Mayor Adrian Fenty, Chancellor Michelle Rhee 
Fenty Administration Reflects on a Year of Public Education Reform
June 12, 2008

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Fenty Administration Reflects on a Year of Public Education Reform

From facilities to academic programs to improved food service, public education sees significant change in the last year

WASHINGTON, DC --- One year ago today, Mayor Adrian M. Fenty took the first critical step toward education reform by appointing Michelle Rhee as the chancellor of the District of Columbia Public Schools (DCPS). With DCPS facilities in shambles, the Mayor’s next order of business included naming Allen Lew as the schools system’s director of the Office of Public Education Facilities Modernization (OPEFM). Together, Rhee and Lew have led the Administration’s efforts to shake up an inefficient system and lay the groundwork for massive education reform.

Administration officials recapped the highlights of the 2007-08 school year at Langdon Elementary School in Ward 5, a school which was without air conditioning last year. Today, the school has window units throughout, and has been identified as a STEM school. This fall, school officials will begin planning the implementation of a new curriculum that will be focused around science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

“After only one year, this Administration has made enormous headway in setting the stage for an excellent education for our children,” said Mayor Adrian Fenty. “We have a long way to go and will continue to put the weight of the entire District Government behind this critical mission.”

“Over the past year, the District has demonstrated that it’s ready for change,” said DCPS Chancellor Michelle Rhee. “Parents, teachers, community members and, most importantly, students have worked hand-in-hand with this Administration to introduce a new culture of accountability and results. There is no doubt in my mind that we’re on our way to creating a world-class education system.”

Public Education Reform Highlights

The Legislation. Announced the first week in office. DC Council held more than 70 hours of hearings on it.

The team. Deputy Mayor Victor Reinoso, Chancellor Michelle Rhee, Facilities Chief Allen Lew and State Superintendent Deborah Gist.

• First Buff and Scrub. We had 117 businesses doing work at 54 schools. Graffiti, light and bathroom fixtures, painting. This year, the Office of Public Education Facilities Management will manage 26 schools assigned to 35 total partners. Ten additional businesses have expressed an interest in participating.
• ICSIC. Created the Interagency Collaboration and Services Integration Commission to address the needs of at-risk children by reducing juvenile and family violence and promoting social and emotional skills among children and youth through the oversight of a comprehensive integrated service delivery system. The Commission meets monthly to discuss data around one of the six goals to determine how agencies can collaborate to address the needs of children, youth, and their families.
• Summer Blitz and Targeted Repair Initiatives. OPEFM covered 70 schools.
• Tracking Textbooks. Created a new tracking and distribution system, and got 97 percent of the textbooks into the classrooms in time for the first day.
• Digitized Personnel Files. DCPS teamed up with the Office of the Chief Technology Officer (OTCO) to scan 4.6 million loose, individual personnel documents in just 54 days and to re-engineer OHR business processes from manual paper-based to end-to-end digital. These papers were previously neglected for at least 10 years.
• Contracting and procurement. Developed, for the first time, systems to track how many employees are in the school system and how many are on leave; also to track the system’s contractual obligations.
• Athletic Fields. Modernized six fields with the help of Fannie Mae. Bought new uniforms for all high school sports teams, with eight more on the way.
• Beautification Day. Signed up more than 1,600 volunteers in all eight wards. Most successful Beautification Day ever.
• Personnel. Converted non-union DCPS career employees to at-will status, allowing the Chancellor to have the team she needs to make sure the entire team is focused on the needs of students first, not adults.
• Improved Security. Overhauled the entry and exit systems at 9 key schools, improving security for students and staff and ending fire code violations. Includes replacing all the doors at Ballou High School. On track to eliminate fire code violations and improve security at all schools by the end of this school year.
• Hired Ombudsman. Hired Tonya Kinlow as the Ombudsman for Public Education, covering DCPS, public charter schools and UDC.
• Blackman-Jones Agreement to Improve Special Education. Reached an agreement with the plaintiffs in this long-running lawsuit to finally deliver on the District’s special-education obligations to all students.
• Community Meetings and Town Halls. Hosted hundreds of meetings across the city, in every ward to discuss important issues such as school consolidation, restructuring and reuse.
• School Consolidations. So every student in every classroom can have resources such as art, music, guidance counselors and a school nurse, the administration announced plans to consolidate 23 schools after a thorough set of community meetings and public input process.
• TEAM Awards: Pay for Performance. Announced the first achievement awards for staff at schools whose test scores improve by 20 percent or more in a single year. From the principal down to the custodian, the teams at three District elementary schools received between $2,000 and $10,000.
• Cable TV at McKinley Tech. Brought DCPS Channel 99 under the Office of Cable Television, and built new production studios at McKinley Technology High School to generate programming and teach students video production.
• Wilson Pool. Demolished the old Wilson Pool and broke ground on a new Ward Three Aquatic Center with bigger, better facilities for students and the entire community.
• Buff and Scrub 2. Donation targets of $15,000 for each school in the system for repairs this summer.
• School Restructuring. Announced plans to restructure 27 schools under the federal No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act. Some will be reconstituted with new staff, some will partner with outside organizations, and others will receive restructuring plans individually tailored to their needs.
• DCHR Evaluations. DCPS Office of Human Resources (OHR) created and implemented a systemwide employee evaluation process. No official reporting structure had existed for nearly two decades. OHR has created a new culture of accountability and transparency.
• National Principal Recruitment Campaign. Last fall, DCPS OHR launched an aggressive national principal search, increasing the number of applicants by 350 percent; from 200 in 2007 to 700 in 2008, ensuring that DCPS has an excellent pool of potential school leaders to choose from.
• School Leadership Institute. In response to the surge of interest generated by the principal search and to support retention efforts, DCPS successfully obtained federal funding to create a comprehensive School Leadership Institute, designed to provide principals with the support and guidance needed to excel.
• Teacher Transition Awards. Implemented this buyout program to provide new exit opportunities for Washington Teacher’s Union (WTU) members who were eligible for retirement, as well as those who were simply looking to leave the school system. TTA created options for 1,700 teachers, potentially $13 million in cost savings opportunities for DC Public Schools, and monetary awards to eligible DCPS teaching professionals.
• Critical Response. Over the past 12 months DCPS’ Critical Response Team (CRT) has responded to 7,038 constituent requests and concerns, 92 percent of which were responded to in the first 24 hours, and have ultimately been resolved.
• Security Committees. For the first time, DCPS has brought together all stakeholders to address security concerns at the school level. With newly-formed security committees at 111 schools across the city, staff from central office and school faculty together with parents, students, security guards and the Metropolitan Police Department have begun to tackle key issues with intervention and peer mediation.
• Transcript Audit. Last fall, the newly created office of Data and Accountability conducted a transcript audit and found that nearly 1/3 of DCPS high school students were in jeopardy of not graduating because they were either missing core classes, enrolled in the wrong class or simply weren’t credited with earned units. The audit allowed instructional staff to better target students for credit recovery and summer school, ultimately contributing to more students earning their diplomas this year.
• Renew, Revitalize and Reorganize. The Administration finalized this plan in an effort to deliver new, innovative programs by consolidating the District’s underenrolled, poor performing public schools.
• 2007-08 School Opening. Just months after gaining control of the District of Columbia Public Schools, the Administration successfully reorganized the DCPS central warehouse, completed 97 percent all textbook orders and opened schools on time; tasks that were not successfully executed in past years.
• Food Service. The Office of Food and Nutrition Service (OFNS) implemented a food pilot program in four schools offering new healthy lunch menus to students. Food sales increased from $180 to $900 a day at two high schools.
• Food Service Upgrade. As a result of the food service pilot program, OFNS began the process of outsourcing food service, by issuing and a RFP; a plan which will save millions of dollars in expenses and offer new, nutritious meals to students. The Administration is currently finalizing plans.
• Parent Resource Centers. DCPS has launched its new Parent Resource Centers aimed at providing a “one-stop shop” for parents by providing them with the tools and information they need to partner with their children and schools for academic success. Currently there are three resource centers in Wards 1, 7, and 8; programming covers a range of topics such as enrollment, special education, preventing truancy and parent rights.
• Saturday Scholars. Launched as an academic intervention initiative designed to assist students in grades 3 through 6 in preparing for the spring 2008 District of Columbia Comprehensive Assessment System (DC-CAS).
• Summer School. The new five-week program will be expanded to 37 schools, which includes 12 high school sites, a significant increase from only three last year.
• Construction. OPEFM undertook an unprecedented $500 million in school construction, capital improvements, modernizations and/or maintenance projects. Currently, 20 projects are in design, under construction or completed.
• Work Orders. OPEFM inherited over 11,000 known work orders and uncovered at least as many that were never reported. In one year, with contractors and in-house trade staff, OPEFM has touched each school with necessary quality of life improvements. By the end of this summer, there will be few if any remaining backlogged work orders.
• Heat/AC. Fixed more than 400 boilers; made repairs to all central cooling systems and installed 2,500 window AC units.
• Expanded DIBELS. A literacy assessment tool for grades K-3, which evaluates weaknesses and enables teachers to target their lesson plans to meet students’ specific needs. This assessment was expanded district wide to create more focused instruction.
• Additional Pre-K. 220 slots will be available in the 2007-08 school year for families in the District of Columbia.
• PACE. The Phelps Architecture Construction and Engineering (PACE) High School will be open in the 2008-09 school year, giving students more academic options to prepare them for college or other post graduation opportunities.
• Computers in Every Classroom. OCTO has also taken the lead in equipping DCPS classrooms with the technology they need to enhance learning. In six weeks, the agency was able to deploy more than 6,300 computers for teachers and administrators, making a huge impact on a persistent digital divide across the district. OCTO also implemented the Read 180 and Accelerated Math Intervention programs to provide teaching and learning tools for the students.
• High-Speed Network. To support computer upgrades, OCTO converted 103 schools to the new high-speed broadband network increasing Internet speed 50 times over, from speeds of 1.5 mbps to as much as 100 mbps, with the remaining schools scheduled to be converted by the beginning of September. Network protection was also a priority, as OCTO eliminated viruses that infected 85 percent of the computing infrastructure while implementing processes to consistently back up servers and scan for viruses.
• Federal E-Rate funding. In an effort to continue funding classroom initiatives and system-wide upgrades, OCTO has received more than $20 million in Federal E-Rate funding for key technology investments; $6.3 million will go toward outstanding debt dating back to 2003, and $13.8 million will be used to fund current IT initiatives, including installing wireless access points, internal cabling, conduit repair, switch and router maintenance and network interface cards at public schools.
• Federal Payment Increase. The school system’s first financial achievement includes DCPS’ ability to secure an increase in the federal payment for the 2007-08 school year. This action will help to significantly will increase classroom resources and provide schools with additional teachers and support staff needed to raise the achievement levels in students throughout the system.
• FY ’09 Budget. The total DCPS budget includes $773 million for the school system; with 23 schools slated to close starting next school year, monies allocated for schools increased to $537 million from $493 million in FY ’08. This increase signals the administration’s commitment to ensuring classrooms across the school district realize financial benefits for new programs and additional staffing.
• Comprehensive Staffing Models. Next school year, each receiving schools will receive this staffing model--a major benefit of the new budget--allowing schools to receive art, music and physical education teachers as well as social workers, psychologists and literacy coaches to support teachers and students both in and out of the classroom.
• Other Budget Highlights. Includes increased funding for athletics and other program activities like debate teams, chess clubs and yearbook; DCPS will also expand partnerships with external organizations that provide important extracurricular, after-school, and educational services for students. Schools will also benefit from the expansion of extended-day initiatives.

The Year Ahead

With one year completed, the Administration still has many miles ahead as it continues down the road to education reform. The 2008-09 school year will present new opportunities and challenges for the school system. The Administration will push forward with its goal of offering a world-class education to all students who enter the doors of the District of Columbia Public Schools. In year two, some key initiatives include:

Contract Agreement. DCPS is currently working closely and expects to soon complete contract negotiations with the Washington Teachers Union to create a contract that focuses intensely on children and ensures that the school system is operating in the best interest of students as well as recognizing and rewarding effective teachers.

Five-Year Financial Forecast. The Administration is creating a planning tool to forecast revenue and spending for the next five fiscal years. The forecast looks at revenue, enrollment, staffing and spending for the last three years and forecasts out for the next five, based on a dynamic model that can be routinely updated as reforms are implemented and enrollment changes. The tool will enable the Chancellor, for the first time ever, to look at the long-term impacts of critical decisions, such as school closings, and realize opportunities for re-investment of resources to support the reform agenda.

School Consolidations. This fall, the school system will have a total of 121 schools, 23 of which will include the comprehensive staffing models. Others will include STEM, Early Childhood, Gifted and Talented, Fine Arts, High Tech and Integrated Special Education programs.

Restructuring. In addition to implementing the restructuring process for 27 schools that qualified this year, DCPS could have has many as 33 schools in restructuring status next year. As such, the school system will again begin the process of working with those affected school communities to choose appropriate NCLB options to turn those schools around academically.

Master Facilities Plan. OPEFM is finalizing the draft Master Facilities Plan (MFP) that will guide the thoughtful development of DC Public Schools for the next 10 to 15 years. The plan envisions new construction and substantially rehabilitated, historically preserved buildings that are environmentally sensitive facilities that serve the needs of students and the community alike. When the MFP is published, there will be a series of meetings across the District for community input before submission to the DC Council in early September.