DC Charters are behind national standards for transparency, open meetings, etc.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Where can we find contracts under $100K, hmmm?

When will they fulfill the City Paper's FOIA requests about TenSquare, hmmmm?

Charter school parent here...I see several sides of this and appreciate the insights of the PPs. I feel like the anti-charter rhetoric is a too heated and knowing the people at my school (after nearly 10 years at the same charter school) I have a hard time buying in to some of the stuff I read on DCUM. They are all kind people that seem like they are trying to do what is right for kids.

But...to your questions:

I, too, hope they respond to it soon- TenSquare is totally a problem and the PCSB needs to do something to make sure what is happening with this organization and schools is more clear.

That said, TenSquare is not a charter school and changing the laws that impact every school seems like overkill.

You can find every contract over 25K listed in the monthly consent calendar on PCSB's site-https://www.livebinders.com/b/2518905#anchor

While this is not the whole contract, you clearly know schools have submitted them to PCSB and you can FOIA the specific contract.

Also, not trying to be snarky, but how do you find a contract from DCPS over 25K? What about any contract in DC government? I don't see how this is the right threshold for schools but maybe I just don't pay enough attention to DCPS to know. Having sat on my school's board for some time, I certainly know we submit a lot to PCSB.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Where can we find contracts under $100K, hmmm?

When will they fulfill the City Paper's FOIA requests about TenSquare, hmmmm?

Charter school parent here...I see several sides of this and appreciate the insights of the PPs. I feel like the anti-charter rhetoric is a too heated and knowing the people at my school (after nearly 10 years at the same charter school) I have a hard time buying in to some of the stuff I read on DCUM. They are all kind people that seem like they are trying to do what is right for kids.

But...to your questions:

I, too, hope they respond to it soon- TenSquare is totally a problem and the PCSB needs to do something to make sure what is happening with this organization and schools is more clear.

That said, TenSquare is not a charter school and changing the laws that impact every school seems like overkill.

You can find every contract over 25K listed in the monthly consent calendar on PCSB's site-https://www.livebinders.com/b/2518905#anchor

While this is not the whole contract, you clearly know schools have submitted them to PCSB and you can FOIA the specific contract.

Also, not trying to be snarky, but how do you find a contract from DCPS over 25K? What about any contract in DC government? I don't see how this is the right threshold for schools but maybe I just don't pay enough attention to DCPS to know. Having sat on my school's board for some time, I certainly know we submit a lot to PCSB.

You know they raised the contract dollar amount to $100K, right?

"A lot" of information is not helpful if it is not the information that is necessary to guard public funds. And it isn't helpful to say "you can FOIA it" if they never respond to the FOIA request. I didn't go into this as a suspicious person but as it goes on and on it really does feel like something is being hidden.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Where can we find contracts under $100K, hmmm?

When will they fulfill the City Paper's FOIA requests about TenSquare, hmmmm?

Charter school parent here...I see several sides of this and appreciate the insights of the PPs. I feel like the anti-charter rhetoric is a too heated and knowing the people at my school (after nearly 10 years at the same charter school) I have a hard time buying in to some of the stuff I read on DCUM. They are all kind people that seem like they are trying to do what is right for kids.

But...to your questions:

I, too, hope they respond to it soon- TenSquare is totally a problem and the PCSB needs to do something to make sure what is happening with this organization and schools is more clear.

That said, TenSquare is not a charter school and changing the laws that impact every school seems like overkill.

You can find every contract over 25K listed in the monthly consent calendar on PCSB's site-https://www.livebinders.com/b/2518905#anchor

While this is not the whole contract, you clearly know schools have submitted them to PCSB and you can FOIA the specific contract.

Also, not trying to be snarky, but how do you find a contract from DCPS over 25K? What about any contract in DC government? I don't see how this is the right threshold for schools but maybe I just don't pay enough attention to DCPS to know. Having sat on my school's board for some time, I certainly know we submit a lot to PCSB.

Unfortunately, only PCSB discloses its contracts, which is great, but that leaves $100 millions being spent by the dozens of charter operators.


Dcps contracts - and even individual teacher salaries are in the city’s audited financials every year.

[Anonymous]

Those against transparency, I am sure you can enlighten us as to why Some charter leaders make exorbitant pay like $500k? Should public education be paying those kinds of salaries?

[Anonymous]

Charter schools have to submit all procurement documents for contracts over 25k. These are listed in the PCSB minutes each month. The schools also submit the actual contracts for any deal over 100k (until recently the threshold was 25k). Also, all audited financials for every school are posted on PCSB site. Those audits have a list of any vendor paid more than 25k in a single year.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Those against transparency, I am sure you can enlighten us as to why Some charter leaders make exorbitant pay like $500k? Should public education be paying those kinds of salaries?

Why should the CEO of any nonprofit make that kind of money? Many take public dollars and perform services on behalf of the government.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Charter schools have to submit all procurement documents for contracts over 25k. These are listed in the PCSB minutes each month. The schools also submit the actual contracts for any deal over 100k (until recently the threshold was 25k). Also, all audited financials for every school are posted on PCSB site. Those audits have a list of any vendor paid more than 25k in a single year.

Right, but you can no longer FOIA the actual contract because you can FOIA the PCSB but not individual schools. So there's no way to dig into whether transactions are really arms-length or whether it's a bunch of cozy relationships and back-scratching insiders shoveling public funds out to private consultants that don't provide value.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Those against transparency, I am sure you can enlighten us as to why Some charter leaders make exorbitant pay like $500k? Should public education be paying those kinds of salaries?

Why should the CEO of any nonprofit make that kind of money? Many take public dollars and perform services on behalf of the government.

If you mandate that leaders of non-profits can’t make more than say $200k then all the people who are qualified to effectively lead large organizations will take private sector jobs. I make about $190k working from home with no staff to supervise, no budget to manage and no board to report to. I want someone way more qualifies than me managing billion dollar non-profits.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Where can we find contracts under $100K, hmmm?

When will they fulfill the City Paper's FOIA requests about TenSquare, hmmmm?

Charter school parent here...I see several sides of this and appreciate the insights of the PPs. I feel like the anti-charter rhetoric is a too heated and knowing the people at my school (after nearly 10 years at the same charter school) I have a hard time buying in to some of the stuff I read on DCUM. They are all kind people that seem like they are trying to do what is right for kids.

But...to your questions:

I, too, hope they respond to it soon- TenSquare is totally a problem and the PCSB needs to do something to make sure what is happening with this organization and schools is more clear.

That said, TenSquare is not a charter school and changing the laws that impact every school seems like overkill.

You can find every contract over 25K listed in the monthly consent calendar on PCSB's site-https://www.livebinders.com/b/2518905#anchor

While this is not the whole contract, you clearly know schools have submitted them to PCSB and you can FOIA the specific contract.

Also, not trying to be snarky, but how do you find a contract from DCPS over 25K? What about any contract in DC government? I don't see how this is the right threshold for schools but maybe I just don't pay enough attention to DCPS to know. Having sat on my school's board for some time, I certainly know we submit a lot to PCSB.

You can find a lot more than that: https://contracts.ocp.dc.gov/

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Those against transparency, I am sure you can enlighten us as to why Some charter leaders make exorbitant pay like $500k? Should public education be paying those kinds of salaries?

Why should the CEO of any nonprofit make that kind of money? Many take public dollars and perform services on behalf of the government.

If you mandate that leaders of non-profits can’t make more than say $200k then all the people who are qualified to effectively lead large organizations will take private sector jobs. I make about $190k working from home with no staff to supervise, no budget to manage and no board to report to. I want someone way more qualifies than me managing billion dollar non-profits.

Large national or international non-profits are in a different league from a DC public charter school. Charter schools have such tight budgets and on average the teachers make far less than their DCPS counterparts, and in reality they're accountable only to the board. So no, a Principal or Head of School shouldn't have a salary of $300K+. Most of them aren't doing stellar jobs. Look at the test scores for some of these HRCs. The performance of some of these leaders is very poor yet they're not held accountable and parents have nowhere to go to demand better.

[Anonymous]

this whole thing seems dumb. just people who hate charter schools trying to come up with a reason to trash them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:this whole thing seems dumb. just people who hate charter schools trying to come up with a reason to trash them.

Yep.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:this whole thing seems dumb. just people who hate charter schools trying to come up with a reason to trash them.

That’s pretty simplistic. I don’t hate charters. My kids go to one. But I’m all for increasing transparency and I haven’t heard any persuasive reasons for not opening board meetings and subjecting charters to FOIA. The objections sound to me like general resistance to regulation by the PCSB, and I think it’s reasonable for parents and teachers to question that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:this whole thing seems dumb. just people who hate charter schools trying to come up with a reason to trash them.

That’s pretty simplistic. I don’t hate charters. My kids go to one. But I’m all for increasing transparency and I haven’t heard any persuasive reasons for not opening board meetings and subjecting charters to FOIA. The objections sound to me like general resistance to regulation by the PCSB, and I think it’s reasonable for parents and teachers to question that.

Because so many parents and teachers are yearning to FOIA charters.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:this whole thing seems dumb. just people who hate charter schools trying to come up with a reason to trash them.

That’s pretty simplistic. I don’t hate charters. My kids go to one. But I’m all for increasing transparency and I haven’t heard any persuasive reasons for not opening board meetings and subjecting charters to FOIA. The objections sound to me like general resistance to regulation by the PCSB, and I think it’s reasonable for parents and teachers to question that.

Because so many parents and teachers are yearning to FOIA charters.

I agree that there will not be a flood of requests. But that means it won’t be burdensome, so why oppose it? And there’s no reason board meetings shouldn’t be open. Organizations are going to be more accountable to the public when their decision making isn’t private.