction, we feel the emphasis is misguided.  Many elementary schools will be hiring foreign language instructors and the foreign language will be taught as a specials subject where students will get instruction 45 minutes a week or less.  Yet, a middle school like Stuart Hobson will no longer be able to offer foreign language as it has in previous years because its enrollment is projected to fall below 400 students, and the school is being reclassified as a “small school.”  (Historically, this school has always had enrollment between 350 and 450 students.)  At this school, where Spanish has been offered for many years as a core subject, the PTA finds itself having to step in to offer a before and/or after-school Spanish class for a portion of the school’s students.  As you may know, in order to be accepted into competitive high schools in DC, middle school students have to fulfill the foreign language requirement.

These school-level cuts are shortsighted because they will exacerbate the enrollment problems by driving away frustrated parents and lead to further destabilization of our neighborhood schools.  One parent told us the decision not to offer foreign language at Stuart Hobson was a “deal breaker” for her family, and they will likely choose another school to send their children. When parents choose another school, they will likely choose a charter school that offers foreign language instruction. When families cannot depend on programs being offered from one year to the next they start to look elsewhere.  This is destabilizing to our neighborhood schools because it further decreases enrollment  and thus more schools will fall under the 400 student threshold to qualify for certain budget items, such as full-time librarian and foreign language instruction.  It turns into a “vicious cycle” of perpetuating low enrollment.

So what should be done?  If the DC public schools are to be successful in this time of school choice and competition, we believe investments must be made to provide the types of programming that will retain and attract families.  We strongly recommend:

• the recommendations of the DCPS Library Task Force be followed in regards to library staffing, and that DCPS fund full-time librarian positions regardless of school size.
• DCPS rethink the staffing planned for foreign language instruction in the coming year.  We believe there should be a greater emphasis on ensuring foreign language is provided equitably across all of the city’s middle schools, and that the educational value of providing very limited foreign language instruction at the elementary schools be reexamined.  At the elementary level, foreign language instruction can only be viewed as ineffective, unless it is taught more than once a week.
• targeted investments be made in the local schools where DCPS sees schools losing quality programming they have previously offered due to the SY14 budget cuts.

DC Council Hearing on Education Budget

Wednesday, April 17, 2013

Testimony by Sandra Moscoso, Capitol Hill Montessori at Logan Parent

Council Members Catania, Grosso, Wells, Alexander and Barry, thank you for the opportunity to testify. As a parent in DC Public Schools, I continue to value the work of this committee and would like to commend what I perceive to be a push for transparency by the council. I believe this is in line with what families are looking for, in order to make decisions about and advocate for schools, transportation, safety, and beyond.

I recently described my community’s engagement with the city and schools to a group of international visitors. I talked about how in DCPS, parents are invited to be part of the budget process; that we review how the school is staffed, look at allocation for non staff costs like toilet paper and do our best to compare our school’s staffing to other schools and across years. As I described this, it occured to me how odd this might seem and the visitors confirmed that it’s not something they would expect from their own schools or governments.

While I am not sure that this type of city-with-citizen engagement is intentional or deliberate, it’s clear to me that it is crucial to the success of our schools. Every successful school I have seen in action is a product of a strong partnership between its families and educators.

Families build gardens, design playgrounds, develop enrichment opportunities, host staff appreciation weeks, organize community discussions, support school communications, work to improve our children’s lunches, write grants and raise funds. In turn, we entrust our children’s and their peers’ academic (and to some degree social) development to educators. We expect that the quality of the academic programming in our schools will not only be stable from year to year, but will hopefully improve and be adequately resourced.

Unfortunately, over the past years, it seems that the support for schools seems to be slipping. Schools are being asked to meet enrollment minimums in order to get resources like librarians, music, language and art teachers. Of course, in order to attract families, schools need to offer resources. What is disturbing, is that schools that have worked hard to meet these enrollment requirements are now losing existing resources when the enrollment bar is raised. Without any warning, as there was no transparency around the process by which these enrollment decisions were made.

I do not know whether this situation is coming from overall school budget needing to be supplemented by the city, or whether DCPS is not distributing resources in a way that best supports schools. I do not necessarily want to be in the position of having to figure this out, but here I am, wondering why my children’s school and my neighbors’ schools, cannot get a full-time librarian and are at risk of losing our language (and other) teachers. I am also wondering how exactly the funds that were budgeted for my children’s (and other) schools were spent? We (parents and school educators) did our part in making our schools a place where children learn, are enriched and made sure other parents know it, so more families want to enroll. I am wondering whether the city and DCPS are doing their part?

When it comes to resourcing our schools, let me be clear. I send my children to their school because I believe in their teachers, their peers, and the staff who supports them in that building. I do not send them to their school because of DCPS’ teacher evaluation system, or because of the opportunity for my children to test out another version of the DC CAS or Paced Interim Assessment.

I value the collection of data and measurement of results, but it must be purposeful. In the case of my children’s education, when it comes to data, I wonder why I hear so much about testing and teacher evaluation, but not so much about how my children’s school is enriched? I also wonder about whether the data collected about my children’s school and its performance is well-rounded. Finally, given this environment of choice, I wonder why ALL of this data, given its importance, is not yet available for ALL schools (DCPS and charter) in a central place, like the Office of the State Superintendent of Education (OSSE). As families, we don’t really have a choice if we don’t have access to information to make that choice. I see good things happening in way of making this data available by OSSE and hope that the Council and the schools will continue to support this level of transparency and will apply it to school factors beyond standardized testing.

In closing, my requests and expectations of DCPS and the city are simple and hopefully sensible. Families are much more interested in what is happening at their children’s school than in the school system. Resource the schools properly, so they are attractive to families. Be transparent about how resources are budgeted, allocated and spent. Given that we are told we have choices, make all (non-sensitive) data publicly available for all schools.

Thank you for your audience.