Well, we've got about 11 months before the all-important 2010 District of Columbia primaries. Just enough time, in other words, for candidates to gather some early information on how they stand with the city's electorate.

Which means polls!

Two of which City Desk has gotten some details on over the past couple of days. Details below.

Read More "It’s Polling Season in D.C. Politics" »

It's high school graduation season here in the nation's capital which means two things: ridiculous crowds outside Constitution Hall all day, every day; and the publication of Education Week's graduation issue.  It's the latter that is causing greater concern because contained in the June 11 edition are the results of the magazine's ten-year analysis of public high school graduation rates across the country.  And unfortunately, D.C. Public Schools ranked 50th out of 51 states and territories.  According to the poll, 48.8 percent of public school students in the city graduated in 2006.  So what do we do now?

Read More "Are D.C. Public Schools a Lost Cause?" »

Since he moved last month to hold $27 million from the D.C. Public Schools budget over an enrollment dispute, Council Chairman Vincent C. Gray has been pleading for an answer to a simple question: Where are the schoolchildren that DCPS is projecting will enroll this fall---more than 3,000 more than if longstanding trends hold---going to come from?

Now Gray's crowing, because he says DCPS Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee has admitted he has a point in a letter sent to him yesterday.

In the letter, Rhee cites the work of independent researchers in coming up with the projections, but writes, "I understand your hesitance to accept the projected increase in enrollment....Based upon the assumptions we outlined...we believe we have sound evidence and data to suggest that DCPS's enrollment of October 2009 will increase slightly....However, as I shared with you Friday, I cannot guarantee that this will occur."

Gray sees vindication therein: "Basically, what I think it says is [that] I think we'll be proven right on the number," Gray said this morning at the council breakfast meeting. "It says in a lot of words that they don't know where 3,073 people are coming from."

As for a modus vivendi, a compromise has been fashioned: The council will vote today to restore DCPS funding on the October 2008 enrollment figure---meaning DCPS is free to spend about $24 million of the $27 million that council had threatened to place in escrow. The remaining $3 million will be set aside pending an audit of the fall enrollment.

For next year, however, Rhee and Gray have agreed to work together to "develop a uniform method by which enrollment projections will be completed by both DCPS and the charter schools." That would aim to end the inequity in the mechanics of charter funding versus DCPS funding: Charters have to refund money accepted due to overprojections, but DCPS doesn't.

Last week, on his way out of the door for a long weekend, LL threw up a post about how D.C. Public Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee, faced with threats from the D.C. Council to cut $27 million from her fiscal 2010 budget over an enrollment dispute, had sent letters to her principals telling them that their budgets are set to be cut.

Therein, LL asked a couple of questions: Why cut teachers first? Aren't there central-office savings to be reaped?

This week, some answers came to those questions, from DCPS spokesperson Jennifer Calloway. "DCPS has cut the central office budget to the bare minimum," she writes in a statement, "reducing spending over the past 2 years while significantly increasing funding going directly to schools."

"Central office," by the way, is shorthand for all school-system functionaries who aren't directly serving students in schools---not just those who work at DCPS headquarters at 825 North Capitol Street. And if the central office has indeed been cut to the bone, Rhee will have accomplished quite something.

Read More "DCPS: Central Office Budget Cut ‘to the Bare Minimum’" »

Yesterday, Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee dispatched letters to principals of DCPS schools informing them that their budgets next year stand to be cut, pending the D.C. Council's decision to put a hold on some $27 million due to concerns about possibly inflated enrollment projections. The letters included specific per-school figures on amount of money and number of teachers cut.

"As you know," the letter starts, "the DC City Council has proposed an amendment to set aside $27.5 million from the DCPS budget for the upcoming 2009-2010 school year.....In this smaller budget, the budget of [SCHOOL NAME] will be reduced by [DOLLAR AMOUNT], that is [NUMBER] teacher positions....I am hopeful that this situation can be rectified, however. We feel that the proposed amendment is based on inaccurate information, and we are working with Council in hopes that this can be corrected prior to the vote."

Here's the big question: Why would you cut the teachers first? Aren't there central-office savings to be reaped somewhere? Or is this just the most expedient way of fomenting outrage at the council's move?

The Office of the State Superintendent of Education has been getting a personnel overhaul this month, LL has learned. Several top deputies to Deborah Gist, who left the OSSE post for a state superintendent's job in Rhode Island earlier this year, have resigned or been forced out in the past two weeks.

The moves come ahead of next week's council confirmation hearing for Gist's replacement, former federal education official Kerri L. Briggs (pictured).

"They're cleaning house, getting rid of whole divisions," one person familiar with the changes tells LL. Prior to her departure, Gist was said to be unhappy with efforts to move traditional state-level responsibilities for educational oversight out of her agency.

The departed employees, LL is told, include several folks who were hired by or close to Gist. Read More "House Cleaned at State Superintendent’s Office" »

The Washington Post's Alan Goldenbach is reporting that Troy Mathieu, who took over as athletic director for the D.C. Public Schools not 10 months ago.

Mathieu had come form the top athletic post at Grambling State University in Louisiana, and had overseen athletics programs for the Dallas public schools.

The key portion of Goldenbach's report:

A source who has worked closely with Mathieu said it became difficult for him to enact change due to the structure of the DCPS administration.

"He has so many people over him that it's impossible to do anything," the source said. "The problem with this job is, nobody is going to allow you to make any major moves because they just want to save their job."

That'll be a tough thing to hear for a city administration supposedly devoted to cutting bureaucracy---especially at DCPS headquarters.

D.C. Public Schools students are used to doing without certain resources, but students at Bell Multicultural High School and Lincoln Middle School yesterday did without a rather essential one: water. A water line break left the schools with minimal running water starting in the mid-morning. Students were kept in class during the outage.

The two schools, together the "Columbia Heights Education Campus," are among the newest facilities in the school system. Without working toilets, students were escorted by administrators, teachers, and security guards to use restrooms at the nearby Target and Capital City Charter School.

Candi Peterson, a school counselor (not at Bell or Lincoln) and union activist, blogged about the incident this morning, and Jennifer Calloway, a DCPS spokesperson, confirms this afternoon that there was a "major inconvenience" for the schools.

Calloway explains in an e-mail that "protecting valuable instruction time and the lack of notice for parents to arrange alternative childcare prompted our decision to keep school open." Everything, she reports, is back to normal today.

Peterson complains that "[d]espite not having...optimal sanitary conditions, lunch was still served to students on schedule which was a cause for alarm for some especially given recent outbreaks of the swine flu and other potential viruses." Calloway says that because "food was already prepared before the water was turned off, sanitation protocol was not affected."

"Our first priority," she writes, "is always the safety and well-being of our students."

Yesterday, after the D.C. Council voted to hold back on some $27 million in D.C. Public Schools funding, Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee wasted no time writing a nastygram [PDF] to Vincent C. Gray and his colleagues.

The letter laid out all the money that would have to be pulled from schools---itemized and broken down by ward. (Smart move: Hey, Harry Thomas, want to explain to your constituents why you voted to cut $3.9 million from Ward 5 schools?)

This wasn't the first letter Rhee had sent Gray and the council.

Last week, she had sent another missive [PDF], asking the council to reconsider its moves to cut the budget of the Deputy Mayor of Education's office and to remove the State Board of Education from the Office of the State Superintendent of Education. Rhee says the council moves, which were ratified yesterday, "begin to erode the structure established by and the progress which has ensued under" school reform legislation passed in 2007.

Much of the letter concerns the decision to take the Interagency Collaboration and Service Integration Commission (aka ICSIC---"ick-sick") out of DME Victor Reinoso's shop and put it in the DCPS Office of Youth Engagement. That office, Rhee writes, "is building twilight programs, student attendance and truancy initiatives, and the Youth Engagement Academy," and as such "cannot take on the additional responsibilities of ICSIC without diverting its focus from these other important initiatives." Better, she says, to leave it with Reinoso, where it "has the force of the Mayor's office to coordinate across agencies and the dedicated focus and resources which would otherwise be lost in the day-to-day functions of another agency."

Rhee also takes issue with the council's move to pump up the SBOE's independence, saying it is "likely to lessen the policy focus of the Board and create the temptation to micromanage" and claiming that moving the school ombudsman's office under their aegis "is likely to politicize" that operation.

In closing, she writes, "we need to continue our progress within the structure and the time line promulgated by the Act. It is too early to turn back."

Full letter after the jump.

Read More "Michelle Rhee Annoyed By Council’s School Governance Moves" »

Looks like Vince-'n'-Victor show has turned into a bit more than a show. More than that, it looks like the baseball ticket feud between the council and Mayor Adrian M. Fenty has given way to conflict much more substantive.

According to a budget report released tonight, Council Chairman Vincent C. Gray is proposing to cut the office of Deputy Mayor for Education Victor Reinoso by some 80 percent. Where the mayor had proposed a $4.04 million budget for the office, Gray is proposing outlaying only $778,000 for the office. He proposes taking the office from 21 employees down to seven.

In other big news, all the lobbying by charter schools and their advocates has paid off: Gray's looking to restore $16.7 million to the charter facilities budget (though not the full $24 million). Where did the council find much of the money to do so? From Fenty's beloved summer jobs program.

The proposed reduction in the deputy mayor's budget corresponds to a movement of various functions out of Reinoso's shop and into others. Some agency oversight functions are being transferred to the State Superintendent of Education; the Interagency Collaboration and Service Integration Commission and its $2.3 million budget is being sent to the DCPS Office of Youth Engagement; and the schools ombudsman will fall under the State Board of Education's purview.

As for charter facilities funding, under the committee plan, the method of funding will remain the same for another year, delaying the mayoral effort to move to a "cost-based" system. However, the formula will decrease from $3,100 per student to $2,800 per student.

If you think mayor-council relations were bad before, consider this a declaration of all-out war. Gray is taking direct aim at what Fenty considers the cornerstone of his mayoral legacy: public education reform. Reinoso was tasked with being Fenty's big-picture, behind-the-scenes guy responsible for steering the whole educational ship in the District, from early education to charter schools to facilities management to DCPS to UDC. But Gray never saw much strategic direction out of Reinoso's office, and it didn't help that Reinoso repeatedly clashed with Gray when he testified before him---if he testified at all.

That's borne out by the report, which reads, "[S]ince the creation of the Office of the Deputy Mayor for Education, no statewide education strategy has been created or established, even though approximately $2 billion is invested annually in public education in the District of Columbia, not including the District’s educational facilities capital program....The Committee is concerned that there is a continuing environment of uncoordinated efforts, initiatives, and budgets between early childhood education, the traditional public schools and charter schools, and the University of the District of Columbia, as well as the strategic planning of educational facilities for all public education sectors."

The slap being delivered by raiding the Summer Youth Employment Program for $10 million is even more vicious for who is delivering it: Marion Barry, the father of the summer jobs program and current chair of the committee on housing and workforce development. It's rare for a committee chair to willingly give up a huge chunk of the budget under his oversight, but make no mistake that Barry considers it worth it to send a message to Fenty.

The plan is still subject to a vote by the full council---this is the committee of the whole, after all---but expect Vince to have the votes on this one.

UPDATE, 12:30 A.M.: After having a closer look at the COW report, LL realizes he may have buried the lede. Gray is proposing to essentially triple the proposed budget of the State Board of Education and to make it "a separate entity within the District of Columbia Government, with sufficient resources and staff to fulfill its important mission." That responds to concerns that, under the Office of the State Superintendent of Education, the board did not have sufficient institutional distance from executive functions of government. But before you start thinking this is the second coming of Peggy Cooper Cafritz, read this: "No additional roles, responsibilities or authority over educational decisionmaking will be assumed by the Board as a result of this transition."

Another item of note: Gray has found $5.4 million in his proposal to fully fund the "Pre-K for All" legislation passed by the council last year. The report had strong words for the gap in the mayor's budget plan: "Disappointed is a mild description of the Council’s response to the failure of OSSE and this Administration to honor its commitment to the expansion and enhancement of pre-kindergarten (pre-k) services to District residents."

Last month, LL covered the sizable personality conflict between D.C. Council Chairman Vincent C. Gray and Deputy Mayor for Education Victor Reinoso.

The conflict remains.

On Tuesday, Reinoso showed up before Gray for his office's budget hearing. Among the topics discussed was the charter school facility allotment, which is, rather controversially, being cut by $24 million. Gray and Reinoso discussed the topic for more than 15 minutes, and Gray seemed satisified enough with the answers that he invited Reinoso to attend the hearing on the charter schools budget two days later.

Reinoso, though, had a hard time committing to that date. He kept telling Gray that he'd confirm the next day; Gray didn't understand why he couldn't just give a yes-or-no answer. "Is that a decision you can make independently?" he asked Reinoso, who sheepishly replied that it was. [Watch the hearing, WMV format, forward to 3:07:50]

Fast forward to yesterday's hearing, where, surprise, Reinoso doesn't show.

Read More "The Vince ‘n’ Victor Show Continues" »

The world-record holder for most consecutive kisses in a minute is no longer employed by the District of Columbia.

WaPo's Bill Turque is reporting that State Superintendent of Education Deborah Gist has resigned to take a similar top job with an actual state---Rhode Island, to be precise.

Turque includes some fun stuff about tensions over Gist's role in the District's newfangled edubureaucracy:

While her agency took on increased responsibilities for special education, charter schools and compliance with federal laws, her influence was limited by her peculiar status under the terms of the mayoral takeover in which she was, in effect, a state superintendent without a state. Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee, a Fenty appointee, has been the dominant force in school reform. On the District's organizational chart, Gist actually reported to [Deputy Mayor Victor Reinoso].

At one point she asserted that she had authority over Rhee's plans to restructure the management of schools deemed to be failing under the federal No Child Left Behind Law, but she was later overruled by District lawyers. Last year, she was forbidden by Fenty to discuss teacher certification policy with a Post reporter.

Gist will be replaced by former assistant education secretary Kerri L. Briggs, Turque reports.

The Washington Teachers' Union is airing radio ads and launching a Web site to promote their teachers contract proposal, according to press release just issued by the union.

From the release: "The first radio ad features the voices of two current DC public school teachers and highlights the need for innovative and collaborative solutions to fix education in Washington. The Web site [unitedfordckids.org] is a location where visitors can see highlights of the WTU proposal, stream the radio ads and other media, sign up for e‐mail updates, and read the latest news related to the contract proposal."

Last month, the WTU issued a counter-plan to DCPS Chancellor Michelle Rhee's famous/infamous Green Tier/Red Tier plan that would reward teachers who discard their tenure rights with significantly higher salaries. The WTU plan's gotten fairly light coverage, certainly relative to the attention Rhee's plan has gotten, so it's no surprise that the union honchos are trying to generate some heat here.

A glance at the Web site shows that the WTU is dipping into the Rhee lexicon in describing its plan, calling the proposal "bold and progressive" and promising that it will "dramatically improve teaching and learning in our schools."

LL's trying to track down some more details on the campaign.

UPDATE, 1 P.M.: The Web site domain is registered to Adelstein Liston, political consulting firm with offices in Chicago and D.C. Among their specialties, according to their Web site: "Message Development" and "Media Buying and Strategy." Their client list features almost exclusively Democratic political candidates and liberal-leaning activist groups.

UPDATE, 3:50 P.M.: WTU spokesperson Monique LeNoir says the ads have already started airing on local radio stations including WMAL-AM, WAMU-FM (which doesn't run pre-recorded ads...hmm), WHUR-FM, WPGC-FM, and WMMJ-FM "in mornings, significant times when members and the public can hear them." As far as Adelstein Liston's involvement, she says, they produced the Web site only; the radio ads were done in-house. LeNoir declined to give a dollar figure for the campaign.

Accompanying yesterday's Washington Post story on DCPS student discipline was this photo, taken by Sarah L. Voisin:

It needs a caption!

Perhaps: "Is it raining in here?" or "Red tier, green tier? Red tier, green tier? Red tier, green tier?"

Or something else entirely---put it in the comments!

An Eckington charter high school will close by February's end, parents were informed today.

City Lights Public Charter School, which was founded in 2005 to serve special-needs children of high school age, sent a letter today explaining that the decision to close comes after "notice from the DC government that the school's funding is being reduced and that this reduction raised significant issues regarding the school's budget and its ability to operate."

[UPDATE, 5:30 P.M.: LL is told that the school was unable to prove District residency for some students during an audit, leading to a serious reduction in its anticipated per-pupil funding.]

Executive Director Iris Lewis, who wrote the letter, was not immediately available for comment. Nona Richardson, a spokesperson for the Public Charter School Board, which oversees City Lights, says the school's financial difficulties are "related to enrollment." LL is told According to PCSB statistics [PDF], City Lights enrolled 62 kids in fall 2007; only one senior graduated the following spring.

A recent PCSB review of the school was critical in a number of areas. City Lights, the board found, had "no overarching curricular framework reflecting [its] academic and nonacademic goals." It also found problems with staff turnover and an "urgent need...for certified special education teachers. Currently, there are none on staff." In addition, the school was found not to have "sufficient systems to collect, record and analyze student academic data and gauge success in the academic and nonacademic goals" and that "very little in terms of academic and behavioral curriculum policies and procedures are written down."

The school was issued a notice of probation in March 2008 for "deficiencies in its services to special needs students." It was lifted by June.

Richardson says that the vast majority of students at City Lights are "high-level special-needs kids" and are likely to be placed though D.C. Public Schools. A community forum will be announced next week, she says, "which will lay out for parents what had happened and what the next steps are."

Letter is after the jump.

Read More "Charter High School to Fold" »