D.C. Council members fear schools near tipping point as students flee system
The District’s traditional public school system is in danger of shrinking significantly unless officials make changes that persuade parents to stop fleeing to public charter schools, D.C. Council members said Wednesday.
“I believe we are within a year or two of hitting an irreversible tipping point,” said David Catania (I-At Large), who chairs the council’s Education Committee, during a hearing on Chancellor Kaya Henderson’s plan to close 15 under-enrolled city schools.
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Fifteen schools in the District will close within the next two school years.
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“If we don’t become very serious about marketing and competing” with charter schools, Catania said, “traditional public schools, as we know them, will become a thing of the past.”
Charter schools have grown quickly in the District during the past 15 years and now enroll more than 40 percent of the city’s public school students, leaving the traditional school system with half-empty buildings in many neighborhoods — and something of an existential crisis.
“On the one hand, we all support high-performing charters, and we support choice for our families,” Henderson said. “But at the same time, we want [the school system] to be robust and to provide everything under the sun.”
Henderson says that closing some small schools will allow her to redirect resources from administration and maintenance to teaching and learning, creating the kind of academic offerings — such as art and music programs, modern libraries and elementary-school foreign language classes — that will attract families.
But on Wednesday, the chancellor offered