District of Columbia
Just before the economic downturn, District of Columbia Public Schools (DCPS) changed its school budgeting formula in an effort to bring art, music, and physical education teachers, and wraparound social services, to all the school system’s children, as well as job‐embedded professional development to teachers. Funds available to the district under the State Fiscal Stabilization Fund (SFSF) will enable the school system to maintain this newly designed equity during the recession and continue to direct necessary funds to schools by preserving the comprehensive staffing model for school budgeting.
The SFSF will also enable the school system to continue implementing much‐needed innovation. For example, a portion of the stimulus funds distributed to schools will support those participating in the DCPS Collaborative. School leaders in the collaborative’s successful schools work closely and intensively with the leaders of the district’s most struggling schools. Principals meet regularly to address various issues, observe successful initiatives, and present their discoveries and results to non‐collaborative schools. This model allows principals to demonstrate best practices, create shared accountability, and increase the achievement levels of the lower- performing schools.
The school system will use Title I stimulus funds to support innovative out‐of‐school-time programs and the people who make them happen, such as the full‐time coordinators who recruit high‐quality programs for their schools and implement accountability measures for all after-school work. Stimulus funds can also assist the district in providing much‐needed additional instructional time through the Saturday Scholars Program, evening credit‐recovery classes, and summer school.
ARRA funding can also assist the school system in its dedicated effort to turn around special education, an effort that will continue through the recession. The school system has a great need to offer successful programs to all students. A good example is the district’s autism program, which has been praised for its innovation in serving children on the autism spectrum. The district also has a similar high-quality program for students with Asperser’s syndrome, and the stimulus funds will be used to replicate these types of successes throughout new programs across the district.
IDEA funds from ARRA will also be directed toward reforming the Individualized Education Program (IEP) process by engaging parents more fully in their children’s education. This step represents a basic but important improvement from past action, and the district believes it is especially vital that this reform continues through the recession. In addition, IEPs are not currently available in an electronic form for the staff members who refer to them. With the support of stimulus funds, the district is working to add IEPs into a secure database for the first time.
The school district has also committed to building a state-of-the-art early childhood center that would identify children at a young age, provide services immediately upon assessment, and ultimately help address the issue of overrepresentation of students in special education. With the support of stimulus funds, District of Columbia Public Schools hopes to move forward on this project, as well as to develop a process for moving students out of special education before they transition to middle or high school.
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