The District of Columbia’s $3.7 billion initiative to modernize all DCPS school buildings, which began in the late 1990s, has not equitably allocated its school construction funding. Schools in more affluent areas have had far greater investment than those in less economically privileged neighborhoods. This problem is illustrated below, in the comparison of the lifetime budgets (FY1998 to FY2021) by student and by gross square footage for school facilities modernization and the % of the student enrollment in the attendance zone that are at risk. The clusters of schools with the lowest percentage of at risk students had the highest levels of capital spending.
To address these inequities, City Council Education Committee Chairman, David Grosso, proposed amending the School Based Budgeting and Accountability Act of 1998 to change how DCPS school modernizations are planned, scheduled and budgeted, introducing the “Planning Actively for Comprehensive Education Facilities Amendment Act of 2016” (Legislation B21-0777).
The proposed legislation provides defined criteria to the annual prioritization of the six-year Capital Improvement Plan (CIP). This is an effort to more objectively select schools to be modernized by comparing the needs of individual schools by means of weighted criteria.
The bill also calls for Master Facilities Plans every 10 years rather than every 5 years and requires MFP updates every 2 years rather than annually. It requires charter school local education agencies to submit standard data about facilities to the Deputy Mayor on Education on a regular basis in order to make it possible to plan responsibly for both charters and DCPS schools in the MFP.
The DC Education Committee heard from parents with children at DCPS schools and their concerns about the transparency and accountability of the modernization process. Testimony from the DC Association of Chartered Public Schools and FOCUS (a charter advocacy organization) expressed concerns for the establishment of penalties for charter schools that do not provide data about their buildings. The 21st Century School Fund testimony provided alternative criteria to increase equity and attention to building condition and proposed a standing committee to advise on the MFP and the CIP citing examples in Chicago, Fairfax County and formerly in DC. Government witness included the Deputy Mayor for Education, the Director of the Public Charter School Board, The Director of the Department of General Services and DCPS’s Chief Operating Officer. The Committee plans to continue refining its approach in working groups over the remainder of the summer.
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