NEWS
- Mayor Bowser denies building funds for Washington Latin and DCI PCS's [Washington Latin PCS and DC International PCS mentioned]
- What parents want: Charter schools in D.C. see increased demand [Two Rivers PCS mentioned]
- Where to apply — and not to apply — in Round 2 of the D.C. school lottery
- D.C. joins push to open more charter schools for military children
- DC is giving low-income babies and toddlers the kind of childcare they need
- Duncan wants new law to include early childhood education, state oversight
Mayor Bowser denies building funds for Washington Latin and DCI PCS's [Washington Latin PCS and DC International PCS mentioned]
The Examiner
By Mark Lerner
April 10, 2015
Two highly prominent charter schools in the nation's capital learned this week that desperately needed city funding for their buildings will not be coming their way. Washington Latin PCS and D.C. International PCS were told by officials of the Bowser Administration that the city's budget deficit of around $200 million will preclude the awarding of $2 million to each institution to support their permanent facilities.
In case you don't remember, former Councilman and head of the education committee David Catania promised at the grand opening of Rudolf Elementary in September 2013 that he would ensure that $3 million would be provided in support of building a gym at the renovated DCPS site. He repeated this pledge on several occasions. I witnessed these promises in my role as a board member at the school.
That spring Mr. Catania allocated $2 million toward Washington Latin and $6 million for D.C. International to build its home at Delano Hall at the old Walter Reed Medical Center site. Mayor Gray redirected this money, stating at the time stating that capital dollars could not be used for charter schools because they are nonprofits independent of the local government. The city's Attorney General Irvin Nathan supported this move.
Mr. Catania tried again last May including the following language in a Budget Support Act: "(1) Providing an operational grant of $2,000,000 for the development of a language immersion public charter school campus serving middle and high school-aged students in the District and (2) Providing an operational grant of $2,000,000 to support the project development and management of an athletic and community meeting space on the grounds of a public charter school that provides a classical education to students in grades 5 through 12."
The money was eventually approved by the Mayor as part of a larger bill, and right at the end of his administration Deputy Mayor for Education Abigail Smith issued a Request for Proposal for these dollars to which Washington Latin and DCI responded. Other schools may have also sought this money. At the start of the new Mayor's term Ms. Bowser placed these allocations on hold citing a need to understand the city's financial situation. Then just the other day each charter learned that a final decision had been made and the funding was denied.
Millions of dollars each year are spend by the city on renovating the traditional school system. It is difficult to drive around town and not see the palaces that have been constructed for DCPS. While there is a pending lawsuit over the approximately $100 million a year the regular school are awarded that charters do not illegally outside of the Uniform Per Student Funding Formula, this legal action does not address the issue of capital money. Charter school must use their own per pupil facility funds to construct permanent facilities, even if they are renovating a dilapidated former DCPS space, and this revenue often is insufficient to complete the job. It is a sad day when a small amount of this town's budget cannot be utilized to support these fine public schools.
What parents want: Charter schools in D.C. see increased demand [Two Rivers PCS mentioned]
Watchdog.org
By Moriah Costa
April 9, 2015
High-quality charter schools in Washington, D.C. are in demand.
The number of students waitlisted to attend a charter school next school year increased by 18 percent this year, to 8,526. Demand for traditional schools increased by 25 percent, with 7,000 students waitlisted for a public school outside their neighborhood boundary.
“These waitlist numbers are yet another indicator that there is significant demand for quality schools in the District,” Scott Pearson, executive director of the D.C. Public Charter School Board, said in a statement.
Demand is particularly high for specialty programs, such as foreign language and Montessori schools, as well as preschool.
The charter school board said over 9,000 students were on the list for preschool through kindergarten, with many on a waitlist for more than one school.
Two Rivers Public Charter School, which serves students in preschool though eighth grade, had the largest demand, with 1,381 students waitlisted.
Enrollment in the school lottery increased by nearly 15 percent this year with 72 percent of families getting into a school of their choice.
Families could rank their top 12 schools out of 200 charters, out-of-boundary traditional schools and specialized high schools. Those that were not matched with their top choices were waitlisted at those schools.
The lottery is run by My School DC and managed by the office of the deputy mayor for education. The office centralized the lottery and waitlist this year and parents are able to log in online and see where their child is on the waitlist. Previously, parents had to contact each school to find out if the school had room.
There were 16 charter schools that did not participate in the lottery, many of them alternative and adult education schools.
Parents who didn’t make the first round can apply for the second round by May 8.
Where to apply — and not to apply — in Round 2 of the D.C. school lottery
The Washington Post
By Michael Alison Chandler
April 10, 2015
The D.C. public school system published a new Web tool showing schools that still have seats available for families planning to participate in the second round of the citywide school enrollment lottery.
More than 20,000 students applied in the first round of the lottery for the next school year. Students could apply for up to 12 schools, including charter or traditional schools. Overall, 72 percent of applicants were matched with a school, according to results released at the end of March.
A second round is available for those who did not apply or get a match in the first round. After Round 2, names are added to existing wait lists, so there’s no advantage to applying again for a school where you are already wait-listed. There’s also probably no advantage to applying to schools that already have lengthy wait lists. The deadline for Round 2 is May 8.
This online tool shows the size of wait lists, sortable by grade level. The D.C. Charter School Board also published a chart with wait-list numbers in every grade for every charter school.
Here’s a snapshot of some D.C. public schools that have no or low wait lists after Round 1 for Pre-K to third grade. Many are east of the river.
Visit link to view wait lists.
D.C. joins push to open more charter schools for military children
The Washington Post
By Kavitha Cardoza
April 10, 2015
Larissa Camilleri pushes a stroller with her 20-month-old daughter, Scarlett, while juggling several lunch bags and backpacks. As they make their way through the hallways of Leckie Elementary School, a public school in Southwest Washington, Camilleri looks over at her sons, 7-year-old Eric and 5-year-old Nicholas. Both boys are dressed in brown blazers and red bow ties for picture day.
Eric gives his mother a quick hug and kiss, then runs off to find his friends before Camilleri can finish saying, “Have a good day.”
She walks Nicholas into his classroom.
“What’s the ‘P’ word we’re going to focus on today?” she asks.
“Participation,” he says.
Camilleri stays close to the door.
“Remember, just one ‘goodbye’ and one ‘I love you,’ ” she tells him.
The pre-kindergartner places his jacket and book bag in his cubby hole, then looks up at her uncertainly.
“You’re a big boy, Nicholas,” she says. “One ‘goodbye’ and one ‘I love you,’ and I’ll see you again soon.”
She hugs and kisses him and leaves quickly.
It wasn’t long ago that her younger son would try to keep her by asking over and over, “Are you going to pick me up?” and saying “I love you” 10 times.
Larissa and her husband, Army Sgt. Matthew Camilleri, moved to the District last May. Matthew hasn’t been deployed overseas but is frequently away on training trips. The last one ended three months ago. In between those absences, they move. In seven years, the couple has relocated five times, starting in their native Texas, then on to Louisiana and Georgia, then Germany and now Joint Base Anacostia-Bolling in the District. Each of their three children was born in a different city.
The boys have adjusted differently. Eric loves meeting people and has thrown himself into Boy Scouts and flute choir. Nicholas prefers to play at home and had to be weaned off of carrying his “daddy doll,” a stuffed toy bearing his father’s face.
Before she leaves Leckie, Camilleri stops to chat with the principal, Atasha James. Camilleri, 30, is president of the parent-teacher organization. They compare to-do lists for a rally to get the kids pumped for their latest battery of standardized tests.
James and the school have welcomed the Camilleri boys and the other roughly 150 children from military families nearby. Last year, school staff did a countdown every day with one 9-year-old boy until his mother came back from a deployment. Teachers post what’s going on in their classes on Facebook, so parents serving overseas can stay connected. And the school invites service members to visit often and talk to students about what they do.
But there are certain aspects of military life that a regular public school can’t easily accommodate. Relocations don’t follow a school calendar and often don’t coincide with sports team tryouts or the annual lottery to get into local charter schools. And in the District, public schools don’t get any additional funding for children who enroll after October. In December, Leckie ran out of desks after 20 new students enrolled in first grade.
In the past year, a consensus has emerged among parents such as Camilleri, base officials and D.C. leaders: There needs to be another option once children age out of Leckie. They have been working to open a charter school at Bolling, starting with a middle school, and eventually a high school. The city would seek an operator experienced in dealing with military children and fund it the same as any other D.C. public charter school.
The D.C. Council is expected to take up a bill in the coming months to allow a charter school at Bolling that reserves half of its seats for military children. If it passes, the school is expected to open in a couple of years.
By then, Camilleri and her family will likely be gone. But she still wants to help create one for the families that will follow, because she understands the emotional struggle many of them face.
“There’s the constant fear that [a parent] might not come back. Children keep asking, ‘Where’s Daddy?’ Some of our get-togethers turn into crying parties where we share our worries,” she says.
Outside Leckie, Camilleri straps Scarlett in her car seat and heads home down Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue SW, back to the base, two miles and a world away. She turns into the housing section, a swath of open space, cul de sacs, ’90s-era colonials and townhouses that look as if they belong in the exurbs. She parks and carries Scarlett inside, past photos lining the walls, legions of stuffed animals and a large sign that says, “Love Is Spoken Here.”
Camilleri says she didn’t look for work as a dental hygienist during this posting because she was worried about her younger son.
“A lot of times, being a military child is rough,” she says. “The moves, the leaving, the uncertainty. Some children will be sad, some will act out, cry. There are so many emotions they don’t know how to deal with. Then there are others who won’t say anything, won’t participate. That’s the roughest. Nicholas is the silent child.”
Nicholas and his siblings are among the nearly 2 million American children with a parent serving in the armed forces. Because less than 1 percent of the population serves, their struggles and strengths are often invisible to classmates and teachers.
“Americans’ military children don’t make American foreign policy, they live it,” says Mary Keller, president of the Military Child Education Coalition, an advocacy group.
When the Camilleris heard they were moving to Washington, they got in touch with Bolling’s full-time school liaison officer, a former teacher and ex-reservist named Daniel Dunham.
Dunham speaks softly and exudes calm despite the large coffee cup he’s always holding. The desk in his office at the base is covered with calendars, phone lists and maps that show where every D.C. school is. He put 50,000 miles on his car last year, driving to nearly 200 D.C. public schools.
He sees his role as a “cultural translator” who helps bridge the gap between military families and the schools their children attend. He was a military brat, attending five high schools, back when there were no school liaisons.
“I can recall having nightmares even after I started teaching high school about not graduating,” he says. “I always had this fear that I wouldn’t have enough credits and I would have to repeat a year.”
He has been one of the major proponents of putting a D.C. public charter school on the base. Middle and high school options are especially lacking. At the neighborhood schools only about 20 percent of the students are proficient or better in reading and math, according to D.C. Public Schools data. Many service members who live on base have opted for schools farther away. There are 255 students being bused from the base daily. Parents drive another 300 to school. Having an option on base would allow more families to live there, where the cost of living is low , and it would cut down on commutes that can be as long as two hours.
If the District succeeds in opening a school on the base, it would join a growing list of cities with charters for military children. Schools have been on military installations since 1816, but as the Department of Defense has consolidated or closed bases, it has shut more than 50 department-run schools since 2006 worldwide. The first charter school opened in 2001, and now there are eight at installations that educate nearly 3,000 students, two-thirds of whom are military.
Several states, including Maryland, have had to change their laws to allow charter schools to set aside spots for military children . On Joint Base Andrews in Prince George’s County, Md., Imagine Andrews Public Charter School reserves 65 percent of its seats for them. The five-year-old school is a joint venture between the county school system, the base and Imagine Schools, a for-profit company based in Arlington that operates about 70 schools in 12 states and the District, according to its Web site.
D.C. Council member David Grosso (I-At Large), who co-sponsored the bill to allow a charter school at Bolling, says local and military officials feel a sense of urgency to address the long-standing needs of this population.
“Having a school that understands their crazy schedules is really beneficial to the families,” he says. “It’s not like these are super-wealthy families, right? Military families are just getting by often, and to be able to say, ‘Well, we have this charter school and we’ve reserved these spaces for your child, a quality school,’ that takes the stress off a parent who has been shifted from one part of the country to another.”
Back at Leckie, the afternoon bell has just gone off. The sound of children laughing and talking fills the hallways. Several service members in uniform have come to pick up their children. Tiny shoes skip alongside their combat boots, trying to keep up. Larissa Camilleri leaves the parent resource room where she volunteers every afternoon and meets up with her boys.
She listens as Eric tells her about picture day.
“I took off my blazer to show my new shirt,” he says proudly.
“And you, Nicholas?”
“I did a good job,” he says shyly. “I smiled big!”
DC is giving low-income babies and toddlers the kind of childcare they need
Greater Greater Washington
By Natalie Wexler
April 9, 2015
The District has led the nation in making public preschool available to all children from the age of three. Now it's beginning to focus on improving child care for low-income children during the crucial years before three.
Last month, Mayor Muriel Bowser announced an initiative that promises to boost the quality of child care for some of the District's youngest, and poorest, children. Currently, about 750 babies and toddlers in DC benefit from the high standards set by the federal Early Head Start program. Soon another 400 will join them.
The expansion will be fueled by about $2.7 million in government funding this year. DC is providing $1.8 million of the money, with another $900,000 coming from the federal government. The federal award will continue for five years, although it's possible the annual allocation will change.
Congress created the Early Head Start program in 1994, prompted by research showing that much of a child's brain development occurs before age three, when regular Head Start programs begin.
Research has also shown that poverty has significant effects on the cognitive capabilities of infants and toddlers. One frequently cited study found that by the time low-income children reach age three, they've heard 30 million fewer words than their affluent peers. Recently, another study found that Latino children, especially those in immigrant families, start out with the same language and cognitive abilities as their white counterparts but lag significantly behind by age two.
The stress of living in poverty may even have an effect on the size of children's brains. Researchers have found that even one-month-old infants from poor families have smaller brains than wealthier babies.
These effects seem to be preventable and reversible, especially if young children engage in a lot of verbal interaction with adults. Some programs have attacked the early literacy gap through home visits designed to get low-income parents to speak to their young children more, and more encouragingly, or to read books to them.
Children and families benefit from Early Head Start
But another approach is to make sure infants and toddlers get verbal stimulation and emotional support at high-quality day care centers, where they may spend as much as ten hours a day. One study found that children who participated in Early Head Start performed better on measures of cognitive and socio-emotional development than a randomly selected control group.
Because Early Head Start also educates and engages parents, it can have an effect at home as well. The same study found that parents with children in the program did better on measures of parenting skills and were more likely to be employed.
But the program's reach has been limited. In 2010, Early Head Start served fewer than 4% of the children who were eligible nationwide. The situation has been somewhat better in DC. A spokesperson for the Office of the State Superintendent of Education (OSSE) estimated that Early Head Start here is now serving about 750 of the 5,600 who are eligible, or 13%. With the addition of 400 new slots, that will rise to 21%.
DC's grant is part of a $500 million Early Head Start expansion that Congress approved last year. Rather than expanding the programs of the large childcare providers currently certified as Early Head Start providers, DC chose to use the funds to create the Early Learning Quality Improvement Network (QIN). OSSE chose three large centers to serve as "hubs" for networks of smaller child-care providers.
The hubs will train and coach teachers at the smaller organizations, which include 14 childcare centers, located in all wards but Ward 3, and 12 home-based centers in Wards 1 and 4. And the smaller centers will use the hubs to offer families services like health care and help with literacy and nutrition. DC government agencies offering those services will partner with the hubs to provide them.
Help for small childcare centers
In the past, it's been difficult for smaller childcare providers to qualify for Early Head Start because they often lack the wherewithal to engage in the rigorous application process, according to HyeSook Chung, executive director of DC Action for Children. But the hub structure should enable them to offer their enrollees the high quality of care and comprehensive services that the larger centers in the program have been able to provide.
One of the centers in the QIN is Jubilee Jumpstart, which serves children from birth to age five. Located in an affordable housing site in Adams Morgan, it serves a total of 50 children, including 34 under the age of three.
Dee Dee Wright, the organization's executive director, says a coach from its assigned hub, United Planning Organization, has already begun visiting classrooms and helping staff improve their interaction with children.
Southeast Children's Fund, which operates two child care centers in Ward 8, is also participating in the initiative. Robert Gundling, deputy operating officer, said the centers serve a total of 106 children between six weeks and three years old.
While both Wright and Gundling said they're looking forward to having family service workers assigned to their families and to the coaching their teachers will receive, their centers may not need as much help as some others. Both already use well-regarded early childhood curricula that help foster social and language development. But if a center isn't already using a good curriculum, the QIN will provide one.
Clearly, the QIN will still leave out many low-income babies and toddlers. But at this point DC has chosen to focus on improving quality rather than simply expanding the number of daycare slots available. That makes sense, given what we now know about the importance of a child's experiences before age three.
Ultimately, though, we'll need to focus on scale as well as quality. Because high-quality childcare requires a high ratio of staff to children, that will take money. And of course, even excellent care doesn't guarantee that a baby or toddler will stay on a pathway to middle class, which Bowser has identified as the goal. Excellent schools and continuing social services are necessary as well.
But the QIN is at least a promising baby step in the direction of narrowing the achievement gap between low-income children and their more affluent peers.
Duncan wants new law to include early childhood education, state oversight
The Washington Post
By Lyndsey Layton
April 9, 2015
On the eve of the 50th anniversary of the nation’s main federal education law, Education Secretary Arne Duncan said Thursday that Congress needs to craft a modern version that stays true to the law’s intent: to create equal educational opportunity for all children.
Speaking beside a mural of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. at the District’s main library, which bears King’s name, Duncan said he was heartened by a bipartisan plan to upgrade the law written by Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), chairman of the Senate education panel, and the ranking Democrat, Sen. Patty Murray (Wash.).
“I’m just glad we have a Republican and a Democrat who are actually talking and trying to work together,” Duncan said. “There’s a long way to go in the process, and we don’t know whether it will lead to anything or collapse at some point. But I’ve said for six years that we need a bill for the country.”
Saturday marks the 50th anniversary of President Lyndon Johnson’s signing of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, one of several key pieces of civil rights legislation passed by Congress. The law was designed largely as a way to create educational opportunities for disadvantaged children by sending federal dollars to states to help pay the cost of educating disadvantaged children, students with disabilities and English learners.
It has been updated several times, most recently in 2002 when President George W. Bush signed the latest version, known as No Child Left Behind.
But that version was due for reauthorization in 2007, and several attempts have fallen apart amid partisan debates in Congress about the appropriate role of the federal government in local schools.
Observers say the current effort by Alexander and Murray stands the best chance in years. The Senate education committee is scheduled to take up the bipartisan proposal April 14, and Alexander hopes to bring it to the full Senate for a vote before Memorial Day. Efforts to pass a bill in the House are less clear; a GOP bill was passed by committee on a party line vote but the legislation was pulled off the House floor mid-debate in February after complaints by conservatives that it didn’t go far enough to scale back federal oversight of schools.
Duncan was generally positive about the Alexander-Murray bill but said the Obama administration wants a final law to expand early childhood education and to place stronger demands on states to improve their worst-performing schools, among other things.
“The goal is not just to acknowledge a problem, to identify a problem, but to do something about it,” Duncan said. “One of the things we’ve done at the federal level is to challenge states and districts to take on the lowest-performing schools. The fact that the high school graduation rate is at an all-time high, the fact that African American dropout rates have been cut by 45 percent and Latino dropout rates have been cut by half, that would not have happened” without pressure from the federal government.
The Alexander-Murray bill is striking in its attempt to shrink the authority of the U.S. Department of Education, transferring power over schools from the federal government back to the states.
Duncan has been arguably the most influential education secretary since the department was created in 1979, thanks to two things — the $4.3 billion he distributed through his Race to the Top competitive grant program and the waivers issued to states to free them from the most onerous aspects of No Child Left Behind as the country waited for Congress to rewrite the law. In both cases, states had to embrace education policies favored by Duncan to win a grant or waiver.
He said Thursday that he never intended to amass power.
“We never asked for all this,” he said. “We simply stepped into a void of Congress’s dysfunction. The goal is never to have power, we’ve actually been trying to give it away for a long time [by urging Congress to update the law]. The goal is to have students learn . . . and if we can have a bill that helps students learn, that scales what’s working and accelerates the pace of progress, that would be fantastic.”
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