DCPS Budget Hearing

November 2024

Betsy Wolf

Thank you for the opportunity to testify. I’m testifying in support of stable, adequate, and equitable school budgets.

1. Stability – One of the biggest disconnects between DCPS central office and local schools is the school budget. DCPS needs to consider budgets from the school POV. Losing an amazing staff member only to have to find another staff member in the same position a year or two later is inefficient and undermines the school community. DCPS needs to adjust its budget model to allow budgets to be able to absorb some shocks from year-to-year without schools being pushed to a crisis mode about the budget each year. DCPS also needs to think about stability in terms of staff positions (not dollars), as average position costs increase faster than school budget increases. A timely example of this is DCPS should hold school staff harmless during modernizations and relocations of schools to swing spaces during the 2-year period.

2. Adequacy – 100% of funds for the bare minimum staff (classroom teachers, assistant principal for schools with >300 students, instructional coach, base front office staff, etc.) should be covered by the general enrollment funds. Now, DCPS requires that all schools pay for some bare minimum staff out of targeted support funding buckets, and it’s unclear in some cases how schools with few targeted support funds will maintain bare minimum staff in future years. In supplanting some of the targeted support funds to pay for bare minimum staff, it’s clear that DCPS doesn’t want to be fully transparent about the amount of money that is base v targeted. If DCPS can be honest about this, then advocates can work with and for DCPS to advocate for additional funds over time.

3. Equity – Last year, DCPS allocated an additional $3,960 per student classified as “at-risk”. I don’t think anyone would agree that $4,000 is sufficient to overcome (or substantially mitigate) the negative effects of income inequality on student outcomes. What’s worse is that it’s actually less than $4,000 when you account for the supplanting of targeted funds to pay for the bare minimum staff. If we can have an honest accounting of what we’re actually spending towards equity, then we can work to improve over time. But it makes it very difficult when DCPS (and city leadership) is more interested in public appearances than addressing the inequities head on. There is serious educational inequity across schools in DC, and school budgets should reflect that.

Last, while I generally supported the Schools First legislation, we never stopped to ask if school budgets were fair in the first place, and there was much evidence that they were unfair. We can walk and chew gum at the same time. We can work to improve stability while also not losing sight of adequacy and equity. I’m asking DCPS to consider all three and to be more transparent in the next budget cycle.

1 DCPS also adds central expenses onto staff position costs, which is unfair to schools because it’s expecting schools to absorb costs for inflation that DCPS central instead should be absorbing.

2 A less important point but DCPS should look to its internal programs that are highly unpopular and resource intensive and cut them. DCPS does itself no favors by continuing unpopular programming because it increases the calls that spending on DCPS central services should be cut.