Man Stops Traffic at 17th and K to Demand $200 Million
Morning Roundup: Goodbye, Abe Edition
Judge Throws Out WTU Suit Over Teacher Layoffs
Vegetate to Close at the End of the Month
Morning Roundup: Rain Won't Go Away Edition
While other school districts like Fairfax County and states like Massachusetts are in the midst of slashing schools budgets and cutting funding for education initiatives, D.C. seems to have found ways to avoid such measures, at least for a while. As we mentioned in the Morning Roundup, yesterday Mayor Adrian Fenty and D.C. schools chancellor Michelle Rhee asked the Council to approve a relocation of $100 million from the approximately $750 million schools budget. According to a DCPS release, the money is to be distributed as follows:
$88 million will be used to align individual school budgets with final enrollment counts. Each school’s needs were determined in partnership with the school principals, and the additional funding will allow additional positions such as art, music, and P.E. teachers to be filled in over-enrolled schools, while under-enrolled campuses could lose staff. (The staff would not be fired, but assigned elsewhere in the system.)
$6.7 million will be transferred from the DCPS central office budget to be used directly in schools, including $4 million to assist in restructuring efforts mandated under the No Child Left Behind law.
Additional funds will be used to initiate new programs, including a new Office of Youth Engagement ($2.4 million) that would coordinate all health and mental heath programs in DCPS, and work to improve student attendance and behavior.
The Examiner points out that the transfer request came on the same day that D.C. Council Chairman Vincent Gray introduced a bill aimed at improving DCPS budget transparency and public input. Rhee will testify about the funding transfers at a public budget hearing on Thursday. Additionally, Rhee’s monthly community forum is scheduled for tomorrow evening from 6:30 to 8:00 pm at the Francis-Stevens Education Campus, 2425 N Street NW.
Photo by Rob Shenk
The Teacher Next Door: Know any teachers looking to buy a house? Educators who work in the 20020 zip code are eligible for The Teacher Next Door program, a federally funded initiative that sells foreclosed single family homes acquired by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to teachers at 50 percent off their appraised value.
The program typically operates in neighborhoods designated by HUD as “revitalization areas,” and browsing through the listings offered reveals several places on 30th St. SE and Good Hope RD SE that are being offered for around $40,000, including the discount. Sounds pretty sweet to us, but teachers, what do you think? Also, should programs like this be available for all neighborhoods?
Contract Watch: Over the weekend, we mentioned that the American Federation of Teachers, the parent union of the Washington Teachers’ Union, has officially stepped in to support the embattled WTU in its teachers’ contract negotiations. Previously, the AFT had been involved from a distance, financing a poll of D.C. teachers (some of whom complained the poll was biased against the contract) and offering advice to WTU negotiators. Rhee has called the AFT’s tactics “disingenuous” since the union had earlier claimed no involvement, a charge strongly denied by new AFT president Randi Weingarten. Weingarten said in a statement, “We are proud of that work and are surprised that anyone thought it was being kept a secret.”
Schools Notes: Kevin Carey defends DCPS’s “Critical Response Team” from snarky bloggers… New study finds that 1/3 of D.C. students are currently enrolled in charter schools… New Ombudsman end of year report on DCPS is now available (PDF).
add to stumble upon
add to reddit
tweet this
post to facebook
I have to wonder how much of that $100 million is going to be realocated into some mid-level bureaucrat's Cayman Island offshore holding company?
damn, if you can swing a house in hillcrest for $40k, that'd be the deal of the year!