Reply to Charter school funding gap in FY27 budget

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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]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.[/quote]

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?   [/quote]

Some of them are in unions though.

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

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. [/quote]

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.  
[/quote]

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

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 [b]can choose properties that make most sense in this era[/b], 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.[/quote]

How? They already have buildings. Just like DCPS. Do better.[/quote]

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.[/quote]

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. [/quote]

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?

[/quote]

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[/quote]

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. [/quote]

DCPS MUST serve them. Charters don’t have to serve anyone.[/quote]

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. [/quote]

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.[/quote]

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. [/quote]

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.[/quote]

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?[/quote]

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. [/quote]

It's wildly, wildly unequal, as people have been discussing for 34 pages and counting....[/quote]

Well, I disagree, for the record. But the point is, they don't get "bupkis". They get what they're getting. And somehow, many charters have managed to remodel, move, and/or buy real estate. If you're not satisfied with your building, maybe ask the leaders why they chose it. [/quote]

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