Testimony of Dr. Michelle J. Walker-Davis, Executive Director DC Public Charter School Board

Testimony of Dr. Michelle Walker-Davis, Executive Director 

DC Public Charter School Board Hearing on Board of Trustees Training Amendment Act of 2025

Committee of the Whole 

March 26, 2025

Good afternoon, Chairman Mendelson and members of the Committee of the Whole. I am Dr. Michelle Walker-Davis, the Executive Director of the DC Public Charter School Board (DC PCSB). Thank you for the opportunity to testify at today’s hearing on the Board of Trustees Training Amendment Act.

The School Reform Act empowers us, DC PCSB, to approve the opening of new schools, monitor each school against the goals in its charter, and close schools that do not meet those same goals. We are also charged with monitoring each school's financial health to ensure its financial viability. In August of last year, the school year began with unexpected challenges for the students, families, and staff affected by the sudden closure of Eagle Academy due to financial difficulties. We understand the disruption this caused and recognize the resilience of everyone navigating this transition.

In December, I testified at a hearing on the closing of Eagle Academy. What I shared then is what I believe now; that schools operate better when they have a board of trustees that is trained, knowledgeable, and has access to information. The governance structure of public charter schools is what sets them apart from traditional schools. The ability to attend a school with a distinctive curriculum and instruction model is what motivates nearly half the families in DC to send their children to public charter schools. However, this individuality also raises questions and concerns from families and the broader public. With so many different public charter schools available, how can I have confidence in the management of my school?

That confidence was tested last August. Shortly after Eagle’s abrupt closing by its board of trustees, we worked diligently to help place students and staff in new schools. Since then, DC PCSB has addressed several concerns regarding our financial oversight policies. 

The first step in rebuilding and fortifying public confidence was providing greater transparency by educating the public on our approach to financial oversight, holding monthly discussions on financial oversight at board meetings, and publishing more information, like the financial monitoring list and citations of fiscal concern, on the school finance page and transparency hub on our website.

Each school's fiduciary responsibility ultimately rests with its board of trustee members. Our goal is to provide the public and a school’s board of trustees with additional authorizer insight into the financial and academic stability of their schools. DC PCSB’s role is to monitor the big picture of school finances with an eye toward long-term viability, while each LEA board provides the strategic direction, governance, and finances of the school, with input from the school’s leadership team. A key reason DC PCSB provides this information to the public is to provide a neutral and objective perspective on the performance of schools. In turn, the board of trustees can provide effective governance of their school’s progress toward meeting academic, financial, and compliance goals.

In the wake of Eagle Academy’s closure, it is understandable for families to be concerned and for this Council to want to take action. DC PCSB is prepared to provide training to each LEA board, increasing families’ confidence that their child’s school will be there from the first day of class until the next step in their academic journey.

I wish to highlight for those same families the resources already available on our website – DCPCSB.org – through the Transparency Hub. Each public charter school also has a profile published on our website. In our Transparency Hub, families can learn more about our academic accountability system, ASPIRE. 

In addition to providing academic oversight information, our website’s Transparency Hub provides the public with a substantial amount of financial oversight documentation. As I mentioned before, we have moved our financial monitoring list to a more prominent place on our website. On that page we list the school, reason for inclusion, and whether the school is on a Financial Corrective Action Plan, often referred to as an FCAP. In addition, the Transparency Hub also includes school budgets, audited financial statements, tax returns, Financial Analysis Reports (also known as FAR), and At-Risk Funding Expenditures Plans. These documents help to provide a comprehensive picture of a public charter school.

We strive for DCPCSB.org to be a resource for the public; however, we understand if families are more inclined to visit the website of their child’s school instead. For this reason, we adopted a new Public Information Policy prior to the start of the current school year. Beginning July 1, public charter school websites will be required to include pertinent information related to their school and keep the information up-to-date. This information includes the school’s academic calendar, its student/family policies such as discipline and attendance policies, a centralized hub for open meetings and board of trustees information, and its employee policies, to name a few. The Public Information Policy will ensure students, families, school leaders, and school board of trustees are on the same page with school policies.

The Board of Trustees Training Amendment Act would require DC PCSB to train board members on a variety of topics. These topics include academic programs, personnel, fiscal management, operations, governance, and knowledge of federal and DC laws and regulations. Many of these topics have policy and resource pages on our website, and we’ve begun sending key documents directly to school board members, instead of relying solely on school staff.

I agree with the Council’s desire to institute mandatory training for public charter school board of trustee members. Trustee members need the resources and knowledge to think critically about their schools. Through this effort, I believe we can help ensure stability for the District’s public charter school sector.

To create a comprehensive training program, we are meeting with LEA board members and working with local and national experts to craft the best program possible. In fact, we have already met with four other model authorizers to learn more about their governance oversight work, and we look forward to continued conversations with experts to better our understanding of board training practices.

As this bill moves through the legislative process, I ask you to consider how we can thoughtfully build a board of trustee member training series. This consideration should take into account the needs of the 700+ board members that serve on the boards for 68 public charter LEAs in the District. As you know, the members of the board of trustees are volunteers. The majority are District residents, while a small portion are students attending the school they serve. Many have impressive and taxing jobs in both the public and private sectors, and many juggle those roles with that of being a parent. These volunteers can only devote a few hours to the endeavor of governing a school. In addition, because there are so many vacant positions to fill sector wide, schools report that recruitment can sometimes be a challenge. We want to make sure we are enhancing the board of trustee member experience, not adding additional burden.

This legislation calls for board assessment training 90 days after a board of trustee member is elected, and annual training for all members. While we will strive to be creative, this timeline may be logistically challenging given the amount of annual turnover on each board of trustees. We would like to see this number closer to 182 days or six months to ensure these volunteers can find the time to be trained. Additionally, the requirement for annual training may be a bit taxing on volunteers. Typically, board of trustee member terms run an average of three years per their bylaws. As the content will likely remain unchanged, it would make sense to require biennial training after the initial onboarding. 

We would also like to see changes to the types of training offered. LEA boards of trustees absolutely need to be trained on financial oversight, academic oversight, legal requirements, and governance. It is in the areas of operations and personnel that we believe more clarity is needed. For example, a board of trustees does not have any real oversight into operations as that is handled at the school staff level. Regarding personnel, if this means hiring and evaluating a school leader or creating personnel policies, it could be relevant. However, if it means something broader, then that would be more of a school level discussion. These are also areas that fall squarely within the exclusive controls afforded to schools under the School Reform Act. We ask that those particular lines are clarified or struck from the bill.

Thank you, Chairman Mendelson and the rest of the Council, for your support of accountability in our public charter schools. I am happy to answer any questions you may have.