Coalition for DC Public Schools and Communities (C4DC) is a coalition of groups and organizations that share values and priorities essential to excellent and equitable District of Columbia Public Schools (DCPS). The DCPS budget allocation from the city should map to the strategic goals of DCPS. These include promoting equity, empowering people, ensuring excellent schools, educating the whole child, and engaging families.  

These budget principles align with DCPS priorities and with our values, they support: 

  • ensuring all families have access to high-quality DCPS schools in their neighborhoods – a predictable, matter-of-right path from preschool through high school through stability and investment.

  • focusing resources on students and communities with the greatest need by addressing equity

  • responsible management of our financial resources

  • ensuring families and community members have reliable ways to exercise the right to participate in public education decision making through transparency and additional times to testify.

DC’s public education budget should acknowledge the extraordinary circumstances of the past year and their consequences on the academic and physical and mental well-being of students, families, educators, and staff. 

Now more than ever, the budget should make substantial efforts to redress long-standing educational inequities that are now likely deepened by the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. DC’s most vulnerable students--low-income students, students of color, English learners, students living in foster care, students experiencing homelessness, and students with disabilities--deserve a budget that acknowledges that they have been hit the hardest and targets local and federal relief dollars to support their recovery.

While strong, targeted investments in school are essential to DC’s recovery, District leaders should also recognize that educational equity in COVID-19 and beyond is not just about what is equitable inside of classrooms. It is also about what resources the families of our most vulnerable children can access. The budget should ensure that the hardest hit families have cash, food, housing and other assistance they need to weather this unpredictable storm. 

When preparing the city budget, we believe District leaders should prioritize the following principles when making the FY 2021 supplemental and FY 2022 public education budgets:

 Transparency and Community Engagement

●          The budget should be shared with the public in a way that is easy to understand. School budgets should be shared publicly in a format that is easily understandable, clearly delineating budget categories (i.e., how much goes to local schools, central administration, and facilities, further broken down by how much goes to maintaining the buildings, heating and cooling them, etc.). School budget allocations should also differentiate funds for general education, special education, English Language Learners and extracurricular programs. The public should be able to easily discern which budget categories are paid centrally vs. paid by the local schools, as well as understand how much is spent on general education funds (or other categories) per school. School budgets should also be presented in a way such that parents, staff members, and other community stakeholders can tell how the school’s budget will increase or decrease compared to the previous budget year.

●          The budget should ensure full transparency of local investments and supplemental federal aid. It should clearly distinguish between education resources that are funded by local and federal dollars. The total amounts of federal public education aid that DC Public Schools (DCPS) and public charter school local education agencies (LEAs) have received to date should be identifiable in budget documents; and how they spent the money should also be clear. The budget should also include detailed information on the Paycheck Protection Program loans that several public charter school LEAs have received.

●          The public should be allowed sufficient time to review the budget and provide input. Local School Advisory Teams should be given sufficient time to review their local school budget allocations, and they should have ample time to provide input, and changes should be made based on this input. The DC Council should provide sufficient opportunities for public testimony on the public education budget without limiting the number of witnesses. The DC Council should also hold public hearings at times that are convenient for teachers, parents, and students to participate. 

COVID-19 Federal Relief

●          The budget should supplement, not supplant public investments in education with federal relief dollars. DC is expected to receive $172 million—approximately four times the amount it received from the CARES Act—from the Coronavirus Response and Relief Supplemental Appropriations Act of 2021. These and any additional dollars the District receives should add to, not replace, local investments in public education. 

Equity 

●          Right-size funding for facilities maintenance and operations for DCPS The budget should result in an equal UPSFF burden to pay for building and grounds maintenance and operations (“M&O”) for DCPS and the charter sector on average. DCPS should be required to spend no more than $600 per student in UPSFF dollars on M&O and any additional M&O expenses should be paid for outside of the UPSFF allocation. 

●          Adequately adjust the enrollment projection methodology to better accommodate mid-year student mobility patterns. The budget should fully fund DCPS to deal with mid-year mobility given the arrival of thousands of students throughout the year, particularly in schools serving low-income communities. This would place the sector on equal footing with the charter sector, which experiences a net loss of hundreds of students—many of whom subsequently enroll at their by-right neighborhood schools—but retains the funding for them. Funding may not only include the base UPSFF, but also any weights for various student subgroups (e.g., “at-risk”, student with disabilities, etc.).  

●          Close the digital divide. The budget should ensure that (1) there is a 1-to-1 ratio of digital devices to students; (2) all teachers are supplied with system-compliant devices, including necessary technology for simultaneously teaching students both in-person and virtually; and (3) that there is adequate staff in place to provide user support to students, teachers, and school staff.

●          An increase to the UPSFF is needed but will not promote equity. To promote educational equity at many levels, the budget should allocate and target additional funding to address the structural underfunding of DCPS relative to public charter schools, inadequate funding of majority Black and majority low-income schools, insufficient funding to support the needs of at-risk students, and, this year, the uneven health and economic harms of the pandemic. 

·         Expand the provision of stabilization funds to schools faced with declining enrollments. Ensure that schools at least retain their funding allocation from the previous school year to ensure stability of schools serving vulnerable student populations. Funds that are moved from central office budgets to school budgets should not be allowed to artificially inflate school budgets.

Supports/Resources That Help Students Learn and Be Well and Safe

●          The budget should prioritize helping students navigate the emotional toll of the pandemic and the devastating life losses that they have experienced as much as their “learning loss”. It is important that the budget does not overly prioritize helping students recover “learning loss” by focusing on a limited curriculum (math and reading), test scores, and other academic outcomes while inadequately prioritizing resources that help students feel physically and mentally safe and well--conditions that are actually paramount to student success by nurturing the whole child.

●          The budget should adequately and equitably provide resources to help the most vulnerable students learn successfully, whether virtually or in-person.  Schools should be fully funded to provide academic resources to help vulnerable students learn in any learning environment. Specifically, the budget should provide targeted funding for tutoring, summer school, and other supplemental academic activities that students may need. Targeted resources should be funded by supplemental resources that are in addition to what schools typically receive. 

●          The budget should ensure schools and community-based provider organizations can adequately and equitably respond to the mental health crisis facing students and staff. Students and staff are facing increased mental health challenges due to isolation, illness, loss of loved-ones, and other traumas. Schools and community-based provider organizations must be prepared and equipped to meet these challenges as distance and/or hybrid learning continue and as some students transition back to in-person learning.

●          The budget should reflect the resources needed to ensure our schools are safe and secure places of learning.  DCPS is now responsible for the management of its school security contract, which was previously managed by the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD). The DC Council Commission on Police Reform will be submitting recommendations on school security and student safety in schools, including DCPS security guards and MPD school resource officers this spring.  The schools were to be engaged in a re-imagining of security this year prior to the renewal of the security guard contract on July 8, 2021.