how do we argue for more money for schools?

[Anonymous]

This is at least the 3rd year in a row that the Mayor and Chancellor have pushed out press releases stating that they are increasing funding for DCPS schools when they are actually cutting funding. Each year they push more costs onto schools without providing more funding. Last year (or 2 years ag0?) it was security costs. This year they provided $0 for non-personnel funding. That means schools need to cut staffing positions if they want to have money to pay for paper and cleaning supplies.

Now, it seems they want to require schools to use the federal stimulus funding to pay for outside organizations to push in after school programs while at the same time cutting actual in-school teaching staff and support staff. It's a clear diversion of funding from schools to non-school entities.

Some parents and LSATs have been trying to fight back against this continual bait and switch for several years now with no success. The Mayor keeps getting away with it. I honestly don't know how to get the oversight and transparency that is needed.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Or we could slash pay for teachers, since they're only working part time now.

Great way to retain the best and brightest. You must be an economist. Think you can control everything but don't actually understand the system.

Hard pass.

Actually an economist would advocate for higher pay to retain and attract better teachers.

There's a paper on DC teacher hiring. They're not hiring the better teachers who apply. Increasing the applicant pool doesn't help if you're picking them essentially randomly with respect to characteristics predictive of performance.

https://www.nber.org/papers/w22054

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is at least the 3rd year in a row that the Mayor and Chancellor have pushed out press releases stating that they are increasing funding for DCPS schools when they are actually cutting funding. Each year they push more costs onto schools without providing more funding. Last year (or 2 years ag0?) it was security costs. This year they provided $0 for non-personnel funding. That means schools need to cut staffing positions if they want to have money to pay for paper and cleaning supplies.

Now, it seems they want to require schools to use the federal stimulus funding to pay for outside organizations to push in after school programs while at the same time cutting actual in-school teaching staff and support staff. It's a clear diversion of funding from schools to non-school entities.

Some parents and LSATs have been trying to fight back against this continual bait and switch for several years now with no success. The Mayor keeps getting away with it. I honestly don't know how to get the oversight and transparency that is needed.

Yup, this is the thing. It should be a scandal.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is at least the 3rd year in a row that the Mayor and Chancellor have pushed out press releases stating that they are increasing funding for DCPS schools when they are actually cutting funding. Each year they push more costs onto schools without providing more funding. Last year (or 2 years ag0?) it was security costs. This year they provided $0 for non-personnel funding. That means schools need to cut staffing positions if they want to have money to pay for paper and cleaning supplies.

Now, it seems they want to require schools to use the federal stimulus funding to pay for outside organizations to push in after school programs while at the same time cutting actual in-school teaching staff and support staff. It's a clear diversion of funding from schools to non-school entities.

Some parents and LSATs have been trying to fight back against this continual bait and switch for several years now with no success. The Mayor keeps getting away with it. I honestly don't know how to get the oversight and transparency that is needed.

What are you talking about? According to my school’s budget sheet we get non personnel funding and after you take away all the money lost due to cuts, 50k in stimulus money.

[Anonymous]

I’m confused all the schools I saw got cut but came out on top due to stimulus money. What am I missing?
Usually they don’t increase the budget, this time they technically have even though it’s not enough.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I’m confused all the schools I saw got cut but came out on top due to stimulus money. What am I missing?
Usually they don’t increase the budget, this time they technically have even though it’s not enough.

The stimulus money is earmarked for use for outside groups for tutoring, after school, summer programs. There’s a list of organizations.

Also, supplies are included in the total budget envelope, before they were in a separate envelope.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m confused all the schools I saw got cut but came out on top due to stimulus money. What am I missing?
Usually they don’t increase the budget, this time they technically have even though it’s not enough.

The stimulus money is earmarked for use for outside groups for tutoring, after school, summer programs. There’s a list of organizations.

Also, supplies are included in the total budget envelope, before they were in a separate envelope.

Where does it say this? I’m on the FY22 budget site now and for my child’s school it just says the stimulus money is for supplemental services. So they are going to use over 200k to hire people outside of the school and lose 1 teacher......

And yes, I see that for the supplies. I don’t get why they want to control where this money is going to this extent. It’s not like schools can use it in a unethical manner.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m confused all the schools I saw got cut but came out on top due to stimulus money. What am I missing?
Usually they don’t increase the budget, this time they technically have even though it’s not enough.

The stimulus money is earmarked for use for outside groups for tutoring, after school, summer programs. There’s a list of organizations.

Also, supplies are included in the total budget envelope, before they were in a separate envelope.

Where does it say this? I’m on the FY22 budget site now and for my child’s school it just says the stimulus money is for supplemental services. So they are going to use over 200k to hire people outside of the school and lose 1 teacher......

And yes, I see that for the supplies. I don’t get why they want to control where this money is going to this extent. It’s not like schools can use it in a unethical manner.

This is what principals have been told when asked if they could deploy the CARES money to cover staff positions. DCPS is smart enough to be vague on the website....

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is at least the 3rd year in a row that the Mayor and Chancellor have pushed out press releases stating that they are increasing funding for DCPS schools when they are actually cutting funding. Each year they push more costs onto schools without providing more funding. Last year (or 2 years ag0?) it was security costs. This year they provided $0 for non-personnel funding. That means schools need to cut staffing positions if they want to have money to pay for paper and cleaning supplies.

Now, it seems they want to require schools to use the federal stimulus funding to pay for outside organizations to push in after school programs while at the same time cutting actual in-school teaching staff and support staff. It's a clear diversion of funding from schools to non-school entities.

Some parents and LSATs have been trying to fight back against this continual bait and switch for several years now with no success. The Mayor keeps getting away with it. I honestly don't know how to get the oversight and transparency that is needed.

What are you talking about? According to my school’s budget sheet we get non personnel funding and after you take away all the money lost due to cuts, 50k in stimulus money.

Name the school please - every school I’ve heard about had their non personnel funding line at 0.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is at least the 3rd year in a row that the Mayor and Chancellor have pushed out press releases stating that they are increasing funding for DCPS schools when they are actually cutting funding. Each year they push more costs onto schools without providing more funding. Last year (or 2 years ag0?) it was security costs. This year they provided $0 for non-personnel funding. That means schools need to cut staffing positions if they want to have money to pay for paper and cleaning supplies.

Now, it seems they want to require schools to use the federal stimulus funding to pay for outside organizations to push in after school programs while at the same time cutting actual in-school teaching staff and support staff. It's a clear diversion of funding from schools to non-school entities.

Some parents and LSATs have been trying to fight back against this continual bait and switch for several years now with no success. The Mayor keeps getting away with it. I honestly don't know how to get the oversight and transparency that is needed.

What are you talking about? According to my school’s budget sheet we get non personnel funding and after you take away all the money lost due to cuts, 50k in stimulus money.

Name the school please - every school I’ve heard about had their non personnel funding line at 0.

Both of my children’s schools, on is Janney. They have a section titled non personnel spending under every school.
Janney’s is 114k.

From what someone else said it seems that’s a sham?