Charter Board Votes to Approve Catholic Conversions
The D.C. Public Charter School Board has voted tonight to convert seven Catholic schools to charters. The vote was unanimous, after about 15 minutes of discussion. More to come.
UPDATE, 10 P.M.: The Catholic conversions, to be known as the Center City Public Charter School, were the only application to be accepted unconditionally by the board this year. The application for the National Collegiate Preparatory Academy, a high school, was also approved unanimously, albeit with conditions to be specified. The board denied the applications from the other seven schools, all but two unanimously.
While introducing the charter-applications portion of the agenda, board chair Tom Nida mentioned that letters and petitions had been received in opposition to the Center City application, but during the discussion of the proposal, virtually every member spoke in praise of it.
“These have been well-run schools with a culture of achievement and high standards,” said member Will Marshall.
Member Dora Marcus called Center City’s a “strong application” and said it was “our duty” to keep the schools open.
The only even mildly negative comments came from member Karl Jentoft, who expressed concerns (somewhat self-servingly) at higher level of oversight and accountability the schools would have as a charter, and from member and executive director Josephine Baker, who expressed some dismay at the size of the proposed school—possibly more than 1,000 students across seven campuses. Both voted to approve.
Jentoft dismissed much of the hullabaloo surrounding the decision: “There’s been a lot of political stuff going on,” he said, “but our role is to look at the application and make sure the children get an education.”
Nida closed discussion after about 15 minutes with a defense of the board’s procedures. “We’re in a situation where I come back to our process,” he said. “The process has been followed….Has it been followed? Is it fair to the parties concerned? This is a test of our process.”
He included a poke at the old D.C. Board of Education, which used to share chartering authority with the Public Charter School Board before giving up that authority in 2006 with the achievement of its schools in doubt: “This is why we’re the sole authorizer. Our process has worked.”
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June 30th, 2008 at 1:50 pm
Or this whole “7-school charter” might have been intended from the start to be a secret scheme to get a million dollars a year of DC public money to support 4 Catholic schools, by sacrificing 7 other schools, eliminating Catholic education from their curriculum in order to pay for Catholic education at 4 other schools.
The 7 schools might have the “same teachers, same kids, same environment,” but they also have an obligation as DC public schools to teach kids that they have the option to have an abortion if they suffer an unwanted pregnancy. Thanks, Bishop!
But there is a LOT of rent money available to support Catholic schools that remain Catholic.
Because this was such a sensitive case, the DC Public Charter School Board should have been especially vigilant about any potential conflicts of interest.
This is a hurry-up charter, completed in 3-4 months instead of the usual 12-15 months. There is an obvious conflict of interest among the DC Public Charter Board, the group running the 7-school charter, and the archdiocese. The group running the charter is made up of the same people who ran these schools into the ground for the archdiocese–same executive director, Mary Ann Stanton. In December 2007 the archdiocese pretended to select this group to run the charter from among competing offers. Now this group, having won the “competition” to run the charter, had to turn around and negotiate with their old employers, the archdiocese, who “selected” them to run the charter, about the rent to be paid for the 7 parish school buildings.
The rental lease obligates the city to pay enough rent so that the 7 parishes can get half the rent money–and the other half goes to 4 parochial Catholic schools NOT part of the charter. That lease, which the DC Public Charter School Board approved in approving this hurry-up charter this month, in effect sets up a pipeline from DC taxpayers to 4 Catholic schools, to the tune of $1 million a year in taxpayer money to support Catholic schools that remain Catholic schools.
The DC Public Charter School Board failed to highlight this conflict of interest in having the charter school operator, beholden to the archdiocese, negotiating a lease with the archdiocese for rental of the 7 school buildings. An objective third party should have stepped in to review the lease.
The archdiocese makes no bones about the fact half the rent money paid for these 7 schools goes to support 4 Catholic schools that remain parochial Catholic schools. (The archdiocese told a newspaper, “We can do what we want with rent money.” See: http://www.examiner.com/a-1455763~Catholic_schools_to_benefit_from_charter_rentals.html ). Hmmmmm, there might be a lot of excess rent being paid for the 7 school buildings. An independent, objective third party could have investigated that, BEFORE the DC Public Charter School Board approved the charter and the underlying lease.
Let’s see something done about investigating this conflict of interest, these excessive rent payments, and the unconstitutional public support for Catholic Schools imbedded in this deal.