Dispatches from Planet Pollyanna: Charter School Walkability Edition
The other day, I participated in a phone call with several other people regarding the charter school walkability preference proposal. As you may recall, the mayor proposed on January 30 giving elementary-age students a preference in the lottery for charter schools if their by right DCPS schools are more than half a mile away from their homes and a charter school is closer.
(See more information here–there is even a survey, whose deadline is March 15, on the walkability proposal. You get to these lovely pieces of information by going to the deputy mayor for education’s (DME’s) website, going to the 6th tab (“Data Resources”) of the 7 drop-down tabs across the top of the home page, then choosing “proposed walkability preference analysis.” It’s all conveniently there! If you can find it.)
Anyhoo, that phone call the other day was held by the DME’s office in response to the fact that only one public meeting—this past Monday, attended by less than 20 people–was held on the charter school walkability proposal. The phone call itself was not publicized by the DME—and had only me and two other participants.
In the next week or two, the DME’s office will submit legislation for the charter walkability preference to the council—and the council will hold a hearing, as the proposal will require a change in the School Reform Act.
In the phone call, DME staff went through a slide deck presented at the public meeting, showing (on p. 4) that the goal of the walkability preference was “to improve access to walkable schools for our youngest students.”
But that was very different from what the DME herself, Jennifer Niles, said about a month ago, in a phone call with cross sector task force members about the preference proposal.
Then, the DME responded to a task force member’s query about helping Dispatches from Planet Pollyanna: Charter School Walkability Edition | educationdc: