Shutdown or no shutdown, the show that is the D.C. Public Schools budget hearing must go on.
D.C. Council Chairman Kwame Brown will convene one and all — but mostly parents, students and teachers — at 10 a.m. in the Wilson Building to talk about the impacts of DCPS’s proposed school budgets.
DCPS representatives are scheduled to appear before the Committee of the Whole on May 3 at 2 p.m. But before then, the council will hear from citizens like Linwood Jolly, a parent at Schools Without Walls Senior High School, who sent out a press release expressing her displeasure with SWW’s $8,683 per-pupil allotment for fiscal 2012 (down $2,000 from 2011).
“School Without Walls is a partner in the city’s mission to make our public schools the best in the nation,” she said. “No school should be whipsawed by a $2,000 cut in per-pupil spending from one year to the next without any programmatic justification. This drastic a cut does more than reduce costs. It undermines this high-performing institution.”
School Without Walls received a National Blue Ribbon from the U.S. Department of Education in 2010 for raising achievement among low-income minority students.
Patrick Mara, a member of the D.C. school board who is running for the at-large city council seat, issued a statement Friday telling Gray to fully fund SWW.
“The students and educators at Schools like Walls should be rewarded for their progress, not punished because of the fiscal irresponsibility of District government,” said Mara before going for a direct shot at Gray:
