D.C. Public Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee announced Monday a plan to reshuffle $100 million to address complaints about overcrowded classrooms and missing teachers.
About $88 million would align school budgets with their actual enrollment for the year, according to the school system. Schools with higher-than-expected enrollments would receive funds to hire teachers and administrators, while underenrolled schools could lose positions.
Staff members pushed out of schools with lower-than-expected enrollments would not be fired, but could be placed elsewhere in the 45,000-student system, according to district spokeswoman Dena Iverson.
The request came on the same day that D.C. Council Chairman Vincent Gray introduced a bill “to ensure that the budgeting process for the District of Columbia Public Schools is transparent and guarantees adequate opportunities for necessary public input.”
Gray added that a Thursday council meeting at which Rhee will testify about her proposal “should provide an opportunity for the public to get an idea of the executive’s plans,” which were sent to the council on Monday.
In addition to the $88 million, nearly $7 million of the funds were pulled from the central office and moved to individual school budgets. About $4 million would be directed to the district’s 27 schools that are being “restructured” for failing to meet testing standards set by No Child Left Behind. Rhee said she did not anticipate losing central office staff.
“We’re taking money from what everyone has known for decades to be a loaded-down central administration, and moving it to the classroom,” said Mayor Adrian Fenty, who appeared with Rhee at Northeast’s Eliot-Hine Middle School.
Eric Counts, principal of the 55-student Youth Engagement Academy, said more than $1 million in funds from the reallocation will be used to create a high school for his class of eighth-graders designated as being at high risk for dropping out.
Counts’ students attend school on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, and an internship “tailored to their passions” on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
“They love the smallness, they love the personalizing,” Counts said.
