Wilson funding petition v. At Risk funding petition

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04/20/2015 18:01

Subject: Wilson funding petition v. At Risk funding petition

quote

Anonymous

Here's a letter from CHristopher Rinkus at DCPS about the budget cuts to Wilson. The bottom line is that in order to fund more $ for at risk students, the per pupil funding was cut severely at Wilson. That is how DCPS came up with more money. You don't fix one problem by causing another.

Chancellor Henderson asked that I share the following with you on her behalf.

Over the past several years, DCPS has budgeted and staffed hundreds of new teacher positions, in content areas like art, science and world language. We have extended the hours in the school day at dozens of schools. We’ve added more social workers, more school psychologists, and more special education teachers. These added resources correlate with other recent positive changes: in 2014, DCPS enrolled more new students than any other single point in the past 47 years.

For the upcoming year, we are introducing over twelve million dollars in new positions and programs for neighborhood high schools. We’ve directed funding to support advanced courses like honors and Advanced Placement for every high school. We will also continue the good work of the NAF Academies by providing new funding to replace expiring state funding. High schools will finally receive dedicated coordinators to oversee athletics and extracurricular clubs, along with dedicated funding for those activities.

The upcoming year will also be different because of how we allocated resources to support “at-risk” students. Previously, we pooled our at-risk funding and invested it in specific positions, including new social workers for middle schools, and specific programs, like the Proving What’s Possible (PWP) awards. While these targeted investments undoubtedly made a difference, it put DCPS out of compliance with the law.

To comply with the law, DCPS allocated its at-risk funds in direct proportion to the expected number of at-risk students at each school for the upcoming year. This represents an important change to the budgeting process. Moving forward, school budget allocations will be weighted more heavily towards schools with higher concentrations of at-risk students. Conversely, schools with low concentrations of at-risk students will receive less funding compared to the current year.

For a school like Wilson, with a lower percentage of at-risk students compared to other neighborhood high schools, the change from a general at-risk allocation to a proportional at-risk allocation had an impact. Our implementation of the PWP award is an example: in the current fiscal year, Wilson’s PWP award was $100 per student, for a total of about $170,000. For the upcoming fiscal year, PWP is newly fixed to the number of at-risk students, and totals about $30,000—a reduction of approximately $140,000 in funding that Wilson received in the current fiscal year. For schools with higher percentages of at-risk students, the new PWP award formula resulted in more money than the current fiscal year.

There were other challenges associated with this switch. For example, when we pooled our at-risk funding this year, we overfunded middle schools and education campuses compared to a proportional allocation. A strictly proportional allocation would require taking back that funding from middle schools. That was impossible to justify after making the new investment less than a year ago. To protect the middle school investment, we identified acceptable cuts elsewhere to generate sufficient savings to be reinvested in underfunded at-risk schools.

To find these savings, we thoroughly reviewed the central office budget, and made cuts of over fifteen million dollars. This will result in a modest reduction-in-force of central office staff. We then revisited the elements of the school budget that mainly supported schools with small percentages of at-risk students. This included the per pupil funding minimum (PPFM), which was established three years ago to steer additional funds to our largest schools. Previously, the largest schools were effectively subsidizing smaller, higher-need schools, which resulted in smaller per student spends for the large school. The PPFM introduced more balance, although at significant cost: PPFM cost about nine million dollars during the current fiscal year for nine schools, including three million dollars to Wilson. So, in order to realize the savings necessary to protect earlier investments in middle schools, to proportionately allocate at-risk funding, and to undertake new high school investments, the PPFM was cut from its current level. In the case of Wilson, the PPFM payment was reduced altogether.

On the other hand, Wilson benefits from the new high school investments. The school gains several important, sustainable advantages from the reworked high school allocation model, including new content area teachers, new special education teachers, new NAF Academy personnel, and a new athletics and extracurricular coordinator. These new allocations mostly offset the loss of PPFM and PWP funding, although not entirely.

We recognize that one of the challenges facing Wilson is a shifting budget even in light of a growing enrollment. The situation is made more difficult given the current space constraints. One reason behind the recent review of the city’s boundaries and feeder patterns was the acute pressure faced by Wilson. DCPS adopted the recommendations of the review panel as the correct long-term solution to this problem. In the short term, Principal Bargeman and Superintendent Shea will implement several fixes to help reduce the immediate enrollment pressure. Done correctly, these fixes will help right-size enrollment so that the allocated resources match the expected need for the upcoming year.

First, there has been an informal tradition at Wilson in recent years to admit siblings of current out-of-boundary students. Given the space constraints, this practice will not be continued. Although DCPS values keeping siblings together when possible, it is not fair to continue this practice in light of the school’s facility constraints.

Second, there are currently over one hundred out-of-boundary students attending Wilson who are noncompliant with the DCPS out-of-boundary attendance policy. The policy mandates that an out-of-boundary student cannot have more than ten unexcused absences. Wilson has mailed out notification that out-of-boundary students may be excluded from enrolling at Wilson next year if they fail to maintain good attendance this year. In years past, these notifications have been sent, but not enforced. This year, the policy will be enforced.

Third, there are several dozen students who are 19 years old or older currently at the school who are not receiving Special Education or English Language Learner (ELL) services. Those students will be referred to one of our alternative high schools, or one of our STAY programs, which are designed for adult learners.

Lastly, the DCPS application high schools and other nearby neighborhood high schools will do more outreach to Wilson’s feeder middle schools. If there are other options within DCPS that incoming or current Wilson families are interested in exploring, those efforts should be encouraged.

The goal is to help put Wilson in the best possible position for the upcoming year, understanding the limited resources and physical space available. It’s also in recognition on the fact that shifting from a general at-risk allocation to a strictly proportional at-risk allocation can be a difficult shift for schools like Wilson with lower percentages of at-risk students.

The budget process is zero-sum, and any time we direct more resources to one place it means fewer resources available for another. One suggestion is to allocate an extra million dollars to Wilson for the upcoming year. Unfortunately, a million dollars to Wilson now would require a million dollars in cuts to other schools, or additional reductions to the central office beyond the $15 million in cuts already planned. Cutting the central office further risks its ability to remain a viable support for schools. Cutting schools would mean taking funds from those same schools with high concentrations of at-risk students that benefitted from the proportional allocation mandated by the law.

The budget that was submitted by DCPS represents the single best effort to comply with the law and to protect recent strategic investments. These investments were created in direct response to feedback from the community and from elected officials about the need for more resources and greater equity across all middle schools.