Charter school funding gap in FY27 budget

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Very weirdly framed petition. Charter schools should get the same amount, which relies on Early Stage funding even though you don’t do that? Glad you don’t feel as strongly about that, but given that it’s required to get to the equal funding… suggests you don’t actually feel strongly about equal funding, no?

Ya, I also find this weird. We are at another charter and there is no chatter around this movement (not from the school, and not from parents). The school does raise a tremendous amount of money to top off teacher salaries.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DCPS is stuck with its buildings for the long term and has to plan for long term needs and deal with long term maintenance and compliance in 100+ year old buildings. It was a huge struggle for our school just to get the bathrooms made non-awful. GDS takes forever to fix anything. Being part of a larger system has really significant down sides.

Have you been inside Yu Ying, or the new Latin Cooper building? They're as nice as any, certainly way nicer than our Ward 5 Title I.

And of course, why invest in charter buildings when everyone, including the PCSB, is saying the sector is going to contract?

Yes, those buildings are nice--and cost the schools specifcally money to build.

Have you been the Lafayette Elementary? Dorothy Heights? Both absolutely stunning.

Seen the giant project that Whittier is getting for their temporary campus during their remodel? Millions and millions of dollars so those kids don't have to ride a bus to a flex space.

DCPS schools are getting tons spent on their remodels.

Just looking at it from the sidewalk, it seems a little nuts this is the plan.

The parents in the neighborhood pushing it were so annoying. Some of them didn’t even have kids on the school yet. Would have been so much simpler to just bus the kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Mundo's argument is that it... Serves kids from Ward 4 and Ward 5? And that's supposed to get them more sympathy? Mundo as a LEA serves 193 at-risk kids.16% of their kids are at-risk. DCPS is 43% at-risk. So excuse me if I don't care.

My charter has 70% at-risk kids. Care about them?

Is the charter's performance measurably better than nearby DCPS schools serving similar populations?

Yes, significantly measurably better.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DCPS is stuck with its buildings for the long term and has to plan for long term needs and deal with long term maintenance and compliance in 100+ year old buildings. It was a huge struggle for our school just to get the bathrooms made non-awful. GDS takes forever to fix anything. Being part of a larger system has really significant down sides.

Have you been inside Yu Ying, or the new Latin Cooper building? They're as nice as any, certainly way nicer than our Ward 5 Title I.

And of course, why invest in charter buildings when everyone, including the PCSB, is saying the sector is going to contract?

Yes, those buildings are nice--and cost the schools specifcally money to build.

Have you been the Lafayette Elementary? Dorothy Heights? Both absolutely stunning.

Seen the giant project that Whittier is getting for their temporary campus during their remodel? Millions and millions of dollars so those kids don't have to ride a bus to a flex space.

DCPS schools are getting tons spent on their remodels.

To add to your list: Burroughs and Bunker Hill too. Swing space is great. Remodel for Burroughs looks amazing.

And Brookland Middle might not be a great school, but it’s got a lovely building.

The new remodels are amazing. Those kids deserve those better buildings. If you've been here in DC a while, you know just how bad the buildings were (and in some places still are). The charter kids deserve decent facilities too. The people who hate charters (most who don't even have kids in schools) have made the issues into DCPS versus charters. When it should be here's what it takes to educate kids adequately and then make it fair across DCPS and charters.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DCPS is stuck with its buildings for the long term and has to plan for long term needs and deal with long term maintenance and compliance in 100+ year old buildings. It was a huge struggle for our school just to get the bathrooms made non-awful. GDS takes forever to fix anything. Being part of a larger system has really significant down sides.

Have you been inside Yu Ying, or the new Latin Cooper building? They're as nice as any, certainly way nicer than our Ward 5 Title I.

And of course, why invest in charter buildings when everyone, including the PCSB, is saying the sector is going to contract?

Yes, those buildings are nice--and cost the schools specifcally money to build.

Have you been the Lafayette Elementary? Dorothy Heights? Both absolutely stunning.

Seen the giant project that Whittier is getting for their temporary campus during their remodel? Millions and millions of dollars so those kids don't have to ride a bus to a flex space.

DCPS schools are getting tons spent on their remodels.

To add to your list: Burroughs and Bunker Hill too. Swing space is great. Remodel for Burroughs looks amazing.

And Brookland Middle might not be a great school, but it’s got a lovely building.

The new remodels are amazing. Those kids deserve those better buildings. If you've been here in DC a while, you know just how bad the buildings were (and in some places still are). The charter kids deserve decent facilities too. The people who hate charters (most who don't even have kids in schools) have made the issues into DCPS versus charters. When it should be here's what it takes to educate kids adequately and then make it fair across DCPS and charters.

Well, it's a question of what's "fair" when one part of the system has to take kids all year and guarantee enough space in perpetuity, and the other side doesn't have to do that or care about that at all.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Oh FFS. Clicked through the talking points and it says "this is coming in the form of line items for teacher bonuses (IMPACT) and Early Stages ( early intervention (which I don’t feel as strongly about because we don’t do it in the charter sector at the moment)"

Well if you're not doing Early Stages kids then you don't get the money for Early Stages kids! Obviously. Oh, you "don't feel as strongly"? Come on. No kids no money, it's as simple as that. Anything else is insane.

It's funny how charters hate the union so much, but when the union bargains for wages, charters want the same money despite doing none of the work.

The teachers at my school negotiated for a starting wage of 70K. The teachers at the newish Montessori school start at 100K. Is the city going to match those since those teachers/charters did the work to get there? How about the charters that have negotiated better food contracts than DCPS. Is the DCPS amount going to be lowered?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Oh FFS. Clicked through the talking points and it says "this is coming in the form of line items for teacher bonuses (IMPACT) and Early Stages ( early intervention (which I don’t feel as strongly about because we don’t do it in the charter sector at the moment)"

Well if you're not doing Early Stages kids then you don't get the money for Early Stages kids! Obviously. Oh, you "don't feel as strongly"? Come on. No kids no money, it's as simple as that. Anything else is insane.

It's funny how charters hate the union so much, but when the union bargains for wages, charters want the same money despite doing none of the work.

The teachers at my school negotiated for a starting wage of 70K. The teachers at the newish Montessori school start at 100K. Is the city going to match those since those teachers/charters did the work to get there? How about the charters that have negotiated better food contracts than DCPS. Is the DCPS amount going to be lowered?

The ability to try to negotiate better deals is part of the rationale for charters. But since it's harder to find a provider willing to serve a very large school system, I'm not sure DCPS can get the same deals. It's a different part of the services market.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DCPS is stuck with its buildings for the long term and has to plan for long term needs and deal with long term maintenance and compliance in 100+ year old buildings. It was a huge struggle for our school just to get the bathrooms made non-awful. GDS takes forever to fix anything. Being part of a larger system has really significant down sides.

Have you been inside Yu Ying, or the new Latin Cooper building? They're as nice as any, certainly way nicer than our Ward 5 Title I.

And of course, why invest in charter buildings when everyone, including the PCSB, is saying the sector is going to contract?

Yes, those buildings are nice--and cost the schools specifcally money to build.

Have you been the Lafayette Elementary? Dorothy Heights? Both absolutely stunning.

Seen the giant project that Whittier is getting for their temporary campus during their remodel? Millions and millions of dollars so those kids don't have to ride a bus to a flex space.

DCPS schools are getting tons spent on their remodels.

To add to your list: Burroughs and Bunker Hill too. Swing space is great. Remodel for Burroughs looks amazing.

And Brookland Middle might not be a great school, but it’s got a lovely building.

The new remodels are amazing. Those kids deserve those better buildings. If you've been here in DC a while, you know just how bad the buildings were (and in some places still are). The charter kids deserve decent facilities too. The people who hate charters (most who don't even have kids in schools) have made the issues into DCPS versus charters. When it should be here's what it takes to educate kids adequately and then make it fair across DCPS and charters.

Yes I totally agree!

One thing I was thinking about after I posted that is whether the outcomes for DC kids are actually best served by looking at the budget going to schools. I've been really struck by the fact that schools here don't seem under-resourced. It's that there's a huge portion of kids whose home lives are difficult - because their parents are working three jobs and don't have time or energy to parent on top of that; because their housing situations aren't safe (a five year old was playing on the street yesterday afternoon and got shot...), etc. The schools (and particularly the teachers) then have to bear all of that, but their job should be to educate, not to correct for all of these other failures that have accumulated before the kid even opens the door.

My son and I were walking past a middle school the other day where this mother was just laying into her kid because she had to pick him up early. Screaming and swearing. He was barely even trying to defend himself by the end. My 3 year old started crying and snuggled up to me, looking for reassurance. Meanwhile, that poor middle school kid isn't going to trust his mom to take care of him or call her when he needs help; and she's probably totally frazzled because she's had to leave work early and doesn't know how she's going to pay the bills. I'm projecting, obviously, but I just wonder how much thought is given to how we serve DC kids outside of schools, and whether actually the budget and policies that would most impact school performance really have anything to do with schools at all.

Sorry... that was a long one. Just feeling a little heartbroken for kids here and for the way the discourse seems to play out on this platform of presumably well-meaning parents who want the best for DC.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The difference in the facilities budget does feel unfair (DCPS school renovations are funded through the Capital Budget and DGS, while charters have limited funding through the schools budget, which is why we see these insane renovations for DCPS schools but charter schools feel more modest.)

Only a handful of DCPS schools have gotten "insane renovations," and those were politically driven.

Most DCPS buildings suck, and when they do get renovated, it is at minimal quality. Then they don't get maintained.

You want to rely on DGS for your facilities? We'd be happy to trade places on that one.

Yeah, I mean just look at this shitty DCPS facility: https://perkinswill.com/project/ballou-senior-high-school/

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Very weirdly framed petition. Charter schools should get the same amount, which relies on Early Stage funding even though you don’t do that? Glad you don’t feel as strongly about that, but given that it’s required to get to the equal funding… suggests you don’t actually feel strongly about equal funding, no?

Ya, I also find this weird. We are at another charter and there is no chatter around this movement (not from the school, and not from parents). The school does raise a tremendous amount of money to top off teacher salaries.

If it’s Yu Ying, they aren’t worried. If it’s not… YY raises a ton of money to supplement salaries as well.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DCPS is stuck with its buildings for the long term and has to plan for long term needs and deal with long term maintenance and compliance in 100+ year old buildings. It was a huge struggle for our school just to get the bathrooms made non-awful. GDS takes forever to fix anything. Being part of a larger system has really significant down sides.

Have you been inside Yu Ying, or the new Latin Cooper building? They're as nice as any, certainly way nicer than our Ward 5 Title I.

And of course, why invest in charter buildings when everyone, including the PCSB, is saying the sector is going to contract?

Yes, those buildings are nice--and cost the schools specifcally money to build.

Have you been the Lafayette Elementary? Dorothy Heights? Both absolutely stunning.

Seen the giant project that Whittier is getting for their temporary campus during their remodel? Millions and millions of dollars so those kids don't have to ride a bus to a flex space.

DCPS schools are getting tons spent on their remodels.

Just looking at it from the sidewalk, it seems a little nuts this is the plan.

The parents in the neighborhood pushing it were so annoying. Some of them didn’t even have kids on the school yet. Would have been so much simpler to just bus the kids.

+1 I drive past the space they're building for Whittier almost daily. It's wild that the city agreed to wreck/occupy the public park space and spend all those millions to build a temporary swing space rather than bus the kids to a brick and mortar, perfectly fine building a couple miles away. I heard they're going to tear it right back down when Whittier is done with it too and that (unlike Burroughs) it won't be used for additional schools.

Agree it boils down to politics...the JLG/our Ward 4 Councilmember pushed hard for the temporary swing space and got lots of credit when it went Whittier's way.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DCPS is stuck with its buildings for the long term and has to plan for long term needs and deal with long term maintenance and compliance in 100+ year old buildings. It was a huge struggle for our school just to get the bathrooms made non-awful. GDS takes forever to fix anything. Being part of a larger system has really significant down sides.

Have you been inside Yu Ying, or the new Latin Cooper building? They're as nice as any, certainly way nicer than our Ward 5 Title I.

And of course, why invest in charter buildings when everyone, including the PCSB, is saying the sector is going to contract?

Yes, those buildings are nice--and cost the schools specifcally money to build.

Have you been the Lafayette Elementary? Dorothy Heights? Both absolutely stunning.

Seen the giant project that Whittier is getting for their temporary campus during their remodel? Millions and millions of dollars so those kids don't have to ride a bus to a flex space.

DCPS schools are getting tons spent on their remodels.

Just looking at it from the sidewalk, it seems a little nuts this is the plan.

The parents in the neighborhood pushing it were so annoying. Some of them didn’t even have kids on the school yet. Would have been so much simpler to just bus the kids.

+1 I drive past the space they're building for Whittier almost daily. It's wild that the city agreed to wreck/occupy the public park space and spend all those millions to build a temporary swing space rather than bus the kids to a brick and mortar, perfectly fine building a couple miles away. I heard they're going to tear it right back down when Whittier is done with it too and that (unlike Burroughs) it won't be used for additional schools.

Agree it boils down to politics...the JLG/our Ward 4 Councilmember pushed hard for the temporary swing space and got lots of credit when it went Whittier's way.

I live in Brookland and find it appealing that they completely took over a huge green space for that monstrosity, which will be there through several renovations. Not to mention increased traffic once two schools are on that site.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Oh FFS. Clicked through the talking points and it says "this is coming in the form of line items for teacher bonuses (IMPACT) and Early Stages ( early intervention (which I don’t feel as strongly about because we don’t do it in the charter sector at the moment)"

Well if you're not doing Early Stages kids then you don't get the money for Early Stages kids! Obviously. Oh, you "don't feel as strongly"? Come on. No kids no money, it's as simple as that. Anything else is insane.

It's funny how charters hate the union so much, but when the union bargains for wages, charters want the same money despite doing none of the work.

The teachers at my school negotiated for a starting wage of 70K. The teachers at the newish Montessori school start at 100K. Is the city going to match those since those teachers/charters did the work to get there? How about the charters that have negotiated better food contracts than DCPS. Is the DCPS amount going to be lowered?

Montessori teacher here! Which school has starting salaries at 100K???

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DCPS is stuck with its buildings for the long term and has to plan for long term needs and deal with long term maintenance and compliance in 100+ year old buildings. It was a huge struggle for our school just to get the bathrooms made non-awful. GDS takes forever to fix anything. Being part of a larger system has really significant down sides.

Have you been inside Yu Ying, or the new Latin Cooper building? They're as nice as any, certainly way nicer than our Ward 5 Title I.

And of course, why invest in charter buildings when everyone, including the PCSB, is saying the sector is going to contract?

Yes, those buildings are nice--and cost the schools specifcally money to build.

Have you been the Lafayette Elementary? Dorothy Heights? Both absolutely stunning.

Seen the giant project that Whittier is getting for their temporary campus during their remodel? Millions and millions of dollars so those kids don't have to ride a bus to a flex space.

DCPS schools are getting tons spent on their remodels.

Just looking at it from the sidewalk, it seems a little nuts this is the plan.

The parents in the neighborhood pushing it were so annoying. Some of them didn’t even have kids on the school yet. Would have been so much simpler to just bus the kids.

+1 I drive past the space they're building for Whittier almost daily. It's wild that the city agreed to wreck/occupy the public park space and spend all those millions to build a temporary swing space rather than bus the kids to a brick and mortar, perfectly fine building a couple miles away. I heard they're going to tear it right back down when Whittier is done with it too and that (unlike Burroughs) it won't be used for additional schools.

Agree it boils down to politics...the JLG/our Ward 4 Councilmember pushed hard for the temporary swing space and got lots of credit when it went Whittier's way.

Wow. You all kind of suck. Do you understand what it means for those of us who work to have to do that kind of commute? I guess you're enjoying driving by on your way to a charter school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DCPS is stuck with its buildings for the long term and has to plan for long term needs and deal with long term maintenance and compliance in 100+ year old buildings. It was a huge struggle for our school just to get the bathrooms made non-awful. GDS takes forever to fix anything. Being part of a larger system has really significant down sides.

Have you been inside Yu Ying, or the new Latin Cooper building? They're as nice as any, certainly way nicer than our Ward 5 Title I.

And of course, why invest in charter buildings when everyone, including the PCSB, is saying the sector is going to contract?

Yes, those buildings are nice--and cost the schools specifcally money to build.

Have you been the Lafayette Elementary? Dorothy Heights? Both absolutely stunning.

Seen the giant project that Whittier is getting for their temporary campus during their remodel? Millions and millions of dollars so those kids don't have to ride a bus to a flex space.

DCPS schools are getting tons spent on their remodels.

Just looking at it from the sidewalk, it seems a little nuts this is the plan.

The parents in the neighborhood pushing it were so annoying. Some of them didn’t even have kids on the school yet. Would have been so much simpler to just bus the kids.

+1 I drive past the space they're building for Whittier almost daily. It's wild that the city agreed to wreck/occupy the public park space and spend all those millions to build a temporary swing space rather than bus the kids to a brick and mortar, perfectly fine building a couple miles away. I heard they're going to tear it right back down when Whittier is done with it too and that (unlike Burroughs) it won't be used for additional schools.

Agree it boils down to politics...the JLG/our Ward 4 Councilmember pushed hard for the temporary swing space and got lots of credit when it went Whittier's way.

Wow. You all kind of suck. Do you understand what it means for those of us who work to have to do that kind of commute? I guess you're enjoying driving by on your way to a charter school.

They’re required to bus kids from the original school site to a swing space if it’s more than a mile for duration of modernization. You would have survived. This is a complete waste of city resources.