Members of the D.C. Council said Monday they want to take more of a hands-on approach to education spending, while the chief school board member called for legislators to back off.
“The Board of Education has successfully balanced the DCPS budget for five years,” Board of Education President Peggy Cooper Cafritz said during a hearing of the council’s Committee of the Whole.
“We should not return to the recent past when our energies were spent fighting for control of the school system.”
But low test scores, a ballooning annual budget and a scarcity of such basics as books and toilet paper have led to a series of proposals that could drastically alter how the school system is governed.
The council is considering three bills: One would guarantee all children the right to a quality public education; one would force the schools’ to craft specific educational policies; and the most controversial would provide the mayor and council line-item veto over the schools’ $1 billion spending plan.
“There are ample resources in the school budget to do better than what we’re doing,” said Council Member David Catania, I-at large, who said the council could provide some budget direction to the school board.
The three bills are amendments to the District’s charter and would require D.C. voters’ approval if adopted by the council.
The D.C. Public Schools $1 billion budget is double its 1999 plan, yet the system educates 22,000 fewer students, council members said.
“When you’re talking about a $1 billion budget for under 60,000 students, certainly there should not be the need for books and others such as that,” said Council Chairman Linda Cropp.
But Council Member Vincent Orange, D-Ward 5, said line-item veto power will “blur the lines of accountability” and be a “step backward” for public education.
Jon Fernandez, director of Mayor Anthony Williams’ Office of Policy Research and Development, testified that a legislative line-item veto could “confuse and complicate governance, rather than make it more effective.”
The mayor backs Superintendent Clifford Janey’s effort to reform the public education system, Fernandez said.
Board moves on setting standards
» Board of Education backs bill to make quality education a constitutional right
» BOE opposes bill forcing it to establish policies that ensure every third-grade student can read independently and every eighth grade student can read at or above grade level
» BOE opposes line-item veto
