Photo of arguing fingers from Shutterstock.

Shortly before the advisory committee on school boundaries and feeder patterns released its final proposal, the DC Public Charter School Board’s representative resigned in protest over one of the committee’s recommendations. Does that move reflect a deepening rift between the charter and traditional public school sectors? It depends on who you ask.

There’s been a lot of brouhaha surrounding the committee’s recent recommendations, their adoption by Mayor Vincent Gray, and their repudiation by both of his likely successors. The resignation of Dr. Clara Hess, the PCSB’s official representative on the committee, has gotten somewhat lost in the shuffle.

But in interviews, members of the committee candidly expressed anger and dismay at Hess’s resignation, seeing it as one more step in the apparent deterioration of the relationship between DC’s charter sector and DC Public Schools.

“Everybody was disappointed,” said Faith Hubbard, a member of the committee who lives in Ward 5. “It was like, all this work we did over a year, and you want it to come down to this?”

Others disagree that the once cordial relationship is breaking down. “I think actually relations between the sectors are better than ever,” said Scott Pearson, executive director of the PCSB. “And I think the level of collaboration will continue to grow.”

Priority for at-risk students

The recommendation that prompted Hess’s resignation focuses on “at-risk” students, a new designation that includes kids who are homeless, in foster care, eligible for food stamps or welfare benefits, or a year or more below grade level in high school. The category includes 43% of DC students.

Beginning this school year, the DC government will provide additional funding to schools based on the number of at-risk students they enroll.

The committee recommended that all public schools, including charter schools, with fewer than 25% at-risk students give priority to such students for 25% of the seats they allocate through a lottery each year.

Pearson said the committee hadn’t sufficiently analyzed the impact of that recommendation. The committee did produce data showing how many schools would be affected (19 DCPS and 13 charter schools) and how many seats at each school would be set aside for at-risk students (between two and 38).

But Pearson said the committee should also have analyzed whether at-risk students would displace others who are economically disadvantaged but don’t fall into the at-risk definition.

PCSB’s authority to bind charters

More fundamentally, Pearson said the PCSB did not have the authority to agree to a recommendation that would bind individual charter schools. There were no representatives of individual charter schools on the committee.

Hubbard argued that it would have been impossible to have representatives of all DC charter schools on the committee, just as it was impossible to have all DCPS schools represented. There was one representative from DCPS, she said, just as there was a representative from the PCSB.

But Pearson said those representatives were not equivalent, since all of DCPS is a single Local Education Agency, while each charter operator is its own LEA.

Part of the problem was that the committee didn’t begin focusing on charter schools until fairly late in its 10-month process, so there wasn’t time to canvass charter leaders on the at-risk issue. The committee’s initial mission was to redraw boundaries and feeder patterns for DCPS schools.

But at community meetings on the first round of proposals in April, parents repeatedly called for comprehensive planning that would include both sectors, according to committee members.

Pearson said those meetings, held at DCPS schools and organized according to DCPS feeder patterns, didn’t adequately represent charter school parents. Committee members responded that parents often switch back and forth between sectors, so there was more charter representation than was apparent.

“To say charter parents weren’t represented in the process is erroneous and is convenient if you don’t like what came out of it,” said Eboni-Rose Thompson, a Ward 7 resident who was on the committee. Thompson has also been a contributor to Greater Greater Education.

The DCPS-charter relationship

The more important question, especially now that the future of the committee’s recommendations is uncertain, is what the disagreement means for the DCPS-charter relationship. Thompson and Hubbard were pessimistic, feeling that a generally positive process had ended on a sour note.

But Pearson was more upbeat, pointing to another recommendation that calls for a task force to be set up by the end of December that will focus on collaboration and planning across school sectors. The PCSB still supports that recommendation, he said.

His perspective was echoed by Emily Bloomfield, a committee member and former board member of the PCSB who is in the process of launching a new charter school.

“I’m very optimistic about collaboration partly because I’ve seen more of it over time,” Bloomfield said, citing the common school lottery and an annual school fair that used to be limited to charter schools and now includes DCPS.

But those who have called for collaborative planning generally envision a process that would impose some limits on charter growth and location. As Pearson has made clear, the charter sector is adamantly opposed to any limits that aren’t voluntary on its part.

Hubbard feels that attitude will be a problem for the task force that the recommendations call for. “Charters have been allowed to grow without much oversight,” she said, “and this task force is going to infringe on that. Anytime, they could say: we’re going to take our ball and go home.”

Both Hubbard and Thompson, an alumna of a charter school, say that things have changed since charters were a small part of the educational landscape. Now that they educate nearly half of DC’s students, Thompson said, charter autonomy shouldn’t be seen as sacrosanct.

“Now it should be about how we ensure we’re making a good faith effort to serve all students,” she said, “and not just buying into words that sound attractive like ‘innovation’ and ‘autonomy.’”

Perhaps, as Thompson predicts, the DC Council will soon be ready to impose limits on charter growth, although so far there have been few signs of that. Or perhaps, as Bloomfield suggests, charter operators will be willing to voluntarily adjust their plans in exchange for a better way of obtaining suitable buildings from the DC government.

What’s clear is that many in both sectors share a sense of mission about improving the quality of education for DC’s low-income students. But they don’t always agree on the best way to achieve that.

Let’s hope the task force, which is scheduled to begin meeting before Gray leaves office, will provide a better forum than the advisory committee for hashing out differences between the sectors. Unlike the committee, the task force will most likely include representation from charter school operators, and it will be clear from the outset that its mission is cross-sector planning and collaboration.

Natalie Wexler is a DC education journalist and blogger. She chairs the board of The Writing Revolution and serves on the Urban Teachers DC Regional Leadership Council, and she has been a volunteer reading and writing tutor in high-poverty DC Public Schools.