Alice Deal for All: Only by Breaking Student Count-Funding Link

[Anonymous]

Yes. I was surprised that the arguments put forward after the first round of proposals to try to convince parents to send their kids to failing schools were so often about the physical space --- "but Cardozo has been renovated!" This seemed surprisingly tone deaf to me, but... that may to some extent be my middle class bias. I've never attended or sent my kid to a school that was falling apart, so I kind of take safe, functional physical plant for granted.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Jeff you are absolutely correct. It's how DCPS kept a few smaller schools programming strong and growing but that was all before charters. Now we can't ever go back to that thanks to the PPF created by Mary Levy, who now admits it was a mistake. But really, there was nothing else that could be done once we had charters.

It's disappointing that school leaders like Mary Levy couldn't predict this totally inevitable scenario. Maybe we could implement Jeff's idea by calculating the PPF on a 3 or 5 year rolling average. Then new or reconstituted schools can get a "bonus" to their initial enrollment that gives them a fighting chance to grow their programs for the first few years.