U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE

61–528 CC WASHINGTON : 2000

STATUS OF THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA PUBLIC

SCHOOLS PLAN FOR CAPITAL IMPROVEMENTS

AND ACADEMIC EXCELLENCE

HEARING

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON THE

DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON

GOVERNMENT REFORM

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED SIXTH CONGRESS

FIRST SESSION

APRIL 30, 1999

Serial No. 106–64

Printed for the use of the Committee on Government Reform

(

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.house.gov/reform

(II)

COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM

DAN BURTON, Indiana, Chairman

BENJAMIN A. GILMAN, New York

CONSTANCE A. MORELLA, Maryland

CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut

ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida

JOHN M. MCHUGH, New York

STEPHEN HORN, California

JOHN L. MICA, Florida

THOMAS M. DAVIS, Virginia

DAVID M. MCINTOSH, Indiana

MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana

JOE SCARBOROUGH, Florida

STEVEN C. LATOURETTE, Ohio

MARSHALL ‘‘MARK’’ SANFORD, South

Carolina

BOB BARR, Georgia

DAN MILLER, Florida

ASA HUTCHINSON, Arkansas

LEE TERRY, Nebraska

JUDY BIGGERT, Illinois

GREG WALDEN, Oregon

DOUG OSE, California

PAUL RYAN, Wisconsin

JOHN T. DOOLITTLE, California

HELEN CHENOWETH, Idaho

HENRY A. WAXMAN, California

TOM LANTOS, California

ROBERT E. WISE, JR., West Virginia

MAJOR R. OWENS, New York

EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York

PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania

PATSY T. MINK, Hawaii

CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, Washington,

DC

CHAKA FATTAH, Pennsylvania

ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland

DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio

ROD R. BLAGOJEVICH, Illinois

DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois

JOHN F. TIERNEY, Massachusetts

JIM TURNER, Texas

THOMAS H. ALLEN, Maine

HAROLD E. FORD, JR., Tennessee

JANICE D. SCHAKOWSKY, Illinois

———

BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont

(Independent)

KEVIN BINGER, Staff Director

DANIEL R. MOLL, Deputy Staff Director

DAVID A. KASS, Deputy Counsel and Parliamentarian

CARLA J. MARTIN, Chief Clerk

PHIL SCHILIRO, Minority Staff Director

SUBCOMMITTEE ON THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA

THOMAS M. DAVIS, Virginia, Chairman

CONSTANCE A. MORELLA, Maryland

STEPHEN HORN, California

JOE SCARBOROUGH, Florida

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, Washington,

DC

CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York

EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York

EX OFFICIO

DAN BURTON, Indiana HENRY A. WAXMAN, California

HOWARD DENIS, Staff Director and Counsel

ANNE MACK BARNES, Professional Staff Member

BOB DIX, Professional Staff Member

MELISSA WOJCIAK, Professional Staff Member

JON BOUKER, Minority Counsel

(III)

C O N T E N T S

Page

Hearing held on April 30, 1999 .............................................................................. 1

Statement of:

Williams, Anthony, Mayor, District of Columbia; Kevin Chavous, chairman, education committee, District of Columbia City Council; Constance Newman, vice-chairman, D.C. Control Board; Arlene Ackerman,

superintendent, District of Columbia Public Schools; Wilma Harvey,

president, District of Columbia Public Schools Board of Education;

and Maudine Cooper, chairman, District of Columbia Public Schools

Emergency Transitional Education Board of Trustees .............................. 9

Letters, statements, etc., submitted for the record by:

Ackerman, Arlene, superintendent, District of Columbia Public Schools:

Information concerning attorney’s fees .................................................... 62

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 39

Chavous, Kevin, chairman, education committee, District of Columbia

City Council, prepared statement of ........................................................... 18

Cooper, Maudine, chairman, District of Columbia Public Schools Emergency Transitional Education Board of Trustees, prepared statement

of ..................................................................................................................... 45

Davis, Hon. Thomas M., a Representative in Congress from the State

of Virginia, prepared statement of .............................................................. 3

Newman, Constance, vice-chairman, D.C. Control Board, prepared statement of ........................................................................................................... 28

Norton, Hon. Eleanor Holmes, a Representative in Congress from the

District of Columbia, prepared statement of .............................................. 7

Williams, Anthony, Mayor, District of Columbia, prepared statement of ... 12

(1)

STATUS OF THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA

PUBLIC SCHOOLS PLAN FOR CAPITAL IMPROVEMENTS AND ACADEMIC EXCELLENCE

FRIDAY, APRIL 30, 1999

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

SUBCOMMITTEE ON THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA,

COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM,

Washington, DC.

The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 10 a.m., in room

2154, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Thomas M. Davis

(chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.

Present: Representatives Davis, Horn and Norton.

Also present: Representative Biggert.

Staff present: Howard Denis, staff director/counsel; Anne Mack

Barnes, Bob Dix, and Melissa Wojciak, professional staff members;

Trey Hardin, communications and policy director; Jon Bouker, minority counsel; and Jean Gosa, minority staff assistant.

Mr. DAVIS. Good morning and welcome. We are here today to review many of the issues and challenges which confront the District

of Columbia public school system. I am as always indebted to the

ranking member of the subcommittee, Eleanor Holmes Norton, for

working with me in a bipartisan manner, and I’m happy to have

Mr. Horn from California, whose family has been in Washington,

DC, for many generations, with us as well.

We are looking to the future.

Mrs. Biggert has just come in, too, from Illinois. Thank you for

coming as well.

We are looking to the future. Last year the subcommittee conducted four hearings on the D.C. schools. Today we will examine

the status of a number of the reform efforts. We seek an environment in which students can learn without fear for their personal

safety, an environment that invites stakeholders to share in the effort to develop creative solutions. We seek an environment that is

not driven by crisis.

I do not minimize the magnitude of the challenges that remain

in restoring full confidence in the public school system. We have to

work together to ensure that successful academic achievement and

social development is the hallmark of the system’s reputation. In

fairness, it should be acknowledged that meaningful progress is

being achieved. I want to thank our witnesses today and all of

those who have played a role in that effort.

This subcommittee continues to be very active aggressively pursuing public policy developments and oversight review intended to

2

facilitate the successful revitalization of the District of Columbia.

The current reform effort underway in the District’s public schools

is a very significant element in the overall revitalization.

Recent events, including the decision of the bond houses in New

York to upgrade the District’s debt rating, is evidence that overall

efforts in the city across a wide front are producing results.

The leadership and vision being provided by Superintendent Arlene Ackerman and her team at the DCPS, along with the support

and the direction provided by the Board of Education, the Emergency Board of Trustees, the Control Board, Mayor Williams and

the City Council, provide the foundation for future successes; additionally, the support of parents, community leaders, the private

sector, teachers, administrators, and support staff demonstrating

our joint commitment to academic excellence.

The District of Columbia College Access Act, which I introduced,

and which the subcommittee approved unanimously 2 weeks ago,

will result in expanded opportunities for high school graduates for

affordable college educations. We are deeply grateful to all of our

colleagues for their recognition of the enormous value of H.R. 974

and the benefits of expanding choices and access to higher education that the bill will bring about.

We have to provide opportunities to achieve academic excellence

in facilities that are safe, have efficient heating and air conditioning, whose roofs don’t leak, and can be modernized. We have

to be able to include advances in technology, fiber optic cable, arts

and sciences laboratories and special programming activities. This

must be a priority.

Another priority mission is to develop, update, and implement an

academic plan which meets the needs of the school population and

prepares students to compete in a global economy.

I thank our distinguished panel for demonstrating the leadership

and commitment to the District’s children. I look forward to their

testimony and the opportunity to pursue a number of questions.

[The prepared statement of Hon. Thomas M. Davis follows:]

3

4

5

Mr. DAVIS. I would now yield to Delegate Norton for an opening

statement.

Ms. NORTON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Before I begin my opening statement, I would just like to commend the D.C. Public

Schools on the way in which they have responded to the aftermath

of the great tragedy at Columbine High School in Littleton, CO.

While, like many school systems across the United States, there

had to be some evacuations, you had to close schools, it’s over with

and done with, and it’s settled down.

These children may regard this matter as pranks. I would hope

that if we do find that children have engaged in these threats, that

strong sanctions would be taken against them so that an example

could be made so that children would, in fact, get the point that

these are not pranks and are not considered pranks. If, in fact,

adults or children close to adults are found to be responsible, I

would hope that some prosecution would occur so that we could

have a deterrent effect upon such copycat incidents.

Today’s hearing reflects the continuing interest of the chairman,

the subcommittee, and the Congress in improvements in the D.C.

Public Schools. Of the problems that have arisen in home rule governance, none has had a more serious impact than those that relate

to education and children. The District’s problems in its public

schools are typical of big cities. However, the paralysis and stalemate that developed between the Board of Education and former

Superintendent Franklin Smith left the schools to drift downward

and finally hit bottom and contributed to the loss of the board’s

power and standing in the community. A commendable and structured effort to regain both is under way.

The decline in the D.C. Public Schools has been so wholesale that

the initial reforms related simply to keeping them standing. Much

of what has occupied the appointed Board of Trustees, the superintendent, and the Council has related not to academic improvements, but to support issues, such as security, fixing roofs, getting

a correct count of children in the schools, and assuring edible food

in school cafeterias. The primacy of these issues in the first stage

of reform was demonstrated by the appointment of a former general as superintendent, Julius Becton. To General Becton’s credit,

he also brought in an educational expert, Arlene Ackerman, who

has since become superintendent.

Although Mrs. Ackerman became superintendent more quickly

than anyone had anticipated after the unexpected resignation of

General Becton, she quickly won the confidence of many in the city

and the Congress. This confidence came largely because she broke

through the academic stalemate and quickly began to make major

changes unlike any that had been seen in many years. One common example was a turnaround in test scores in virtually every

grade. Another was the Summer STARS program and an afterschool program during the school year, one of the first of its kind

in the country, to tackle social promotion by reducing class size and

giving children the hands-on academic help they need.

The Clinton administration has been so impressed with these

and similar innovations that the President, the First Lady, and the

Secretary of Education have sent millions of dollars to the city for

the educational reforms designed by Superintendent Ackerman, inVerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:00 Oct 03, 2000 Jkt 010199 PO 00000 Frm 00009 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 E:\HEARINGS\61528 pfrm08 PsN: 61528
6

cluding $5 million for the Summer STARS program. Secretary

Richard Riley, who spoke at my Education town meeting this past

Monday, announced there another $5 million grant for the District

of Columbia Youth Investment Program for the superintendent’s

after-school programs.

Large problems continue to plague the D.C. Public Schools and

the superintendent, the trustees, and the Board of Education are

under great pressure to proceed more rapidly to attend to them.

Among the most serious are continuing problems with special education where the children most in need simply cannot afford to

wait any longer. The difference between today and recent years,

however, is that the superintendent has not hesitated to act boldly

whatever the consequences to existing management and has not

had interference from others that sometimes made it difficult to

take bold action in the past.

As the Control Board proceeds toward restoration of the home

rule powers of the school board, District officials must look at what

home rule governance and structure best suits our school system

today. Many cities are moving away from politically based school

boards toward structures that assure parent participation and

guarantee that the children will be the overriding concern. I have

not examined what the available options are. I can only hope that

some in the city with direct responsibilities are doing so. I have

formed no opinion yet, nor, I believe, have most residents. Most

would agree, however, that what we had surely did not work, and

indeed fell apart. What we had may well be quite capable of working, but the burden will be on the present system to demonstrate

that it can work for children.

One thing seems clear. There has been a change in the political

culture in the District. It did not come from Congress. It did not

come from the Control Board. It came directly from the streets and

the people. Residents will no longer tolerate factionalism on the

board, interference with the superintendent who wants to move forward, poor performance by our children, or unaccountable personnel. The District does not need overseers to make the schools

work. Residents know what to do. They simply won’t take it anymore.

I’m very pleased to welcome today’s witnesses, Mayor Anthony

Williams, Council Member Kevin Chavous, chair of the Council’s

education committee; Wilma Harvey, president of D.C. Board of

Education; Constance Newman, vice chair of the Control Board;

Maudine Cooper, chair of the Emergency Board of Trustees; and

Superintendent Arlene Ackerman. I commend each and every one

of them for the admirable leadership they are providing in the effort to reform and refurbish our public schools and to assure families and residents a school system of which we can all be proud.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman for this hearing and for your efforts

on behalf of our schools.

Mr. DAVIS. Thank you very much.

[The prepared statement of Hon. Eleanor Holmes Norton follows:]

7

8

9

Mr. DAVIS. Mrs. Biggert.

Mrs. BIGGERT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you very

much for allowing me to participate in your hearing today. I am on

the Government Reform Committee, but not on the District of Columbia Subcommittee, but public education is of great importance

to me, and public education in large cities. While in the Illinois

Legislature, I worked on the Chicago school reform. I’m proud to

say that it proved to be a great success. So I look forward to hearing about the reform in the District today, and I’m happy to be

here. Thank you.

Mr. DAVIS. Thank you very much.

Any other statements? If not, I would like to call our panel of

witnesses to testify. Mayor Anthony Williams; Councilman Kevin

Chavous, the chairman of the education committee; Connie Newman, the vice chair of the Control Board; Arlene Ackerman, the superintendent of the District of Columbia Public Schools; Wilma

Harvey, the president of the D.C. Board of Education; and Maudine

Cooper, the chair of the Emergency Board of Trustees.

As you know, it’s the policy of the committee—is Mr. Chavous

here yet? Councilman Chavous is not here yet, but we will swear

him in when he gets here. It is the policy of the committee that

all witnesses be sworn before they can testify. If you would rise

with me and raise your right hands.

[Witnesses sworn.]

Mr. DAVIS. Mayor Williams, I understand that you have some

pressing budgetary meetings coming up, and so I will start with

you. If you have to excuse yourself before the questions, we certainly understand, and we just look forward to a very continued cooperative working relationship with you. Thank you for being here.

STATEMENTS OF ANTHONY WILLIAMS, MAYOR, DISTRICT OF

COLUMBIA; KEVIN CHAVOUS, CHAIRMAN, EDUCATION COMMITTEE, DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CITY COUNCIL; CONSTANCE NEWMAN, VICE-CHAIRMAN, D.C. CONTROL BOARD;

ARLENE ACKERMAN, SUPERINTENDENT, DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA PUBLIC SCHOOLS; WILMA HARVEY, PRESIDENT,

DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA PUBLIC SCHOOLS BOARD OF EDUCATION; AND MAUDINE COOPER, CHAIRMAN, DISTRICT OF

COLUMBIA PUBLIC SCHOOLS EMERGENCY TRANSITIONAL

EDUCATION BOARD OF TRUSTEES

Mayor WILLIAMS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I was just at a

meeting actually with some of the county executives, and we were

talking about contingency plans for the Wilson Bridge. I’m sure you

and the committee would appreciate that.

I want to thank you and Congresswoman Norton, Congressman

Horn, all of the members of the committee for having us here today

for the opportunity to testify. I’m pleased to join this panel to discuss our shared vision for education, to elaborate on the questions

of governance and the operations of the school system.

This is a time for optimism in the District. Our bond rating is

up, our books are balanced, and our economy is still expanding.

But a rising economic tide does not ensure the success of our education system. Our school system needs to experience a similar

10

turnaround. I’m committed to working with the superintendent and

the other leaders of our city to make sure that this happens.

My vision for education has three central components. First, our

children deserve the best possible schools with first-class teachers.

Second, our approach to education must recognize that an equal

part of a child’s learning and development takes place outside the

classroom. This is exemplified by my belief in the idea of parents

as first teachers. Third, we must mobilize all of the resources of the

community toward the education of our young people. That means

involving parents, teachers, civic leaders, faith organizations, as

well as the business community in the life of every child.

Let me discuss each of these in turn and highlight a few of the

initiatives. As I mentioned, our first and most immediate priority

is to make sure that our children have the best schools with the

best teachers in the region. Our students deserve to learn under a

roof that doesn’t leak. They deserve schools where bathrooms work

and classrooms stay warm in the winter and cool during summer.

That’s why I have proposed investing $364 million in renovation,

modernization, and construction of public schools. Among other

things, these funds will pay for two new schools and will allow us

to renovate eight schools a year for the next 6 years. The funds will

bring our education system into the 21st century providing access

to modern technology and computers.

Competition can and should drive this effort to make our schools

the best they can be. I believe that parents should have a choice

among public schools and charter schools so that they can hold

schools accountable for the education their children receive.

I also believe our children deserve the best teachers in the region. District teaching salaries are well below those in Maryland

and Virginia. With close to 70 percent of our teachers approaching

retirement age in the years ahead, we face a critical window in

teacher hiring. To help our city compete for and retain the best and

brightest new educators, I have proposed a 4 to 5 percent raise for

teachers, 4.5 percent in 1999 and 5 percent in the year 2000.

The second part of my vision is the idea that educating a child

does not begin and end with the school bell. It begins before birth

and continues through the early years and into high school and college. Educating a child means making a commitment before school,

after school, and in that general environment.

Early childhood programs for children are essential for making

a child enter school ready to learn. Part of the $33 million Children

and Youth Investment Partnership could be used to expand access

to these services for at-risk families. These programs have been

proven to improve school performance, reduce instances of child

abuse, as well as save as much as $7 for every dollar invested.

But quality early childhood and preschool programs are not

enough. Young people must also have access to worthwhile, wholesome activities during the afternoon hours. We know that, for example, juvenile crime suddenly triples in the hour after the school

bell rings, yet as many as 45,000 District students go without afterschool programs. My proposal for this partnership could change

that equation, providing students with these opportunities.

The third major component of my education vision is recognizing

that the entire community has a role to play in the life of every

11

child. Parents, teachers, and businesses must be engaged together

in the process of education.

I believe we must support parents in their role as first teachers.

We must encourage and support parents to get involved in their

child’s education. Every parent should have access to quality affordable day care, counseling, and other services designed to help

raise that child.

I am also asking the business community to play a role in the

education of the District. This is happening on a number of fronts.

For one, we have worked in partnership with 15 companies and

foundations to establish the D.C. College Access Program. It is a

creative partnership that will awaken students to the opportunities

available for higher education and make those opportunities possible by providing scholarships to make college affordable. In addition to college scholarships, the program will provide as many as

11,000 students with college advisors in their high schools to help

them navigate the complex testing, application, and financial aid

process.

Members of the business community can serve as mentors for

young people or get involved in a summer jobs program, which I

propose extending into a year-round program. It would be coupled

with a new youth internship program as well as a youth-to-careers

and entrepreneurship program to engage high school dropouts in

nontraditional education and vocational testing.

Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, I thank you for

the opportunity to testify before you today and look forward to answering your questions.

Mr. DAVIS. Thank you very much.

[The prepared statement of Mayor Williams follows:]

12

13

14

15

Mr. DAVIS. Mr. Chavous, if you would rise, I have to swear you

in. Can you stand up?

Mr. CHAVOUS. Yes.

Mr. DAVIS. Happy to have you here.

[Witness sworn.]

Mr. DAVIS. Councilman Chavous, if you would care to make any

opening remarks, we have copies of everything that has been submitted. You don’t need to take the full 5 minutes.

Mr. CHAVOUS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and members of the

committee, including our Delegate and our Congresswoman. It’s

good to see you all.

Sorry I was a few minutes late. I am a member of the finance

committee on the Council, and this morning we voted out of committee the most sweeping tax package this city has ever seen. I’m

proud to report that this morning.

I am Kevin Chavous, a member of the Council of the District of

Columbia representing ward 7. As you know, I’m speaking in my

capacity this morning as chair of the committee on education, libraries and recreation. I welcome this opportunity to report to you

on the role that the Council has played and will continue to play

in the ongoing reform effort taking place in our public school system.

You do have my prepared remarks and I just want to highlight

a couple of things that indicate the involvement of the Council in

this effort.

The committee on education over the past few months has had

an unprecedented number of hearings involving the District of Columbia Public Schools and the charter schools over the past few

months. Topics have included areas such as school bus transportation, certification of bus drivers, as well as various other special

education issues; student truancy and dropout prevention policies

and programs; the public charter schools and their role in this community; long-range facilities master plan; and the interagency collaboration effort where we have asked various agencies that touch

children to come together on ways to work better together.

This month the Council did something that will move this system

forward in the area of special education. Working with the superintendent, we approved at the request of my committee, the establishment of a special Council committee to investigate the excessive

spending, poor accountability, and ineffective, low-quality offerings

in the special education programs. Clearly, problems were manifested long before our current superintendent came to this city, but

it is the goal of this committee, of the Council committee on education, to assist her in offering a quality education for our special

education students that number approximately 8,000 children.

In addition, less than a year ago the full Council voted and

passed the uniform per pupil student funding formula which was

later approved by Congress. This law is noteworthy because it allows the funds that we allocate for education to follow the student.

It also provides a sound basis for the fiscal budget to be established

with respect to how we spend our money. The public charter

schools is implementing this formula this school year, and DCPS,

our public school system, will begin similar implementation in

school year 1999 and 2000.

16

We have, my office, maintained almost daily contact with Mrs.

Ackerman and members of her staff as well as members of the public charter school community. We intend to be of assistance to both

entities as well as to provide oversight, and to do so we need to be

informed to understand the issues and be able to answer the questions of our constituents. The strength of this communication will

support our efforts in rebuilding a budget consensus process and

make sure that the 2000 budget reflects the priorities of our citizens. The good news is that all of the committee and budget working group recommendations, if they are all accepted, Mrs. Ackerman will get close to what she wants for 1999 and 2000. The

Mayor has made that commitment, and I do as well.

I want to highlight a couple of other Council actions before I

close that impact on school reform. In the budget that we passed

out of committee just a couple of weeks ago, we requested the

DCPS study the feasibility and the requirements for establishing a

residential school for school year 2000 and 2001. I might parenthetically add that we have seen with the SEA foundation, a residential school that is a public charter school, that there is a greater need for a holistic approach for the education of our children.

Because of some of the dysfunctional homes that a lot of our children come from, we feel, the Council feels strongly that the city

should make an investment in a residential school.

In addition, we have requested in our committee report that

DCPS establish a comprehensive student truancy and dropout prevention program for school year 1999 and 2000. I can tell you that

far too many of our children are on the street or visiting local businesses during school hours. Working with the Mayor, Chief

Ramsey, and Superintendent Ackerman, this year we sent thousands of letters to businesses urging them to report children who

come into their establishments during the school day to the local

school.

As a strong supporter of before- and after-school programs, my

colleagues in the Council and I have requested that DCPS apply

for the 72 Federal grants for which they qualify. According to reports, only 47 of those grants were applied for last year. We feel

that if we can maximize the funds that are available through Federal grants, it would enhance some of the efforts that Mrs. Ackerman has been under taking with respect to school reform.

With respect to school safety, we voted out of committee just recently to transfer the responsibility of school security from DCPS

to the Metropolitan Police Department. Sadly, it was on the same

morning of the Littleton, CO, incident. It is my belief that Mrs.

Ackerman, working with the chief of police, can put in place a

sound approach to school security that reflects the public safety

needs both inside and outside of the school.

Another project in progress is the State Education Agency. It is

my belief that the District of Columbia has numerous State education responsibilities, and there is no single agency that handles

this task. Therefore, we have State education agency functions that

are located in a number of different agencies without the benefit

of the collaboration and comprehensive planning that should take

place. Our committee has suggested and we will be proposing legislation that would blend those responsibilities into one single entity.

17

With respect to the public charter schools, we do feel that the

public charter school experiment is working in the District. We

support public charter schools. We do need to address some of the

inherent inconsistencies in some of their funding, particularly as it

relates to facilities. We have a lot of good charter school programs

that have been proposed, but one of the big barriers is in the area

of facilities and where they are going to house their efforts. So we

are working with Connie Newman on the Control Board and Mrs.

Ackerman to find a way to make excess D.C. school surplus property more available to charter schools.

With respect to new school construction, I am very pleased to report that the Mayor has worked with us in putting in place a new

school construction plan that is noteworthy here in the District. We

are the only jurisdiction in America that hasn’t built a new school

in the last 20 years, but over the next 10 years, we will either build

from the ground up 8 to 10 new schools or totally modernize them. Finally, let me just say that President Clinton has proposed $114

million for a special subsidized bonding authority for DCPS school

construction and repairs; however, to successfully implement and

complete the plan, Federal funds are needed. I’m requesting the

Congress to consider providing the $73 million for fiscal year 2000

as has been outlined in the Mayor’s fiscal year 2000 financial plan.

That will make a big difference in aiding our effort toward new

school construction.

In closing, for as much progress as the Council has made, there

remains work to be done in support of public education reform. The

Authority, Mayor, Council, and superintendent are committed to

working together in support of public education.

I do want to say that we have a jewel in Mrs. Arlene Ackerman.

She should be commended for her effort and perseverance in accepting the many challenges to the reform of our school system.

While she has a lot of challenges, we must understand and appreciate that the problems she has been tasked to fix weren’t new—

they were here before she got here. She didn’t cause them. But I

think that she has done a fabulous job, and we are committed to

working with her to make that a reality.

Thank you for the opportunity to testify and for your support,

and I look foward to working with you in the future and to entertain any questions you may have.

Mr. DAVIS. Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Chavous follows:]

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

26

Mr. DAVIS. Ms. Newman.

Ms. NEWMAN. Good morning, Mr. Chairman and Congresswoman

Norton and members of the subcommittee. I am the member of the

Authority with lead responsibility for public education and appreciate the opportunity to testify this morning. When I asked your

staff how much time, they went 5, 4, 3, and I stopped them before

they said 1 minute, but I will race through because I know that

the full statement will be in the record.

We do believe that permanent change is occurring and tangible

progress is being made in all areas of public education, and, importantly, in the interest of the children of the District of Columbia.

These improvements are the result of effective leadership and development of a strong reform-minded team under the leadership of

Arlene Ackerman, superintendent, and chief executive officer.

These changes have been in academic performance, in management, and in fiscal environment.

The Authority is pleased with and fully supports the direction of

her efforts and is committed to the aggressive reform agenda she

has established. Through all of her efforts, the Emergency Transitional Board of Trustees has supported her.

We are further encouraged by the efforts under way to involve

the elected school board in the governance of the school system as

an active partner in improving student academic performance. The

priority of the Authority has been to ensure that the Board of Education is fully prepared to assume responsibility for the school system by June 30, 2000.

A key element in the transition plan that has recently been put

together requires the Board of Education and the superintendent

to develop a strategic plan that contains short and long-term goals

and objectives. The Authority is committed to working with all parties to ensure that transition plan is fully implemented.

With regard to academic performance of students, the Authority

is pleased. The results of the initiatives of the superintendent,

elimination of social promotion, implementation of the Summer

STARS program, increased principal and teacher accountability,

more service and training, and more parental involvement, have

contributed to the students’ better academic performance.

Turning now to physical improvements, I’m pleased with the efforts of the superintendent and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers

to make the schools cleaner and safer. Much progress has been

made in the last year. The Corps understands that a lead responsibility of the elected school board is to develop a master plan, a

long-range facilities master plan. They are prepared to work with

the school board in preparing this very important document.

It was mentioned earlier and I should reinforce the importance

of the charter schools and the charter school movement. We do believe that the District can be a model for the rest of the country,

given, frankly, the fact that we have moved faster than any other

jurisdiction in establishing charter schools. We do know that we

need to work in a much more efficient and effective way in supporting charter schools, particularly in addressing their space requirements.

For the second year in a row we know with confidence how many

students are in the schools. Knowing the exact number has become

27

more important since the adoption of the per pupil funding formula

and the superintendent’s plans to use a weighted student formula

to allocate funds to the individual schools. We believe that this new

formula is an equitable way to fund education and will address

some of the inequities that have existed between schools. We will

work with the Council and the Mayor to address any problems that

surface through the implementation of this formula.

As required by the act, the Authority hired an independent auditor to audit the school’s official enrollment count of 75,000. The

independent auditor has verified the number. It is 75,483. I think

it’s give or take. While we have made progress, the Authority is

still concerned, however, with the level of documentation being

maintained by the school system and the public charter schools

with regard to verification of residents.

I want to second Chairman Chavous’s concern about special education. Nearly 10,000 students are expected in special education in

the coming year. Fiscal year 2000 special education programs will

consume more than $170 million of the appropriated budget. The

Authority supports the initiative of Council Member Chavous to assemble a task force which will include the courts, the administration, educators, and parents to develop a coordinated and comprehensive response to address this problem.

In conclusion, the Authority is pleased with the progress in the

District’s schools. Superintendent Ackerman and her team of committed educators and managers are energetically tackling the education and management problems confronting the public schools,

and we can see evidence of change. My colleagues and I recognize

that much still needs to be done, and sustained reform will require

the cooperation and participation of this entire community. We are

committed to working with all parties to ensure long-term improvements in the interests of the children.

Mr. DAVIS. Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Ms. Newman follows:]

28

29

30

31

32

33

34

35

36

Mr. DAVIS. Mrs. Ackerman.

Mrs. ACKERMAN. Good morning, Mr. Chairman, Congresswoman

Norton, Congressman Horn and Congresswoman Biggert. I am Arlene Ackerman, superintendent of the District of Columbia Public

Schools. I thank you for providing me the opportunity to share the

status of DCPS.

At our previous hearing last spring, we shared with you what the

school system was doing to build an exemplary school system. I recall you asking me on a few occasions, but particularly at that particular hearing, if school would open on time, and I answered yes.

Indeed, school did open on time like it does across every other

school district in this country. I am confident that we will never

have to ask that question again, and it’s such a basic question.

What we want to focus on now are the larger issues that face our

urban system as we try to provide our youth with the skills and

knowledge necessary to turn dreams into reality.

Since that hearing, we at central office and the principals and

teachers and parents in each school have been busy with the reform agenda. Our focus is clear, and that is improving teaching and

learning. We have put in place clear standards for what students

should know and be able to do in all areas and all content areas.

We have invested more in professional development and plan to extend and expand our efforts to reach every teacher with sustained

learning opportunities.

We have continued to work with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers making important capital improvements. Full facility assessments have been completed for all schools, and we have begun

plans for full school rehabilitation for one school in each ward next

year while we work with the elected board on a long-range facility

plan. For 1999, procurement actions for five roof replacement

projects, the long-range master facility plan, and education specifications have been initiated. If we want to see our children learn,

we need to assure a safe environment where principals and teachers have the adequate resources that they need.

The District is continuing with a principal evaluation that sends

a clear signal to principals that academic growth is our No. 1 priority. We have also implemented, though, this year a new teacher

evaluation. Principals now have the ability to identify low-performing teachers, give them assistance, and should they not show

signs of improvement within 90 days, the teacher can be dismissed.

Our investment in instructional technology is bringing more computers to every school in addition to additional training to our

teachers and support staff. In order to provide more instructional

time for our students who we know need extended opportunities to

learn, we have created a Saturday morning program across the

District. We are proud to say that more than 10,000 students attend our Saturday academies where we focus on reading and writing and math. We are making important changes and are preparing for a summer school where we expect and anticipate upward

of 25,000 students to attend.

Across the District, student achievement showed gains between

the spring of 1997 and spring of 1998, and I’m confident that we

will continue to see that kind of growth. Special education, however, continues to be an area that the deeper we go, the more chalVerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:00 Oct 03, 2000 Jkt 010199 PO 00000 Frm 00040 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 E:\HEARINGS\61528 pfrm08 PsN: 61528
37

lenges we seem to face. It is clear that drastic changes were needed

and are still needed, and we are taking actions to try new solutions. We have had difficulty attracting staff to the District in this

area as there is a national shortage of special ed educators, and

many are skeptical to join a department that has had such a long

history of neglect. We have developed, however, a new incentive

package to try and become more competitive with surrounding jurisdictions.

We are also working to grow our own staff with local universities

and changing how we think about delivering services to students.

After reviewing current practices and looking at other districts, we

are now convinced that one of our problems has been that the local

school has not been involved in the assessment process. We will see

changes over the next month, and you will hear us announce

changes over the next 30 days that will drastically change the way

that we do business in special education. You will also see a realignment of and a redeployment of special ed staff, central office

staff, as well as central resources that will go to the schools. I can

only hope that the community will remain patient as we make

these changes in many areas.

One of the most important reform initiatives of this year, however, is the planning we have done for implementing the new

weighted student formula. We are assuring that resources follow

the students based on need and the needs of the student, and that

schools have the opportunity to make decisions about the best way

to use those resources. Across the District principals, teachers, and

parents and community members will now make the decisions

about how to allocate those resources, not central office. For the

first time in this community, every school and every member of the

public will know where the resources go and how the resources are

being spent at each school as well as the logic behind how the

schools decide to spend their resources.

In the past few months, we have worked hard to develop the

weighted student formula. We have had numerous community

meetings to share the weighted student formula with the community, and we have made changes in central office to better support

schools in the development of their school plans. Each school now

has completed a full needs assessment, developed a school plan and

a budget. Our principals, parents, and teachers have worked many,

many hours over the past 2 months to develop these plans. The

process has provided a powerful experience for our principals, parents, teachers, and community members to learn more about their

school and chart a course for its future. We have heard many positive comments about this experience. We believe that giving authority to schools for a budget and staffing offer schools the opportunity to realize their dreams.

One reason that we have been able to implement this reform is

because of the change in how we as a system are to be funded by

the city this coming year. We have created our school budget following the law that the City Council developed and passed a year

ago. We are making sure that more resources now go to the

schools. The law created a per pupil formula that funds the charter

schools and the D.C. Public Schools in the same manner. The formula in the law is clear in determining and providing a methodVerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:00 Oct 03, 2000 Jkt 010199 PO 00000 Frm 00041 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 E:\HEARINGS\61528 pfrm08 PsN: 61528
38

ology. We constructed our budget based on what the law generates,

and we are proud to say that of the proposed budget, 94 percent

will go directly to schools and less than 6 percent to central’s office.

This is down from 15 percent 2 years ago, a central office budget

that was at 15 percent.

We have come a long way, and we still have a long way to go.

Our reform agenda and budget request is based upon the law and

meeting the needs of our students. We have closed the budget deficit, and we want to ensure stable funding as intended by the law.

I urge you to support us as we shape the budget that will allow

us to carry forth our reform agenda. We have made progress, and

we are proud of that progress, but we do realize that we still have

a very long way to go. Thank you.

Mr. DAVIS. Thank you very much.

[The prepared statement of Mrs. Ackerman follows:]

39

40

41

42

Mr. DAVIS. Maudine Cooper.

Mrs. COOPER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Mrs. Norton, Mrs.

Biggert. I’m very pleased to provide testimony to you this morning

on behalf of the Emergency Transitional Education Board of Trustees, which I chair. Next month will be our superintendent’s first

anniversary, having held this incredible responsibility over the last

year, and we want to congratulate her in advance of that anniversary, but also recognize that while her modesty and those of this

panel view her progress as incremental, from what we know, sitting as the Board of Trustees, it is really incredible. The challenges

that she has faced, the management by discovery in some instances, has made it more than just a small incremental activity.

It really has been incredible.

I want to say to you that we as the Board of Trustees view our

responsibility as supportive of the mission of educational reform.

This mission can be succinctly grouped into four core areas as defined by the Financial Authority: improved academic performance

for all students; the promotion of educational equity; the institution

of sound management practices; and the development of a safe,

healthy and cost-effective environment in which our children can

learn.

Our role as trustees is that of a policy-oriented support group

and not one of micromanagement, and certainly not micromanaging

the superintendent and her staff. Our job is to support her by marshaling the forces that we bring to the community, that we bring

to this task by virtue of our roles in the community.

As you know, Mr. Chairman, and Council Member Norton particularly, we are not educational experts, and I think we were selected for that reason. The revelations found in Children in Crisis

serve as the backdrop by which we function, and we take that seriously.

So we are very pleased with the superintendent’s performance,

but, again, we know personally of the challenges that she faces as

she tries to improve the educational activity for 71,889 students in

our system.

My presentation will follow the six summary areas, Mr. Chairman, that you outlined in your questions to us. No. 1, the DCPS

future capital improvement plan. On January 28, the superintendent proposed and the trustees approved a comprehensive

capital improvement plan, which, I believe, was shared with your

office. At any rate, the goal of that plan was to make our schools

engaging, compelling, effective, and efficient environments for

learning, teaching, working, and for community activities. We are

very proud of that, and the preliminary total budget for years 1

through 10 is approximately $1 billion.

The plan encompasses everything for modernization, public-private partnerships and ADA improvements to name a few. I might

add that includes the toilets that you have heard so much about

lately.

Item No. 2 was the update on DCPS’s academic plan. As to the

academic plan, the trustees have supported the curriculum thrust

that our superintendent had put forth: ending social promotion; developing more challenging academic standards; creating new report

cards and new school profiles; increasing reading and math proVerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:00 Oct 03, 2000 Jkt 010199 PO 00000 Frm 00046 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 E:\HEARINGS\61528 pfrm08 PsN: 61528
43

grams; and, of course, as you have already heard, the Saturday

STARS program and the SAT 9 students, who will be working in

those Saturday programs for 3 hours, approximately 3 hours; as

well as now a program that is going on on Saturdays besides the

summer program, the development of the Summer STARS program

in which more, as you know, over 22,000 students, attended for 6

weeks. We have also adopted a new K through 6 reading and math

series. You heard about the weighted student formula.

Item 3 that you presented to us was an update on the DCPS

technology plan. You already heard something about that from various members of this panel. We are very pleased to see that the

city administrators and superintendent are proposing again to

make sure that we have adequate technology in our schools; however, there are some problems. Procurement falls under the city, as

you know. This means that DCPS is required to rely on city administrators and city procedures to purchase fundamental items for its

students. In a word, this is a ludicrous process.

We have got a superintendent who has to rely on others, in my

judgment, second-guessing her in terms of what she needs and

when she needs it. Given this what I call a bureaucratic and convoluted paradigm through which we attempt to purchase instructional materials for our children, DCPS is literally held hostage to

the city. Because of this we cannot purchase in a timely fashion

such fundamental items as computers and, indeed, textbooks.

For the record, because of this choke hold in our procurement

processes, there are now over 588 backlog requisitions that do affect the education of our children. These requisitions are simply

caught up in someone’s bureaucratic pipeline. Again, if there is a

problem, it should be brought to the attention of our superintendent and not allowed to languish. The procurement should indeed report to the superintendent, not to the city. If we have the

responsibility, then we need the authority.

Given the 1997–1998 school year, DCPS has developed an educational technology plan. It is my understanding that it has been

approved by the Federal Department of Education. It is entitled

Beyond 1977—Children First. We believe that this is very critical

and a true testament of the superintendent’s support by the Federal Department of Education.

As you also know, we are already on the Internet and have email.

Finally, I will quickly go through the other question that you

raised on teacher certification. We have been informed by staff that

all teachers employed by DCPS hold certification.

I will sum up. We are very pleased with that, and we wanted you

to know that on the record. We are doing all kinds of things to indeed increase those student bodies.

On No. 5, I will just indicate that we do discuss the budget, but

I will say that the fiscal year 2000 budget that is stated at 704 million is incorrectly stated. That is a total budget including our

grants and projects. The accurate number is $627.5 million.

In terms of the charter school, that has already been discussed,

and this is in my testimony.

I will conclude that by stating that we have done something else

as trustees. Working with the Federal City Council, the D.C.

44

Chamber, and the Board of Trade, we have instituted what we call

two very active business groups that work with us to help us bring

in line the school system and the needs of our business community.

After all, we are training these young people to go into the community as workers and not as those on the dole. With this alliance,

we are concentrating on school to careers, literacy, technology, and

the arts. It is an incredibly fantastic bunch of people, and we hope

that they will be here at some point to talk to you as well. I thank

you for your time.

Mr. DAVIS. Thank you very much.

[The prepared statement of Mrs. Cooper follows:]

45

46

47

48

49

50

51

Mr. DAVIS. Let me just ask for Mayor Williams and Councilman

Chavous, this idea about the procurement not reporting to the superintendent and holding the school system hostage. These are ongoing fights that we used to have out in my county as well and is

probably repeated across the country. But even at the Federal

level, we have Cabinet officers having to do procurements through

GSA. In some ways—Mr. Horn has left, but he has tried to take

a leadership role in trying to make sense out of this.

Do you have any reaction to that in terms of the school procurements not having to report but basically go through the city and

not having their own autonomy in those areas?

Mr. WILLIAMS. I could let Councilman Chavous and Connie Newman speak on this, but I know that I was at a meeting of the

Authority——

Mr. DAVIS. I didn’t see him grabbing the microphone.

Ms. NEWMAN. We are going to talk to her later.

Mrs. COOPER. I am a volunteer, sir.

Ms. NEWMAN. We all are.

Mayor WILLIAMS. But in conjunction with the Council, the Mayor’s office, the Authority, we have been bringing the managers up

to the Authority to look at what assistance they need from the Authority in pursuing our management reform agenda. So we had the

director of procurement up there, and in the process of talking

about general procurement issues, some issues were raised about

the schools. I think the general understanding there is that we

were on the road to giving the schools the authority and responsibility to get their job done while still maintaining some central system control. I thought that progress was being made.

Mr. DAVIS. Let me just add that I can remember just anecdotally,

which is a tough way to do this, where the schools one year where

they had the autonomy didn’t order the books on time, and we have

gone through that as well. It’s a balance as we try to transition

back. I think the Mayor and Council probably want to be careful.

Mr. CHAVOUS. Well, Congressman Davis, this has been an ongoing problem. The procurement responsibility was taken away from

the schools last year, frankly, because the procurement process inside the schools was broken. Books weren’t being ordered on time,

and, again, that is something that predated Mrs. Ackerman.

What we have found this year is there has been what I would

call a creative tension between the central procurement office and

the school system, so much so that we have an issue regarding certain books being ordered even this year. Ms. Newman and I, and

I know that she wants to speak to it because she is grabbing my

arm here—but because this is something—you hit the nail on the

head. Ms. Newman, Mrs. Ackerman and I have talked about this

excessively. We really want——

Mr. DAVIS. You need to include Mrs. Cooper in your discussion.

Mr. CHAVOUS. She has been. When you say balanced, Congressman, that is the key. Right now during this budget process, we

want to come up with a way to give the schools enough autonomy

so that central procurement doesn’t bottleneck the process. While

they are reshaping their own procurement capabilities, we want to

make sure that there is legitimate safeguards in the process. We

52

are working through that, and I know that Connie Newman wants

to speak about it.

Ms. NEWMAN. Just a second. I don’t want to make light of the

observation that Mrs. Cooper made. We have had many conversations with the superintendent. There is a new procurement system

going into place. There is always difficulty with a new system in

place.

My argument is that we need to deal in the short run with the

immediate problems of the textbooks and the facilities, the Corps’

contract, and then we need to see whether or not this new system

will work, because saying that it should move, the authorities

should move to the school system, does not address the issue about

how the school system will run it. They don’t have the people to

do it either. I think that it’s something that there is always tension

on this issue, and I think it’s worth a conversation, but maybe not

too much.

Mr. DAVIS. I think this is a tension that exists in school systems

versus city councils across the country, and getting it right—it is

never right in somebody’s eyes. I think Mrs. Cooper has brought

this to everybody’s attention, and I think we have aired out what

the difficulties are in trying to work together.

Let me ask, if I could, Mrs. Ackerman, I look at a school system

and try to measure results. I want to try to look at where we were

maybe a couple of years ago and where we are today. You mentioned the test scores, and if you could get those to us, I’d want to

put those in the record. I didn’t really see the test scores. Was it

in every school, was it up across the way, was it uneven? But test

scores are certainly one way of measuring progress. Yeah, open the

schools on time, that’s the way of measuring progress given where

we were. You look at the state of the facilities of the schools and

a lot of work has gone into that. That is a way of measuring

progress.

What about safety in the schools? Have we made progress there

over the last year?

Mrs. ACKERMAN. We have put in place—we have. Our incidents

are down, and we can give you those, get you those.

Mr. DAVIS. Are they down significantly or just marginally?

Mrs. ACKERMAN. I would say—I wouldn’t say significantly.

They’re down enough where we can say we’re making progress, and

we still need to put some more things in place, but they’re down

enough where I can count that as one of the successes, that we are

showing some progress. In addition——

Mr. DAVIS. Let me just stop right there. If we’re making progress

there, why are we replacing the contractor with the police department? I’ll ask Mr. Chavous, and I have a couple of other questions

for you but I just thought——

Mr. CHAVOUS. I think that we are making progress, but I think

we’re spending a lot of money. That contract is $9.5 million and we

get 315 security officers, and in looking at what other school districts are doing; namely, Baltimore and New York, they have shifted that responsibility over to the police. The key, though, is you

have to have the right approach by the police so they will work

with the superintendent and make sure that teachers and principals don’t feel like they’re under occupation and that there is

53

some seamless continuity between the public safety efforts inside

and outside the school, and so the reason why we did it is really

for more efficiency and hopefully for not as much cost.

Mr. DAVIS. Well, I just don’t want you to feel that, when it comes

to school safety, we do it on the cheap and I really——

Mr. CHAVOUS. No, we’re not going to do that, but the other thing

is, we felt that it was important to bring all of those kind of efforts

under one shop so that you had the school security, you have police

officers and you also have crossing guards. I mean, you have the

whole apparatus there working to support what the school system

is doing and working with the local school.

Mr. DAVIS. All right. Well, we’re going to be watching because

we’ve made measurable progress and now you’re shifting, and we

want to continue to see that. I mean it’s a Council decision at this

point and it’s just from our perspective something that we’re going

to want to watch very, very carefully to make sure that we continue progress, if you understand.

Mr. CHAVOUS. I understand. Now it’s on my head.

Mr. DAVIS. That is a nice way of saying it. I’ll get back for another round of questions, but I’m going to yield to Ms. Norton and

then to Mrs. Biggert.

Ms. NORTON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to say that I

have been informed that Wilma Harvey, the president of the school

board, is ill. Two members of the school board are here, Dwight

Singleton, the vice-president and new board member who represents ward 4, and Angie Corley, who has long been on the board

who represents ward 5. If we have any questions for the board, I’m

sure they would be able to answer them. We do have Ms. Harvey’s

testimony however.

I have a question for—first for Mayor Williams and

Councilmember Chavous. First, let me commend Councilmember

Chavous for the oversight you are doing of the public schools, and

I know that in the budget discussions you are bearing in mind the

importance that everybody in this city attaches to the children of

this city. I have no doubt about that.

The Mayor testified—and let me also commend you both for what

is reported to be good discussions going on between people who

want a tax cut and the Mayor who wants to make sure that it is

prudently done and that sufficient investment occurs in the city,

and I informed my colleagues that there’s every reason to believe

that those are the kinds of discussions that legislators and the executive always have, and I’m very pleased at what is the reported

progress. So I don’t have any problems there.

I have a question that flows from the Mayor’s testimony. He testified that he was recommending eight schools a year be renovated.

A fourth—that’s something that parents will be glad to hear, because the ad—let me just add—the ad hoc way of going at schools,

based on which one was falling down first, has been a real frustration in the city.

He testified that he desired a 4 or 5 percent raise for teachers.

All I can say is good luck. Because with the shortage of teachers

in the United States, with big city schools being the last place

many recent graduates want to come, my own sense of what Federal Government can do, because I don’t think cities are going to

54

be able to do this for themselves, is to help pay such a premium

for teachers so they can really recruit, I don’t see how you’re going

to be able to be competitive with easier places to teach like Prince

George’s and Montgomery, and Fairfax, but I see where you’re

going. Your testimony said that your budget included $33 million for

children and youth for after school programs, noting that that has

not only academic effects but that’s when most juvenile crime takes

place. Now, the reports are that—the concern has been that we

have a surplus, and the proposal was to use the surplus to give

back money to taxpayers and that some balance was going to be

sought between doing that and taking care of what has been some

disinvestments, to put it mildly, in the district.

Now, when I say disinvestment, that is not to say the District

has not invested. The District is heavily invested in its bureaucracy, hasn’t invested in employees, but it sure has had money, and

it sure has invested it all around, and finally, folks just got tired

of that. But there’s been lots of investment in the district, but now

that there’s a surplus, your budget talks about investments, Council talks about tax cuts. I recognize that part of the problem was

that this was going to come out of the surplus, but then we’re told,

well, don’t worry, this will now come out of the operating budget,

or at least that’s what the newspapers report.

What I would like to ask you, and with Mr. Chavous here, is

whether or not with the kinds of investments you’re talking about

which would not be investments in the bureaucracy, investments in

eight schools per year and, and the renovation of eight schools per

year, a 4 or 5 percent raise for teachers, $33 million for children

for their after school program, whether investments like this are

still on the table, as you discussed, taking money from the operating budget and dealing with the tax cut and somehow bring it

all in balance? I’d like some indication of whether or not you—what

you testified here today, which was in your original budget, is

going to be possible, given the negotiations that are going on.

Mr. WILLIAMS. Yes, Ms. Norton, I’m actually confident that we’re

making progress and that we can maintain this emphasis on school

construction modernization. We can maintain this emphasis on our

children. There are differences—we’re working out differences on

how we program that and the structure of that, but there’s, I think,

a joint commitment to our children and our out of school programs

for children, and then, finally, that we work on sizing this tax plan

and staging this tax plan so that we can maintain these investments while doing the tax reduction.

So, in other words, we can do it in a fiscally responsible way, we

can do these improvements we talked about and maintain these

programs out of operating, including the teaching raise.

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Chavous.

Mr. CHAVOUS. Well, Congresswoman Norton, first of all, thank

you for those kind remarks.

This is one area where the Mayor and I in terms of our investment in children and reinvesting in the future of the people of this

city, this is one area where the Mayor and I have really been on

the same page, and I can tell you that while I’m one of the strong

advocates for this tax cut proposal in the Council that I would not

55

have signed on if I thought it would cut into some of these new investment opportunities, and frankly, the discussions are going

quite well between the Mayor and the Council.

And we feel in this case we can have it all, that we can, based

on—we can’t project too far out in the future in terms of the surpluses because it is too much speculation, but we do know that if

things proceed and if the rebirth and resurgence in this city continues, then we should be able to reduce the tax rates consistent

with the wishes of the Council, and while at the same time continue with the additional $300 million to the base in programs.

The Mayor and I met yesterday morning, early I might add, on this $33 million children initiative. We’re going to work that out.

We’ve talked about the teacher raises, and we’re going to find a

way to work that out. The Council markup in the committee was—

stayed pretty true to what the Mayor wanted. There were no cuts

into that, and the feeling is that we’ll be able to make it all work.

I might add one other point is, this is part of the creative tension

that occurs in a democracy. I was really disheartened to hear reports that because the Council feels one way about tax cuts and the

Mayor feels another way, it may threaten home rule. Well, that’s

the essence of home rule and now that we’re having these discussions we’re going to work it out, and I think it shows that this city

is on the rebound, we’re moving in the right direction with your

leadership, and I appreciate your remarks in saying, look, you all

work it out, but work it out and don’t cut into the investment of

the people, and that’s what we’re going to do.

The Mayor and I are on the same page, and I tell you one thing,

the Mayor and I have really been fighting on this new school construction. I mean, I quarrel with some of my colleagues on how far

we should go, and where we want to go as far as the Mayor and

I have suggested, that’s 8 to 10 schools over the next 10 years. So

I’m more heartened by this budget process than any I’ve been in

my 6 years on the Council.

Ms. NORTON. Thank you very much, Mr. Chavous.

Mr. Williams, I do think—I mean, there was some reports about

cuts and so forth. I do believe that there are, probably are even as

we talk about investment, and I know this is the direction in which

you’re moving, even as we talk about investment, there is no doubt

in my mind that there need to be further, ‘‘cuts,’’ but they are cuts

in the bureaucracy.

I refer to them as streamlining because I think as you consolidate, and if you build yourself a modern government, the government is—there are going to be cuts. There are going to be cuts, and

of course, then there’s going to be investments, and this may all

come out in the wash.

The only concerns, and ones you seem to be handling very well,

are the pace so that investment occurs along with any tax cuts that

also occur.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. DAVIS. Thank you. And let me just add—I know the Mayor

has to leave, but Councilman Chavous, I appreciate you putting

into perspective, these aren’t arguments over tax cuts, but it is part

of the process, and I don’t know how it could threaten home rule

because you’re handling it better than we do up here on the Hill,

56

but I appreciate your clarifying that because we get this back and

forth, somebody’s not for it and somebody’s all for it or there’s some

big conflict.

And as we noted earlier on, when I met with Councilmen Evans

and Catania on the whole tax cut package, this is something that

is going to be worked out and it needs to be discussed, it needs to

be staffed out, and as we get those numbers in, it moves around

a little bit, but grateful to both of you for your leadership.

Mr. Mayor, you’re excused. Thank you.

And let me just welcome, if I can, 5th grade class, G&T class

from Rockledge Elementary School out in Prince William County in

my district, Ms. Norton, who are here today touring the Capitol,

and we appreciate you all being with us. This is part of the G&T.

They do the school paper, and they’re kind of the press corps. So

if I’m going to get good press out there, I’ve got to perform today.

I now yield to the gentleman from California, Mr. Horn.

Mr. HORN. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman and ladies and

gentlemen. It’s good to see all of you because it looks like at last

we have a team and people cooperating and working with each

other, and that’s certainly good news for the people of the city and

the Nation in which this is the world’s most beautiful city, and we

want to keep it that way, and we want to help you improve it.

Let me ask a few general questions on security in terms of the

schools. I come from Long Beach, CA, where I think under Carl

Cohen’s leadership as superintendent, and I’m sure, Superintendent Ackerman, you probably know Carl. He’s done an outstanding job, as have a number of superintendents before him, and

one of the things we had to grapple with was school security, and

I’d just be curious the degree, Superintendent, of gang-related incidents on the playground or in the classrooms, any way you want

to measure it. I mean, could you give us an idea of how much of

that activity occurs to the detriment of——

Mrs. ACKERMAN. I don’t have that off the top of my head. I have

a lot of information.

Mr. HORN. So you can provide it for the record?

Mrs. ACKERMAN. But I will provide that for the record because

we do keep those kinds of incidents, also. But we have done a number of things to address the issue of school security and safety in

the schools, including of course putting in additional technology so

that we can ensure that we have safe environments. We have cameras in almost all of our high schools now. The plan is to put them

into——

Mr. HORN. Do you have the type of thing we go through at airports which would detect——

Mrs. ACKERMAN. We do. We have the new metal detectors, similar to what we have in our airports.

Mr. HORN. So that’s controlled, where people enter through one

gate?

Mrs. ACKERMAN. Right.

Mr. HORN. Let me ask you about the clothes situation. Often

gang colors show up and that creates problems and all the rest.

Has any thought been given to a school uniform?

Mrs. ACKERMAN. Many of our elementary schools and about half

of our middle schools do have a uniform policy, and we are encourVerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:00 Oct 03, 2000 Jkt 010199 PO 00000 Frm 00060 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 E:\HEARINGS\61528 pfrm08 PsN: 61528
57

aging that. I’d like to see every school, if you really want to know

the truth, implement a school uniform policy. As a former principal, I do know that that does help the climate. It helps keep the

attention from what people are wearing, to focus on what’s happening in the classroom and the teaching and learning.

Mr. HORN. You’re absolutely correct because, you know, if we

could keep people from—young people from the peer pressures of

having to get the Nike shoes that the Jones and the Smiths have—

30 years ago, if somebody would be for a school uniform, I’d say

they’re crazy, but given the times we live in, I think it’s just prudence. President Clinton came out to the Long Beach Unified

School District, met with people, was suitably impressed with it,

and he said in his remarks that Mrs. Clinton had been telling him

to do that for 20 years, even when he was Governor, and it has

worked, and we don’t have that kind of incident occurring over

gang colors, if you will, and so I would hope that you would be pursuing it.

Let me ask you, what’s the teacher/student ratio in kindergarten

and first grade?

Mrs. ACKERMAN. 20 to 1 with an aide.

Mr. HORN. And I bet that’s made a lot of difference.

Mrs. ACKERMAN. It has. In addition to the focus on standards, 20

to 1 or lower class size without teachers who teach differently without a curriculum standards who get us increased student achievement, but I think it’s a combination of having the lower class sizes,

as well as a really clearly articulated curriculum and standards in

place that’s helping.

Mr. HORN. Now, it’s your plan to move up the scale and what—

where does it go higher than 20?

Mrs. ACKERMAN. It’s the highest at the—believe or it not, it’s the

highest at the intermediate grades. We’re looking at—I see that in

our local school plans with the new weighted student formula,

many of the schools are lowering their class sizes, either—not necessarily with the teacher but with another adult so that the class

sizes will, will see them lower probably next year by choice. The

schools, remembering the weighted student formula, firmly get a

chance now to decide if they want it lower than the District average.

Right now it’s about 25, I believe, to 1, to 26 at the intermediate

level. I really believe that at that level they still need smaller class

sizes. It’s really why I think our summer school program worked

very well. The class sizes were down to 15 to 1.

Mr. HORN. Let me ask you, is there any parent involvement in

the selection of principals?

Mrs. ACKERMAN. Yes. We start with—in fact, in the last year we

have put in place a process for how we hire principals and teachers

and it’s consistent——

Mr. HORN. I’m going to have to move because I see that yellow

light facing me, but I’ve got one last question for you, and that is,

to what degree is the educational system coordinating its efforts

with the recreation system and the healthcare system in terms of

the school grounds? What’s bothered me for 40 years at least is the

schools are sort of closed down at 3 o’clock, and we ought to have

them as community centers where both parents and the pupils

58

could get their appropriate shots or whatever it is that the health

department’s going to provide to keep people healthy, and I just—

it seems to me with all those facilities it’s a great place to also have

recreation programs and keep people, young people, occupied.

What’s your reaction?

Mrs. ACKERMAN. I really do agree with you there in that it’s really important that we integrate those services and provide wraparound services for our young people, and that means that we have

to then work with our other agencies. I know that Councilmember

Chavous is working with us with that, and I want to say, though,

last summer, that’s one of the things that we did in planning our

summer school program is we brought everybody to the table, and

so we had the academic programs in the morning and the extended

opportunities for them to work with our recreational programs in

the afternoon, but our recreational staff were at the table. They all

were there with us as we planned the program, and we’re doing

that again this year. I’d like to see that extended throughout the

school year. It’s important that we align our resources that way.

Mr. HORN. Well, thank you very much, and I wish you well.

Mrs. ACKERMAN. I do want you to know that I did take a visit

to Long Beach, and I was very, very impressed with the programs

that were there.

Mr. HORN. Thank you.

Mr. DAVIS. Thank you, Mr. Horn, and I now recognize the

gentlelady from Illinois, Mrs. Biggert.

Mrs. BIGGERT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I was thinking back to

the Chicago school reform when you mentioned that the schools

opened on time because of the start of the Chicago school reform.

That was the first time in years that the schools opened on time,

that there wasn’t a strike and they didn’t come to the legislature

to ask for more money. So I think that is the first clue that a school

system is on the right track. Of course, we did put in some collective bargaining barriers for a certain period of time to ensure that

everyone would be there.

But one thing that hasn’t been mentioned too much, and I think

is so important to a school community, and that is the involvement

of the community in the businesses and the parents and the teachers and the school boards. Has there been any change in trying to

bring in the parent involvement to a greater degree?

Mrs. ACKERMAN. We have tried to do multiple strategies with

parent involvement, and for me, I really do believe, again, as a

former principal and teacher, that authentic parent involvement

happens at the local school site. That’s where you want parents involved. That’s where—their investment lies in those schools. The

weighted student formula was one of the ways this year that heard

parents who had been involved in that process, if they weren’t on

the local school team, and we had parents actually developing the

academic plans. They were involved in the community hearings

and the community meetings that were held, both at the beginning

of the process at the end, and I think that’s one way.

We have also put in place a parent affairs office. We’ve trained

50 parents to go out and to work with other parents. We’re training

another 50 so we’ll have 100, a cadre of 100 parents, that will be

training over the summer and working with parents.

59

I think that we know the importance of having parents involved.

I think we tried to do a lot about getting information out to parents

about what we’re doing, the standards, and for instance, we’ll be

on the webpage and we’ll get distributed to parents next year.

We still again have a long way to do this goal because often parents feel intimidated about schools, so we’re trying to change it

from parent involvement to parent outreach so that the schools are

outreached.

Mrs. BIGGERT. We went back to such basics as that they had to

come to the school to pick up a report card.

Mrs. ACKERMAN. We did that, too. We also this last year made

it very basic that parents and students had to come pick up their

school schedules. We also put in place this year new hours for parent/teacher conferences, and we saw a significant increase in the

number of parents who participated just by changing the hours

from 12 to 7.

Mrs. BIGGERT. What about the dropout rate, has that changed?

Mrs. ACKERMAN. One of the things that I discovered upon my arrival is the lack of the data systems that were in place. I think we

have faulty data around the dropout rates. So this is really the first

year that we have a clear methodology for tracking attendance, at

the high school levels in particular, so we can really look at dropout rates. We’re also looking at now the data from the class that

is graduating this year and tracking it back to the ninth grade, but

the data systems weren’t in place. So when I asked simple questions like what’s the dropout rate, I got different answers. I think

you will see that we will have that information after this year.

Mrs. BIGGERT. Is that involvement too where you’ve got enforcement of your enrollment eligibility and residency verification?

Mrs. ACKERMAN. I think all of that. Now that we have a methodology in place to really accurately count and track our students,

we’ll know which students started and which students are not

there, which students were not supposed to be there, and we’ll

have accurate numbers, but a lot of what we’re doing and have

been doing over the last year and a half really has been putting

in place those data management systems that weren’t there.

Mrs. BIGGERT. Are students able to go from school to school

then?

Mrs. ACKERMAN. They have open enrollment.

Mrs. BIGGERT. And is a public charter school, is that what that

is, or are they relieved from all of the legislation or the rules and

regulations of a regular school?

Mrs. ACKERMAN. They have some different——

Mrs. BIGGERT. I just wondered if it was more of a school that

might focus on math, like a magnet school, that students would go

there because they were—that was their interest.

Mrs. ACKERMAN. They generally have a theme. The public charter schools have a theme.

Mrs. BIGGERT. Thank you very much.

Mrs. ACKERMAN. Thank you. I also want you to know we went

to Chicago and some of the things that we put in place, I don’t see

any reason we need to reinvent the wheel when there are good

things going on in public schools across the country.

60

Mr. DAVIS. Thank you. I’ll just ask a few questions. I’m going to

ask a series of questions on special education, because I think you

candidly admitted that there’s some shortcomings there that we

need some improvement in that area. What’s being done—what are

you trying to do to produce tangible results there?

Mrs. ACKERMAN. In terms of what are some of the new things

we’re trying to do, what we really worked on in the last few

months, we had on loan from Montgomery County, we did—a special assistant who has really worked very hard to put in place a

whole compliance structure for listening—for putting in place and

making sure that our hearings get heard in a timely way.

The things that we’re doing now is really looking at how to put

in place the assessment process at the school site, as well as the

IEP development. It hasn’t—for some reason it certainly is not a

policy, I found out. It’s been a practice that the—we call them

Form 6s, but it really is the method that triggers the process, gets

sent from the school to the central office, and there’s a central office team, and there are a variety of teams—assessment teams.

We’ve now put that back into the school site because that’s where

it happens in school districts across the country. I’ve never been in

a place where the assessments didn’t happen at the school.

Mr. DAVIS. Well, getting ahold of special education will have

ramifications throughout the system, and I just ask that, what’s

the current cost of special education in dollars as a percent?

Mrs. ACKERMAN. It’s about $170 million.

Mr. DAVIS. What percent would that be then?

Mrs. ACKERMAN. It’s more than a quarter of our budget, about

30 percent.

Mr. DAVIS. How much of that would you say is obligated to outof-school placements?

Mrs. ACKERMAN. We anticipate about $40 million.

Mr. DAVIS. And how about attorney’s fees?

Mrs. ACKERMAN. Last year was around $7 to $8 million, more than $7, less than $8.

Mr. DAVIS. Now, last year as you know, at the request of the

school system, legislative language was adopted which extended

the timeframe for evaluation and placement of students requiring

special education services from 50 to 120 days. Has this change

substantially reduced the backlog?

Mrs. ACKERMAN. We had a backlog of about 184, and today we

anticipate that that backlog will be diminished because it’s now in

the schools. We’ve put quotas on this, and I don’t anticipate that

this will be a problem in the future because we’ve changed the way

we are monitoring the assessments. In addition, we have now put

quotas to end the backlog of assessment by the midsummer. So we

will see that disappear, too.

Mr. DAVIS. Now, do you think the capacity exists to deal with

special needs students within the school system itself or do you

think you’re going to be substantially sending these kids out?

Mrs. ACKERMAN. I think that we—what you will see next year is

a real effort to develop programs and to have programs put in place

at the different school sites, and we are aggressively moving forward with that for next year. So I think that you will see again,

over time, that number diminish as we put in place a way to monVerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:00 Oct 03, 2000 Jkt 010199 PO 00000 Frm 00064 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 E:\HEARINGS\61528 pfrm08 PsN: 61528
61

itor, even doing the annual evaluations to see if we have programs

in the school district, you will see that we will have alternatives

for parents. Right now, we don’t have the programs in place. We’ve

got to put the programs in place, and there are several that will

be in place by September. I was just given a correction, the attorney fees last year were $12

million.

Mr. DAVIS. OK. With regard to the capping of attorney’s fees related to special education cases, what’s been the effect of that legislation? What’s been the impact in addressing the backlog?

Mrs. ACKERMAN. I know it’s lower than it was last year but I can

get the specifics for you and send them to you.

Mr. DAVIS. Well, let me say—tell you why it’s important is

they’ve been up here.

Mrs. ACKERMAN. I know.

Mr. DAVIS. And there’s a lot of pressure put on Members—it’s a

very, very influential group with some Members of Congress, and

they’ve made a case to a lot of our Members who want me to specifically ask you, if you’re not saving appreciable money on this by

putting the cap on, then why do it and not let the——

Mrs. ACKERMAN. OK. We will be able to give you those numbers.

[The information referred to follows:]

62

63

64

Mr. DAVIS. OK. Has the school system contracted with outside

firms that represent the DCPS in the special needs administrative

process?

Mrs. ACKERMAN. I’m sorry?

Mr. DAVIS. Has the school system contracted with outside firms

that represent the public schools in this special needs administrative process? In other words, are you handling these administratively within the system or are you contracting some of that out?

Mrs. ACKERMAN. We do some of both. We have contracted some

services out.

Mr. DAVIS. OK. I mean, there’s nothing wrong with that. I think,

when you come into a system that’s completely broken down, you

do what you have to do.

Mrs. ACKERMAN. Yes.

Mr. DAVIS. And this was a mess, and just getting it stabilized,

it doesn’t happen overnight, and we tried it at the congressional

level to help you with some things.

Mrs. ACKERMAN. And it has helped, it really has, and I want to,

at the end of this year, show you how it has helped and where you

will see the differences.

Mr. DAVIS. Well, it’s important we see that, and I’ll tell you, in

the appropriation process, I suspect there will be a run on the attorney’s fees and the sooner you can get information up here to

make your case, I think the better off you’re going to be.

Mrs. ACKERMAN. I was just passed a note. We’re now at about $2 million, $21⁄2 million. This time last year was at 7, so——

Mr. DAVIS. In attorney’s fees?

Mrs. ACKERMAN. Uh-huh.

Mr. DAVIS. You’re paying out. OK.

Thank you. Let me yield now to my ranking member, Ms. Norton.

Ms. NORTON. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I have a

question for Ms. Newman, but before, just to followup on the chairman’s questions on special education, actually, as a way to get into

whether or not you have been able to deal with the management

problems of the school system under the present managers.

Now, the report is that clearly you brought in somebody from

Montgomery County—you had in place a way you wanted this matter dealt with. But in point of fact, you had to put three administrators, or three managers I suppose, on administrative leave and

you did so. I commend you, where instead of hemming and hawing

when people haven’t met, as was reported in the newspapers. We

can understand how troubled this area was but no one said, I have

to take real action. I mean the basics were reported at least in the

paper. They go to data correction, how money is being spent, and

you brought in a 90-day action plan.

I really wonder if you can really manage the school system from

the top that way, and my question is whether this indicates that

you have weak managers underneath you throughout the school

system, whether you wait until somebody does what apparently the

managers did here, which is fail utterly. You just had to give them

an F. Is there not a more proactive way to, in fact, get a competent

band of managers who from the get-go who will set out to meet

your goals and here, of course, it was very serious. It was the most

65

broken part of the school system and the most disadvantaged children in the school system, but are we in for a kind of management

failure, department by department, despite your own very focused

approach or do you have a plan to recruit managers who are able

and competent enough to, in fact, carry out your own goals and

plans?

Mrs. ACKERMAN. That is a good question. It’s a difficult question

for me to try and answer. It is—I said it’s been troubling. It has

been. In addition to looking at areas where people—the competency

levels, I find that I’m trying to break through a culture of behaviors, lack of accountability, secrets that people know that I had to

find out, and so it’s important that I believe that I take action. We

do have a 90-day plan that’s in place. Over the next—within the

next 30 days you will hear a reorganization, not even a reorganization, probably a dismantling of the program as we know it, with

some movement of managers who are currently in place as we try

to put in place a structure that really does support the schools, as

opposed to a central office, bureaucratic kind of central office structure.

Special ed is, you know, in many areas I have found this culture

of things that are there that I have not seen in any other place,

behaviors that have been there, sort of practices that have been ignored or people turn their heads, and one by one I’ve had to tackle

them, and the way to tackle them is to say, this is not acceptable

and then to start over again.

I believe that in the next 90-day plan you will see the starting

over again with special ed. Now, that will put us in some other—

there will be some other rippling effects from that, but I think we

can handle that as we’ve done with personnel——

Ms. NORTON. What do you mean by rippling effect?

Mrs. ACKERMAN. Well, when you’re making those kind of drastic

changes you have to have an infrastructure there to support it. So,

as you pull one way, another one has to be in place, and it may

not be as strong for a while because you’re putting new people

there. So I think that unfortunately it will take sort of day-to-day

oversight for me until it’s there and I can move out and we have

at least somebody there in the directorship that can handle this.

Ms. NORTON. Are you evaluating your managers the way the

Mayor, for example, has said he’s going to put performance goals

on his managers and evaluate them so that people know up front

that they have to produce?

Mrs. ACKERMAN. Which is why——

Ms. NORTON. Management in place in the school system among

managers?

Mrs. ACKERMAN. It is and I focused initially on principals and

other central office staff. You will see now the focus squarely on

special ed, and you will see changes in the management structure

within the next 30 or so days. By the end of May you will see major

changes.

Ms. NORTON. Let me commend Ms. Newman and the Control

Board and Ms. Cooper and the Board of Trustees for their work in

trying to move toward a transition back to the elected school board,

and of course, the Control Board has a transition plan and is trying

to structure that in a very responsible way because, of course, if

66

the public sees any reversion to type, that that would mean that

all of the good work that’s been done would be lost.

There was some initial concern that the short and long term,

that there were short- and long-term goals but that the first goal

of developing a mission statement had not been met on time. Can

you tell us anything about whether that goal has been met at this

time and whether other goals are being met on time and how the

process of meeting the goals necessary for transition are proceeding?

Ms. NEWMAN. Well, I’d like to start by saying I am now optimistic that we’re going to be able to work through the transition

with the elected school board and the emergency trustees.

What did happen was that there were two full day retreats with

the elected school board where they started working through the

transition plan. They had to become comfortable with it. They also

asked for two facilitators so they could respond to talks about cultural change. That’s what we’re also having to do with regard to

the elected school board, and they felt that it was necessary to

spend some time with facilitators, getting to learn how to work

with one another.

So that was more important frankly than at the outset meeting

the date for having the vision and mission statement. The vision

and mission statement was discussed at the 24th retreat, but that

isn’t going to have any meaning until they sit down with the superintendent. What we have said to them is that there’s certain dates

that are a must to be met. October 1, 1999 is the beginning date

of the work on the fiscal 2001 budget, and they are to take the lead

in that. They cannot move on that date.

So they have now backed up from that date a schedule that we

will approve this week. They did not change too many of the steps

in between the development of the mission and vision statement,

a strategic plan with long- and short-term goals. They need to work

on their by-laws, but importantly, and this is going to be tough,

they and the superintendent are going to have to work out a clear

understanding of roles and responsibilities, and when I say that, I

mean it’s going to be tough because one person believes that they’re

micromanaging and another person believes they’re not micromanaging but they’re just carrying out their responsibilities and addressing policy issues.

Now, some of these areas are pretty clear, and I think we’re

going to have to put some of those on the table and just say there’s

no debate here, this is policy, and you are in operations, but I

guess I would just conclude by saying there will be an approved

plan that alters the dates. The dates won’t be changed that much,

but I think we all agree, those of us who have spent a great deal

of time with the school board and the facilitators, that it was more

important at the outset to develop a way in which the school board

worked with itself, with its leadership and with the superintendent, and if that didn’t happen, all of the other goals on the

transition plan would not be met in a meaningful way.

Ms. NORTON. Thank you.

Mr. HORN. Let me pursue that question just a little bit in terms

of the management. Do you have exceptions for management from

67

being in collective bargaining or is there a separate union for managers? How does it work?

Mrs. ACKERMAN. We do have a teachers’ union, and we have an

officers’ bargaining unit for managers, yes.

Mr. HORN. Now, that would include the principals of the various

schools?

Mrs. ACKERMAN. That’s right and some of our central office staff

are in this bargaining unit.

Mr. HORN. What are the positions that are not in the bargaining

unit, assistant superintendents?

Mrs. ACKERMAN. Assistant superintendents are not there.

The——

Mr. HORN. Consultants?

Mrs. ACKERMAN. Right, but most of the central office managerial

positions are in this bargaining unit.

Mr. HORN. I think Ms. Norton made a very pertinent point here,

if you’re going to get a real reaction of your managers, you need

contracts of 6 months or a year. We did that in the California State

University system, took me about 5 years of lobbying the trustees

to get it, and we had a lot of help obviously of presidents,

chancellors, so forth, but it turned things around. We got rid of the

civil service positions for management. We had four overlapping

categories. It started at $10,000 and went to $100,000 in terms of

deans, vice-presidents, so forth. This is 10 years ago, and you just

saw the change, and this was incentives, and as I look around the

world, there are two countries that have done the same thing, and

that’s Australia and New Zealand, where people are held to those

contracts and the recompense of the benefits and stipend for salary

and so forth is adjusted based on performance. If they don’t have

the performance, they’re out or are you stuck with tenure situations on assistant superintendents and everybody?

Mrs. ACKERMAN. No, we’re not.

Mr. HORN. They’re pleasure appointed?

Mrs. ACKERMAN. That’s right.

Mr. HORN. Cause the only way you as superintendent are going

to be able to turn anything around is if you have that authority.

So do you feel you have enough or should it be broadened into the

management groups?

Mrs. ACKERMAN. I think that given—I think we have enough to

make the changes that we need, and there are strategies, as you

will see. I’m trying not to announce what we’re going to do here

because I’m trying not to compromise the work that’s already

under way, but I think we will be able to do what we need to do

in special ed in terms of the restructuring of it and get some

changes, and then we have put in place performance measures at

every level, and we will put them there.

Just the mere putting in, in the last few weeks, the quota system

of how many assessments have to be done and holding people accountable to it, we’ve shown—we already are beginning to see the

results of that. We’ve reduced the 184 now down to 20.

Mr. HORN. Let me pursue another question here or do you have

a point, Ms. Cooper?

Mrs. COOPER. I’m sorry, Congressman. Ms. Norton, I was trying

to wait for Congressman Davis to return. I did get a commitment

68

that I could leave at 11:30, and I’m already late. If there are some

other questions, please feel free to ask. I’d like to be excused.

Mr. HORN. Let me ask one more and then Ms. Norton will be

again asking questions. This question comes up because of what we

went through in the last Congress where computer firms all over

the Nation wanted us to change the immigration laws to bring foreign programmers to the United States. Now, they do a fine job,

a lot of these foreign programmers. However, there’s a golden opportunity for minority students in particular, and I hit the ceiling

when I saw this, and I talked to our community college presidents,

a number of them, and some of the Silicon Valley types.

Now, Fairfax County is sort of Silicon Valley East, and it seems

to me that the schools ought to be working very closely with the

people that are putting out both the hardware and the software.

Those jobs are $60,000 a year jobs on the average to be programmers, and those would be great opportunities for students from the

District of Columbia schools, but if it’s going to work, it means

there has to be a track in both elementary school, junior high, high

school, community college and the 4-year institutions, and I would

hope that frankly the school system would do that and sit down

with the people in Fairfax County, and the chairman here obviously knows them all, that he could lead you in the right direction

but——

Mr. DAVIS. Will the gentleman yield? I mean, we’ve offered—

it’s—you know, we’ve certainly offered to do that many times with

the city and for various reasons. I mean, there are a lot of our people trying to get involved there, but there’s still a little disconnect,

and hopefully we can improve on that.

Mr. HORN. It’s something. If you tell them where the goals are

at the end of the line I think a lot of students would be encouraged

and want to pursue those goals.

Mrs. ACKERMAN. I would like to send you.

Mr. DAVIS. If the gentleman will yield for a second, I’ll let you

respond. We have 12,000 minimum jobs right now that we can’t fill

that average in the $45, $50,000 range, and because the public sector has so missed this, we have private schools, computer learning

centers, Strayer College, groups like that that are coming up and

filling the need that government has missed the marketplace all together. It is sad and we’ve tried to connect with the city.

So I think they’re trying in their own way to do this, but they

look at economics differently, and so on, than we do in the suburbs,

and I think through a dialog this can—over time they will wake up

and see some of the opportunities, but I appreciate the gentleman’s

comments.

Mr. HORN. Well, all I can say is, if they’re serious about it in this

country, then educators ought to be doing this, and if they aren’t

they’re failing as educators. That’s how I feel about it.

Mrs. ACKERMAN. And I do agree with you. This issue of technology in particular is a major issue, and I guess one of the things

I would like to share with you and send to you is some of the

things we have done just in the last year around technology, which

includes a collaborative grant that we did recently submit with

Fairfax County School District, and I was really pleased when the

superintendent called me and asked would we be interested in colVerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:00 Oct 03, 2000 Jkt 010199 PO 00000 Frm 00072 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 E:\HEARINGS\61528 pfrm08 PsN: 61528
69

laborating with them, and we did. So we will send you information

on that because we’re looking forward to getting this grant.

Mr. HORN. Thank you.

Mr. DAVIS. Thank you.

Ms. NORTON. Would you yield on the question you just raised?

Mr. DAVIS. Sure.

Ms. NORTON. Apart from the jobs that are available, and this is

something that’s discussed over and over again, we wired the

schools, and I understand every school is now wired.

Mrs. ACKERMAN. Every school is wired.

Ms. NORTON. I’ve not heard whether or not our schools, the

teachers in our schools are prepared to, in fact, handle these computers and this technology. It does seem to me that one way in

which Fairfax County or anyone whom the chairman might designate could be helpful would be in quickly getting teachers so that

they are not sitting in schools with computers they don’t know how

to use and, therefore, can’t do anything for the children with. I’d

like to ask you first whether or not teachers have had any training

now that the schools are wired, and second, whether or not there’s

anything you think that the region could do if the teachers do need

any special training?

Mrs. ACKERMAN. Well, this whole issue of technology, I do believe

that if our children are going to be prepared for the 21st century,

they have to be technologically competent, and the way that really

happens in a sustained way is with teachers who understand it.

We’ve had more than 5,000 of our teachers and support staff who

have gone through some kind of training this last year. We put in

place for the first time instructional technology department. It

wasn’t even existent when I came and it’s in place now. We have

now over six different partnerships with area firms and companies,

again to shore up our focus on this initiative.

And then the last thing I’d like to say is we just recently opened

a new training facility down on 8th Street, in our 8th Street building where we have 80 computer—it’s called the Cable in the Classroom training facilities. So we plan and have major plans to have

professional development over the next year that will increase the

contact that we have with teachers to make sure that they’re ready

to fully integrate technology into the classrooms.

So we did see this coming. Once the schools were wired, now you

got to work on the staff. Sometimes—we even have some plans of

helping our students help, some be facilitators for teachers. Some

of the students have had the experiences and teachers haven’t,

so——

Mr. DAVIS. Maudine, if you want to add anything, you can. Otherwise you’re certainly excused.

Mrs. COOPER. I just want to mention once again that we do have

the alliance that includes many members from the surrounding

communities. One of those representatives is Marie Johns, who is

chairing that regional technology group. So there is a definite connection between what the superintendent is trying to do and the

business community, public, private kind of partnership.

I do have to go and I apologize, but I just want to say thank you

and Ms. Norton for your support of the college access program. As

70

a member of the board and the executive committee, I think that

we all in that committee and board do appreciate your support.

Mr. DAVIS. Thank you very much. I’ve got my 5 minutes and I’m

going to start talking. Technology came up and I was a technology

executive before I came to Capitol Hill. I had some pretty strong

feelings about it, and I don’t want to place this burden on the

school system because, frankly, that’s not been the problem.

There are issues there where we can do a better job, and you

have a great challenge ahead and unlimited opportunity for these

kids that choose to go in that direction, and the College Access Act,

which I sponsored, is part of that because it will make affordable

educational opportunities, but more importantly, it will allow the

city to focus UDC into areas where it can be a job creator and

teach, if that’s what the city chooses to do.

But it’s tough to do anything in this city because in my opinion

it gets—instead of looking at the grand picture and looking ahead

and around corners, it tends to be very parochially oriented sometimes in the way decisions are made, and Mrs. Ackerman, I don’t

consider you part of that problem, but I think that has been the

history, and we’re trying to break out of that mold.

Let me ask, I’m going to go back to something Mr. Chavous and

I talked about earlier in terms of we’d seen improvement in safety

in the school system, and I just had an opportunity to call the company who has been doing that, and they were indicating they’d

been asking for meetings to find out what they did wrong and

haven’t been able to reach your office or Mrs. Ackerman’s, and I

would hope that—they are a Fairfax County business—that there

is some feeling that they were picked out because they weren’t a

DC business.

And this would go back to the parochialism that has driven so

many decisions in this city, and I hope this is not part of what has

motivated you in this because I think that’s a throwback at a time

when the city and suburbs are reaching out to meet with each

other, but there has been some rhetoric throwing around about,

you know, suburbanites.

Listen, our destinies are intertwined, and we have talent out

there that would love to start taking DC kids and educating them,

bringing them out to work in our companies and, more importantly,

some of our companies opening up offices in the city, if you can

make it affordable for them to do that, and cut the regulation and

so on that has deterred and driven many of them to the suburbs.

That’s part of the problem, and I just hope that has not been a

motivation, and since I’ve got you here under oath, I thought it’s

a great time to talk about it.

Mr. CHAVOUS. And since you do have me under oath, let me assure you, you don’t need to go there. That wasn’t the motivation

at all.

Look, in all candor, I wasn’t thinking specifically about that company when I made that suggestion moot. I was thinking in terms

of the big picture, as you suggested the city should do. You know,

Mrs. Ackerman made a good point earlier when she talked

about——

Mr. DAVIS. I’m going to let you finish, but let me just say this,

we heard Mrs. Cooper earlier talk about limiting the school’s abilVerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:00 Oct 03, 2000 Jkt 010199 PO 00000 Frm 00074 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 E:\HEARINGS\61528 pfrm08 PsN: 61528
71

ity to make—to do their own decisions. We’ve had this problem in

Fairfax where—and I don’t mean to say Fairfax is the end all to

do things—where we would have the school system do one thing

and the county do others through the police and everything else.

To the extent you have the police moving in, they really report to

you and the Mayor, not to the school system.

Mr. CHAVOUS. Well, let me say this, a couple of things, the contract was going to end in October, irrespective of what we did. As

part of the——

Mr. DAVIS. That had an option, though, to be——

Mr. CHAVOUS. Yeah, but I had nothing to do with the decision

on the contract. In fact, Chief Ramsey, if he chooses, can choose to

renew the contract. That has nothing to do with the move we

made. What we’re looking at is an approach to security consistent

with what other urban school districts are doing around the country, same in Baltimore, New York, and we look at these best practices, and looking toward the future, that’s what led to the decision.

It has nothing to do with parochialism. It has to do with long range

vision and planning, which is something that you-all have suggested we do for many years, and I’ve said to Chief Ramsey, he

should work with Mrs. Ackerman, work with the local schools and

make a decision about what is in the best interest for those individual schools as it relates to security. So it has nothing to do with

going out to——

Mr. DAVIS. And that’s all I want you to do. That’s all I would

want you to do on that is to do what you think is the right thing,

but I was in the business for a long time, too, with contractors. You

ought to bring them in and let them know what’s going on.

Mr. CHAVOUS. I told them we’d talk with them. I mean, we were

asked—I don’t know if they’re on the schedule or not.

Mr. DAVIS. Let me move on to a couple of other items.

Ms. NORTON. Could the gentleman just yield on this question?

Mr. DAVIS. Sure.

Ms. NORTON. Because there was something that interested me as

well, without taking from your time, and take from mine if necessary.

I think that it will restore confidence in security in the public

schools that the Metropolitan Police Department has control of

these safety issues, given the problems that you’ve had with contracts and with what we know about people who are sometimes recruited.

There’s a lot of confidence in the police chief, and it is true that

given the mounting problems of safety in public schools, big city

school systems have been moving in the direction that

Councilmember Chavous indicated.

My only concern would be, since essentially you’ve got to have a

cop for example, you had them in the high schools—whether or not

you’re going to be able to do it at the appropriate cost, because one

of the reasons people have gotten these contractors is they hire

these $8 an hour folks who have very little experience, who have

not done a good job in our school system, I can tell you that for

sure, on safety matters, and I can understand why they hire them.

You know, they hire essentially security guards in big city school

systems where people are bringing in real ammunition. Parents, esVerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:00 Oct 03, 2000 Jkt 010199 PO 00000 Frm 00075 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 E:\HEARINGS\61528 pfrm08 PsN: 61528
72

pecially after Littleton, CO, want to make sure that there’s somebody at the door who has had some real training.

My concern, Councilmember Chavous, would be, whether or not

the police chief might indeed, instead of using high cost cops, be

able to recruit people who might be in a more—I’ll use the word

paraprofessional role—but still not cost us what it would cost us

to have essentially officers doing the work that these contract officers now do. Is there any look at the cost effect of the changes you

were making?

Mr. CHAVOUS. I think that’s an excellent point. In fact, when this

suggestion was vetted to the chief, I mean, he didn’t immediately

say yes, I want to do it. I mean, I think he did some due diligence

on his own, as did Mrs. Ackerman, in talking to some of the other

jurisdictions that have headed in this direction, and he thinks he

can do it, particularly with the money that’s available, and he did

not rule out maintaining a relationship with the current security

company but having it augmented with the better increased role of

the metropolitan police department.

The other thing that we’re going to do is we’re going to have a

hearing in June, and Mrs. Ackerman and the chief and I are all

going to sit down to figure out the best way to make it work. I

mean, I can’t emphasize enough that this action was not aimed at

the contractor per se. It was really aimed at trying to move the system forward and taking as much off of this great superintendent’s

plate as possible. I mean, I think that her focus should be on educational reform. It shouldn’t be dealing with the security contract.

Mr. DAVIS. Mr. Chavous, under that then, you wouldn’t give

them back any procurement. You would keep procurement over on

the city side, and we just heard Mrs. Cooper say she wanted it to

go back to schools.

Mr. CHAVOUS. Well, we haven’t done that. I mean, that’s something—we’re trying to work out a balance because we don’t want

to put additional burdens on her. I think——

Mr. DAVIS. We just want it to work. We just want things to work.

We heard testimony today that things are going in the right direction on security, and now you are doing another—I don’t care

what you do. We are going to hold you accountable. We think this

is, obviously, with the events in Colorado, this is even heightened.

But the school system has been going in the right direction in the

last year, and now you want to go in another direction. That’s fine.

You may be able to improve it and enhance it.

I just want to say to you, the cost—we don’t want to do this on

the cheap. Having a secure school system is the most important

thing that you can do as kind of an anchor before you can get to

the other items. The surveys that I saw in terms of why kids were

dropping out was the safety and concern about being safe in

schools was one of the reasons that kids were dropping out. That

is an absolutely critical route to go.

If you have given it the thought and the reflection and we have

an unanimity among us on the way to go, that’s all right. That’s

fine with me. I just want to make sure that this wasn’t driven by

other things which I see so often in this city. That’s all I’m saying.

I think that I have said enough on it. We are going to be watching

and holding you accountable appropriately.

73

Mr. CHAVOUS. I appreciate that.

Mr. DAVIS. Just a couple of other things that I wanted to bring

out. We have an elected school board now that was, frankly, dysfunctional for a couple of years. That’s why we had an advisory

school board put up and everything. But now that they have been

elected, are there plans—and this is really addressed to you, Ms.

Newman—to start phasing them back in? They were the first elected group in the city. Are there plans to phase them back into involvement with the public school system and how is that being implemented?

Ms. NEWMAN. Yes. We have a fairly detailed plan that was put

together under the leadership of the dean of the School of Education at G.W., Mary Futrell. There were representatives appointed

by Council Member Chavous, and the elected school board and the

appointed school board.

That plan outlines what needs to be put into place to develop the

leadership capability. That plan puts into place a time line for developing a mission and vision statement, and bylaws—especially,

the relationship between the superintendent and the school board

and their roles and responsibilities. And in the plan there is along

the way before June 30, 2000, additional responsibilities. At the

outset we turned over the lead responsibility on discipline and development of the facilities’ master plan. That development of the

facilities’ master plan would be done in conjunction with the superintendent and the Corps of Engineers.

The school board has started working on that. They have a staff

person assigned to them, and they will meet the deadline on that,

I’m assured of that. But the ultimate goal is to be certain that by

June 30, 2000, they have the tools to do the job, but more importantly, the understanding of what the job is and an agreement with

the superintendent of the distinction between policy development

and day-to-day operations.

Mr. DAVIS. Thank you.

Ms. NEWMAN. I should add that I’m optimistic that it will work.

Mr. DAVIS. We all want it to work. We really do. We didn’t feel

good about doing anything that would deprive this, but it gets to

a point where we had to step in, and we have some new Members

now that are untested, but in many cases weren’t part of the problems in the past and we want to make sure that we transition. I

think that’s where this committee would come from and Ms. Norton would concur with that.

Finally, just on the charter schools. That was briefly discussed as

we moved on, the implementation of charter schools as being a part

of the overall plan. They present a great opportunity if it’s done

correctly, and they can always sometimes go the other way as well

if it’s not done. What is being done? How do the charter schools fit

into the strategy?

Mrs. ACKERMAN. We certainly provide the support, but it’s really

sort of a separate process now. The Board of Ed serves as one chartering body, and then there is another body.

Mr. DAVIS. I guess my question is, are we being reactive? If

somebody wants to start a charter school and the school board decides that they cut the mustard—or are we saying that here is an

area like technology where if we did a charter that would focus on

74

certain items that would bring in a consortium of technology companies coming in and specializing in this that we could be active

and let’s go out and recruit that?

Are we still in a reactive mode on this?

Mrs. ACKERMAN. I don’t know because I’m not involved in either

of those processes.

Mr. DAVIS. That’s my question.

Mr. CHAVOUS. I can speak a little bit to that. We have had several oversight hearings on what the public charter school board is

doing. They have been reviewing a lot of different applications. I

can tell you that what a proponent of a charter school has to go

through is extremely tedious. It’s not easy to start a charter school.

They have charter schools set up in terms of technology, hospitality, mathematics. They have all kinds of specialty areas. I think

they have become more proactive in terms of the selection process

and in terms of the criteria they are utilizing in order to decide

who to appoint those charters too.

Mr. DAVIS. But Councilman Chavous, that is the way it works in

a lot of places. But to really make this work, you can be proactive.

You can say, here is a void that the public schools aren’t getting

right now due to rules and regulations and other things. You go out

and you incentivize certain groups and say, yes, we could really use

a charter that would be in one area.

The city has done very well. Not just with charters, but with

some of the magnets that it has. I have been very impressed with

some of the kids I see coming out of Banneker and coming out of

Duke Ellington school for the arts. It worked very, very well. But

charters can serve that purpose, too, if they are started appropriately.

We are happy to help you get the consortiums going. There is a

lot of interest in this region about helping provide quality education to these kids. Charters are a great way sometimes where

you don’t have to work within the existing rules to do that. If you

are proactive, and this could include some input from Mrs. Ackerman in terms of these are areas where we feel right now that the

school system could use some help because we have to deal with

everybody in the school system and there are some niches where

if we had a charter here we could be proactive, and these are the

kinds of things in which we like to help you.

Ms. NEWMAN. I would just add that I have been meeting with the

representatives of both of the chartering authorities and meeting

with them together to ask the question, What is the rationale and

the criteria they are using to address the needs of the overall

school system? I think they are thinking about that. At the outset

I think their criteria was more along the lines of what is a strong

organization that can run a school along certain lines.

If you look at the pattern now, many of them, the math and

science strategy for some of the schools says, we know where some

of the gaps are and we believe that we can contribute to the overall

school system. More of that needs to be done, but I think they are

thinking along those lines.

Mr. DAVIS. So the marketplace itself is starting to define it. OK,

that’s all I needed. Thank you. Mrs. Norton.

75

Ms. NORTON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The chairman called an

entire hearing on the school count. We are pleased to read recently

that the school certainly can count now. You have 75,483 students.

But if I may say so, I always thought, particularly under you, Mrs.

Ackerman, that you all would learn to count the students. I regard

that as an administerial act that somehow you get enough folks in

place who have done it before, that that could be figured out. But

you have not dealt with my problem. You really have not dealt

with my problem according to your own release.

Here I’m reading from the release, your own auditors who conducted and performed the student census, as it is called. Here I am

quoting: ‘‘identified continuing problems such as the lack of student

documentation being maintained by DCPS and the public charter

schools to verify residents.’’

Going on: ‘‘The individual charter schools have their own standards for determining residency.’’

Now, this is from your release. My problem has never been

whether there are this many more or that many more. My problem

has been where do they come from. As long as we—particularly,

now that we cannot do, and for the foreseeable future will do no,

commuter tax, the insult to injury it adds for folks who happen to

be coming into the District of Columbia to drop off a child in one

of our public schools and now a public charter school is really

something.

I heard the chairman asking about proactivity in our charter

schools. Well, you know, in Virginia and Maryland they can’t get

charter schools at all. They are virtually blocked there. So what

happens? You may have people from Virginia and Maryland seeing

this new blossoming charter school movement in the District of Columbia where we have more charter schools per capita than any

place. They could be ripping you off because we still have this residency problem. I know that Mrs. Ackerman went to great lengths,

great lengths to indicate what residences—what we should use to

verify residency and the wide open things like what church do you

go to, those kinds of things were eliminated. But if you have got

almost 5,000 children in charter schools, and they are determining

standards for residency, I, at least, have no confidence that the

charter schools are educating D.C. students, and I don’t even have

confidence that you are because they say, your own auditors say,

there is a lack of student documentation being maintained by the

D.C. Public Schools to verify residency.

So, I would like to ask you—perhaps Mr. Chavous knows something about this—how you yourself can be confident that you are

overseeing this expenditure of D.C. taxpayers’ funds only on D.C.

taxpayer children in public schools, whether they are public charter

schools or schools under your direct control.

Mrs. ACKERMAN. We went through, as you know, an extensive

process last fall around verification. The problem that we had when

we talked with the auditors is what we kept as a proof of that process. In some schools there was the checklist and signed off by the

person, the staff person, who verified. Others, they actually kept

the documents. There was some confusion this year about whether

or not the documents had to be kept in every file. What we did

76

have was, though, a verification that they had been checked and

what was checked.

What we have done for next year is to be clear about that. That

was the problem that we had. When we brought the auditors back,

I think they were satisfied that we did, indeed, have a process in

place and that we could verify. The problem we had is what we

kept in the permanent records. Next year that will not be an issue.

As it relates to what happens in charter schools, we did not have

that same process for charter schools. There was a separate process.

Ms. NORTON. Why was that, Mrs. Ackerman? That’s not in your

best interests.

Mrs. ACKERMAN. Well, I know——

Ms. NORTON. Public school money per pupil that goes to the

charter schools. Why wouldn’t you insist that they, in fact, use the

same process that you had forced on the public schools that are

noncharter schools?

Mrs. ACKERMAN. I would like to insist that they do, but I don’t

think that I——

Mr. CHAVOUS. And that will happen. We have noticed that has

been a problem. With the escalating number of children that are

accessing public charter schools, there has to be some continuity in

the enrollment and making sure that the residency includes D.C.

residents.

In fact, Ms. Newman and I have been talking about the best way

to do it. If it needs to be done legislatively, it will be. If it needs

to be done in rulemaking, we will make that happen.

Ms. NORTON. I very much appreciate that to clear this problem

up once and for all.

Could I ask you a question—by the way, I’m sure that you would

be concerned about this, Mr. Chavous. They no longer are saying

80,000 students. So that means 4,000 disappeared just by counting.

Now they are saying 75,000.

You know what has happened to 7 and 8. That’s where the children were. That’s also where much of the movement has gone from.

That’s why it has been hard for us to believe that somehow the

movement out of the city has been so colossal but the school remained exactly where it was. There is some credibility restored because at least the number has gone down so we can see that there

is accurate counting.

Let me ask you, in light of that, about this difficult problem that

the school system has had. One, I want to know if there is a continuing decline in student population and whether you anticipate

that that will be the case. We are gaining in population, but all of

the indications are that they are single people and married couples

without children. So, one, in your long range planning do you see

a decline in the student population, and, two, what has happened

to the properties that were to be sold once you closed the school?

If there is a decline in student population, do you see any more

consolidation or closing of schools?

Mr. CHAVOUS. Let me answer the first one. I think that Mrs.

Newman can answer about the surplus properties the Control

Board has been tasked with that responsibility.

77

We are going through this process of implementing a long-range

master facilities’ plan, and one of the reasons why we rejected the

plan last year is it did not deal with the demographic trends. We

don’t want to talk—we are talking about building and modernizing

new schools. We don’t want to build schools and modernize schools

if there aren’t going to be children. So we are doing some statistical

analysis to try to decide where the growths are in this city.

It is true that the city is continuing to lose population, but it is

also true that that is being stabilized somewhat. It is being offset

to some degree, not to the degree that we would like, by new folks

coming into the city. My ward, as you mentioned, ward 7, has lost

more people in this city than any ward in the city over the past

10 years. But we do see home sales increasing by families even in

my ward.

So the short answer to your question is, yes, we think that the

school population is still declining, but we don’t feel that it’s declining at the same time. I think that the renaissance in the city will

be reflected in middle class families coming back in. I think that

with some of the inroads we are making with public safety and

even along the tax lines—I think that’s going to have, frankly, a

heartening impact on that issue.

I think Ms. Newman could speak specifically about surplus property.

Ms. NEWMAN. Yes, I can, and I can’t speak in a way that I’m

very proud of. I think that most of us who have been involved with

the disposition of the school property up until about 2 months ago

have not been that comfortable that the process has run as smoothly as it should run. But what I think we all are in agreement on

right now is that we need to see which of the schools are in process

and where are there certain expectations that there is property to

be disposed of. And then what we need to do is to revisit the policy

and determine—what I started to get along the way was more public sentiment that the school system not sell the properties, but

rather lease it. That wasn’t the policy at the outset.

So what I’m suggesting is that once we see what is in process

and we take care of those, up or down, that then we, through the

public process of the Council, revisit what is and should be the policy, how much should there be a determination of the community

impact and other community uses, and how much should only the

bottom line be considered in the disposition of the property.

Ms. NORTON. I can understand your concern and, of course, you

are getting competing notions here. One thing that you don’t want

to have happen to you is what happened to the city in the past.

The city has closed schools. These schools have become terrible

wrecks in communities. So if you close schools and go through that

pain, some disposition must be made of the school.

As you say, there are options. If you don’t want to sell it, or you

decide on second thought you shouldn’t sell it, then the only thing

that I’m asking is don’t let happen what has happened in my

neighborhood where the school site became the focus for all of the

dereliction in the neighborhood. It was the public school site.

Whereas people were taking care of their homes, it was the public school site because the public school was closed, the site, years

ago and nothing ever happened to it. So the public thinks that havVerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:00 Oct 03, 2000 Jkt 010199 PO 00000 Frm 00081 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 E:\HEARINGS\61528 pfrm08 PsN: 61528
78

ing gone through this terrible pain and turmoil, which, of course,

was necessary to close the schools, that the site is going to be taken

care of. I would only ask that a time limit be put on it, for example,

to say that by the end of this year a decision would be made on

what is the disposition of the closed schools, so that we will not go

into the year 2000 not even knowing whether it is going to be sold

or whether you have made another decision.

Mr. DAVIS. If the gentleman would yield, I would concur with

that. I would concur with that.

Ms. NEWMAN. Mr. Chairman, a point of personal privilege. Mr.

Singleton is a member of the elected school board, and I think he

feels I haven’t properly represented the optimism and the support

for the elected school board. I would like to ask him if he can have

a minute——

Mr. DAVIS. He isn’t sworn. We invited the school board to participate, and their leader did not show or give notice as to why she

wasn’t showing. We will give him an ample opportunity at another

hearing.

Ms. NEWMAN. I see.

Ms. NORTON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have no more questions.

Mr. DAVIS. Mr. Horn.

Mr. HORN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I think earlier in response

to a question from the panel, Superintendent, you mentioned the

open enrollment policy of the District.

Do you have data on last fall’s results of open enrollment, and

has it been analyzed as to where a particular student was and

where that student is now going? And is that data available, and

have you analyzed it in terms of is this a bad school that student

was leaving from to go to what was perceived by parents and perhaps the child as a good school? And what can you tell me about

the analysis of that data?

Mrs. ACKERMAN. Again, we are in the process. This is the first

year that we have put out our school profiles, so we are looking at

a variety of data, including where our students attend schools. We

will be able to, for the first time, take a look at that as we look

at all of the data we have compiled by school.

There is movement across the District—and we can see within

each school how many students are out of boundary. So we will be

able to look at how many students are out of boundary and continue, how many students migrate back. In the past, we haven’t

kept that, we haven’t looked at that data. We are now compiling

it in the new school profiles along with other data that will allow

us to look at it and strategically plan, but to allow parents to look

at it.

Mr. HORN. That is where I was leading. Have you thought of a

random sample of the parents when you see some significant—sort

of more than normal change? Either a person might have bought

a house in a different type of neighborhood or not, and that—but

the question is, if they are still living at a certain address and

changing schools, that ought to be perhaps significant, and are you

thinking of doing the survey to get more information?

Mrs. ACKERMAN. This is the second year that we surveyed all of

our parents, and there are a variety of questions. Many of them reVerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:00 Oct 03, 2000 Jkt 010199 PO 00000 Frm 00082 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 E:\HEARINGS\61528 pfrm08 PsN: 61528
79

late to the school and what is happening in the school. Since this

is our second year, we can now begin to compare what parents said

last year with the data that we have this year when we get it back.

In fact, the surveys are in, probably, in all of our homes this

week—or they will be by the end of this week—and we are expecting them back.

We are going to do the comparison. We are going to use it. I am

a firm believer that the data needs to drive the decisions in the

District. These surveys tell us a lot. They told us a lot last year

and they will tell us even more about the progress that we are

making in our individual schools. We also surveyed our students

and staff.

Mr. HORN. I suspect that you and I could agree that the principal

sort of sets the tone for the school and makes the difference. My

children went to the D.C. schools when they were desegregated,

two-thirds black in the particular junior high that my daughter

went to. Superb education. Then the principal retired for many

years and the school started going downhill because the successor

never left the principal’s office. The previous principal was out

there in those halls, was tooting his whistle, knew students by

name, all of those things that connect in terms of encouraging students to get an education. I hope you will be looking at that and

maybe holding some principals accountable.

Mrs. ACKERMAN. Last year we changed 39 principals. I do believe

that the victory is in the classroom with the teacher, but it is facilitated in the principal’s office. If you want to see a good school,

there is a good principal in the principal’s office.

Mr. HORN. As you know, that also means that the principal

ought to be backing up the teacher when there are discipline problems. Too often principals have just been hiding behind the desk.

I don’t know how you find that as a superintendent, whether they

are hiding under the desk or just behind the desk, but I leave that

up to your professionalism. Thank you.

Mrs. ACKERMAN. Thank you.

Mr. DAVIS. Mr. Horn, thank you. I want to thank all of you. We

may submit some further questions. Mrs. Ackerman, I know you

are going to get back to us with those test scores that we asked

for and we will make those part of the record.

Mrs. ACKERMAN. Yes.

Mr. DAVIS. Without objection, all written statements submitted

by the witnesses will be made part of the permanent record, and

the record will remain open for 10 days. The subcommittee will

continue to work with all interested parties to achieve these objectives of making this a great school system. And these proceedings

are closed.

[Whereupon, at 12:23 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]

Æ