Parents, students and government officials criticized the D.C. Public Schools budget as not clear at best — and as turning the city into a “laughingstock” at worst — at a hearing Monday. Parents from the top-performing School Without Walls Senior High School decried the $2,000-per-student cut proposed for fiscal 2012 on the heels of the U.S. Department of Education naming Walls a Blue Ribbon School for its successes, including a 100 percent graduation rate.
More community members said they were concerned about a lack of openness in the schools budget, which was released more than a month late.
“I have to say this is the worst thing I’ve ever seen. It’s a mess,” said Mary Levy, a lawyer and budget watchdog since 1975. “If we are to believe it, central office is going up by $18 million, special education is being cut by $15 million, and early child education is being cut by $16 million. I don’t really believe this is happening” but can’t discern differently, she said.
Ward 3 Councilwoman Mary Cheh called the budget “inscrutable.”
“Is there an increase or a decrease in the school budget? I’d like to know, is there an increase or decrease to central office?” she said.
DCPS officials have said the central office is being cut and that any appearance otherwise is the addition of support for schools.
DCPS has proposed reducing the budgets for 10 of 19 high school programs, along with six of 14 middle school programs and 21 of 66 elementaries.
“It’s silly. It doesn’t make sense,” said Mark Simon, a Walls parent. “There should not be a dime more to central office if some schools are getting cut.”
Amidon-Bowen Elementary School is set for a 17 percent budget cut of $586,601. Eve Brooks, a parent with Southwest’s Neighbors for Education Excellence Now, said she feared cuts to mental health programs because many students have “experienced significant trauma.”
“When we ask if they know someone who’s died, or been murdered, it’s almost every kid,” Brooks said.
Marcia Kupfer, another Walls parent, pointed to New York City’s embrace of magnet schools, while Walls’ budget is cut $320,490 and must increase enrollment and create makeshift classrooms at other schools. “So how is it in only in D.C. this can go forward? [To cut Walls’ budget] is to turn the city into a laughingstock,” she said.
Council Chairman Kwame Brown said he will grill school officials at a May 3 hearing. “No school should have a decrease in the classroom,” Brown said. “That’s my philosophy.”
