The Ward 5 Quality Schools Community Engagement Meeting and the IFF Report: Why Community Meetings Must Challenge the IFF Report’s Legitimacy and Reject Its Recommendations
Written by Erich Martel, cross-posted from DCPS Watch. Erich Martel is a Retired DCPS High School Teacher (Cardozo, Wilson, Phelps)
Quality Schools Community Engagement meeting held in Ward 5. Participants were divided into small groups and not allowed to include a statement voicing their concerns about the Illinois Facilities Fund Report.
On July 31, 2012, I attended the Ward 5 Quality Schools Community Engagement Meeting, one of five ward meetings. It was initiated by the DME (Deputy Mayor of Education) to address the recommendations of the IFF (Illinois Facilities Fund) report, which recommends the closure, “turnaround” or “transfer to charter operators” of 37 DCPS schools, including five in Ward 5.
Before and during the Ward 5 meeting, the DME, DME staff and Public Agenda facilitator insisted that the meetings were not about the IFF report, but only to solicit the public’s ideas about school quality. In discussion group #3, efforts to include a statement opposing the IFF report were opposed by the DME staffer and the Public Agenda facilitator. Their response was to minimize the importance of the IFF report and to assure us that our concerns would be best addressed by describing the elements of “quality” that we want to see in our schools. The other part of their strategy was to split the participants into multiple groups, have them spend the entire time discussing, making long lists, then putting colored stickies on our preferences, and, finally, reports from each group to the whole group. No time was allotted for the whole group to vote on the recommendations.
This two-part strategy (divide participants into small groups; focus discussion on broad generalities, instead of the real issue) is designed to isolate concerned parents and community members in small groups and limit discussion to an agenda that avoids the most important issues.
The resulting lists of “qualities” will be attached to the DME’s recommendations, in his report. He will write that every quality criterion can be met by closure, turnaround, or transfer to charter operators, the IFF report’s recommendations. In the meantime, while the DME is diverting parents and residents’ concerns into make-believe discussions about school quality, the Public Charter School Board has initiated a speeded-up process for “experienced charter operators” to open new charters in DC by August 2013 and the DCPS Chancellor is seeking charter authority to cover up her and Rhee’s failed reform policies. Both charter initiatives have the full support of Mayor Gray and DME Wright.
The evidence (with links) supporting this analysis is below, followed by suggestions for moving forward. Statements or documents by the Mayor, the DME, the DCPS Chancellor and the Public Charter School Board all show that each one is seeking to increase “the number of high quality public charter school seats.” In fact, OSSE’s plan to water down graduation requirements may be part of their effort to attract charter high schools.
Evidence: The five “quality school community engagement meetings” are really about the IFF report
In written responses to the Council’ oversight questions, this past February, the DME wrote: “DME is beginning a process of community engagement based on the IFF report data. This engagement will begin in April 2012 and last through the fall. DME is working with DCPS, PCSB, and community members to hold facilitated conversations in each of the ‘Top 10’ neighborhood clusters as identified in the IFF report.”
The DME’s statement clearly means “public engagement” on the subject of the “IFF report data.” His next and final sentence attempts to shift focus away from the IFF report to something vague and undefined, “quality schools”:
Making “quality schools” an “integral part of these community conversations” does not negate the previous sentences’ focus on IFF data. More importantly, “feedback” can only be solicited for information already reported to those expected to give feedback. The community had information on the IFF report’s recommendations and its newly invented category, “performing seats,” after the report was posted in January. That is the only information which ward residents could study and then give knowledgeable “feedback.” The DME provided no information on the subject of a “vision for quality schools,” on which the community could give knowledgeable “feedback.”
There is nothing in the DME’s response that makes “the IFF report data” an off-limits topic as the DME, DME staff and Public Agenda facilitator tried to enforce.
The evidence that the Mayor, the DME, the DCPS Chancellor and the DC Public Charter Board are promoting a rapid expansion of charter “seats”
1) The Mayor supports and takes credit for the IFF Study and its recommendations.
“Action 2.2.2: Develop Strategies To Create In D.C. Public Schools And D.C. Public Charter Schools.
“The IFF study, Quality Schools: Every Child, Every School, Every Neighborhood commissioned by the Mayor and the Deputy Mayor of Education, indicated that the District will need to increase the number of educational options or “quality seats” that prepare children for future academic success in both DCPS and D.C. public charter school system. The study identified ten neighborhood clusters with a high need for quality academic seats. In conjunction with the report’s findings, the DME will engage the community in conversations to further examine academic needs in each of the neighborhood clusters. At the conclusion of the community conversations, the DME will release a report with recommended strategies to bring forth more quality seats in the District.” (Vincent Gray, One City Action Plan, p.25, July 2012: http://mayor.dc.gov/sites/default/files/dc/sites/mayor/publication/attachments/One_City_Action_Plan.pdf )
2) Chancellor Henderson and Mayor Gray want DCPS to have the authority to grant charters
“Henderson voiced unconditional support for chartering authority Thursday at a D.C. Council hearing.
“Henderson said the traditional school system would benefit by giving schools the kind of freedom that charters enjoy. What we know is that autonomy leads to innovation and success,” Henderson said. She added that she viewed restoration of chartering authority not as a means of competing with the charter board but as a way to collaborate and move with dispatch to place good schools in underserved neighborhoods.” “District Seeks Return of Charting Authority” by Bill Turque, Washington Post, 2/23/2012, http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/dc-schools-insider/post/district-seeks-return-of-chartering-authority/2012/02/23/gIQAB54YWR_blog.html
Comments:
Henderson’s touting of chartering authority as “autonomy [that] leads to innovation and success” is a deception:
a) The failure of many charter schools proves that innovation can lead to failure as well as success;
b) The current contract with the WTU allows for procedures, whereby the faculty of a school can vote to adopt a non-traditional schedule. If 2/3 or all faculty members (WTU bargaining unit) vote to adopt it, it can go into effect. Teachers who don’t like the non-traditional schedule have the right to transfer to another school.
If the issue is a longer school day, that can be negotiated via a memorandum of agreement or new contract provision with the president of the WTU.
The real reason is that Henderson does not want to go that route, because it would limit her ability to terminate teachers in schools that are closed, turned around or transferred to charters. She wants to use chartering authority as another vehicle to excess and terminate teachers.
c) Henderson has managed or co-managed DCPS for over five years. In most of the 37 DCPS schools cited in the IFF, the majority of the faculty has been hired by Rhee and Henderson since June 2007. The management and academic policies they implemented must be independently analyzed to determine the reasons for 37 schools to have failed.
3. The DC Public Charter Board is Seeking to “expand the number of high quality public charter school seats available to the DC public.”
– A speeded up process to attract “experienced charter operators” to open as early as August 2013;
– A process for new charter school start-ups to open as early as August 2014. http://tinyurl.com/cos67fl (on the DC Public Charter Board web site, 7/12/2012)
The headlines from today’s top education stories reads: “Many public schools in D.C.’s poorest area should be transformed or shut, study says; more charters recommended” written by Bill Turque, Washington Post writer while Mike Debonis’ blog: DeMorning Links reads: “School Closings Contemplated” and Channel Fox Five TV news reported the DC School System study recommends making major improvements or close three dozen under performing public schools or expand high performing charter schools.
The Demolition of Bruce Monroe Elementary School
The Washington Teacher blog first reported on October 31, 2011 about future plans to close additional DC public schools. An excerpt from the 21st Century School Fund September – October newsletter stated: “The Deputy Mayor for Education, with a 100,000 dollar grant from the Walton Family Foundation, engaged IFF (Illinois Facility Fund) to study the capacity and performance of DCPS and public charter schools. IFF has authored reports in Denver, Chicago, Milwaukee, and St. Louis, using a defined method to determine what they term “performing” or “non- performing” seats. This analysis is being done with an eye to “right sizing” district schools which beyond consolidation could include reconstitution and replacement with school management organizations.”
Not unlike other major cities including NY, Chicago, Ohio- DC has been at the forefront of shutting down traditional public schools. In 2008, twenty-three public schools were closed under former DC Chancellor Michelle Rhee and then mayor Adrian Fenty which led to a community outcry to save our public schools. Local education stakeholders voices weren’t heeded by Rhee or Fenty and only one neighborhood elementary school- John Burroughs was saved from the chopping block.
Natalie Hopkinson who authored the article Why School Choice Fails, which appeared in the December 4, 2011 N.Y. Times, discussed how this country’s reform policies in Washington, DC- put in place by a Republican led congress in 1995 led to the birth of many of our charter schools. Hopkinson wrote:” if a school was deemed failing, students could transfer schools, opt to attend a charter school or receive a voucher to attend a private school. The idea was to introduce competition; good schools would survive; bad ones would disappear. It effectively created a second education system, which now enrolls nearly half the city’s public school students. The charters consistently perform worse than the traditional schools, yet they are rarely closed.”
The results of IFF’s study recommend that DC make major improvements or close thirty six under performing schools in some of the city’s poorest neighborhoods or expand high performing charter schools. It’s a finding that heralds the continued growth of the charter schools sector at the expense of the D.C. Public Schools, if not its outright domination. While some people are questioning the motives of the Illinois Facilities Fund, the study is “likely to rekindle impassioned debate about possible school closures and the future of public education in the District,” Bill Turque notes. Officials tell Turque, education writer for the Post that any decisions about a “major restructuring” are at least a year and many community meetings away.
What comes as no surprise to anyone is that schools in ward 8 were identified as having the greatest need, according to the IFF study. The study recommended turning around or closing the following public schools: Simon, Patterson, Terrell-McGogney and Ferebee-Hope and closing two bottom-rung charter schools, Center City Congress Heights (pre-K to 8) and Imagine Southeast (pre-K to 5). H.D. Woodson Senior High School which is located in Ward 7 was also recommended for turn around or closure, a school which recently has undergone capital investment which cost millions of dollars in investment.
One of the things that I find disturbing about IFF’s report is the recommendation for DC to consider expanding charter schools in the 10 targeted neighborhood clusters and call for the DC Public Charter School Board to authorize about 6,500 new charter seats (current enrollment is about 32,000) while utilizing former public school buildings as incentives to get the public charter board to actively recruit the highest performing charter school operators to replicate their school models.
The writing should be on the wall for all of us to see. If it’s not, I don’t know what to tell you. From where I sit, this situation looks bleak for working, middle class families and many of our teachers in some of our poorest communities. The loss of our public schools is a disinvestment in our school communities and may lead to higher classrooms sizes, further declining enrollment in DC public schools and extinction of traditional public schools and fewer teaching jobs. Now is not the time for parents, students, teachers, school staff and community members to sit back. We have to ask the hard questions, organize and demand to have a voice as education stakeholders or we may likely have a re-run of the 2008 school closures.
On November 8, 2011 – I issued a call to action to DC teachers and school personnel: “In the midst of upcoming contract negotiations, there are big plans ahead to close our traditional public schools. Never in our history has been there been a greater need for teachers and school personnel to have an effective organizing union. Our very future as educators and the future of our students will be determined by how vigorously we, alongside parents and community members are willing to fight to save our public schools.” Won’t you heed the call to get involved before your local school is reconstituted and turned over to a charter school, your job is lost and your community no longer includes you?
Join Empower DC’s Information and Action Planning Summit
Exposing DC’s Equation for Displacement
Saturday, Feb. 4 @ 11 am -1:30pm @ 1419 V St NW
Imagine every news story that you read, hear or watch is a painting hanging on an art gallery wall. Just as the artist determines not only the main subject matter of the painting but everything else that gets included on the canvas, it is the producer of the news story who decides what issue to cover, what “facts” should be included, whose opinion will be voiced and whose opinion will be ignored. In other words, it is the reporter or journalist who decides what’s inside the frame and what gets left out. Deciding what issues to cover and what angle or perspective to use is called framing. How a reporter frames a story is guided by many factors including, but not limited to, the reporter’s experience of the world and the assumptions they’ve made about the issue in question.
Ward 7 Councilmember Yvette Alexander & DCPS School’s Chancellor Kaya Henderson listening intently (or not) to the River Terrace Community as they plead for their school.
Let’s take a specific example, local mainstream news reporting on proposed school closings in DCPS. In this article by Washington Post education reporter Bill Turque School Closings Unlikely to be Widespread, the assumption that school closings will have a positive impact on DCPS is not obvious, but it’s there. Turque trusts just two sources–School’s Chancellor Kaya Henderson and Deputy Mayor for Education De’Shawn Wright. As city officials who have a budget to balance, they may prioritize the alleged cost-effectiveness of closing schools over providing a world-class education to the city’s children but that possibility is never explored. The parents who may be forced to uproot their children from one school and bus them to a location outside of their neighborhoods are not included. And why should they be? After all, closings are unlikely to be widespread. The title of the article itself suggests that only a relatively few families will be inconvenienced and that their loss is acceptable in the face of the positive gains that may or may not be achieved throughout the system as a whole. Also left out of the frame are the teachers and the students themselves, who may not agree with Kaya Henderson’s definition of an under-enrolled school, especially if that definition means an increase in the size of their classes. Members of the community at large aren’t likely to be considered at all by mainstream news sources covering education issues but that doesn’t meant they are not impacted when a community’s school is torn down in lieu of luxury condos. To his credit, Turque does mention one school community–River Terrace, whose elementary school is scheduled for closure next year, but he says nothing about how the school’s closing might impact the River Terrace community. Of course, including all of those voices might take too much time. No doubt he has a deadline to adhere to. He may also have constraints on the number of words he’s allowed in his column. On the other hand, if he really wanted to include the voices of the River Terrace school community in his article, he could have simply provided a link to his previous article River Terrace Pleads for its School. In this article, River Terrace parents, students and community members are quoted but not until the end of the article. Also, Turque points out the official estimate of $800,000 in savings should the school be closed, adding in his own words, “no small matter given the city’s fiscal straits.” If Turque were committed to giving equal weight to both sides of this issue, he might have countered with Kaya Henderson’s statement “If every community had this level of engagement, DCPS would be the best school district in the country,” which surely suggests that $800,000 is no savings at all if the result is a lower level of community engagement. So, let’s review. Turque’s trusted sources are known to believe in the efficacy of school closings, otherwise they wouldn’t have closed schools in the past and they wouldn’t be advocating for more closings now. Any sources that just might believe that closing schools will not improve DCPS are not in the frame. Fortunately, we have a frame of our own to fill. On January 12, 2011, over 200 members of the River Terrace Community attended a public hearing regarding the proposed closing of their elementary school. Over 40 parents, teachers, students and members of the community testified. The video below is just a small portion of that hearing in which Henderson pledged to work with the community. Watch it and you’ll understand why she would make such a pledge. Why she went back on her word, refusing to help community members with their efforts to increase enrollment and deciding to close the school on December 16, 2011, is a question for another day. Unfortunately, our frame does not have the same reach as the Washington Post or other news media outlets, but if it’s reaching you than something can be done. Right now, when students, parents and community members continue to be negatively affected by punitive school reform efforts, we must find a way to get our knowledge and opinions into the media frame. It may not be possible to change the life experience of mainstream reporters like Bill Turque or the rest of the staff of the Washington Post, the Washington Times, DCist, The City Paper and every network television station producing local news, but we can and should relentlessly question their assumptions. Beyond that, we can find ways to make them hear our stories, to better understand our lives and to respect our knowledge and opinions. To that end, Empower DC is sponsoring the following:
How To Use The Media Before It Uses You
Join us for Empower DC’s next Empowerment Circle on how to effectively use and create media, an interactive training facilitated by Liane Scott, the coordinator of the Grassroots Media Project.
Wednesday, January 25 2012 6:30 – 8:30 PM Watha T Daniel/Shaw Neighborhood Library 1630 7th Street NW
Accessible by the Shaw/Howard Metro Station (Green and Yellow line) Use the 7th and R Street exit and its just a couple of steps away
Limited childcare is available for this meeting so please RSVP if you will need childcare. To RSVP or if you have any questions or concerns please contact Daniel del Pielago at 202-234-9119 ext. 104 or via email at Daniel@empowerdc.org
You can also contact me at 202-234-9119 ext. 106 or via email at Liane@grassrootsmediaproject.org. Although I’ve focused on education in the above example, the techniques we cover are good for any issue or concern. Developing a clear, concise message is the key to effectively advocating for your issue in the media. So please join us next Wednesday. If you can’t make it to the workshop, please forward this information to your progressive friends and acquaintances. If you’re angry about the treatment of the River Terrace community, then contact any or all of the following public officials:
Mayor Vincent Gray – call (202) 727-6300 or email Mayor@dc.gov
Schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson – call (202) 442-5885 or email Kaya.Henderson@dc.gov
City Council Chairman Kwame Brown – call (202) 724-8174 or email kbrown@dccouncil.us
Ward 7 Councilmember Yvette Alexander – call (202) 724-8068 or email yalexander@dccouncil.us
Deputy Mayor for Education DeShawn Wright – call (202) 727-3636 or email dme@dc.gov
Both schools have been considered under-enrolled, yet one was demolished and the other completely refurbished. William Jordan, a member of the list serve Concerned for DCPS has some theories as to why. I’ve reprinted them below because I think they are worthy of your consideration.
Posted on the Concerned For DCPS List Serve on January 5, 2012:
Takoma Educational Campus after the Rehabilitation
I would suggest anyone who has followed or participated in the “Bruce Monroe School” over the years to pick up the Wednesday, December 28, 2011 addition of Northwest_Current 12.28.11 . On the front page is an article about the reopening of the Takoma Educational Campus one year after a fire closed the school. The article is relevant to Bruce Monroe because the city and officials, including Councilmember Graham, etc. found a way to address the needs of Takoma doing the very things they told our community and Bruce Monroe stakeholders they could not do months prior to the Takoma fire. It reveals the pattern of dishonesty and political disdain by then Chancellor Rhee and Councilmember Graham toward this community and the population of families and students served by Bruce Monroe.
Bruce Monroe Elementary after the Demolition
The article explains how the city initially planned to make $2 million in repairs but later decided to invest $25.5 million in a complete rehab. Via a bait & switch, Councilmember Graham and Rhee mislead this community into believing that the DCPS capital budget could not be adjusted to do a complete rehab of Bruce Monroe either as part of the redevelopment of the old site or as rehab of Bruce Monroe at Park View as they promised in prior years.
As evidence of what was actually promised, the notes from community meetings in which the future of Bruce Monroe was discussed can be downloaded via the following links.:
Bruce Monroe, Park View & Meyer were closed down as part of the 2008 DCPS Rhee closings supposedly because of low enrollment. It should be noted that Takoma Enrollment was on par with Meyer. However, Bruce Monroe was reconstituted and the students shipped to Park View the least hospitable of all 3 buildings. In fact Park View at the time could have easily been considered dangerous. Despite this Bruce Monroe students were not relocated to the Meyer building which was in much better shape, they went to Park View. In the meantime, Councilmember Graham placed a boxing program in Meyer Elementary, to which he had been funneling earmarks for years with no community or practical oversight. Clearly, Ward 1 closings were not so much about education, but politics and real estate development. Rhee closed schools with minimal responsibility and Councilmember Graham place his political concerns above those of DCPS students or the community at large.
In this case Councilmember Graham and then Chancellor Rhee engaged in operating at one of the lowest political and ethical standards possible under the guise of school reform. To politically punish and breakup the Bruce Monroe school family, they place a school primarily serving working class Latino and African American families in building (Park View) which at the time had become unfit when better alternatives were available. The positive outcome for Takoma when placed in context makes clear the dishonest nature of reform under Rhee, the unethical cesspool that is Ward 1 politics and ultimately the nexus between pay-to-play politics, real estate development and school reform.
I just finished listening to the December 27 edition of the Latino Media Collective, a radio program that airs on WPFW every Wednesday night from 7:00 PM – 8:00 PM. This episode focuses on the city’s penchant for closing schools in neighborhoods that private developers have shown an interest in developing. River Terrace, a quiet, residential community along the Anacostia Waterfront, right across the river from long sought-after Kingman Island, is one such neighborhood. Despite loud and persistent objections from the residents, River Terrace Elementary School was the latest to make the school closure list.
Education advocate Alicia Rucker claims that you can predict when a school is going to be closed by the incremental withdrawal of attention and resources to the surrounding community by District government. She is concerned about her children’s school, Houston Elementary. River Terrace was at one time on the school modernization list, but with no explanation to the community, it was withdrawn. Houston Elementary has also been on the school modernization list, but because DCPS has become silent with regards to modernization plans, the school community speculates that Houston has been or shortly will be removed. One city official in the District’s Office of Facilities Planning has confirmed this, although no public announcement has yet been made. Will closure be next for Houston as well?
And then there’s the Illinois Facilities Fund Study. The Deputy Mayor for Education (De’Shawn Wright) hired the Illinois-based firm to evaluate the competing needs of charters and traditional public schools for DCPS space. Should we be concerned that the Illinois Facilities Fund is known for working with charter schools (often to the detriment of traditional public schools) or that the study was funded by the Walton Family Foundation (Wal-Mart)? Because the funding is private, IFF was chosen without any competition or public input.
All of these issues and more are covered in the above audio podcast. The show was co-hosted by Oscar Fernandez and Daniel del Pielago. Education activist Alicia Rucker was their in-studio guest and Diana Onley-Campbell joined them on the phone. If you think school closings ended in DCPS when Michelle Rhee left, you’re wrong. If you think school closings are good for DC’s historically Black communities or for DCPS students, then this program should prove enlightening.
Comments are closed 
