DC Council

Status

Suzanne Wells Testimony – DCPS Chancellor Hearing – December 8, 2016

DC City Council Committee on Education Public Hearing

Chancellor of the District of Columbia Public Schools Antwan Wilson

Confirmation Resolution of 2016

December 8, 2016

Suzanne Wells

Eliot-Hine Middle School Parent

Founder, Capitol Hill Public Schools Parent Organization (CHPSPO)

Thank you for the opportunity to testify at today’s hearing on the confirmation of Antwan Wilson as the next Chancellor of the District of Columbia Public Schools (DCPS). 

On August 11, 2016, the Coalition for DC Public Schools and Communities sent a letter to Mayor Bowser identifying qualities the public school education advocacy groups felt were appropriate for the next Chancellor.  These qualities included:

  • Experience as a professional educator and administrator;
  • Tenacity in advocating for current and former DCPS families;
  • Commitment to healthy and productive relationships with principals, teachers, communities, parents and students;
  • Management skills encompassing core school business functions; and
  • Demonstrated support for a well-rounded education for every student.

Since Mayor Bowser announced the selection of Mr. Wilson on November 22, 2016, I have had the chance to read newspaper articles about his tenure in Oakland, attend a meet and greet with him, and speak to a parent from Oakland.  What I have learned is that Mr. Wilson is in fact a career educator who has experience working in and leading a large public school system.  He has experience bringing about positive change in low-performing schools, and seems genuinely committed to meeting the educational needs of all students and ensuring they get a well-rounded education.

Areas where I believe the Education Committee should take a close look at Mr. Wilson are his 1) tenacity in becoming an advocate for DCPS and 2) commitment to healthy and productive relationships with principals and teachers.

In DC, where we have a strong and robust public charter school sector, and where choice is strongly promoted through efforts like My School DC, it is absolutely imperative that the next Chancellor be a tenacious advocate for our city-run public schools.  At your roundtable last week, Cathy Reilly testified that Mr. Wilson should be held accountable for increasing the enrollment of the students in DCPS and she suggested a modest and achievable growth rate of 3% a year.  I believe this is a very sound recommendation that absolutely should be included in Mr. Wilson’s contract.  If he is true to his word about lifting up low-performing schools, he should be successful in attracting families to their neighborhood schools.  If he is true to his word about meeting the educational needs of all students, he will keep families committed to DCPS.  Increasing enrollment in DCPS will be one of the surest benchmarks  Mayor Bowser and the Education Committee will have to evaluate whether Mr. Wilson is successfully performing his responsibilities.

Many have read the March 4, 2016, article about Mr. Wilson’s efforts to bring closer coordination between the Oakland charter schools and the district run public schools.  Some of the things Mr. Wilson tried to achieve in Oakland, e.g., a common enrollment system, are already in place in DC.  Mr. Wilson appears to want to level the playing field between charter schools and district-run schools by promoting the same criteria for academics, discipline and enrollment.  In doing this, we should hope Mr. Wilson will bring insights that will encourage comprehensive planning between the Public Charter School Board and DCPS before new schools are opened or schools are closed.  I hope he will be successful in working with the charter school community to address public charter school practices that work to the detriment of DCPS — such as starting middle school at 5th grade instead of 6th grade, counseling low-performing students to leave individual charter schools (to be accepted back to a DCPS school) before testing begins, and suspending low-performing or difficult students without working to address their individual needs.

In closing, I hope Mr. Wilson has learned from his experience in working with parents and communities in both in Denver and Oakland that while we may not always agree with each other, it is important to invest the time to listen to each other and sincerely seek to understand other’s perspectives.  Parents and communities can bring enormous support to Mr. Wilson if he works with them as partners, and not as adversaries, such that the changes he may want to bring about can be fine-tuned to address genuine concerns.

If confirmed, I wish Mr. Wilson the best of luck in his new endeavor, and I personally look forward to working with him as a parent of a DCPS student.

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Max Kieba Testimony – DCPS Chancellor Hearing – December 8, 2016

Testimony by Max Kieba, Maury parent

DC Council Committee on Education Hearing: PR21-1040 – Chancellor of the District of Columbia Public Schools Antwan Wilson Confirmation Resolution of 2016

December 8, 2016

Thank you for the opportunity to testify on the proposed confirmation of Antwan Wilson as Chancellor of the District of Columbia Public Schools.  My name is Max Kieba: I’m a parent at Maury Elementary, serve as the School Improvement Team (SIT) Co-Coordinator for our upcoming renovation project and one of Maury’s representatives in the Capitol Hill Public Schools Parent Organization (CHPSPO).

I wasn’t directly part of the selection process other than through CHPSPO we did provide some input on what we hope to see in the new chancellor.   While we’re collectively still getting to know each other better and look forward to learning more from him today, many aspects of his background and skill sets appear to address many of traits we asked for in a new chancellor and areas in which we can continue to improve… communication, helping to address the achievement gap, and equity for high quality education for all students.

We look forward to working with him with an open mind and hope he will do the same in working with us.   We also want to make sure he’s aware that while he is coming into a system that has improved in many ways, it also has room for improvement elsewhere.     Among some areas of improvement I’d like to highlight and which we’d like to better understand his approach and any thoughts he may have based on his introduction to the district and DCPS so far:

Improving Trust within the System

We are all part of the system, whether it’s DCPS front office, the schools, families or other agencies/stakeholders that may interact with one another.  DCPS is a key interface for so many processes, but there are unfortunately a lot of apparent trust issues at play that seems to go both ways… there is a lack of trust families have with DCPS, and apparent lack of trust DCPS has with its schools and families.  Many of these issues involve communication and effective community engagement, but at a high level the general perception is DCPS seems to believe it knows what’s best for the schools, makes decisions with little to no true engagement and the schools and families should just fall in line with decisions that are made.    It’s difficult for schools and families to trust DCPS if DCPS doesn’t trust its schools and families in the communication and engagement process.

Communication and Effective Community Engagement

We continue to have issues with open communication and truly effective and robust community engagement.   Most of my experience has been with the modernization/SIT process, but it seems to manifest itself in other processes as well.  While this can’t all be put on the chancellor position, there appears to continue to be a less than healthy culture at DCPS with respect to communication and engagement within and across certain offices (the silo effect), with other key agencies like DGS and externally with schools and their families.    Information is rarely shared in a timely fashion, or when information is pushed out it comes with little to no raw data with it or substantive rationale for the decisions.  In most cases, schools and families are then asked to provide quick feedback based on limited information because we don’t have time to discuss in detail.  When questions are asked in an attempt to have a constructive dialogue, the answer is usually they’ll get back to us (rarely do they in a timely fashion) or it involves another office we need to contact.  When we contact that office, no replies and the cycle repeats itself.    When we ask for public meetings to discuss further, little to no action is taken or schools have to take it upon ourselves to share information publicly or engage in discussions with others, again though with more questions than answers on what DCPS is thinking.  When someone from DCPS does attend a meeting, it’s usually not the people with decision making authority and the cycle continues.   We want to do what we can to be a team player, follow the process and have DCPS take the lead, but they sure make it tough. 

Continuing to support and invest in our middle schools

DCPS needs to continue to support, invest and help improve our middle schools.  DC enrollment is increasing and the families that are coming into the system are generally more affluent, have more education (and are more white) than the average DCPS student.  Those families are demanding high quality education for their children, yes, but they understand the importance of building a system that provides equality of opportunity (and quality learning outcomes) to all students.  That demand for increased quality can benefit everyone if DCPS can appropriately channel that demand/enthusiasm. The new chancellor should build on this momentum and work with families to keep them in the system (and keep them from moving to the suburbs).  Working with those families means being more transparent on decision-making and critically, moving very quickly to improve middle schools (so those families will stay). Mayor Bowser’s promise of “Deal for everyone” does not, we presume, mean that everyone has to enroll at Deal. The Chancellor should immediately act to make DCPS middle schools competitive with charters from an academic perspective.  Many of these “new” families were lured into DCPS by free early childhood education.  DCPS will keep them if they step up their game in middle school, but it needs to happen quickly.

Middle school decisions should all happen at the same time

The new chancellor should work together with the DC Public Charter School Board to find ways how we can make the decision processes for families more fair and equitable.  One key area is helping to encourage all charters to start their entry grade in grade 6, similar to DCPS middle schools, instead of grade 5.  To be clear, we feel public charters and DCPS do have a place together in the overall education system and there are many reasons families may choose a public charter over DCPS middle school.    However, we are losing far too many families in our school and DCPS in the 5th (and sometimes earlier grades) based often on the fear that if they don’t make a move then, they may have no shot.    In the process of making those early decisions, we also suffer with issues in testing results and the overall achievement gap especially when the better performing students are often the ones leaving the DCPS system earlier.   

Improve on equity

DCPS did not go far enough in solving the problem of using the education system to redistribute how students get assigned to schools. For more affluent/high demand schools, DCPS should introduce a percentage of low-income lottery spots.  With the boundary redrawing, we’ve essentially locked in the tight relationship between income and school quality/outcomes. Schools need to be sized to accommodate both their in-bounds population as well as sub group (10%-20% of total?) of income-based out of bounds lottery winners.   We need to honor the right to attend your neighborhood school, but also recognize the need that building a highly educated society requires a diversity of experiences and background all mixed together.  There aren’t very many US cities that have done a good job with this, but surely we can improve upon the existing model by giving more of an eye to equity.  This is a challenge at Maury with its already being overcapacity and challenges in right-sizing the renovation/addition given our tight footprint, but there are ways to do it right and we embrace diversity. 

School Nurse reduction/reallocation plan

We thank Council for helping to influence in a delay in the decision surrounding resource allocation of school nurses.  We continue to be concerned about the potential for a reduction.  We’ve had multiple 911 calls, broken wrists, asthma issues, etc. etc.  It would be great to make it a priority to prevent cutting our full time nurse.  Currently the issue may be on hold but there is a concern it may be sneaked through when no one is looking (again, the trust issue).  It’s fascinating to see the number of students that have health issues that will fall through the cracks if a nurse is not here.  The solution is usually to rely on “med givers” which are four paras that get pulled out of a classroom to attend the students.  The teachers in pre k 3 and 4 cannot be alone with their students and it has caused other unsafe scenarios when it happens in today’s world.    We need more hours not less.  Or if this truly may be the best approach for multiple reasons, we at least ask for more public dialogue. 

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Carys Gill Testimony – DCPS Budget Hearing – April 14 2016

Testimony of Carys Gill

Student, J.O. Wilson Elementary

to the DC Council Committee on Education

April 14, 2016

For more information: iris007gill (at) gmail (dot) com.

 

Good evening Council Members.

My name is Carys Gill and I am in Ms. Gruse’s second grade-class at J.O. Wilson Elementary School.

I am proud to be here today to represent my school, my community, and my classmates.

I hope you will support J.O. Wilson Elementary School and I hope you will come to visit us.

You can see our awesome school garden— we even got chickens last week.

You can meet our cool teachers.

And you can see what a great place it is to learn.

We are a growing school that is doing well. But our school building isn’t as good as it should be.

Kids have to wait in long lines for lunch, which means we run out of time to play outside.

Kids have been hurt by the building when sinks fall off the bathroom walls.

And Kids have to take indoor recess in classrooms or hallways because we don’t have a gym.

I love my school. But right now, not everyone who wants to be a Cardinal, can be one. If kids are in wheelchairs or need help to get around, they have to go to a different school— one that has an elevator or ramps. That’s just not right!

We want our school to be a place for everyone and we want to welcome anybody who wants to come.

In our school pledge we say,

“I will act in such a way that I will be proud of myself and others will

be proud of me too. I came to school to learn and I will learn. I will

have a great day.”

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Evan Yeats Testimony – DCPS Budget Hearing – April 14 2016

Testimony of Evan Yeats

Parent, J.O. Wilson Elementary

to the DC Council Committee on Education

April 14, 2016

For more information:  (at) gmail (dot) com

 

Good evening members of the committee. My name is Evan Yeats, and I’m the parent of a pre-kindergarten student at J.O. Wilson. I’m a resident of Petworth in Ward 4, and we’re one of many out-of-boundary parents that have found a home at J.O. Wilson.

I wanted to start by thanking both the Chairman and the Mayor for working to find a system to determine when school renovations occur that is based more in data and less in politics and influence. It’s certainly a step in the right direction.

Perhaps it’s because my son’s school gets left behind in these calculations, but I can’t help but worry about four criteria that got left off the funding formulas:

ADA accessibility: you’ve heard this concern from the other two parents up here, and I can’t help but emphasize it again. We believe that all children should be able to get the quality education our children are getting, and right now, that’s not possible. Right now, we have no idea if or when that issue will be fixed and urge you to include ADA accessibility as part of your renovation formula. A school should be accessible for the whole community.

Date of last renovation: By not considering the scope of the renovation, this scoring negatively impacts schools that have been already negatively impacted by the now-abandoned phased renovation system. At J.O. Wilson, we received phase one of a three phase renovation – a phase that mainly consisted of replacing windows and the HVAC system over a portion of the building. A large portion of the building was not touched by this phase one, and the needs are clearly far greater than just new windows. Under this committee’s scoring system, we receive the same score as a school that was constructed new on the same date, while clearly our building is not in the same condition.

Health and safety concerns: while the formula used by this committee reflects the DGS “grades” assigned to the facilities, they don’t reflect real health & safety concerns of the population that are using them. The District is probably already be tracking, for liability purposes, a more useful metric – like building-related injury reports. If students and community members are being injured due to the condition of a DCPS facility, that should count in your rankings.

Equity of access to facilities: An indoor activity and play space, like a gym, is essential for elementary school children in a climate like Washington’s where a substantial portion of their recreation time is likely to be spent indoors. J.O. Wilson doesn’t have a gym, and that paired with high enrollment and high building utilization means that there is essentially no indoor recreation space. My son’s class takes indoor recess by literally running laps in the halls. In the committee’s formula, our school is the same priority as a (hypothetical) school that has a gym, an auditorium, a separate cafeteria or even a pool.

I believe, that like the parents and families at J.O. Wilson, that the Mayor and the members of this committee want to provide facilities for DCPS students that enable our children to learn and succeed. I admire the committee’s efforts to make a fairer, more transparent process for renovations. But I think that these categories need consideration, as well.

Thank you.

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Iris Bond Gill Testimony – DCPS Budget Hearing – April 14 2016

Testimony of Iris Bond Gill

Parent, J.O. Wilson Elementary

to the DC Council Committee on Education

April 14, 2016

For more information:  (at) gmail (dot) com.

 

Good evening Chairman Grosso and Members of the Education Committee.

My name is Iris Bond Gill and I am parent of first and second grade students at J.O. Wilson Elementary School. I also serve on the executive board of the PTA and on the LSAT. I’ve lived in the neighborhood for over a decade and am grateful that we have a strong neighborhood school that my children can walk to and attend.

I want to talk about some of the immediate health and safety challenges we face at J.O. Wilson.

Accessibility: One of our biggest challenges is the lack of ADA accessibility at our school. We have a three-level building with no elevator or chairlift, and none of the main entrances are wheelchair accessible. Our principal has had to turn students away because it was too difficult for them to get to classes. In 2016, in our nation’s capitol, this situation is unacceptable, and in the current budget, there is no schedule for this to change.  We thank our ANC commissioner who just yesterday put forth a resolution requesting ADA compliance for JO Wilson.

Stairwells: DGS rated our facilities as unsatisfactory or poor in two categories– “unsatisfactory in conveying” and “poor in stairwells” this year. This is the third year in a row that we’ve received poor ratings so we are saying now, on the record, that we need our stairwells upgraded to a safe standard for all students.

Cafeteria: While we received a partial phase one of a three-phase renovation several years ago, there is a large portion of our school that went untouched, including the cafeteria. Our cafeteria is overwhelmed by student demand. The huge uptick in enrollment at our school means that our only indoor space of any size, which also functions as an auditorium, is occupied for most of the day and the slow service–because our kitchen is inadequate to meet the high demand–prevents our children from getting the recess time they need after lunch.

Bathroom: And finally, this winter, a sink fell off a wall in a third floor bathroom while a student was using it. That student was injured by the shattering sink and had to go to the hospital for stitches. And that’s just one story that illustrates our need for bathroom upgrades throughout the building.

Our school is rapidly becoming an environment no longer conducive to learning. Yet we have no money allocated for renovations in this year’s budget or in any budget going forward.

We are specifically asking for two requests in the FY17 budget.

First, we need funding to remedy the health and safety concerns associated with the poor stairwells, lack of ADA accessibility, and bathrooms in need of repair.

Second, we need seed money to plan collaboratively with DCPS and DGS for the out-year renovations.

Families from all over the city are choosing JO Wilson. We’re sending our children at every grade level. We don’t experience the drop-off that other elementary schools experience after fourth grade. We have a very full fifth grade and we feed into a strong DCPS middle school. Our school is fully utilized from 7am until 6pm with one of the highest before and aftercare rates in the city.

This is a good problem to have and one way to continue to keep people is to have a great facility that can truly accommodate the daily wear and tear of school like ours. And the planning dollars will help us start this process of creating a smart and sustainable plan for our school.

Thank you for the opportunity to share our concerns and requests with you today.

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Andrea Tucker Testimony – DCPS Budget Hearing – April 14 2016

Testimony of Andrea Tucker

PTA President, J.O. Wilson Elementary

to the DC Council Committee on Education

April 14, 2016

For more information:  (at) gmail (dot) com

Good evening, Chairman Grosso and members of the Education Committee, and thank you for holding this budget hearing and inviting public testimony. We appreciate the opportunity to be here to represent our school at JO Wilson Elementary. We are Title I school that serves kids from Preschool through Fifth grade and we located in the heart of the NoMa/H Street community.

My name is Andrea Tucker and I am proud parent of three children at J.O. Wilson. I am also the President of the school’s PTA,  a native Washingtonian and a proud Alumni of J.O. Wilson. J.O. Wilson holds a special place in my heart. I have watched the school grow over the years as I have lived in the community right behind the school growing up.

My early education at J.O. provided me with the tools and opportunities I needed to succeed and I’m confident that it’s going to provide that same excellent education and opportunities for my children.

J.O. Wilson’s enrollment has grown tremendously in the five years since my children have been in attendance there and this year we have more than 500 children that attend our school.  Our numbers are continuously increasing yearly and we are maxing out capacity. According to the Deputy Mayor’s annual facilities review, we are currently at 96.4% capacity – one of the highest among Ward 6 elementary schools. Based on our enrollment projections for the 2016-2017 school year, we will be at almost 99% utilization come this time next year.

J.O. Wilson services children from all over the city and most of them are there all day. We have 77% of our children that participate in aftercare, which is one of the highest rates in the city.  Our Early Childhood program starts kids off on the right foot with a 94% attendance rate, which also is one of the highest rates in the city.  Most of our students stay at J.O. Wilson through the 5th grade.  We have 3 classes on every grade level which is unusual for an elementary school and an important first step to fixing our city’s difficult middle school challenges.

Our successes could quickly be set back if our facilities continue to languish and do not meet the high expectations that we expect from our scholars. Our children should be proud to come into a school that is warm and inviting and they feel comfortable learning in. Despite the challenges we face at our school, some of which are an inaccessible and non ADA compliant facility, a building that is literally falling apart in places, a lack of gym space and an outdated and inefficient cafeteria, we’ve succeeded.

The city has done a wonderful job with the High Schools, it’s now time to focus on our  Elementary Schools to create strong pathways. Elementary School is the beginning of our children’s education and without a firm foundation and adequate facilities our children cannot even advance and be prepared for the next level of education. Our students at J.O. Wilson have lots of challenges already. Many of our families are impacted by poverty, homelessness or other unconventional living situations, as well as language barriers.  In fact, for the upcoming school year it is projected that almost half our students will be considered “at risk” of academic failure.  Let’s not let the conditions of their school building be a challenge as well. Thank you.

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Ivan Frishberg Testimony – DCPS Budget Hearing – April 14 2016

Council of the District of Columbia

Education Committee Budget Oversight Hearing

Testimony by Ivan Frishberg

Thursday, April 14, 2016

Chairman Grosso and members of the Committee, thank you for the opportunity to testify today.

My name is Ivan Frishberg and I am a parent of two children at Brent Elementary. Our plan is to send those children to Jefferson Academy.

Last year you wisely responded to the city track record of wasteful spending, broken promises, and no clear plan or rationale to the CIP with a different approach.

You presented an approach for transparently assessing and prioritizing what we do with limited capital dollars. It wasn’t perfect, but it was a very big step forward.

The current budget proposal clearly responded to the need to focus on modernization as a priority and within that to focus on middle schools.

There are signs of progress, and I am happy for Eliot Hine. But I am even more disheartened about this administration’s ability to meet the objectives the committee laid out and DCPS said they agreed with. While you were taking a step forward, they largely executed business as usual.

  • The chart you produced to identify priorities has not become more sophisticated as it has emerged from DCPS, and the data behind it seems even less transparent. Not the latest available enrollment data. No measures of school success to indicate a school’s ability to grow and serve. No apparent progress on the data quality for population or building condition.
  • In Ward 6, Logan has a higher score than Jefferson and Eliot but disappears all together. Some schools win or lose by years based on statistically insignificant amounts on top of questionable data.
  • Jefferson was top of your list last year and got pushed off for two years. Then, Jefferson then does better on enrollment and test scores and some how drops down the list and gets pushed back two more years.
  • The planning money appropriated by this committee is not spent. Then DCPS says it is only for architects, not community planning. And the stabilization projects you appropriated funds for haven’t happened.

Jefferson has a wait list for 6th grade right now, is 4th ranked on PARCC across District Middle Schools. Each grade scores higher than the one before and the number of students at proficiency doubles from 6th to 8th grade. Jefferson does this with 23% Special Education and 99% Free and Reduced Lunch populations.

And now DCPS’ response to this success is to deprioritize the school and say wait until 2021 to fix the infrastructure.

And we are supposed to put our confidence in this budget and its priorities?

Absolutely not.

They should not have presented, and you should not approve, a budget that doesn’t answer these issues with data, rigor, transparency and a commitment to being straight with parents.

You have a choice:

Pass along the Mayor’s priorities with a few tweaks here and there. Or do what was promised last year by DCPS but which they have failed to. Set priorities and a CIP plan that is based on real data, real transparency and engagement, and real planning.

This Committee set that bar last year. Your budget is the law. You followed up with rigorous oversight. Asked the right questions. But if the administration can’t build what you provide funds for and they can’t meet the standard of budgeting and planning we had all agreed to, maybe you should start from scratch.