Charter Lottery Preference Testimony by Valerie Jablos

I am Valerie Jablow, a DC public education analyst providing testimony against legislation for a charter lottery preference for students from closed schools.

The rationale for this legislation is around mitigating the difficulty that school closures pose for students—fair enough. But the way this bill is crafted suggests fundamental misunderstandings that help neither students nor families.

1. The legislation leaves out DCPS entirely from the lottery preference. This undermines what council member Zachary Parker referenced at the beginning of the legislation’s July 6 hearing, about the bill giving families more choice in the wake of closures.

Like charters, DCPS has many seats of choice. Recent data from the deputy mayor for education shows almost 30% of DC students currently attend DCPS schools by way of seats of choice. The lack of a preference in this legislation for those (DCPS) seats of choice suggests that city leaders believe those (DCPS) seats are not as valuable or as good as charter seats—and that students from closing schools do not deserve to have a preference for them.

As it is, DCPS is required by law to have seats available for any students in bounds for them 24/7/365. The legislation’s silence about that option too suggests that those seats not only are unworthy of notice, but do not have any role to play in supporting students in the wake of closures.

All of those presumptions about DCPS seats are false and harmful to students—and yet this legislation encodes them.

2. This legislation reserves this charter lottery preference even if the school closure happened in the preceding school year, such that students might have had a chance to participate in the lottery.

Taken with the omission of DCPS in the legislation, this suggests that the purpose of this bill is simply to increase the pool of students applying for charter seats at any moment, under the guise of helping students from closed schools.

While that purpose is certainly helpful for the private nonprofits that run DC charter schools, it is neither helpful nor truthful for DC students.

3. DC faces a huge drop-off in public school enrollment in the next decade. As a result, this bill’s lack of mention of any DCPS seats (even when the bill itself is silent about what sector of school closures it would cover) suggests, again, an effort to increase charter enrollment.

As a result, if enacted in its current form this bill would ensure that the lottery preference would come at the direct expense of informing families factually; increasing their choices; AND ensuring DCPS enrollment stability.

Again, while this is helpful for the private nonprofits that run DC’s charter schools, it is not helpful for DC students.

4. As council member Matt Frumin noted at the end of the bill’s July 6 hearing, our current excess school capacity is a burgeoning problem in the face of a declining student population. This in turn begs the question of why there is no legislation to ensure that closures do not happen in the first place.

As public witness Alex Simbana noted at the legislation’s hearing, closures are the end result of years of civic failures. That includes many years of poor oversight of DC’s charter sector.

For instance, I have hundreds of pages of documents showing this civic failure over a decade for just one charter school in DC: Eagle. And I can attest that Eagle is not alone.

Yet this spring’s budget oversight hearing for DC charters took less than 1 hour to review more than $1 BILLION in taxpayer funds in the charter sector for FY27. The DC council then voted to give charters yet more money on the basis of charter lobbyists saying they needed more money—with no truly independent analysis of need or equity.

We all know declining enrollment is on the horizon for ALL of DC’s publicly funded schools. That means closures in BOTH sectors are inevitable. Yet this bill appears to advantage charter enrollment at the direct expense of DCPS—even if the closed school is a DCPS school.

None of this helps families or taxpayers around school closures.

So what DOES help? Ensuring that schools do not close. And that requires much more robust oversight of charters; better accounting both of money in the charter sector as well as of expansions therein; and much more support for existing schools and the system of right that underpins all of them.

I look forward to legislation that makes all of that possible.