Parents peruse their My School DC lottery options. (Photo via Facebook)

Mayor Muriel Bowser announced her administration is putting an additional hurdle between her staffers and the D.C. Public Schools Chancellor’s ability to grant parents the chance to skip the anxiety-inducing school lottery, the latest in her response to a controversy involving one of her deputies getting a prime school placement for her child outside the My School DC lottery process.

Discretionary placement, as its called, gives the chancellor power to place a student in a D.C. school in rare circumstances. Now, under a mayoral order issued by Bowser on Friday, if any city officials want to get a waiver from the chancellor, they both first have to consult the D.C. Board of Ethics. Until that rule, first reported by WAMU, goes into effect in 30 days, discretionary placements are suspended. During that period, the D.C. Public Schools chancellor needs to come up with policy that clarifies the criteria for such a placement.

This comes after a report from the D.C. Inspector General revealed that former D.C. Public Schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson helped at least six well-connected people, including Deputy Mayor Courtney Snowden, skip the school lottery. Others included a former White House staffer, a DCPS principal, one of Henderson’s old classmates, and a former city elected official. The report, which remains under wraps, does not name the parents who were granted a waiver. Its contents were first reported by The Washington Post.

In a statement, Henderson says that “in my capacity as Chancellor, I made a very limited number of discretionary placements for students when extraordinary circumstances applied. I stand by those actions. The IG does not provide evidence that placements were made improperly, only that they were discretionary.” She left her role at DCPS this fall, and was replaced by Antwan Wilson in December.

Snowden defends her actions, too. “We all want the best for our kids and to that end, I was thankful to have the chancellor’s discretion in understanding my son’s unique needs as I pursued an option available to every parent,” she said.

However, in a letter to the council, the IG Daniel Lucas says that Henderson “failed to act impartially and gave preferential treatment to certain District government officials and members of the public when granting discretionary out-of-boundary school transfers.”

During a press conference last Thursday, Bowser did not criticize Snowden for requesting discretionary placement. “The deputy mayor did what was available to her, and the chancellor made the decision,” she said.

Bowser also said that City Administrator Rashad Young, another of her appointees who the IG said requested and received a waiver, went through the My School DC lottery—and her office had records to back it up. The IG’s Office has since issued a statement saying it will update a misstatement in the report.

What Henderson did was not illegal. Her role granted her the power to provide such waivers as she saw fit. But it certainly has some D.C. parents steamed over the appearance of favorable treatment.

In the school lottery in 2015, the year Snowden’s son was accepted to Capitol Hill Montessori at Logan, WAMU reports that 1,302 students applied for 93 available desks—putting its admission rate somewhere between Brown and Yale University.

2017- 125 Creation of a Policy Regarding Out-Of-Boundary Transfers by Rachel Kurzius on Scribd