Iris J. Toyer, Parents United for the DC Public Schools
Testimony on the District of Columbia Public Education Reform Amendment Act of 2007
January 30, 2007

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Statement of Iris J. Toyer, Chair
Parents United for the DC Public Schools

Before the
Committee of the Whole Hearing on Bill 17-0001
"District of Columbia Public Education Reform Amendment Act of 2007"

Good afternoon Mr. Chairman and members of the Committee. I am Iris J. Toyer, Chair of Parents United for the DC Public Schools, a parent advocacy and empowerment organization with thirty years of history in this community. I want to thank you for the invitation to appear this morning to provide our thoughts on the District of Columbia Public Education Reform Amendment Act of 2007, Bill 17-0001. We all agree that public education has failed to provide children in this city with the necessary foundation to enter society fully prepared to compete and take advantage of all this city and country have to offer. Therefore, we want to emphatically state that we are always excited when public education is at the center of our elected and appointed officials' attention as well as most citizens.

We want to remind the Council that this bill is NOT an education reform bill. This is a bill that redefines the powers of our branches of government and redefines the number of elected representatives in our city.

As we were preparing testimony for today, we received the proposed legislation from the newly constituted Board of Education. Mr. Chairman, we want you to give that legislation a proper public airing so that this community and the Council are able to create the optimal situation for the future of public education in this community. We believe that more ideas not fewer lead to better solutions.

In reviewing this bill, we find a number of the Titles very positive steps for this government to take.

• We believe that the interagency collaboration-that the Deputy Mayor says is the core of the bill-is a wonderful opportunity to create a real safety net for children and families. Regardless of the outcome of your vote, we believe that the Fenty administration should begin immediately to implement this aspect of the proposal.
• Similarly, efforts to increase parent and community involvement by coordinating services and aligning them with those of the school system will improve service delivery allow the city to use resources more effectively
• The creation of the Ombudsman's Office--especially to provide charter school parents with a home for their concerns-- is a good idea. We hope that in establishing this office the administration will seek counsel from The Ombudsman Association, a national professional association with standards of practice, a code of ethics, etc. and is not a service delivery model as described in the legislation.
• We are particularly pleased to see the separation of state education agency and local education agency functions. While it is not stated in the legislation, we hope this means the establishment of a 'firewall' between the persistent overspending on state-level functions that erodes funding for the local schools and school system operations.

Taken together these are momentous steps for this government and we commend Mayor Fenty for bringing forward the possibility of implementing initiatives that have only been talked about in prior administration. These are all affirmative actions that the Mayor can take without a charter change that will improve the performance of the Board of Education and allow it to focus on the implementation of the Master Education Plan, the Master Facilities Plan, and oversight of the DC Public Schools. We want the focus to be on student improvement.

The current proposal has a number of areas of concern.

• In its current form it removes the public from public education. There is no mechanism by which parents and school communities can have a say in education policy and practice. The Ombudsman's Office, designed to receive complaints, nor the Board of Education in its altered role provide the mechanism by which this will occur. The importance of there being a mechanism for decision makers to received input from those closest to the work cannot be understated and should not be minimized. The basis for good decisions result honest information, sound data, and diverse opinions. Those that are most affected by the services provided are the best source for that information.
• We must understand whether this governance change constitutes a state takeover of our schools and may put us in a different category of action under No Child Left Behind vis a vis' the U.S. Department of Education. Unlike other cities that have been taken over by a Mayor, there is a separate state authority-a governor and generally a state board of education.
• The proposed legislation creates dual roles for the Mayor, head of the LEA and Head of the SEA. From an organizational development standpoint, the proposal simply picks up a bureaucracy and places it under other power centers, with more layers and complicated lines of authority. We question whether the Mayor as head of the LEA (that is DCPS) is bound to enact recommendations of the State Education Agency with regard to matters such as NCLB compliance, funding levels, etc, or is the Mayor empowered as `governor' to determine if those recommendations shall be advanced to the DCPS/LEA? We think that these questions must be asked and answered in as you deliberate.
• We believe that education is one of the most significant and complex responsibilities of any government. It is recognized as such in nearly every community and this is why Board of Education exists -- to ensure that one entity of the government will devote itself solely to the complex array of issues, the needs, the finances, etc. The Council's role under the current proposal is unsatisfactory in conflicting ways: on the one hand Council will not be able to become the city's board of education and devote adequate attention to education matters, on the other hand the Council may be tempted to abuse its powers over the line items in the school systems budget and to establish policies that may impede the plans, priorities, and direction of school reform established by the mayor and chancellor. We remind the Council hat the mayor currently has authority over education policy and line items of the DCPS budget. There are four (4) appointees on the current Board of Education. He can establish a unified platform for education reform and move it if his appointees can succeed in influencing one vote among the elected members. We have yet to see a mayor make use of the powers that our charter currently grants to the office of the executive.
• Most importantly, we have looked at this as parents and asked if it is approved, what will be different in our children's classrooms? Since the Mayor has indicated that he will not seek additional resources for this proposal we know that means expanded course offerings will not be coming on-line for their schools or any others. We fear that the incentive programs undertaken by other school districts to improve teacher and principal quality will be delayed. We know that expanding extracurricular activities including sports is not likely to occur. While we think that the Mayor wants to protect our budget from cost overruns with respect to special education transportation, he will be powerless to do so. (Please know that we do not begrudge our students and parents who must avail themselves of these services, but the reality is that DCPS pays for overages because the Mayor's mark never covers the costs.)

Finally, the process for changing our government is defined in our charter. The charter states that the people shall vote by referendum on amendments to the charter. The charter, our constitutional document, was not imposed on this city but rather voted on by its citizens. Be mindful that this is not a simple piece of legislation such as those that the Council routinely enacts. This is a proposal by the executive branch to increase its power, voted on by the Council as a measure that will also increase the Council's power. Nothing is more significant than the redefinition of the powers of government. We would not expect such a change to be made without due process at the federal level and we must seek to uphold the due process that our city charter sets forth.

Our testimony attempted to reflect what we see as the strengths and weaknesses of the proposal. We have found in meetings with parents and community members around the city that opinion is divided evenly between those who generally support the idea and those who do not. The Council must understand that this proposed change to our governance has not been met with a clear majority opinion in the city. This is yet another reason why we support a referendum on the matter as the means by which the people can become informed and truly decide.