Reply to Charter school funding gap in FY27 budget

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]The city will spend astronomical amounts renovating schools, but only if they're DCPS. DC spent $180 million redoing Duke Ellington, which only has 600 or so students. Works out to about $300,000 per student. [/quote]

Banneker got a $130 million renovation (700 students) [/quote]

There's a long list of DCPS high schools that have gotten $100 million+ renovations[/quote]

How long exactly is that long list?

What portion of DCPS schools is it?[/quote]

The city has spent $3 billion and counting remodeling public schools (but not charters!)...[/quote]

Some of the renovations are really over the top. Apparently money is no object for some schools. [/quote]

It's kinda hilarious how the city treats charter school kids like red headed stepchildren. You would not think a government would or could go so far out of its way to be shitty to a group of children. [/quote]

DC is obsessed with the “right” people using city services. It IS racial. It is a low level counter insurgency waged against “transplants.” To turn a phrase, you face twice as much scrutiny and be twice as good. [/quote]

I think the city still resents the charter school system, even though half the kids in the city are now it in, and the way it tries to get back at it is by starving the schools of money. The difference between DCPS facilities and charter facilities is mind blowing. I would not think it is legal to treat an entire class of children like third class citizens. [/quote]

I realize this thread is talking about facilities funding, but I think the other big part of the conversation is that for years, charters were expanding/opening with seemingly little thought as to how many schools would be in a certain neighborhood, how many seats would be open, etc. The birthrate has stopped increasing, we have too many schools/seats, and that is hard to un-do. DCPS closed a lot of their buildings 20ish+ years ago, and they can't close many more bc there needs to be guaranteed/neighborhood/by-right options for all students within a certain distance from their home. Not to mention the budget of the city overall has been hit hard recently, so you end up with less money all around. Many people argue that charter schools opened to respond to a need/demand, which is true -but the lack of big picture planning resulted in a large number of independent charter schools opening, many of them serving the same communities with similar models. 
All that to say, it is a lot more nuanced and complex than just 'give us more money'.[/quote]

Seems a little rich to blame charters when the city routinely spends $100 million to renovate DCPS schools that are already severely under-enrolled. Anacostia High School has 250 students in total. [/quote]

People here are obsessed with poor Black kids getting a school building over a decade ago. It's weird and unhealthy.[/quote]

Here's a list of major school renovations in Washington D.C.:

Duke Ellington -- $180 million
Coolidge -- $160 million
Jackson-Reid -- $130 million
Dunbar -- $125 million
Roosevelt -- $125 million
Woodson -- $100 million
Deal -- $100 million 
Cardozo -- $90 million
Deal -- $90 million
Ballou -- $90 million 
Jefferson -- $90 million
Truesdell -- $80 million 
Janney -- $70 million
Anacostia -- $60 million

Notice anything weird about which schools the city decides get the fancy renovations? [/quote]

Don't forget:

Oyster Adams -- $79 million
Dorothy Height -- $63 million
JO Wilson -- $91 million
MLK -- $65 million
Burrville -- $85 million
Garfield -- $60.5 million
Burroughs -- $75 million

All DCPS. No charters. [/quote]

Again, DCPS and DGS do not renovate charters. That's not how the system is set up. Part of the point of being a charter school is getting to manage your own renovations and not dealing with DCPS and DGS. You seem not to understand this. It's not some big conspiracy. It's how it's supposed to work.

[/quote]

Nobody cares which pocket the money comes from. The point is that the city is starving children in charters of resources while simultaneously building palaces for kids who happen to go to DCPS. Everyone should be treated equally.[/quote]

You seem to think charters never renovate, though. And that is simply not true. There's no centralized list, but they do renovate. People provided you a short list already.

The point of facilities funding is charters can decide whether to save up for renovations and how much to spend. If they choose not to, in favor of spending on other things, that's up to them. And if they stupidly overspent on a building and can't afford to maintain it, too bad. Choices have consequences.[/quote]

Well, this is totally wrong. The reason [b]one system has really nice facilities [/b]and the other has crappy facilities is because one system is given a lot of money by the city and the other is not. It's not complicated. [/quote]m

You keep repeating this misinformation.

How many DCPS have you been in?

Why don't you make a list of the really nice DCPS schools, the adequate DCPS schools, and the overcrowded and/or very worn DCPS schools?

I guarantee you that the "really nice" category would be dwarfed by the others.[/quote]

The city plans to renovate every single public school. It's already spent $3.6 billion redoing more than 150 schools. It plans to spend at least $2 billion on school makeovers, so if your school hasn't gotten one yet, just wait. The question is why are they only doing this for DCPS, when only half the kids in this city go to DCPS. [/quote]

The answer is that administrations come and go and the current one is BIG on building renovations (I mean look at the projects across the district!) and hates charter schools. That’s why. [/quote]

It's political. They hate charters and they take it on the kids who attend them, by attempting to kneecap their educations. [/quote]

The anti-charter vibe is very toxic. you should see the PTO/PTA leadership group WhatsApp on this topic today.[/quote]

To be fair, the anti-DCPS vibe can also very toxic. The way our system is set up pits a bunch of type A DC parents against each other. Just read through the comments on half of these threads. Parents are constantly tearing DCPS apart and listing all of the reasons and generalizations and assumptions that make people have their feelings about DCPS. Not saying two wrongs make a right, but let’s not pretend charter parents are a uniform example of positivity either.[/quote]

The city is actively trying to undermine the education of children in charter schools. You can see why that would make people mad. [/quote]

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