Betsy Wolf Testimony: Schools First in Budgeting Bill

Councilmembers,

There are three ills that plague DCPS school budgets today: instability, inadequacy, and inequity. This bill addresses the first ill – instability – and while I support the spirit of this legislation, the bill currently lacks the needed nuance to have the desired outcomes.

First, the bill doesn’t address the fact that DCPS changes its special education and other special programming all of the time, which makes year-to-year comparisons near impossible. Right now, the only people who have a full understanding of whether schools have the same level of staff from one year to the next are the principals. We need a much better tracking system to understand what’s going. We also need side-by-side comparisons from one year to the next for each staff position in each school.

Second, the bill bases inflation costs on the CPI, but the CPI would not be available by the time that DCPS would need it to enact this legislation. It’s unclear how DCPS would implement this.

Third, the bill doesn’t account for the fact that DCPS (and other school districts around the country) received one-time federal recovery funds. How are districts supposed to provide the same level of resources without these federal dollars? Where is this money going to come from?

Fourth, the bill doesn’t address equity at all, and holding constant last year’s budgets does not treat “at-risk” dollars as supplemental, nor does it necessarily provide substantially more local dollars to schools serving underserved populations. Test scores are a reflection of educational opportunities since birth. If we are serious about changing discrepancies in test scores, then we need to put our money where our mouth is and contribute substantially more resources to students who have had fewer educational opportunities since birth. We also need much more transparency on how “at-risk” dollars are spent in both DCPS and charter LEAs, and we need to ensure that those monies are benefitting kids.

Fifth, while I share others’ frustrations about DCPS central office, we need to be careful that we don’t wipe out the useful things with mandated cuts. There have been some very bad things to come out of central office, but there have been some good things like social studies standards. Perhaps we should first understand how the money is being spent, and then where cuts might be appropriate.

Finally, if this bill passes, it will ultimately be up to DCPS to figure out how to implement it. And DCPS might not hold staff harmless, similar to the way that “at-risk” funding hasn’t supplemental even though it’s supposed to be. Then what will Council do?

I appreciate the effort behind this legislation. But it also feels like it’s a band aid, especially when Council is not willing to address the structural problems behind school budget instability, like funding schools based on students who are there on October 1st and ignoring mobility after that, or allowing new schools to open their doors literally next to existing schools, hurting both of their enrollments. This bill also focuses exclusively on DCPS and not at all on charter LEAs. We know that some charters have too-large central administrations, budget instability at specific schools, and likely misuse of “at-risk” or EL dollars. Why does Council feel strongly enough to legislate all of these things for DCPS but doesn’t care about what happens in charter LEAs when they serve almost half of DC’s students?

I encourage Councilmembers to pass legislation on school budgets, but I also encourage them to do the work to make sure that the legislation will hit the mark, will address issues in both sectors, and will not result in unintended consequences, like reducing equity.

Thank you.