Reply to Petition to DC Council for FY 2024 Charter School Budgets

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Reply to "Petition to DC Council for FY 2024 Charter School Budgets"

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[quote=Anonymous]I do think if charters want equal funding to DCPS, they need to be willing to take kids after count day and to do midyear adds to their waitlists (and even permit people to add themselves to the waitlist midyear) when students depart. These are public schools, but they want to behave like private schools when they feel like it. I don't understand how they get away with it.

I don't actually agree that all charters should be required to offer self-contained classrooms and life skills classes, because I think that would be inefficient and not necessarily serve kids in need of these services any better. Many charters are smaller schools with necessarily smaller student bodies, and it doesn't make a ton of sense to create self-contained classrooms there. BUT I do think there should be more requirements for charters in terms of serving kids with IEPs/SNs. This does not mean every charter should be prepared to handle any kid with SNs. It means that there needs to be a good faith effort to find ways to offer their curriculum and philosophy to kids with SNs. If you are engaged with an educational philosophy that simply does not serve anyone other than high-SES, neurotypical kids with no learning or physical disabilities, then I question whether that philosophy belongs in a public school.

The point of charters is to offer more experimentation and variety in terms of what public schools offer, to offer educational opportunity to every child. That means that ever school need not meet the needs of every student or family, but it should OFFER something for every student or family. For instance, I have no interest in the Kipp schools because I am not interested in their educational philosophy. But their philosophy encompasses a child like my child, even if their approach to my child is not one I want. So I have no problem with Kipp receiving funding equal to what a DCPS does because Kipp is not excluding children from its philosophy altogether. It's an option for my family, just one I won't be using. This is different than a school that has just decided it doesn't serve kids with dyslexia or kids who need skills training or kids who have special transportation needs or remedial education needs. Those are normal things for students to need and as a public school, you need a plan for serving them, even if it's not the exact same plan DCPS would offer.[/quote]

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