I'm calling to order this uh hearing.

This is a public hearing of the committee of the whole of the Council of the District of Columbia.

I am Phil Mendelson, Chair of the Council and Chair of the Committee as a whole.

Today is Friday, April 24th, 2026.

The time is 9.56 a.m.

and we are in room 500 Council Chambers of the Johnny Wilson building.

This is the third of eight hearings that the Committee of the Whole is having on the proposed budget for fiscal year 2027 and related legislative documents.

Today we are hearing testimony with regard to the DC Public Charter Schools.

Only hearing from the Executive Director of the Public Charter School Board two days ago, we had a hearing with public witnesses, if I remember correctly, something like 80 people testified with regard to DCPS and public charter schools.

So today's government only.

And folks who wish to testify at that hearing can do so by going to the Council's website, WW.dccouncil.gov, where not only will they be able to look at this and all other hearings that are being conducted by council committees, but will be able to sign up to testify for the May 13th hearing.

And any other hearings.

With that, the uh no, I do want to say a little bit more.

So the mayor transmitted her budget to the council on April 14th.

The Council will have its first vote on June 9th.

And its second vote on the budget on June 23rd.

The second vote on the Budget Support Act will probably happen a couple weeks later.

Dr.

Michelle Walker Davis, you are the Executive Director of the Public Charter School Board.

The floor is yours.

And good morning.

Good morning, Chairman Mendelson and members and staff of the Committee of the Whole.

Thank you for the opportunity to testify at today's fiscal year 2027 budget oversight hearing.

I am Dr.

Michelle Walker Davis, Executive Director of the D.C.

Public Charter School Board, and I am joined by Will Henderson, our Chief Operating Officer.

I first want to commend Mayor Bowser for her continued commitment to public education.

It is an achievement to increase education funding in good times.

It is a real triumph to do so when times get tougher.

And given the year D.C.

has had, I am grateful to the mayor for prioritizing a 2.55 percent increase in the uniform per student funding formula.

I wish the mayor's budget had run all school funding through the UPSFF, and I'll come back to that, but I want to be sure to give credit where it is due.

In her final budget, Mayor Bowser delivered for the district's public education institutions.

I use that word deliberately because institutions are precisely what charter schools have become.

Our oldest public charter school turns 30 this year.

And over the past three decades, generations of public charter school students have studied, graduated, and raised families here in the district.

Many of these students now teach at the same schools, where they are inspiring the next generation of engineers, social workers, business owners, and public servants.

Like the sector, the DCPCSB has grown and evolved over the years to meet the needs of the moment.

We are currently in the process of developing our financial oversight policy for one thing.

But there is no better example than our academic accountability system, Aspire, the culmination of years of reviewing, revising, and refining.

Aspire will help guide our oversight and lead to faster, better decision making.

But it won't just help DCPCSB.

Aspire will empower families across the district, giving them access to information about public charter school performance in areas like college and career readiness, proficiency, and growth.

And the most exciting news about ASPIRE is that the results are live right now.

But today's hearing is fundamentally about the mayor's FY27 budget and its impact on our agency and the charter sector at large.

And as much as we are grateful to the mayor for the proposed UPS FF increase, I would be remiss if I did not raise three concerns.

First, the mayor's budget proposes to shift $60 million in DC public schools facility cost to the Department of General Services.

Doing so would bring the total operating funds outside the uniform per student funding formula to $96 million, or roughly $2,000 per student.

Students in DCPS and public charter schools face the same graduation requirements.

They take the same state assessments with the same proficiency expectations.

But under the mayor's proposal, a DCPS school of 350 students would receive 7,000, excuse me, $700,000 more for staff and programming than a public charter school of the same size.

Second, the budget would compound this inequity by proposing almost $556 million for capital improvements across DCPS and roughly $187 million for public charter schools.

And while the budget would increase facilities funding for DCPS, it would freeze the charter school facility allotment for the next four fiscal years, placing additional financial burdens on public charter schools to cover essential facilities cost.

I want to be very clear that I do not oppose additional resources to modernize and improve DCPS schools.

In fact, I support them.

My only question is this.

Why aren't public charter schools offered the same?

Finally, the mayor's budget does not provide any funding for St.

Coletta or lead testing.

Two critical needs that cannot continue to be overlooked.

As you know, St.

Coletta is located in Ward 7 and serves students with intensive disabilities.

And as I've testified before, the school requires additional funding to support its full programming and fully meet student needs.

Similarly, while DCP PCSB and DGS conduct lead testing across public charter schools and neighborhood schools respectively, only DGS receives dedicated funding for this essential public health function.

This disparity leaves a significant gap in ensuring safe drink drinking water for all students.

In both cases, I strongly urge the council to find a sustainable source of revenue to address these ongoing inequities.

Over the past three decades, public charter schools in the district have evolved from courageous pioneers to community pillars.

They educate nearly half of our city's public school students and are deeply rooted in the neighborhoods they serve.

Let me close by urging the council to build on the mayor's commitment to public education by ensuring that all public school students are funded fairly and equitably, regardless of school or sector.

The UPSFF was designed to be the foundation of that fairness.

It says so in its name.

As you consider the FY27 budget, please address the inequities in operating and facilities funds and provide dedicated support for critical needs like St.

Coletta and lead testing.

I thank you for your time and your leadership, and I look forward to your questions.

So I'm going to begin with this question.

The public charter sector, the public charter school board is an independent agency, not a subordinate agency.

Nonetheless, in formulating her budget proposal, the mayor's team would have reached out to you, I assume, but maybe I'm wrong that they would have given you a mark for reduction.

They did that for other agencies.

Did they give you a mark for reduction?

Thank you for the question, Chairman.

So we did not get a mark for reduction.

As you know, our budget is dependent on the enrollment in public charter schools, and so our budget usually starts with the projected enrollment for schools times the administrative fee, and that is the revenue that is generated for PCSB.

So we don't get a mark like other agencies do.

Okay.

Now some agencies ask the executive for what we call budget enhancements.

Did you do that?

We don't have a formal budget enhancement request process.

We did participate in the mayor's budget review team process or BRT.

We explained our budget, we explained the components of that.

We also talked about lead testing and St.

Coletta funding and made um that formal ask, much like I'm making here, but we didn't go through the formal um budget enhancement requ request process.

So at the BRT you would have said, look, we need this, we still need the million dollars for lead testing, but you didn't like submit a form or an application.

Correct.

Um what was the response with regard to the lead testing?

I would say that the response was acknowledgement of the request.

Um like the conversation for other agencies, just uh recognition that a lot of decisions have to be made about where investments would be um allocated across the district.

And so no commitment at the time of that budget review um process.

How many um charter school buildings are there?

I do not have that answer off um the top of my head, but we can certainly get you uh can you comment it during this hearing?

Um I will ask my staff to look that up right now.

Uh I'm gonna be I'm sorry.

I can just name that we have 130 some odd campuses, but that does not necessarily equate to buildings.

So I will have the team look look that up.

Well, would there be more than one school on a campus?

Yes.

The reason why I'm asking is because um on the issue of the lead testing.

Just uh it's one way of comparing the charter sector with uh DCPS.

Um your impression is DCPS gets a million dollars, or it's yeah, I I actually do not know how much money DCPS or DGS gets to support lead testing for DCPS schools.

What I will say is both DGS and DC PCSB work with the same contractor to do the lead testing across our schools, but I do not know how much money is actually allocated in DGS's budget for DCPS buildings.

Okay.

But your staff is working on number of school buildings.

Um the executive acknowledged but didn't explain why they were not including the uh lead testing.

Correct.

Um there's the difference between in the budget book, the difference between your FY26 budget and your FY27 proposed budget is roughly 1.2 million.

And I'm my impression is, and this is a question, that that's the lead testing.

Um that is not my understanding of what the difference would be.

The difference is essentially what I mentioned in terms of how the budget is calculated, which is the projected enrollment times the administrative fee.

Um but Mr.

Henderson.

I believe the difference, uh the 1.2 is related to St.

Coletta, actually.

We um the the St.

in FY26, there was a pass-through for um or there was money allocated to St.

Coletta from the council that PCSB facilitated.

So then do you know where we loaded the one point two mil the 1.2 million for I think I'm understanding.

Do you understand do you know where we loaded the lead testing money for FY26?

Or FY26, the um that's based on we were that was um uh distributed to PCSB in the um based on FY25 revenue, and we have we get that on a reimbursement basis.

So I'm not sure where it's loaded in the budget you're referring to, but we have access to it.

We we expect to we will anticipate in getting the lead funding for FY26 as a re on a reimbursement basis.

So the 1.2 is St.

Coletta's and the lead is reimbursed on a reimbursement is provided on a reimbursement basis.

And the lead is reimbursed on a reimbursement is provided on a reimbursement basis.

That's correct.

Okay, give me a second.

Over the past several years, teacher retention has remained a significant focus for both sectors.

During our uh hearing uh a couple days ago, we heard testimony that teacher retention ought to be a factor in ASPIR.

Is this something you've been exploring?

Thank you, uh Chairman.

Um I think you we talked about this at a previous hearing as well.

So we do think yeah, we do think teacher retention is important.

Right now, it's not one of the measures in our accountability framework, but as we continue to engage um our community and as we look at enhancements or improvements um over time, it could be something that rises to the top um as a measure that we would want to include.

But it is not currently in there, and it did not come up in our engagement process as one to include at this time.

So it may not be it may or may not become a factor in aspire.

In the SPIRE, correct.

Would you consider implementing a universal exit survey for charter school educators to help identify the key factors contributing to turnover?

That is not something that I've had a conversation with my staff about.

Um typically we don't issue surveys like that um across the sector unless they do have some impact on our oversight practices or on our reporting.

So I I would not say that would be our starting place, but if it is a measure that we ultimately decide to include in our um accountability system or in our reporting, we would have to have a way of collecting that information.

And I don't know that I would uh start with a survey.

I might use information that's already available.

But it's something we uh can explore, but it it hasn't come up in any of our conversations thus far.

Well, I think it's worth considering because uh we we put a lot of pressure on DCPS to do this, and they've started doing this and it's very informative.

Um and if you do it, then it would be universal between the uh among all the LEAs in the charter sector.

And if you don't, then maybe friendship does it, but KIP doesn't.

And um I think it could be helpful to understand uh we again we've been putting pressure on DCPS with regard to its teacher turnover, and it's reduced to turnover.

I think it's still too high, but it's actually turnover rate in DCPS is lower than the charter sector.

It is we're certainly continuing to pay attention to that, looking at the information that we get on uh teacher retention from Aussie, um, looking at efforts that individual schools have, as I said, we'll continue to work on that um issue and see if it is one of the measures that we might commit to in the future.

But right now, um I'm sure you probably heard from several of our schools that they have a lot that's currently being measured in the accountability framework, and that hasn't come up um in our engagement thus far.

You know, a horrible thought just went through my mind, which is the amount of testing that DCPS does.

We had a student who gave me testimonies at 92 tests in the school year.

Ninety-two.

So there's room for you to do more on the charters.

Um board training.

So you know we passed legislation uh to require more training of chartered boards.

Um how that's going.

Yep.

Um again, thank you for the support and the funding uh to uh work on implementing implementing the governance training.

We used uh the last uh year to uh shore ourselves up to roll out that training.

We did some pilot sessions which were well attended.

Um we have now secured our learning management system to be able to roll out the training, and we are looking forward to doing so um at the beginning of next school year.

So we are on track for implementation.

So you conducted pilots and you secured that computer system?

Yes, alert yes, the learning management system, yes.

What's it called?

I I don't know that we branded it for ourselves, but the system itself is a learning management system, and that's where we would house some of the um learning modules and also use that to keep track of participation in the training.

And full implementation was the start of the forthcoming school year.

The 26-27 school year, yes.

Um is the public charter school board involved at all with the quarterly allotments that the city gives to the charter LEAs?

Um you can speak to that.

We are involved in certifying enrollment, which does feed into the um payment process, but I'll ask Mr.

Henderson to speak to anything else.

Yeah, yeah.

That's our role.

The OCFO is the one that issues the payments, but there is a step that Aussie requires us to certify public charter school enrollment so that ASI can um authorize OCFO to pay the schools.

When do they get their first allotment?

Um their first allotment comes around July 15th.

After the start of the fiscal year on July 1st.

Whose fiscal year?

The schools.

The school's fiscal year.

Are all the schools on a July 1st fiscal year?

Yes, they are, Council.

And the allotment, it's a quarterly allotment, correct?

But the first payment is how much?

Um I believe it's 30 percent.

What do you say?

30 percent.

You might be aware I brought this up with the Charter Alliance the other day.

Um I would characterize the response as uh gasping for gasping.

Um it's something that we're looking at in terms of managing cash flow.

Um it's my intention that if we go there, there would be some consultation with the charter sector first.

Um this is a payment that the city makes in the fourth quarter of its fiscal year.

So it may be the first quarter of the school's fiscal year, and it's more than a quarter of our budget.

But actually, we're making the payment in the final quarter of a fiscal year consistent with the budget that we have for the fiscal year that hasn't begun.

Yes.

Did that make sense?

Yes.

I think you know what I'm saying.

Yes.

So but just for anybody who's watching wonders what the heck I'm saying.

So the charter schools are getting a 2.5 percent increase in the uh UPSFF.

Yes.

So they will get additional money in the next fiscal year, FY27, but that will show up as a um the first allotment in July.

And uh so we're paying.

It not only is it difficult for cash flow reasons that we're paying a lump sum, but we're also paying a lump sum that's higher based on the next fiscal year that hasn't begun.

And uh so we're exploring how we can mitigate so often smooth, I think is the word I want to use.

Uh smooth, these contributions or payments.

Um I don't know if there's a question there.

But you're happy to comment if you wish.

Um well, I appreciate your commitment to engaging um the charter sector in that.

I do uh ask that you hear directly on the about the impact of that shift for schools.

I would point out that um at the start of the recording progress.

Sorry, particularly at that time is a time when schools are wanting to ensure that new staff that come on and uh preparing for the beginning of the school year, they have a lot of cost around that time and have made commitments to that, and so I do think that this is something that we should have perspective on the impact of it to schools.

I totally understand what you're saying in terms of the timing of the city's um cash flow versus the schools, but this has historically been the way that the allotment has offered, been offered precisely because of the planning that needs to happen for schools.

And I think you know that the 30 percent is down from 35 percent, um, which was the typical or historical first payment.

So I don't have a comment now, but I would engage other school leaders about the impact that that would have on them.

And I do think depending on the size of schools, it will have a different impact uh for that first quarter payment.

I don't know if there's more you want to say or not.

And as long as you understand um what the motivation is, it may be that there's a different that there are a different approaches that could uh help meet what the city's need is while not hurting the schools.

We would have be happy to uh work through that because I think it's the you are solving a cash flow problem for the city, and this may cause a cash flow problem for schools as well.

So we certainly can meet um to talk more about that.

So I was a little surprised at the mayor's presentation of the budget on April 10th.

She talked about the she talked about the past 12 years.

Uh you might have been present.

Yes.

She had a table.

The table lists the top ten agencies by spending.

And um, the public charter schools went from third place to first place in terms of the largest spending agency, which doesn't make a lot of sense because the charter sector has a fraction fewer students than DCPS, meaning almost half.

Which is less than half is I don't know how you how the charter sector then becomes first place over DCPS.

Um can you explain?

Um Thank you.

I appreciate the opportunity to speak on that.

I was surprised by that presentation as well in terms of the order of funding.

What I would say is it does not show an apples to apples comparison.

So we just talked about um the charter schools being funded based on um projected enrollment.

And what that showed, it included both the operating costs for charter schools as well as the facilities-related costs.

So it would be the uniform per student funding formula and the facilities allotment.

That's what you see when you look at the charter school budget.

What was represented in the operating budget was just DCPS's operating money.

It did not include the $566 million that is in the capital budget.

And so it is not an apples to apples comparison when you exclude the capital funding for DCPS.

And so that is why charter schools appear to be the higher a higher funded agency than DCPS.

So part of the mayor's proposed budget is to um make some more changes with regard to the facilities allotment.

Now, if I'd done my homework, I would know exactly what we did last year, and I don't remember.

I think what we did was we the mayor last year proposed eliminating the inflation index on the facilities allotment.

And what we did was we rather than when I say we, the council, rather than eliminate it, we delayed the increase and then had in like fiscal year 28 a catch-up.

Was it 28 or 29?

29, I believe, fiscal 29%.

Okay.

Now the mayor's budget is eliminating it again?

It's my understanding that it freezes the um inflation factor for four years, so it would be past the time that you were going the council was going to reinstate the inflation factor.

Um we heard a lot of charter schools complain about this uh at the hearing the other day.

So we heard a lot of charter schools complain about this at the hearing the other day.

Or maybe it was yesterday, or maybe it was both days.

And um but how would you characterize what the difficulty is?

Yeah, I would say it's a compounded impact to having dollars that could have been allocated to operations and facilities related costs by moving the 60 million out of DCPS.

So that's one hit that schools are experiencing, and then on top of that, um not getting the inflation for the facilities cost, their uh facilities are still going to cost what it cost.

In fact, they are going to experience inflation and they're going to have access to less resources to do so.

So I think the impact is significant.

Um I'm sure you heard that in the testimony over the last couple of days.

And so again, that's why it was included in my testimony that those would have been the areas that we would have liked to see in that um in the mayor's budget.

Do you have a sense of what the average additional amount the charter schools must pay?

What that amount is uh because the allotment isn't increasing?

We can get you that.

I know the alliance has been working with schools um to understand those individual and sort of collective impact on that, so we can certainly get back to you with some numbers.

Uh if you would.

So I mean to note you'll get back to us on that.

Um bit.

I'm not sure that a lot of people understand why this the inflation factor is important.

Um as I asked a question, I'm reminded that there are some critics of charter schools who say that, well, charter schools are sitting on large reserves and therefore they don't need this facilities allotment.

What's the response?

Thank you.

Um I'll ask uh Mr.

Henderson to speak a little bit about um why schools would have uh large numbers of cash on hand and what that um actually supports.

So if you can.

Yeah, thanks for the question.

Um the our schools have um uh different type of planning process um to to make sure that they can uh meet the needs of their future needs of their schools.

Many of our schools that have high days of cash are um saving to invest in new buildings to um do renovations to their schools to provide um stronger programming experiences for their children and students.

So um you can imagine a um a school uh furthermore, you can imagine that um they can't anticipate all of the facilities' needs that will come up.

It's not always for long-term new building type of planning, but a school is responsible for repairing their own HVAC system that can cost you know tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars, and so they need to have um additional reserves so that they don't have to change programming and educational experiences for children to address basic maintenance main maintenance needs.

Um furthermore, that um would trickle down into any investments and shifts they want to make into programming um as well.

So um they the system as it stands right now um incentivizes them to to many of them to have um maintain some level of reserves to support future planning.

Also, some charter LEAs do fundraising.

And that could be part of their reserves as well.

Yes, I would say that um primarily our schools depend on the uniform per student funding formula.

And while schools do have access to fundraising and several do, um, they are mostly dependent on the funding that comes through the funding formula and the facilities allotment.

And when you are an adult school, for example, with non-compulsory attendance, um, you have to be very planful on any changes that will impact the adult ed community, they may need to have more um reserves for the volatility of that enrollment.

If you are about to renovate your facility, as Mr.

Henderson said, if you are going to um add to your facility, all of those things are within the school's control.

There they do not have access to additional funding throughout the year.

They do not have a capital budget like DCPS does.

And so each school has to make really tough choices about not only what their needs are for right now, but what those needs might be in the future?

So that is why you might see a difference in the amount of reserve that schools have.

It does not mean that they do not also require the per student funding formula and the per student facilities allotment for their day-to-day expenses.

How much does PCSB currently have in its reserves?

We have about a million dollars.

How much?

One million dollars.

Didn't you have about 10 million three, four years ago?

We did not have 10 million, but I'll ask Mr.

Henderson to explain.

At the end of FY 25, nearly 4 million of those reserves were swept.

And then as we've shared, we um have are intending to have been intending to use those additional resources to support us with building Aspire and the data infrastructure that that new framework takes takes on the front end of uh building a new framework.

But you've now spent that money for SPIRE.

You don't need more reserves for Aspire, do you?

So reserves um support us with uh several things.

Aspire is the most expensive item um currently, and over time Aspire will get cheaper.

We have not um we are excited that we were able to release um Aspire this year publicly, and um but uh we're still in the process of refining that tool.

Reserves are also used to support us with school closures, um, and um and that's a baked in part of our uh planning so that we can um given the volatility that can happen um with any number of schools that are closing any given time, we plan to utilize um funds or have had as reserves for things such as that.

Um your budget, Dr.

Walker Davis, you said just earlier, your budget is um based on a fee that's assessed of each charter LEA, which I assume is based on their enrollment.

Correct.

And um you have, as I recall, you have the ability to increase the fee, meaning there's I think in the law how much the fee could be, and you're below that.

Um we do not have the ability to increase our administrative fee beyond what is allowed in the law.

They allow a the law allows us to um assess up to one percent of the school's budgets for our administrative fee, and that is where we are right now.

Oh, you are assessing it to maximum.

Yes.

Um what happens at the end of the year with unspent money?

For PCSB's budget?

For PCSB and for the charters.

Um PCSB has a non-lapsing fund, which which is what we were just discussing, the reserve.

So any dollars that are in our, well, our entire budget is a special purpose revenue fund.

But any money that is not expended falls to our um reserves.

And with respect to the charters, the charters only receive um an allocation of resources based on the students who are audited, and that gets true up throughout the quarterly payments across the year.

And then their money is in their um budgets, and whatever they do not spend falls to their reserves.

It's not exactly the same as PCSB, but once the dollars are allocated to the schools based on their enrollment, it is in their sort of financial budgeting process.

I should know that without asking.

Uh at the hearing the other day.

We heard some things uh about um a couple of charter schools.

One was a school where uh it's alleged that more than 125 faculty and staff have been fired, resigned, or left for other positions since 2023.

That's a lot of turnover.

And the allegation was that the school leader is that this is this is due to the style of the executive director for that school.

Now I think that's been brought to PCSB's attention.

What can PCASB do?

Yes.

Thank you.

So we are aware of the situation that you are referencing and public concerns that have come up.

Our board chair has been in communication with the board of that school.

We are continuing to monitor that.

I will name that there are multiple perspectives around the issues here.

I understand what has been shared.

I don't know that all of that has been substantiated in terms of facts, but we are continuing to monitor that.

What we have done in situations like this in the past is have had conversations with the board leadership.

We have engaged them to understand how are they managing the situation.

Ultimately the responsibility for engaging their community and appropriately addressing that sits with the board of that school, which is why we engage the board of the school to understand what's going on, to understand what the school's plan is, and we are actively doing so now.

So three things are possible, and that is that what we were told is not correct, that what we were told is absolutely correct, and the truth is somewhere in between.

But let's just go with if the allegations are all correct, that's a lot of turnover.

And it seems to me that in a way it's analogous to what we have talked about, we Dr.

Walker Davis and us, the committee, about schools that are struggling financially.

And uh I would think that it's appropriate that PCSB is saying to the school or the school board, you've got to address this.

But if the allegations are absolutely correct, that's option one of the three options.

Um PCSB get more involved.

If I understand where you're going, a school that would have that level of turmoil, I would expect to see that show up in their outcomes, whether they be academic outcomes, whether they be financial outcomes, et cetera.

And those are all of the things that we would be monitoring, in addition to having a conversation with the board about the concerns that have been raised publicly.

We have not stopped our monitoring activities of the school.

And if we do find that there are significant um challenges around finances, we would intervene with the tools that we have to do so.

If we find that there are challenges around academics, we would intervene with the tools that we have with that we that we have about that as well.

And I would say, as we talk to the school board about what's going on, whether there I would agree with you that there are multiple perspectives around what's going on, but what I would say is it does not it is not good to have that level of um consternation about any school, quite frankly, and the board needs to get a handle on that, and that's what we're engaging with the board around.

How do they get a handle on that and ensure that it does not have an impact on the learning process at the school community?

So let me just say that uh academic is a lagging indicator and uh finances would correlate to a drop in enrollment, again a lagging indicator.

Um that's the problem with those two as something to rely on.

Um I mean, I again I think it's appropriate that you are reaching out to the board.

The picture that was drawn for us was that the board chair is um circling the wagon with the school leadership, and that may or may not be true, but that's the picture we got.

And um, in which case the conversation between the PCSB and the board chair may not be enough.

Um I think we want to get ahead of it before the lagging indicators come to play, because then it's a lot harder to fix the school where enrollment is dropping.

It's going to take at least a year to change that, maybe several years to change that, and that would affect the finances, and we don't want any school to suffer academically.

I would agree with you on that.

It's being pointed out to me that I'm being reminded that there also was apparently a vote of non-confit no confidence by 94 percent of the non-supervisory staff.

As I recall, we were told something like an 80 percent participation rate in that vote, and of the vote, 94 percent was no confidence.

So there's a lot of unhappiness.

Well, this is probably gonna come up again.

Yes.

I think you're aware of that.

Yes.

Um again.

Several possibilities.

What we were told could be completely true.

What we were told is just not accurate, or the truth could be somewhere in between.

Um there are allegations of abuse and my understanding is that it was hitting, it wasn't sexual abuse, but it was physical abuse.

Um my view of that is that that's something that's a mandatory reporter.

And um it's not to figure out whether it's true or not, it's to report it.

And the reason I'm bringing it up with you is that the parent who brought this up said that the public charter school board was contacted.

Her testimony was that the school was not responsive, MPD was not responsive, that PCSB was not responsive.

And also that CFSA was not responsive, and we're gonna take that up with them.

But um, can you respond?

Yes.

Um I believe I understand the incident that you are speaking about, and we did um work through our community complaint process with this parent.

We facilitate facilitated the parent um finding a solution.

We referred the parent to CFSA and the Attorney General.

Um, which are the bodies that are supposed to appropriately investigate.

You are correct.

It is not PCSV's job to um investigate or even question, but more to facilitate a solution.

And we did do that.

I understand that the parent is not satisfied with the resolution and the response that they got from those bodies and perhaps even us, um, but we did follow our community complaint process.

We did work with the parent, we did connect them to both CFSA and the Attorney General, who are the appropriate bodies to do the investigative work.

Um I I do feel for the parent in not having a resolution, feeling like they do not have a resolution.

Um I also believe that all of our schools need to be safe environments, and we did do our responsibility to facilitate getting a resolution to the parent, and I understand that they feel that they have not gotten an appropriate resolution.

Shouldn't PCSB have simply reported it directly to CFSA rather than referring the parent to CFSA?

No, we we did work with CFSA and the Attorney General and also told the parent that that is where they need to um that is where the resolution is going to come from.

But I believe that appropriately so the parent is very frustrated that it feels like nobody was answering their questions.

And I'm just clarifying that we are not an investigative body.

We have to work with the investigative bodies to do that.

But you're saying that PCSB did communicate with CFSA.

Our community complaint process requires us to work to understand the situation and then refer both the parent or whoever is involved in that situation to the appropriate authorities, and we follow up with those authorities around how the process is being handled.

So that is how our community complaint works.

I feel like the terminology here could be clearer.

So did PCSB report it to CFSA?

I would have to confirm it my staff whether we were the ones who made the call or whether we told the parent that they need to make the call.

I need to check that.

All right, if you would.

In my view, PCSB should have reported it.

So you'll find out.

Yes.

There was also a complaint that came up with regard to a parent transferring their child from a charter school to DCPS and there being an issue of whether DCPS would recognize the courses as you know their having completed met the course requirements for DCPS.

Um child completed did not transfer because the course names differed with DCPS offerings.

That was the allegation.

Can you speak to that?

Yeah, I am not aware of that particular situation that you're talking about, but yes, I am aware that there have been questions in the past about how credits transfer.

Aussie ultimately approves course credits for schools, and there should be a way to um acknowledge similar courses across LEAs.

Um I am not aware of this particular situation, but there is a process to acknowledge which courses fall under which um requirements.

I will say that individual schools may have their own requirements within the graduation requirements for schools, so that could be part of the challenge there, but there is a process to acknowledge um courses across LEAs.

So does that mean that if a parent feels like their child is not getting credits that he or she should be getting that that child should contact Aussie?

I would need to be more familiar with the situation to know exactly who is the source of resolution here.

Um again charter schools are required to follow uh graduation requirements for the in the DCMR, and some may have their own graduation requirements and DCPS likewise.

So I'm not sure if the issue is does this course satisfy the DC social studies course or not?

I'm not sure what the issue is here, but Aussie ultimately approves courses across all our LEAs, and they may be a source of resolution here, but I'm not I need to understand the situation better to say where the resolution sits.

Oh good.

You don't have them though.

Not yet.

Yeah.

Somebody has to learn to print better.

There are a hundred and two charter facilities plus charter LEAs, which equal hundred and twelve facilities.

That makes no sense.

And your team says 133.

I'm going to go with 133.

If you want to perfect that answer, because I think we'll send you uh because there is a distinction between campuses and facilities.

You can have multiple campuses in a building, which means that there are fewer buildings than there are campuses.

And one 133 represents the campuses.

Yeah, I'm just trying to get a point of comparison between uh the charter sector and DCPS.

Yeah.

Since we're talking about the lead testing, and I just don't understand why we can't uh be um we the district government can either be testing them all outside of the UPSFF or all inside the UPSF, but not this hybrid approach.

Yes, um there any charter schools closing this year?

Um currently uh Capitol Village relinquished its charter in December, so it will close at the end of this school year um in June.

Capital, what's the name again?

Capital Village.

That's the only one that's closing.

That is closing this school year.

And um everybody was aware of this in December.

Correct.

The school made the difficult decision to relinquish its charter in December and communicated that to its school community and worked through the uh enrollment process uh to have families understand that this was no longer an option for them and to help facilitate other options uh for families, as well as PCSB doing our role there and my school DC.

Yes, so the this is avoiding what we saw a couple years ago with uh Eagle.

Correct.

Um is it possible any other school would close this school year?

Uh uh before the next school year.

Right now, Capitol Village is the only school that is closing at the end of this school year.

I think I've run out of questions.

Thank you for the opportunity to um elevate some of the concerns that we had in the budget, and as always, I appreciate um you hearing from all of our LEA leaders.

Uh, we certainly want to engage with you in conversation about that permanent solution for uh lead and St.

Coletta, but also as you talked about the um quarterly payments for schools, a solution that has the least impact on our um LEAs as well.

Yes, absolutely.

So thank you.

Uh thank you, Dr.

Walker Davis and your team.

Um and I'm gonna call this hearing to a close.

We have another hearing starting theoretically in five minutes.

And uh so this has been uh the third, I think the third of uh eight hearings that the committee of the whole is having, and the next one on education will be May 1st, 11 a.m.

DCPS, to where we will hear from the Chancellor.

The time is 1055 a.m.

and this hearing is adjourned.