The District of Columbia continued to send children to a controversial private school months after the city canceled its contract — and then defaulted on its payments, The Examiner has learned.
School Superintendent Clifford B. Janey canceled the contract with the D.C. Alternative Learning Academy in February, after years of complaints about its shoddy staff and crumbling buildings. Officials were still sending public school children there through June without paying for the services, sources told The Examiner.
On Oct. 10, after months of negotiations, the city agreed to pay the academy $850,000 to settle the dispute, according to a city memo obtained by The Examiner.
It was an abject denouement to what officials had once promised was a unique agreement to reform the city’s stricken schools. City officials entered into a “public-private partnership” with the academy, and over the course of the last decade steered dozens of emotionally troubled students through its doors. It cost taxpayers up to $28,000 per child per month.
There were complaints about the academy almost from the beginning. It was fined in 2004 because its “psychologist” didn’t have a license. A 2005 city audit found one of the academy’s buildings was “unclean” and that only three out of 59 of its teachers had credentials.
Academy officials couldn’t be reached for comment; schools spokeswoman Mafara Hobson did not respond to requests for comment.
The academy was one of hundreds of “non-public” schools paid hundreds of millions of dollars to take in special education students from D.C.
Steven Ney is a class action lawyer who has successfully sued the city over its special education system. He said city officials have lacked the political will to confront the spiraling special education crisis.
“When students with disabilities can have their needs met within that system it will no longer be necessary to send them to the non-public schools,” he said in an e-mail to The Examiner.
