The D.C. Public Charter School Board approved five new public charter schools to open in D.C. in the school year 2020-2021—the highest number in five years—amid a debate about how many charters the city can and should support.

The new schools will mostly serve middle- and high school-aged students:

• Capital Village Academy, which is proposed to serve grades 5-8 in Wards 1, 4, 5, or 6
• Girls Global Academy, a single-sex high school that hopes to open in Ward 2
• The Sojourner Truth School, a Montessori school for grades 6-12, also with a preference for Ward 5
• The I Dream School, a pre-kindergarten-grade 3 school looking for space in Ward 7 or 8
• Social Justice School, a grades 5-8 school which is also planning to situate itself in Ward 1, 4, 5 or 6

The board also denied the applications of six other prospective charter schools in a vote on Monday night. Last year, it rejected all three applications that it received, including Capital Village Academy, which re-applied and was approved this year after it addressed “concerns about serving special populations, staffing, and financial planning,” according to the Board’s assessment. In 2017, the Board approved three out of eight new school proposals. 

The approvals came amid concerns from Deputy Mayor for Education Paul Kihn about adding additional charter school seats, considering that some existing public and charter schools are under-enrolled. (D.C. Public Schools also has plans to add schools and expand capacity in the near future.) But charter supporters contend that more schools mean increased parent choices and access to better quality schools.

The charter board looks at five factors in assessing new school applications: “the school fills an unmet need” in D.C.; the organizers’ progress in developing the plan for the school; a consistent mission; inclusiveness for all students; and the founders’ ability to deliver on their school plan and mission.

In a memo to charter board Chair Rick Cruz, Kihn zeroed in on “demonstrated need,” pointing out the areas and age groups where the District’s schools—traditional public and public charter—are already under-enrolled.

That’s mostly happening in middle and high schools: According to Kihn, there are 5,277 unfilled high school seats across the city, distributed everywhere but Wards 2 and 3. Among middle schools, there are 3,605 empty spots, mostly located in Wards 6, 7 and 8. But it’s worth noting (and the memo does) that the majority of those seats are in DCPS schools, not public charter schools. There are fewer empty seats in the city’s elementary schools, which are on average at 82 percent capacity and within “the lower range of a balanced supply and demand.” Four of the five new charter schools are middle or high schools.

Projections for student enrollment in the future are mixed, too. Kihn points out that D.C.’s high school population has actually declined in the last thirty years, though it is expected to start increasing in 2020. The city estimates that it will see more substantial gains in middle school and particularly elementary school.

The memo also expresses concerns about the small size of existing and proposed charter schools, arguing that smaller schools “bring relatively high fixed costs.”

But this analysis is largely disputed by the charter community.

“It means little to us–and even less to many of D.C.’s families–to hear that there are thousands of seats available at schools that boast poor academic results,” Cruz, the charter board chair, said in opening remarks at the board meeting last night. He noted that there are just 9,774 seats at high schools (both traditional public and public charter) that score three or more stars in the District’s school rating system, and 12,749 high school students across the entire system. In total, there are 115 traditional public schools and 123 public charter schools in D.C.

Cruz also raised questions about whether Kihn’s accounting of the number of empty seats is accurate. It’s drawn from the D.C. Public Education Master Facilities Plan, which Cruz said only looks at the size of the school buildings, not the enrollment limits placed on the schools by the charter board. “We believe they overstate charter school capacity by several thousand students,” he said.

This story has been updated to correct the preferred locations of Girls Global Academy and the Social Justice School.