Charter school funding gap in FY27 budget

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Charter school parents: We want DC to way over-spend on our facilities too (albeit without the big gratuity to developers). Any money that WTU negotiates for their dues-paying teachers is owed to our teachers too. We *have to* go to charters because DCPS has failed us. We *have to* go to charters because DCPS is violent. We can't take any students that have to or want to leave other charters; DCPS needs to take those. Even as we take away half the kids from DCPS, we don't want to have any part is helping solve the messes that DCPS has to deal with -- that is other kids' problem.

Basically, we want the equality for all the good stuff but avoidance for all the difficult parts.

More like…

DC charter parents: Follow the law which says funding parity.

DCPS: But we have to pay our teachers more, they are in a union. Your teachers aren’t in unions so they shouldn’t make as much. We also get no money for buildings, they come from the DGS fairy. Why do you need money for facilities?

Some of them are in unions though.

They do get a facilities allotment. Explicitly. Have your opinion but please stop spreading false information.

Does that $2000 per kid for charters equal $5 billion for DCPS? Absolutely not! What is DCPS spending on Tubman, $200k per kid? And they will provide maintenance going forward.

I don't now where the $5 billion figure comes from.

However, $2000 x 50,000 students x 20 years = $2 billion, so that's real money.

DC has spent $3.6 billion renovating DCPS schools, and plans to send another $2 billion more.

Ok, we know some of that was ill-spent (the effort to make underenrolled high schools appealing), some inefficiently spent (yay Bowser and her developer friends), some spent to benefit the community in addition to the schools (pools), and some spent initiatives to benefit the community that make no diffetence to the kids (energy efficiency).

We also know that DCPS has to deal with the schools already has, that can't easily reject a difficult property.

Charter schools would surely spend more efficiently can choose properties that make most sense in this era, amd need not worry about investments for the larger community. So presumably they need less money for the same number of students over at the same time.

Is the current allocation fair? I don't know. Maybe not. But I do know that you need more complete information to make a meaningful comparison.

How? They already have buildings. Just like DCPS. Do better.

Some charters have bought or leased buildings in the past 20 years. Others are still expanding or plan to move. None are tied to properties they acquired 50 or 100 years ago.

Oh stop. DCPS is building Taj Mahals. They spent almost $200 million on Duke Ellington, which has maybe 600 students. Meanwhile, there is no such thing as a fancy charter school in Washington D.C.

The Duke Ellington renovations were a complete abuse of taxpayers. We all should have been mad -- and we were. For anyone who missed it, here's a good, short article on the fiasco: https://www.wusa9.com/article/news/education/taxpayers-pay-millions-for-over-budgeted-school-renovations/65-474821677

It's still not clear what mismanagement--and possibly graft--last decade has to do with funding schools now.

So have any palaces been built in recent years? I haven't seen it. Banneker is looking great, but was not bonkers like Ellington.

Seems like the process has been tightened up. Maybe somebody here can share details?

Tightened up? DC is spreading the money far and wide (at least for DCPS) and thinks nothing of spending $100 million on a school with 500 kids.

Duke Ellington -- $180 million
Coolidge -- $160 million
Jackson-Reid -- $130 million
Dunbar -- $125 million
Roosevelt -- $125 million
Woodson -- $100 million
Tubman -- $100 million
Deal -- $100 million
JO Wilson -- $91 million
Cardozo -- $90 million
Deal -- $90 million
Ballou -- $90 million
Jefferson -- $90 million
Burrville -- $85 million
Truesdell -- $80 million
Oyster Adams -- $79 million
Burroughs -- $75 million
Janney -- $70 million
MLK -- $65 million
Dorothy Height -- $63 million
Garfield -- $60.5 million
Anacostia -- $60 million

And some of these schools are tiny! Garfield has 252 students. Anacostia High School only has 250 students. Burrville has 232 students. Burroughs has 331.

DCPS MUST serve them. Charters don’t have to serve anyone.

These schools should be closed and consolidated. We should not spending $85 million on a school with 200 students. If the families are abandoning these schools for charters, the money should follow those children to the charters.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Charter school parents: We want DC to way over-spend on our facilities too (albeit without the big gratuity to developers). Any money that WTU negotiates for their dues-paying teachers is owed to our teachers too. We *have to* go to charters because DCPS has failed us. We *have to* go to charters because DCPS is violent. We can't take any students that have to or want to leave other charters; DCPS needs to take those. Even as we take away half the kids from DCPS, we don't want to have any part is helping solve the messes that DCPS has to deal with -- that is other kids' problem.

Basically, we want the equality for all the good stuff but avoidance for all the difficult parts.

More like…

DC charter parents: Follow the law which says funding parity.

DCPS: But we have to pay our teachers more, they are in a union. Your teachers aren’t in unions so they shouldn’t make as much. We also get no money for buildings, they come from the DGS fairy. Why do you need money for facilities?

Some of them are in unions though.

They do get a facilities allotment. Explicitly. Have your opinion but please stop spreading false information.

Does that $2000 per kid for charters equal $5 billion for DCPS? Absolutely not! What is DCPS spending on Tubman, $200k per kid? And they will provide maintenance going forward.

I don't now where the $5 billion figure comes from.

However, $2000 x 50,000 students x 20 years = $2 billion, so that's real money.

DC has spent $3.6 billion renovating DCPS schools, and plans to send another $2 billion more.

Ok, we know some of that was ill-spent (the effort to make underenrolled high schools appealing), some inefficiently spent (yay Bowser and her developer friends), some spent to benefit the community in addition to the schools (pools), and some spent initiatives to benefit the community that make no diffetence to the kids (energy efficiency).

We also know that DCPS has to deal with the schools already has, that can't easily reject a difficult property.

Charter schools would surely spend more efficiently can choose properties that make most sense in this era, amd need not worry about investments for the larger community. So presumably they need less money for the same number of students over at the same time.

Is the current allocation fair? I don't know. Maybe not. But I do know that you need more complete information to make a meaningful comparison.

How? They already have buildings. Just like DCPS. Do better.

Some charters have bought or leased buildings in the past 20 years. Others are still expanding or plan to move. None are tied to properties they acquired 50 or 100 years ago.

Oh stop. DCPS is building Taj Mahals. They spent almost $200 million on Duke Ellington, which has maybe 600 students. Meanwhile, there is no such thing as a fancy charter school in Washington D.C.

The Duke Ellington renovations were a complete abuse of taxpayers. We all should have been mad -- and we were. For anyone who missed it, here's a good, short article on the fiasco: https://www.wusa9.com/article/news/education/taxpayers-pay-millions-for-over-budgeted-school-renovations/65-474821677

It's still not clear what mismanagement--and possibly graft--last decade has to do with funding schools now.

So have any palaces been built in recent years? I haven't seen it. Banneker is looking great, but was not bonkers like Ellington.

Seems like the process has been tightened up. Maybe somebody here can share details?

Tightened up? DC is spreading the money far and wide (at least for DCPS) and thinks nothing of spending $100 million on a school with 500 kids.

Duke Ellington -- $180 million
Coolidge -- $160 million
Jackson-Reid -- $130 million
Dunbar -- $125 million
Roosevelt -- $125 million
Woodson -- $100 million
Tubman -- $100 million
Deal -- $100 million
JO Wilson -- $91 million
Cardozo -- $90 million
Deal -- $90 million
Ballou -- $90 million
Jefferson -- $90 million
Burrville -- $85 million
Truesdell -- $80 million
Oyster Adams -- $79 million
Burroughs -- $75 million
Janney -- $70 million
MLK -- $65 million
Dorothy Height -- $63 million
Garfield -- $60.5 million
Anacostia -- $60 million

And some of these schools are tiny! Garfield has 252 students. Anacostia High School only has 250 students. Burrville has 232 students. Burroughs has 331.

DCPS MUST serve them. Charters don’t have to serve anyone.

These schools should be closed and consolidated. We should not spending $85 million on a school with 200 students. If the families are abandoning these schools for charters, the money should follow those children to the charters.

This has happened in the past only for DCPS to have to open up again.
If you look at the Ed spec of the renovations the capacity is usually only 500 students.

DCPS schools aren’t large enough to absorb 300 or even 100 more students.

For example if Burroughs closed Langdon would probably have to absorb most of them and they cannot.

What would likely happen is CHARTERS would absorb many. I’m sure some charter proponents would just love that haha.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Charter school parents: We want DC to way over-spend on our facilities too (albeit without the big gratuity to developers). Any money that WTU negotiates for their dues-paying teachers is owed to our teachers too. We *have to* go to charters because DCPS has failed us. We *have to* go to charters because DCPS is violent. We can't take any students that have to or want to leave other charters; DCPS needs to take those. Even as we take away half the kids from DCPS, we don't want to have any part is helping solve the messes that DCPS has to deal with -- that is other kids' problem.

Basically, we want the equality for all the good stuff but avoidance for all the difficult parts.

More like…

DC charter parents: Follow the law which says funding parity.

DCPS: But we have to pay our teachers more, they are in a union. Your teachers aren’t in unions so they shouldn’t make as much. We also get no money for buildings, they come from the DGS fairy. Why do you need money for facilities?

Some of them are in unions though.

They do get a facilities allotment. Explicitly. Have your opinion but please stop spreading false information.

Does that $2000 per kid for charters equal $5 billion for DCPS? Absolutely not! What is DCPS spending on Tubman, $200k per kid? And they will provide maintenance going forward.

I don't now where the $5 billion figure comes from.

However, $2000 x 50,000 students x 20 years = $2 billion, so that's real money.

DC has spent $3.6 billion renovating DCPS schools, and plans to send another $2 billion more.

Ok, we know some of that was ill-spent (the effort to make underenrolled high schools appealing), some inefficiently spent (yay Bowser and her developer friends), some spent to benefit the community in addition to the schools (pools), and some spent initiatives to benefit the community that make no diffetence to the kids (energy efficiency).

We also know that DCPS has to deal with the schools already has, that can't easily reject a difficult property.

Charter schools would surely spend more efficiently can choose properties that make most sense in this era, amd need not worry about investments for the larger community. So presumably they need less money for the same number of students over at the same time.

Is the current allocation fair? I don't know. Maybe not. But I do know that you need more complete information to make a meaningful comparison.

How? They already have buildings. Just like DCPS. Do better.

Some charters have bought or leased buildings in the past 20 years. Others are still expanding or plan to move. None are tied to properties they acquired 50 or 100 years ago.

Oh stop. DCPS is building Taj Mahals. They spent almost $200 million on Duke Ellington, which has maybe 600 students. Meanwhile, there is no such thing as a fancy charter school in Washington D.C.

The Duke Ellington renovations were a complete abuse of taxpayers. We all should have been mad -- and we were. For anyone who missed it, here's a good, short article on the fiasco: https://www.wusa9.com/article/news/education/taxpayers-pay-millions-for-over-budgeted-school-renovations/65-474821677

It's still not clear what mismanagement--and possibly graft--last decade has to do with funding schools now.

So have any palaces been built in recent years? I haven't seen it. Banneker is looking great, but was not bonkers like Ellington.

Seems like the process has been tightened up. Maybe somebody here can share details?

Tightened up? DC is spreading the money far and wide (at least for DCPS) and thinks nothing of spending $100 million on a school with 500 kids.

Duke Ellington -- $180 million
Coolidge -- $160 million
Jackson-Reid -- $130 million
Dunbar -- $125 million
Roosevelt -- $125 million
Woodson -- $100 million
Tubman -- $100 million
Deal -- $100 million
JO Wilson -- $91 million
Cardozo -- $90 million
Deal -- $90 million
Ballou -- $90 million
Jefferson -- $90 million
Burrville -- $85 million
Truesdell -- $80 million
Oyster Adams -- $79 million
Burroughs -- $75 million
Janney -- $70 million
MLK -- $65 million
Dorothy Height -- $63 million
Garfield -- $60.5 million
Anacostia -- $60 million

And some of these schools are tiny! Garfield has 252 students. Anacostia High School only has 250 students. Burrville has 232 students. Burroughs has 331.

Again kids they MUST serve. Charters don’t have to serve anyone.

Cute. Of course, the reason why so few kids attend these schools is because families have abandoned them en masse for charters.

Yes and that is what people are mad about. Save the system that must educate everyone (who comes) and f*** those kids and families who choose to opt out of that system. If they think they'll get a worse education in the neighborhood school, that's the families fault for not moving to a better neighborhood.

If parents trusted DCPS to prepare their children for the future, they would send their kids there. It's as simple as that.

Take a look at the best middle school list in DC: https://www.usnews.com/education/k12/middle-schools/district-of-columbia

7/10 in the top ten are charters, and and 14/20 of the top 20. basis, latin, DC prep, Friendship PCS,

But, the list for elementary (10/10 DCPS) and for high school are mostly DCPS (6/10 DCPS). So, these families come back when they assess (corrrectly!) that the schools will work for their kids.

Actually, the edscape data shows this really clearly -- a huge portion of kids at application schools are coming from charters (at Banneker, Bard, McKinley Tech and Phelps, more kids come from charters than DCPS). Look at the "9th backwards to 8th" for application schools chart.

https://edscape.dc.gov/page/student-enrollment-pathways

I'm not sure how you're reaching that conclusion. For n less than 10, are you eyeballing the size of the box on the graphic?

yes, look at the schools where green is larger than blue (the application schools I listed. Walls takes more DCPS)

I'm not sure that's actually how it works. The purpose of the n less than 10 rule is to conceal the number of kids, so to show it by size of box would defeat the purpose of the rule.

Sure. The point remains -- those application schools take tons of charter students (and I've been in Banneker and Phelps in the classrooms and know this to be true).

Okay....is this some sort of gotcha you're proving?

My point is that the DCPS vs charter divide isn't quite as strict as some posters on this thread make it out to be (and some of the members of the DCPS PTO/PTA WhatsApp group want to believe it is). Families are moving in and out of DCPS as their kids age, as they make assessments about what the best school for their kid is. If a typical trajectory is attending DCPS neighorhood elementary school, then a charter middle, then a DCPS application school, the city needs to take a good honest look at that, and to support these actual students.

Pouring a billion dollars into DCPS neighborhood high schools that a couple hundred kids attend is not a good use of money.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Charter school parents: We want DC to way over-spend on our facilities too (albeit without the big gratuity to developers). Any money that WTU negotiates for their dues-paying teachers is owed to our teachers too. We *have to* go to charters because DCPS has failed us. We *have to* go to charters because DCPS is violent. We can't take any students that have to or want to leave other charters; DCPS needs to take those. Even as we take away half the kids from DCPS, we don't want to have any part is helping solve the messes that DCPS has to deal with -- that is other kids' problem.

Basically, we want the equality for all the good stuff but avoidance for all the difficult parts.

More like…

DC charter parents: Follow the law which says funding parity.

DCPS: But we have to pay our teachers more, they are in a union. Your teachers aren’t in unions so they shouldn’t make as much. We also get no money for buildings, they come from the DGS fairy. Why do you need money for facilities?

Some of them are in unions though.

They do get a facilities allotment. Explicitly. Have your opinion but please stop spreading false information.

Does that $2000 per kid for charters equal $5 billion for DCPS? Absolutely not! What is DCPS spending on Tubman, $200k per kid? And they will provide maintenance going forward.

I don't now where the $5 billion figure comes from.

However, $2000 x 50,000 students x 20 years = $2 billion, so that's real money.

DC has spent $3.6 billion renovating DCPS schools, and plans to send another $2 billion more.

Ok, we know some of that was ill-spent (the effort to make underenrolled high schools appealing), some inefficiently spent (yay Bowser and her developer friends), some spent to benefit the community in addition to the schools (pools), and some spent initiatives to benefit the community that make no diffetence to the kids (energy efficiency).

We also know that DCPS has to deal with the schools already has, that can't easily reject a difficult property.

Charter schools would surely spend more efficiently can choose properties that make most sense in this era, amd need not worry about investments for the larger community. So presumably they need less money for the same number of students over at the same time.

Is the current allocation fair? I don't know. Maybe not. But I do know that you need more complete information to make a meaningful comparison.

How? They already have buildings. Just like DCPS. Do better.

Some charters have bought or leased buildings in the past 20 years. Others are still expanding or plan to move. None are tied to properties they acquired 50 or 100 years ago.

Oh stop. DCPS is building Taj Mahals. They spent almost $200 million on Duke Ellington, which has maybe 600 students. Meanwhile, there is no such thing as a fancy charter school in Washington D.C.

The Duke Ellington renovations were a complete abuse of taxpayers. We all should have been mad -- and we were. For anyone who missed it, here's a good, short article on the fiasco: https://www.wusa9.com/article/news/education/taxpayers-pay-millions-for-over-budgeted-school-renovations/65-474821677

It's still not clear what mismanagement--and possibly graft--last decade has to do with funding schools now.

So have any palaces been built in recent years? I haven't seen it. Banneker is looking great, but was not bonkers like Ellington.

Seems like the process has been tightened up. Maybe somebody here can share details?

Tightened up? DC is spreading the money far and wide (at least for DCPS) and thinks nothing of spending $100 million on a school with 500 kids.

Duke Ellington -- $180 million
Coolidge -- $160 million
Jackson-Reid -- $130 million
Dunbar -- $125 million
Roosevelt -- $125 million
Woodson -- $100 million
Tubman -- $100 million
Deal -- $100 million
JO Wilson -- $91 million
Cardozo -- $90 million
Deal -- $90 million
Ballou -- $90 million
Jefferson -- $90 million
Burrville -- $85 million
Truesdell -- $80 million
Oyster Adams -- $79 million
Burroughs -- $75 million
Janney -- $70 million
MLK -- $65 million
Dorothy Height -- $63 million
Garfield -- $60.5 million
Anacostia -- $60 million

And some of these schools are tiny! Garfield has 252 students. Anacostia High School only has 250 students. Burrville has 232 students. Burroughs has 331.

Again kids they MUST serve. Charters don’t have to serve anyone.

Cute. Of course, the reason why so few kids attend these schools is because families have abandoned them en masse for charters.

Yes and that is what people are mad about. Save the system that must educate everyone (who comes) and f*** those kids and families who choose to opt out of that system. If they think they'll get a worse education in the neighborhood school, that's the families fault for not moving to a better neighborhood.

If parents trusted DCPS to prepare their children for the future, they would send their kids there. It's as simple as that.

Take a look at the best middle school list in DC: https://www.usnews.com/education/k12/middle-schools/district-of-columbia

7/10 in the top ten are charters, and and 14/20 of the top 20. basis, latin, DC prep, Friendship PCS,

But, the list for elementary (10/10 DCPS) and for high school are mostly DCPS (6/10 DCPS). So, these families come back when they assess (corrrectly!) that the schools will work for their kids.

Actually, the edscape data shows this really clearly -- a huge portion of kids at application schools are coming from charters (at Banneker, Bard, McKinley Tech and Phelps, more kids come from charters than DCPS). Look at the "9th backwards to 8th" for application schools chart.

https://edscape.dc.gov/page/student-enrollment-pathways

I'm not sure how you're reaching that conclusion. For n less than 10, are you eyeballing the size of the box on the graphic?

yes, look at the schools where green is larger than blue (the application schools I listed. Walls takes more DCPS)

I'm not sure that's actually how it works. The purpose of the n less than 10 rule is to conceal the number of kids, so to show it by size of box would defeat the purpose of the rule.

Sure. The point remains -- those application schools take tons of charter students (and I've been in Banneker and Phelps in the classrooms and know this to be true).

Okay....is this some sort of gotcha you're proving?

My point is that the DCPS vs charter divide isn't quite as strict as some posters on this thread make it out to be (and some of the members of the DCPS PTO/PTA WhatsApp group want to believe it is). Families are moving in and out of DCPS as their kids age, as they make assessments about what the best school for their kid is. If a typical trajectory is attending DCPS neighorhood elementary school, then a charter middle, then a DCPS application school, the city needs to take a good honest look at that, and to support these actual students.

Pouring a billion dollars into DCPS neighborhood high schools that a couple hundred kids attend is not a good use of money.

It's not a typical trajectory because it's not typical to go to an application school at all. Most kids don't.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Charter school parents: We want DC to way over-spend on our facilities too (albeit without the big gratuity to developers). Any money that WTU negotiates for their dues-paying teachers is owed to our teachers too. We *have to* go to charters because DCPS has failed us. We *have to* go to charters because DCPS is violent. We can't take any students that have to or want to leave other charters; DCPS needs to take those. Even as we take away half the kids from DCPS, we don't want to have any part is helping solve the messes that DCPS has to deal with -- that is other kids' problem.

Basically, we want the equality for all the good stuff but avoidance for all the difficult parts.

More like…

DC charter parents: Follow the law which says funding parity.

DCPS: But we have to pay our teachers more, they are in a union. Your teachers aren’t in unions so they shouldn’t make as much. We also get no money for buildings, they come from the DGS fairy. Why do you need money for facilities?

Some of them are in unions though.

They do get a facilities allotment. Explicitly. Have your opinion but please stop spreading false information.

Does that $2000 per kid for charters equal $5 billion for DCPS? Absolutely not! What is DCPS spending on Tubman, $200k per kid? And they will provide maintenance going forward.

I don't now where the $5 billion figure comes from.

However, $2000 x 50,000 students x 20 years = $2 billion, so that's real money.

DC has spent $3.6 billion renovating DCPS schools, and plans to send another $2 billion more.

Ok, we know some of that was ill-spent (the effort to make underenrolled high schools appealing), some inefficiently spent (yay Bowser and her developer friends), some spent to benefit the community in addition to the schools (pools), and some spent initiatives to benefit the community that make no diffetence to the kids (energy efficiency).

We also know that DCPS has to deal with the schools already has, that can't easily reject a difficult property.

Charter schools would surely spend more efficiently can choose properties that make most sense in this era, amd need not worry about investments for the larger community. So presumably they need less money for the same number of students over at the same time.

Is the current allocation fair? I don't know. Maybe not. But I do know that you need more complete information to make a meaningful comparison.

How? They already have buildings. Just like DCPS. Do better.

Some charters have bought or leased buildings in the past 20 years. Others are still expanding or plan to move. None are tied to properties they acquired 50 or 100 years ago.

Oh stop. DCPS is building Taj Mahals. They spent almost $200 million on Duke Ellington, which has maybe 600 students. Meanwhile, there is no such thing as a fancy charter school in Washington D.C.

The Duke Ellington renovations were a complete abuse of taxpayers. We all should have been mad -- and we were. For anyone who missed it, here's a good, short article on the fiasco: https://www.wusa9.com/article/news/education/taxpayers-pay-millions-for-over-budgeted-school-renovations/65-474821677

It's still not clear what mismanagement--and possibly graft--last decade has to do with funding schools now.

So have any palaces been built in recent years? I haven't seen it. Banneker is looking great, but was not bonkers like Ellington.

Seems like the process has been tightened up. Maybe somebody here can share details?

Tightened up? DC is spreading the money far and wide (at least for DCPS) and thinks nothing of spending $100 million on a school with 500 kids.

Duke Ellington -- $180 million
Coolidge -- $160 million
Jackson-Reid -- $130 million
Dunbar -- $125 million
Roosevelt -- $125 million
Woodson -- $100 million
Tubman -- $100 million
Deal -- $100 million
JO Wilson -- $91 million
Cardozo -- $90 million
Deal -- $90 million
Ballou -- $90 million
Jefferson -- $90 million
Burrville -- $85 million
Truesdell -- $80 million
Oyster Adams -- $79 million
Burroughs -- $75 million
Janney -- $70 million
MLK -- $65 million
Dorothy Height -- $63 million
Garfield -- $60.5 million
Anacostia -- $60 million

And some of these schools are tiny! Garfield has 252 students. Anacostia High School only has 250 students. Burrville has 232 students. Burroughs has 331.

Again kids they MUST serve. Charters don’t have to serve anyone.

Cute. Of course, the reason why so few kids attend these schools is because families have abandoned them en masse for charters.

Yes and that is what people are mad about. Save the system that must educate everyone (who comes) and f*** those kids and families who choose to opt out of that system. If they think they'll get a worse education in the neighborhood school, that's the families fault for not moving to a better neighborhood.

If parents trusted DCPS to prepare their children for the future, they would send their kids there. It's as simple as that.

Take a look at the best middle school list in DC: https://www.usnews.com/education/k12/middle-schools/district-of-columbia

7/10 in the top ten are charters, and and 14/20 of the top 20. basis, latin, DC prep, Friendship PCS,

But, the list for elementary (10/10 DCPS) and for high school are mostly DCPS (6/10 DCPS). So, these families come back when they assess (corrrectly!) that the schools will work for their kids.

Actually, the edscape data shows this really clearly -- a huge portion of kids at application schools are coming from charters (at Banneker, Bard, McKinley Tech and Phelps, more kids come from charters than DCPS). Look at the "9th backwards to 8th" for application schools chart.

https://edscape.dc.gov/page/student-enrollment-pathways

I'm not sure how you're reaching that conclusion. For n less than 10, are you eyeballing the size of the box on the graphic?

yes, look at the schools where green is larger than blue (the application schools I listed. Walls takes more DCPS)

I'm not sure that's actually how it works. The purpose of the n less than 10 rule is to conceal the number of kids, so to show it by size of box would defeat the purpose of the rule.

Sure. The point remains -- those application schools take tons of charter students (and I've been in Banneker and Phelps in the classrooms and know this to be true).

Okay....is this some sort of gotcha you're proving?

My point is that the DCPS vs charter divide isn't quite as strict as some posters on this thread make it out to be (and some of the members of the DCPS PTO/PTA WhatsApp group want to believe it is). Families are moving in and out of DCPS as their kids age, as they make assessments about what the best school for their kid is. If a typical trajectory is attending DCPS neighorhood elementary school, then a charter middle, then a DCPS application school, the city needs to take a good honest look at that, and to support these actual students.

Pouring a billion dollars into DCPS neighborhood high schools that a couple hundred kids attend is not a good use of money.

It's not a typical trajectory because it's not typical to go to an application school at all. Most kids don't.

Name all the application high schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Charter school parents: We want DC to way over-spend on our facilities too (albeit without the big gratuity to developers). Any money that WTU negotiates for their dues-paying teachers is owed to our teachers too. We *have to* go to charters because DCPS has failed us. We *have to* go to charters because DCPS is violent. We can't take any students that have to or want to leave other charters; DCPS needs to take those. Even as we take away half the kids from DCPS, we don't want to have any part is helping solve the messes that DCPS has to deal with -- that is other kids' problem.

Basically, we want the equality for all the good stuff but avoidance for all the difficult parts.

More like…

DC charter parents: Follow the law which says funding parity.

DCPS: But we have to pay our teachers more, they are in a union. Your teachers aren’t in unions so they shouldn’t make as much. We also get no money for buildings, they come from the DGS fairy. Why do you need money for facilities?

Some of them are in unions though.

They do get a facilities allotment. Explicitly. Have your opinion but please stop spreading false information.

Does that $2000 per kid for charters equal $5 billion for DCPS? Absolutely not! What is DCPS spending on Tubman, $200k per kid? And they will provide maintenance going forward.

I don't now where the $5 billion figure comes from.

However, $2000 x 50,000 students x 20 years = $2 billion, so that's real money.

DC has spent $3.6 billion renovating DCPS schools, and plans to send another $2 billion more.

Ok, we know some of that was ill-spent (the effort to make underenrolled high schools appealing), some inefficiently spent (yay Bowser and her developer friends), some spent to benefit the community in addition to the schools (pools), and some spent initiatives to benefit the community that make no diffetence to the kids (energy efficiency).

We also know that DCPS has to deal with the schools already has, that can't easily reject a difficult property.

Charter schools would surely spend more efficiently can choose properties that make most sense in this era, amd need not worry about investments for the larger community. So presumably they need less money for the same number of students over at the same time.

Is the current allocation fair? I don't know. Maybe not. But I do know that you need more complete information to make a meaningful comparison.

How? They already have buildings. Just like DCPS. Do better.

Some charters have bought or leased buildings in the past 20 years. Others are still expanding or plan to move. None are tied to properties they acquired 50 or 100 years ago.

Oh stop. DCPS is building Taj Mahals. They spent almost $200 million on Duke Ellington, which has maybe 600 students. Meanwhile, there is no such thing as a fancy charter school in Washington D.C.

The Duke Ellington renovations were a complete abuse of taxpayers. We all should have been mad -- and we were. For anyone who missed it, here's a good, short article on the fiasco: https://www.wusa9.com/article/news/education/taxpayers-pay-millions-for-over-budgeted-school-renovations/65-474821677

It's still not clear what mismanagement--and possibly graft--last decade has to do with funding schools now.

So have any palaces been built in recent years? I haven't seen it. Banneker is looking great, but was not bonkers like Ellington.

Seems like the process has been tightened up. Maybe somebody here can share details?

Tightened up? DC is spreading the money far and wide (at least for DCPS) and thinks nothing of spending $100 million on a school with 500 kids.

Duke Ellington -- $180 million
Coolidge -- $160 million
Jackson-Reid -- $130 million
Dunbar -- $125 million
Roosevelt -- $125 million
Woodson -- $100 million
Tubman -- $100 million
Deal -- $100 million
JO Wilson -- $91 million
Cardozo -- $90 million
Deal -- $90 million
Ballou -- $90 million
Jefferson -- $90 million
Burrville -- $85 million
Truesdell -- $80 million
Oyster Adams -- $79 million
Burroughs -- $75 million
Janney -- $70 million
MLK -- $65 million
Dorothy Height -- $63 million
Garfield -- $60.5 million
Anacostia -- $60 million

And some of these schools are tiny! Garfield has 252 students. Anacostia High School only has 250 students. Burrville has 232 students. Burroughs has 331.

DCPS MUST serve them. Charters don’t have to serve anyone.

These schools should be closed and consolidated. We should not spending $85 million on a school with 200 students. If the families are abandoning these schools for charters, the money should follow those children to the charters.

This has happened in the past only for DCPS to have to open up again.
If you look at the Ed spec of the renovations the capacity is usually only 500 students.

DCPS schools aren’t large enough to absorb 300 or even 100 more students.

For example if Burroughs closed Langdon would probably have to absorb most of them and they cannot.

What would likely happen is CHARTERS would absorb many. I’m sure some charter proponents would just love that haha.

DCPS closed a lot of schools about 15 years ago. It's about the minimum it can be at this point without people having over-long commutes or leaving DCPS unprepared for future growth. Yes I know there's some shrinkage right now, but trends come and go, DCPS must plan for the long term.

DCPS must also be prepared for upcoming charter closures because there are so many charter schools in trouble. Not all of those kids will go to DCPS, but they all have the right to, and some of them will.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Charter school parents: We want DC to way over-spend on our facilities too (albeit without the big gratuity to developers). Any money that WTU negotiates for their dues-paying teachers is owed to our teachers too. We *have to* go to charters because DCPS has failed us. We *have to* go to charters because DCPS is violent. We can't take any students that have to or want to leave other charters; DCPS needs to take those. Even as we take away half the kids from DCPS, we don't want to have any part is helping solve the messes that DCPS has to deal with -- that is other kids' problem.

Basically, we want the equality for all the good stuff but avoidance for all the difficult parts.

More like…

DC charter parents: Follow the law which says funding parity.

DCPS: But we have to pay our teachers more, they are in a union. Your teachers aren’t in unions so they shouldn’t make as much. We also get no money for buildings, they come from the DGS fairy. Why do you need money for facilities?

Some of them are in unions though.

They do get a facilities allotment. Explicitly. Have your opinion but please stop spreading false information.

Does that $2000 per kid for charters equal $5 billion for DCPS? Absolutely not! What is DCPS spending on Tubman, $200k per kid? And they will provide maintenance going forward.

I don't now where the $5 billion figure comes from.

However, $2000 x 50,000 students x 20 years = $2 billion, so that's real money.

DC has spent $3.6 billion renovating DCPS schools, and plans to send another $2 billion more.

Ok, we know some of that was ill-spent (the effort to make underenrolled high schools appealing), some inefficiently spent (yay Bowser and her developer friends), some spent to benefit the community in addition to the schools (pools), and some spent initiatives to benefit the community that make no diffetence to the kids (energy efficiency).

We also know that DCPS has to deal with the schools already has, that can't easily reject a difficult property.

Charter schools would surely spend more efficiently can choose properties that make most sense in this era, amd need not worry about investments for the larger community. So presumably they need less money for the same number of students over at the same time.

Is the current allocation fair? I don't know. Maybe not. But I do know that you need more complete information to make a meaningful comparison.

How? They already have buildings. Just like DCPS. Do better.

Some charters have bought or leased buildings in the past 20 years. Others are still expanding or plan to move. None are tied to properties they acquired 50 or 100 years ago.

Oh stop. DCPS is building Taj Mahals. They spent almost $200 million on Duke Ellington, which has maybe 600 students. Meanwhile, there is no such thing as a fancy charter school in Washington D.C.

The Duke Ellington renovations were a complete abuse of taxpayers. We all should have been mad -- and we were. For anyone who missed it, here's a good, short article on the fiasco: https://www.wusa9.com/article/news/education/taxpayers-pay-millions-for-over-budgeted-school-renovations/65-474821677

It's still not clear what mismanagement--and possibly graft--last decade has to do with funding schools now.

So have any palaces been built in recent years? I haven't seen it. Banneker is looking great, but was not bonkers like Ellington.

Seems like the process has been tightened up. Maybe somebody here can share details?

Tightened up? DC is spreading the money far and wide (at least for DCPS) and thinks nothing of spending $100 million on a school with 500 kids.

Duke Ellington -- $180 million
Coolidge -- $160 million
Jackson-Reid -- $130 million
Dunbar -- $125 million
Roosevelt -- $125 million
Woodson -- $100 million
Tubman -- $100 million
Deal -- $100 million
JO Wilson -- $91 million
Cardozo -- $90 million
Deal -- $90 million
Ballou -- $90 million
Jefferson -- $90 million
Burrville -- $85 million
Truesdell -- $80 million
Oyster Adams -- $79 million
Burroughs -- $75 million
Janney -- $70 million
MLK -- $65 million
Dorothy Height -- $63 million
Garfield -- $60.5 million
Anacostia -- $60 million

And some of these schools are tiny! Garfield has 252 students. Anacostia High School only has 250 students. Burrville has 232 students. Burroughs has 331.

Again kids they MUST serve. Charters don’t have to serve anyone.

Cute. Of course, the reason why so few kids attend these schools is because families have abandoned them en masse for charters.

Yes and that is what people are mad about. Save the system that must educate everyone (who comes) and f*** those kids and families who choose to opt out of that system. If they think they'll get a worse education in the neighborhood school, that's the families fault for not moving to a better neighborhood.

If parents trusted DCPS to prepare their children for the future, they would send their kids there. It's as simple as that.

Take a look at the best middle school list in DC: https://www.usnews.com/education/k12/middle-schools/district-of-columbia

7/10 in the top ten are charters, and and 14/20 of the top 20. basis, latin, DC prep, Friendship PCS,

But, the list for elementary (10/10 DCPS) and for high school are mostly DCPS (6/10 DCPS). So, these families come back when they assess (corrrectly!) that the schools will work for their kids.

Actually, the edscape data shows this really clearly -- a huge portion of kids at application schools are coming from charters (at Banneker, Bard, McKinley Tech and Phelps, more kids come from charters than DCPS). Look at the "9th backwards to 8th" for application schools chart.

https://edscape.dc.gov/page/student-enrollment-pathways

I'm not sure how you're reaching that conclusion. For n less than 10, are you eyeballing the size of the box on the graphic?

yes, look at the schools where green is larger than blue (the application schools I listed. Walls takes more DCPS)

I'm not sure that's actually how it works. The purpose of the n less than 10 rule is to conceal the number of kids, so to show it by size of box would defeat the purpose of the rule.

Sure. The point remains -- those application schools take tons of charter students (and I've been in Banneker and Phelps in the classrooms and know this to be true).

Okay....is this some sort of gotcha you're proving?

My point is that the DCPS vs charter divide isn't quite as strict as some posters on this thread make it out to be (and some of the members of the DCPS PTO/PTA WhatsApp group want to believe it is). Families are moving in and out of DCPS as their kids age, as they make assessments about what the best school for their kid is. If a typical trajectory is attending DCPS neighorhood elementary school, then a charter middle, then a DCPS application school, the city needs to take a good honest look at that, and to support these actual students.

Pouring a billion dollars into DCPS neighborhood high schools that a couple hundred kids attend is not a good use of money.

It's not a typical trajectory because it's not typical to go to an application school at all. Most kids don't.

Name all the application high schools.

Is that supposed to be hard?

Banneker
Walls
McKinley Tech
CHEC
Phelps
Coolidge EC
Anacostia EC
Bard
Ellington

If you add up those programs and compare to the total of non-selective high schools, the non-selective enrollment is far larger. Because the EC programs are pretty small, and some charter and non-selective DCPS high schools are big.

[Anonymous]

I think the number of students in the denominator is also misleading. DCPS get an inflow of students every year during the year (and even more if you start from when the budget is finalized) and charters get an outflow. Numbers based on end of year per pupil funding would be meaningfully different than pre-year. Our DCPS ES is up 30 students since we were budgeted for. That's like 8% of the student body. Not accounted for at all.

[Anonymous]

Let’s talk about the gap in demographics.

DCPS absorbs nearly twice the share of English language learners in comparison to charters.
Also we know families are integral to a students success -engagement and attendance are bet freer at charters.
Since families who actively choose and apply to a charter are generally more motivated than those defaulting to a neighborhood school.
DCPS serves a much higher number of self- contained special education students.

Again, DCPS MUST serve these kids. There’s no, ‘sorry we don’t have the tools’ options charters can take.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Let’s talk about the gap in demographics.

DCPS absorbs nearly twice the share of English language learners in comparison to charters.
Also we know families are integral to a students success -engagement and attendance are bet freer at charters.
Since families who actively choose and apply to a charter are generally more motivated than those defaulting to a neighborhood school.
DCPS serves a much higher number of self- contained special education students.

Again, DCPS MUST serve these kids. There’s no, ‘sorry we don’t have the tools’ options charters can take.

*attendance and engagement are better at charters

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Let’s talk about the gap in demographics.

DCPS absorbs nearly twice the share of English language learners in comparison to charters.
Also we know families are integral to a students success -engagement and attendance are bet freer at charters.
Since families who actively choose and apply to a charter are generally more motivated than those defaulting to a neighborhood school.
DCPS serves a much higher number of self- contained special education students.

Again, DCPS MUST serve these kids. There’s no, ‘sorry we don’t have the tools’ options charters can take.

How did you determine that, is it from the enrollment audit spreadsheets?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Charter school parents: We want DC to way over-spend on our facilities too (albeit without the big gratuity to developers). Any money that WTU negotiates for their dues-paying teachers is owed to our teachers too. We *have to* go to charters because DCPS has failed us. We *have to* go to charters because DCPS is violent. We can't take any students that have to or want to leave other charters; DCPS needs to take those. Even as we take away half the kids from DCPS, we don't want to have any part is helping solve the messes that DCPS has to deal with -- that is other kids' problem.

Basically, we want the equality for all the good stuff but avoidance for all the difficult parts.

More like…

DC charter parents: Follow the law which says funding parity.

DCPS: But we have to pay our teachers more, they are in a union. Your teachers aren’t in unions so they shouldn’t make as much. We also get no money for buildings, they come from the DGS fairy. Why do you need money for facilities?

Some of them are in unions though.

They do get a facilities allotment. Explicitly. Have your opinion but please stop spreading false information.

Does that $2000 per kid for charters equal $5 billion for DCPS? Absolutely not! What is DCPS spending on Tubman, $200k per kid? And they will provide maintenance going forward.

I don't now where the $5 billion figure comes from.

However, $2000 x 50,000 students x 20 years = $2 billion, so that's real money.

DC has spent $3.6 billion renovating DCPS schools, and plans to send another $2 billion more.

Ok, we know some of that was ill-spent (the effort to make underenrolled high schools appealing), some inefficiently spent (yay Bowser and her developer friends), some spent to benefit the community in addition to the schools (pools), and some spent initiatives to benefit the community that make no diffetence to the kids (energy efficiency).

We also know that DCPS has to deal with the schools already has, that can't easily reject a difficult property.

Charter schools would surely spend more efficiently can choose properties that make most sense in this era, amd need not worry about investments for the larger community. So presumably they need less money for the same number of students over at the same time.

Is the current allocation fair? I don't know. Maybe not. But I do know that you need more complete information to make a meaningful comparison.

How? They already have buildings. Just like DCPS. Do better.

Some charters have bought or leased buildings in the past 20 years. Others are still expanding or plan to move. None are tied to properties they acquired 50 or 100 years ago.

Oh stop. DCPS is building Taj Mahals. They spent almost $200 million on Duke Ellington, which has maybe 600 students. Meanwhile, there is no such thing as a fancy charter school in Washington D.C.

The Duke Ellington renovations were a complete abuse of taxpayers. We all should have been mad -- and we were. For anyone who missed it, here's a good, short article on the fiasco: https://www.wusa9.com/article/news/education/taxpayers-pay-millions-for-over-budgeted-school-renovations/65-474821677

It's still not clear what mismanagement--and possibly graft--last decade has to do with funding schools now.

So have any palaces been built in recent years? I haven't seen it. Banneker is looking great, but was not bonkers like Ellington.

Seems like the process has been tightened up. Maybe somebody here can share details?

Tightened up? DC is spreading the money far and wide (at least for DCPS) and thinks nothing of spending $100 million on a school with 500 kids.

Duke Ellington -- $180 million
Coolidge -- $160 million
Jackson-Reid -- $130 million
Dunbar -- $125 million
Roosevelt -- $125 million
Woodson -- $100 million
Tubman -- $100 million
Deal -- $100 million
JO Wilson -- $91 million
Cardozo -- $90 million
Deal -- $90 million
Ballou -- $90 million
Jefferson -- $90 million
Burrville -- $85 million
Truesdell -- $80 million
Oyster Adams -- $79 million
Burroughs -- $75 million
Janney -- $70 million
MLK -- $65 million
Dorothy Height -- $63 million
Garfield -- $60.5 million
Anacostia -- $60 million

And some of these schools are tiny! Garfield has 252 students. Anacostia High School only has 250 students. Burrville has 232 students. Burroughs has 331.

DCPS MUST serve them. Charters don’t have to serve anyone.

These schools should be closed and consolidated. We should not spending $85 million on a school with 200 students. If the families are abandoning these schools for charters, the money should follow those children to the charters.

This has happened in the past only for DCPS to have to open up again.
If you look at the Ed spec of the renovations the capacity is usually only 500 students.

DCPS schools aren’t large enough to absorb 300 or even 100 more students.

For example if Burroughs closed Langdon would probably have to absorb most of them and they cannot.

What would likely happen is CHARTERS would absorb many. I’m sure some charter proponents would just love that haha.

Some of the DCPS schools are comically oversized. Ballou is 350,000 square feet. It has 597 students. That's about the same size as Jackson Reid, which has 2,000 students.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Charter school parents: We want DC to way over-spend on our facilities too (albeit without the big gratuity to developers). Any money that WTU negotiates for their dues-paying teachers is owed to our teachers too. We *have to* go to charters because DCPS has failed us. We *have to* go to charters because DCPS is violent. We can't take any students that have to or want to leave other charters; DCPS needs to take those. Even as we take away half the kids from DCPS, we don't want to have any part is helping solve the messes that DCPS has to deal with -- that is other kids' problem.

Basically, we want the equality for all the good stuff but avoidance for all the difficult parts.

More like…

DC charter parents: Follow the law which says funding parity.

DCPS: But we have to pay our teachers more, they are in a union. Your teachers aren’t in unions so they shouldn’t make as much. We also get no money for buildings, they come from the DGS fairy. Why do you need money for facilities?

Some of them are in unions though.

They do get a facilities allotment. Explicitly. Have your opinion but please stop spreading false information.

Does that $2000 per kid for charters equal $5 billion for DCPS? Absolutely not! What is DCPS spending on Tubman, $200k per kid? And they will provide maintenance going forward.

I don't now where the $5 billion figure comes from.

However, $2000 x 50,000 students x 20 years = $2 billion, so that's real money.

DC has spent $3.6 billion renovating DCPS schools, and plans to send another $2 billion more.

Ok, we know some of that was ill-spent (the effort to make underenrolled high schools appealing), some inefficiently spent (yay Bowser and her developer friends), some spent to benefit the community in addition to the schools (pools), and some spent initiatives to benefit the community that make no diffetence to the kids (energy efficiency).

We also know that DCPS has to deal with the schools already has, that can't easily reject a difficult property.

Charter schools would surely spend more efficiently can choose properties that make most sense in this era, amd need not worry about investments for the larger community. So presumably they need less money for the same number of students over at the same time.

Is the current allocation fair? I don't know. Maybe not. But I do know that you need more complete information to make a meaningful comparison.

How? They already have buildings. Just like DCPS. Do better.

Some charters have bought or leased buildings in the past 20 years. Others are still expanding or plan to move. None are tied to properties they acquired 50 or 100 years ago.

Oh stop. DCPS is building Taj Mahals. They spent almost $200 million on Duke Ellington, which has maybe 600 students. Meanwhile, there is no such thing as a fancy charter school in Washington D.C.

The Duke Ellington renovations were a complete abuse of taxpayers. We all should have been mad -- and we were. For anyone who missed it, here's a good, short article on the fiasco: https://www.wusa9.com/article/news/education/taxpayers-pay-millions-for-over-budgeted-school-renovations/65-474821677

It's still not clear what mismanagement--and possibly graft--last decade has to do with funding schools now.

So have any palaces been built in recent years? I haven't seen it. Banneker is looking great, but was not bonkers like Ellington.

Seems like the process has been tightened up. Maybe somebody here can share details?

Tightened up? DC is spreading the money far and wide (at least for DCPS) and thinks nothing of spending $100 million on a school with 500 kids.

Duke Ellington -- $180 million
Coolidge -- $160 million
Jackson-Reid -- $130 million
Dunbar -- $125 million
Roosevelt -- $125 million
Woodson -- $100 million
Tubman -- $100 million
Deal -- $100 million
JO Wilson -- $91 million
Cardozo -- $90 million
Deal -- $90 million
Ballou -- $90 million
Jefferson -- $90 million
Burrville -- $85 million
Truesdell -- $80 million
Oyster Adams -- $79 million
Burroughs -- $75 million
Janney -- $70 million
MLK -- $65 million
Dorothy Height -- $63 million
Garfield -- $60.5 million
Anacostia -- $60 million

And some of these schools are tiny! Garfield has 252 students. Anacostia High School only has 250 students. Burrville has 232 students. Burroughs has 331.

DCPS MUST serve them. Charters don’t have to serve anyone.

These schools should be closed and consolidated. We should not spending $85 million on a school with 200 students. If the families are abandoning these schools for charters, the money should follow those children to the charters.

This has happened in the past only for DCPS to have to open up again.
If you look at the Ed spec of the renovations the capacity is usually only 500 students.

DCPS schools aren’t large enough to absorb 300 or even 100 more students.

For example if Burroughs closed Langdon would probably have to absorb most of them and they cannot.

What would likely happen is CHARTERS would absorb many. I’m sure some charter proponents would just love that haha.

Some of the DCPS schools are comically oversized. Ballou is 350,000 square feet. It has 597 students. That's about the same size as Jackson Reid, which has 2,000 students.

That has been discussed ad nauseum upthread. Yes, a decade ago DC made several stupidly oversized high school rebuilds and renovations.

Move on. It distracts from a substantive discussion of current issues.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Charter school parents: We want DC to way over-spend on our facilities too (albeit without the big gratuity to developers). Any money that WTU negotiates for their dues-paying teachers is owed to our teachers too. We *have to* go to charters because DCPS has failed us. We *have to* go to charters because DCPS is violent. We can't take any students that have to or want to leave other charters; DCPS needs to take those. Even as we take away half the kids from DCPS, we don't want to have any part is helping solve the messes that DCPS has to deal with -- that is other kids' problem.

Basically, we want the equality for all the good stuff but avoidance for all the difficult parts.

More like…

DC charter parents: Follow the law which says funding parity.

DCPS: But we have to pay our teachers more, they are in a union. Your teachers aren’t in unions so they shouldn’t make as much. We also get no money for buildings, they come from the DGS fairy. Why do you need money for facilities?

Some of them are in unions though.

They do get a facilities allotment. Explicitly. Have your opinion but please stop spreading false information.

Does that $2000 per kid for charters equal $5 billion for DCPS? Absolutely not! What is DCPS spending on Tubman, $200k per kid? And they will provide maintenance going forward.

I don't now where the $5 billion figure comes from.

However, $2000 x 50,000 students x 20 years = $2 billion, so that's real money.

DC has spent $3.6 billion renovating DCPS schools, and plans to send another $2 billion more.

Ok, we know some of that was ill-spent (the effort to make underenrolled high schools appealing), some inefficiently spent (yay Bowser and her developer friends), some spent to benefit the community in addition to the schools (pools), and some spent initiatives to benefit the community that make no diffetence to the kids (energy efficiency).

We also know that DCPS has to deal with the schools already has, that can't easily reject a difficult property.

Charter schools would surely spend more efficiently can choose properties that make most sense in this era, amd need not worry about investments for the larger community. So presumably they need less money for the same number of students over at the same time.

Is the current allocation fair? I don't know. Maybe not. But I do know that you need more complete information to make a meaningful comparison.

How? They already have buildings. Just like DCPS. Do better.

Some charters have bought or leased buildings in the past 20 years. Others are still expanding or plan to move. None are tied to properties they acquired 50 or 100 years ago.

Oh stop. DCPS is building Taj Mahals. They spent almost $200 million on Duke Ellington, which has maybe 600 students. Meanwhile, there is no such thing as a fancy charter school in Washington D.C.

The Duke Ellington renovations were a complete abuse of taxpayers. We all should have been mad -- and we were. For anyone who missed it, here's a good, short article on the fiasco: https://www.wusa9.com/article/news/education/taxpayers-pay-millions-for-over-budgeted-school-renovations/65-474821677

It's still not clear what mismanagement--and possibly graft--last decade has to do with funding schools now.

So have any palaces been built in recent years? I haven't seen it. Banneker is looking great, but was not bonkers like Ellington.

Seems like the process has been tightened up. Maybe somebody here can share details?

Tightened up? DC is spreading the money far and wide (at least for DCPS) and thinks nothing of spending $100 million on a school with 500 kids.

Duke Ellington -- $180 million
Coolidge -- $160 million
Jackson-Reid -- $130 million
Dunbar -- $125 million
Roosevelt -- $125 million
Woodson -- $100 million
Tubman -- $100 million
Deal -- $100 million
JO Wilson -- $91 million
Cardozo -- $90 million
Deal -- $90 million
Ballou -- $90 million
Jefferson -- $90 million
Burrville -- $85 million
Truesdell -- $80 million
Oyster Adams -- $79 million
Burroughs -- $75 million
Janney -- $70 million
MLK -- $65 million
Dorothy Height -- $63 million
Garfield -- $60.5 million
Anacostia -- $60 million

And some of these schools are tiny! Garfield has 252 students. Anacostia High School only has 250 students. Burrville has 232 students. Burroughs has 331.

DCPS MUST serve them. Charters don’t have to serve anyone.

These schools should be closed and consolidated. We should not spending $85 million on a school with 200 students. If the families are abandoning these schools for charters, the money should follow those children to the charters.

This has happened in the past only for DCPS to have to open up again.
If you look at the Ed spec of the renovations the capacity is usually only 500 students.

DCPS schools aren’t large enough to absorb 300 or even 100 more students.

For example if Burroughs closed Langdon would probably have to absorb most of them and they cannot.

What would likely happen is CHARTERS would absorb many. I’m sure some charter proponents would just love that haha.

Some of the DCPS schools are comically oversized. Ballou is 350,000 square feet. It has 597 students. That's about the same size as Jackson Reid, which has 2,000 students.

That has been discussed ad nauseum upthread. Yes, a decade ago DC made several stupidly oversized high school rebuilds and renovations.

Move on. It distracts from a substantive discussion of current issues.

Many of these schools the city is remodeling are *extremely* underenrolled. They need to be closed. Why on earth are we spending $90 million to remodel a school with 200 students when there are charters with 1,000 students that are getting bupkis?

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Anonymous wrote:Charter school parents: We want DC to way over-spend on our facilities too (albeit without the big gratuity to developers). Any money that WTU negotiates for their dues-paying teachers is owed to our teachers too. We *have to* go to charters because DCPS has failed us. We *have to* go to charters because DCPS is violent. We can't take any students that have to or want to leave other charters; DCPS needs to take those. Even as we take away half the kids from DCPS, we don't want to have any part is helping solve the messes that DCPS has to deal with -- that is other kids' problem.

Basically, we want the equality for all the good stuff but avoidance for all the difficult parts.

More like…

DC charter parents: Follow the law which says funding parity.

DCPS: But we have to pay our teachers more, they are in a union. Your teachers aren’t in unions so they shouldn’t make as much. We also get no money for buildings, they come from the DGS fairy. Why do you need money for facilities?

Some of them are in unions though.

They do get a facilities allotment. Explicitly. Have your opinion but please stop spreading false information.

Does that $2000 per kid for charters equal $5 billion for DCPS? Absolutely not! What is DCPS spending on Tubman, $200k per kid? And they will provide maintenance going forward.

I don't now where the $5 billion figure comes from.

However, $2000 x 50,000 students x 20 years = $2 billion, so that's real money.

DC has spent $3.6 billion renovating DCPS schools, and plans to send another $2 billion more.

Ok, we know some of that was ill-spent (the effort to make underenrolled high schools appealing), some inefficiently spent (yay Bowser and her developer friends), some spent to benefit the community in addition to the schools (pools), and some spent initiatives to benefit the community that make no diffetence to the kids (energy efficiency).

We also know that DCPS has to deal with the schools already has, that can't easily reject a difficult property.

Charter schools would surely spend more efficiently can choose properties that make most sense in this era, amd need not worry about investments for the larger community. So presumably they need less money for the same number of students over at the same time.

Is the current allocation fair? I don't know. Maybe not. But I do know that you need more complete information to make a meaningful comparison.

How? They already have buildings. Just like DCPS. Do better.

Some charters have bought or leased buildings in the past 20 years. Others are still expanding or plan to move. None are tied to properties they acquired 50 or 100 years ago.

Oh stop. DCPS is building Taj Mahals. They spent almost $200 million on Duke Ellington, which has maybe 600 students. Meanwhile, there is no such thing as a fancy charter school in Washington D.C.

The Duke Ellington renovations were a complete abuse of taxpayers. We all should have been mad -- and we were. For anyone who missed it, here's a good, short article on the fiasco: https://www.wusa9.com/article/news/education/taxpayers-pay-millions-for-over-budgeted-school-renovations/65-474821677

It's still not clear what mismanagement--and possibly graft--last decade has to do with funding schools now.

So have any palaces been built in recent years? I haven't seen it. Banneker is looking great, but was not bonkers like Ellington.

Seems like the process has been tightened up. Maybe somebody here can share details?

Tightened up? DC is spreading the money far and wide (at least for DCPS) and thinks nothing of spending $100 million on a school with 500 kids.

Duke Ellington -- $180 million
Coolidge -- $160 million
Jackson-Reid -- $130 million
Dunbar -- $125 million
Roosevelt -- $125 million
Woodson -- $100 million
Tubman -- $100 million
Deal -- $100 million
JO Wilson -- $91 million
Cardozo -- $90 million
Deal -- $90 million
Ballou -- $90 million
Jefferson -- $90 million
Burrville -- $85 million
Truesdell -- $80 million
Oyster Adams -- $79 million
Burroughs -- $75 million
Janney -- $70 million
MLK -- $65 million
Dorothy Height -- $63 million
Garfield -- $60.5 million
Anacostia -- $60 million

And some of these schools are tiny! Garfield has 252 students. Anacostia High School only has 250 students. Burrville has 232 students. Burroughs has 331.

DCPS MUST serve them. Charters don’t have to serve anyone.

These schools should be closed and consolidated. We should not spending $85 million on a school with 200 students. If the families are abandoning these schools for charters, the money should follow those children to the charters.

This has happened in the past only for DCPS to have to open up again.
If you look at the Ed spec of the renovations the capacity is usually only 500 students.

DCPS schools aren’t large enough to absorb 300 or even 100 more students.

For example if Burroughs closed Langdon would probably have to absorb most of them and they cannot.

What would likely happen is CHARTERS would absorb many. I’m sure some charter proponents would just love that haha.

Some of the DCPS schools are comically oversized. Ballou is 350,000 square feet. It has 597 students. That's about the same size as Jackson Reid, which has 2,000 students.

That has been discussed ad nauseum upthread. Yes, a decade ago DC made several stupidly oversized high school rebuilds and renovations.

Move on. It distracts from a substantive discussion of current issues.

Many of these schools the city is remodeling are *extremely* underenrolled. They need to be closed. Why on earth are we spending $90 million to remodel a school with 200 students when there are charters with 1,000 students that are getting bupkis?

Again, they are getting a facilities allotment. You can argue whether it is enough or is equal (whatever that means) but they do get it. As well as loans and credit support.