Valerie Jablow- Council Budget Oversight Hearing
/I am Valerie Jablow, a 17-year DCPS parent, and this is my budget oversight testimony.
The proposed capital plan for DCPS is both wasteful and inequitable and will result in great harm to students and families east of Rock Creek Park and to their DCPS schools.
On March 14, Jennifer Comey, director of planning and analysis with the office of the deputy mayor for education, shared a slide deck with C4DC.
It shows that DC’s birth rate as well as student enrollment are not increasing—and that kindergarten enrollment hit its peak in 2016. The kindergarten students then are now hitting middle school, so we are consequently seeing a slight increase in middle and high school enrollment. That increase will soon disappear.
Yet, days after that presentation, and with the knowledge that DC has at least 20,000 empty seats in its publicly funded schools, the mayor announced more than $100 MILLION to increase capacity of DCPS schools in the wealthiest area of the city with the some of the fewest resident kids; highest private school participation rates; and lowest births.
That >$100 MILLION commitment is to renovate and expand the former GDS building on MacArthur Boulevard to make a new high school; to increase capacity at Stoddert; to expand Deal yet again; and to create a new elementary, Foxhall. The total number of students accommodated in such expansions will be several thousand.
While the mayor’s capital commitments also include money for a variety of school renovations elsewhere in the city, few outside the Wilson/Jackson-Reed feeder pattern are as lavishly (or as quickly) funded as those in the wealthiest ward of the city--which is also the only ward with all its DCPS schools modernized (compared to 41% modernized in Ward 8).
Nor do those new capital commitments outside the Wilson/Jackson-Reed feeder system appear to take into account overcrowding or other concerns with the urgency and specificity provided for the Wilson/Jackson-Reed feeder system. Indeed, while the Ward 8 state board representative testified to you about serious life and safety issues that remain unaddressed, while others testified about overcrowding at Roosevelt and terrible conditions at Langley, DGS has more than 700 open work orders for DCPS schools, many of which are for nonfunctioning HVAC--in year THREE of an airborne pandemic.
You all have spoken of equity. So I must ask: Is this what equity looks like to you?
Chancellor Ferebee thinks expanding capacity in the Wilson/Jackson-Reed feeder system is needed because those schools right now are overcrowded. While it is true that they are overcrowded, it is also true that the vast majority would NOT be overcrowded if feeders, boundaries, or out of bounds slots were altered for $0.
But when asked about this in June 2020, the chancellor said that the overcrowding would be addressed with a capital plan, to preserve those schools’ “diversity.”
The chancellor was silent about the diversity of the rest of DCPS’s schools—and was also silent about the unmentioned costs of the Wilson/Jackson-Reed feeder capacity increase, as schools elsewhere in the city languish with unaddressed facilities issues and under-enrollment in the face of a not-expanding student population.
You all have spoken of equity. So I must ask: Is this what equity looks like to you?
Right now, there are entire neighborhoods without any school of right due to closures in the last 20 years. As a result, most communities in wards 5, 7, and 8 no longer have seats of right to accommodate all the students who live there.
All of those communities have thus not only lost the public school assets they once had a right to, but now have to invest in long (and sometimes dangerous) commutes to ensure their children can avail themselves of the school seats they have a right to.
No one in those communities wanted their schools closed. In fact, people in Ward 7 demanded that Winston be re-opened as a DCPS school of right, to serve their community once again.
But while Ward 3 will get new schools in addition to its existing (100% modernized) schools--all populated by students from other wards to ensure diversity--Ward 7 is getting demolition and a vague program that even its own council member said (at the 3/30/22 budget oversight hearing, at the 6 hour, 47 minute, 30 second mark) he knows nothing about, while more than half of Ward 8’s schools are still waiting for renovations.
You all have spoken of equity. So I must ask: Is this what equity looks like to you?
Despite its poor condition, Hart MS in Ward 8 has never had a full renovation. The school is currently at 43% capacity--ironically, after growing more in enrollment than the DME had predicted in its 2018 “gap analysis” (see appendix A.20 of the MFP here).
Nonetheless, the proposed capital plan allocates money to Hart for a renovation starting 5 years hence--almost 20 years after its phase 1 work and after THOUSANDS of new seats will come on line in Ward 3, along with untold numbers of charter seats.
The chancellor is committed to diversity in Wilson/Jackson-Reed schools--but has remained silent about what will happen to schools like Hart, languishing under capacity and unrenovated while seats increase everywhere as our student population doesn’t.
The chancellor believes that the time and energy of students east of Rock Creek Park should be invested in commuting hours every week (for some, more than a hundred miles a month) simply for the sake of the diversity of Wilson/Jackson-Reed schools.
The chancellor has remained silent about the diversity and condition of the schools that those commuting students leave behind east of Rock Creek Park—as well as the condition of the students and families left behind IN those schools.
We know who those students are (mostly at risk). We know the poor physical conditions and enrollment struggles of their schools.
Who is committing the immediate expenditure of more than $100 MILLION to their neighborhood schools, to ensure their schools are all modernized like those in Ward 3? To ensure that kids from across the city populate those non-Ward 3 schools, to ensure their diversity?
You all have spoken of equity. So I must ask: Is this what equity looks like to you?
Approving this capital plan means DCPS schools of right outside Ward 3 will be closed. That IS the plan.
Approving this capital plan means DC is OK with committing >$100 MILLION for a need that could be addressed for $0, while ensuring the waste of unfilled school seats continues. That IS the plan.
Approving this capital plan means DC has given up on a system of schools of right in every corner, much less equity or diversity in them. That IS the plan.
Approving this capital plan means DC’s leaders believe more in the diversity of Wilson/Jackson-Reed schools than in the diversity of all other schools. That IS the plan.
Approving this capital plan means that DC’s leaders believe it better for students to commute than to invest in the schools they have a right to in their own communities. That IS the plan.
Approving this capital plan means charter advocates will be delivered a new set of DCPS school buildings (and the students who live near them)--while only the wealthiest, whitest area of the city will have diverse schools of right that are also easily walkable for in bounds students and newly renovated. That IS the plan.
You all have spoken of equity. So I must ask: Is this what equity looks like to you?