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Bill mandates financial reform of D.C. Public Schools
(Published May 3, 2004)

By MELISSA FERRARA
Staff Writer

Financial reform of the District’s public school system is mandated in legislation before the D.C. City Council that also would restore an all-elected school board by January 2007.

"The ability to better control money would enable [the school system] to target its spending to best meet academic needs," said Councilman Phil Mendelson, who proposed the financial reforms included in the school governance bill that the council passed 11-2 on its first reading on April 20.

A final vote on the legislation is expected on May 11 or May 18.

Among provisions of the bill are requirements for the next D.C. Public Schools superintendent to create, with the school board’s approval, a financial management reform plan. The bill establishes a Financial Management Task Force to "monitor, support, and implement financial management reform" as specified in the approved plan.

The bill also requires the D.C. Board of Education to provide a much more detailed annual budget than it currently submits to the city council for approval. The budget would be required to include line items for specific services and activities system-wide, as well as funding for each individual school.

Final allocation of funds at each school would be put in the hands of parents, teachers, community members and the principal through each school’s Local School Restructuring Team. The teams currently provide non-binding suggestions for their schools’ budget, but their decisions would govern each school’s budget under the council’s legislation.

The Financial Management Reform Plan to be created by the superintendent of schools is required to include six parts. The superintendent must create measurable goals and a timeline to deliver those goals, outline the role and responsibilities of all D.C. agencies that are related to the school system’s finances, propose statutory and regulatory amendments to the budget process, determine possible sources of savings for the next two fiscal years, and review and incorporate suggestions from the Financial Management Task Force.

The eight-member task force would include the mayor, the council members who chair the education committee and the finance committee, the Board of Education president, the school superintendent, the school system’s chief financial officer, the District’s state education officer and the city’s chief financial officer.

The task force, co-chaired by the mayor and the chairman of the council’s education committee, would be required to approve the superintendent’s reform plan and to convene at least monthly "to report on the progress of, identify obstacles to, and recommend amendments to the reform plan," according to the legislation.

The legislation would restore an all-elected school board as the governing body for D.C. Public Schools. If the legislation as currently structured is enacted into law, D.C. voters would elect a nine-member Board of Education in November 2006. Each of the city’s eight wards would elect one school board member and voters citywide would elect an at-large board member to preside as president. All newly elected board members would be sworn into office on Jan. 2, 2007.

The new structure would replace the current nine-member school board, which has five elected members and four members appointed by the mayor. The current structure was created by a June 2000 voter-approved amendment to the District’s home rule charter, which was put forward by the council as a compromise between the mayor’s efforts to take over control of the schools and the council’s desire to retain an elected school board.