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

Testimony of Dr. Michelle J. Walker-Davis, Executive Director 

DC Public Charter School Board 

2022 Performance Oversight Hearing Committee of the Whole

March 3, 2023

Good afternoon, Chairman Mendelson and members of the Committee of the Whole. Thank you for the opportunity to testify at this year’s Performance Oversight Hearing. I am Dr. Michelle Walker-Davis, Executive Director of the DC Public Charter School Board. 

It has been three years since the start of the pandemic. In that time, our educators supported implementation of COVID testing, vaccination efforts, and hybrid learning. They are now working diligently to put students back on the path to higher academic achievement. I have visited many campuses this school year, and the lessons I saw were engaging, rigorous, and joyful.  

In the last year, DC PCSB has taken many strides to ensure all schools are equitable and excellent after the height of the pandemic. Our goal is to leverage our role as an authorizer to ensure every DC student receives a quality education that makes them feel valued and prepares them for lifelong learning, fulfilling careers, and economic security. We aim to do that by creating the policies and conditions that empower teachers and school leaders to do their best work, and that's educating students. This starts with refining our authorizing practices and reexamining the data points we use for decision making. It is our hope that by reforming our accountability system and reimagining charter growth and expansions, we can hold ourselves and the schools to a higher standard. This work is not easy, but our students deserve nothing less. 

Last school year we took time to shift our application process for new public charter schools and expansions. Our staff spent time establishing more robust guidelines for applicants to demonstrate need and inclusiveness. Prospective schools now need to present a compelling case, based on data, that their school will meet an unmet need in DC. In the new guidelines, we also wanted to signal our commitment to improving outcomes for underserved populations. DC PCSB now expects applicants to propose more specific plans for how they intend to create inclusive environments for these students and provide the equitable academic support. Every school needs to design their model to truly work for all students to receive consideration for approval. 

This spring, we will use our new guidelines for the first time as we evaluate the applications we receive, if any. We are confident our revised criteria more accurately ensure any applicants, if approved, will have the capacity and intentionality to be equitable and excellent. 

Another initiative for 2022 was redesigning our accountability framework to pilot in 2023 and fully implement in 2024. We are finishing the process of engaging school leaders, parents, and data experts to develop a revised framework. While we plan to continue measuring school performance based on student outcomes, we aim to create a framework which is much more rigorous and equitable. 

As with changes made to our application process, historically underserved student groups will play a key role in the evaluation of achievement and growth. It is our belief that a school cannot be excellent unless it is equitable, and we hope the revised accountability framework will illuminate where schools can focus additional academic supports for students. We also look forward to this Council and city agencies continuing to provide other critical social supports inside and outside of schools to supplement the work of our educators.  

Updating our application criteria and revising our accountability framework were our two top priorities in 2022, but we also pushed ourselves to make other internal changes in the name of equity. First, we updated our website to provide a translation tool that allows visitors to translate website content into six languages frequently used by families across DC. Additionally, we began translating our monthly Board meeting agendas into Spanish and Amharic. Our staff also revamped the public comment webpage to improve ease of navigation for the public to submit comments or sign up to testify. In addition to this work to make board meetings more accessible for all families, and we are looking forward to bringing board meetings to the community. We transitioned to hybrid meetings in 2022, and we plan to host multiple board meetings at school sites in the coming year.  

While we have taken on bold, new initiatives to improve our authorizing practices, we must also recognize the work of schools this past year. 2022 saw DC’s public charter schools invest themselves heavily in many citywide efforts to support students and families. This school year was the first since the beginning of the pandemic that DC enforced No Shots No School. Public charter schools held dozens of vaccine clinics which gave families access to immunizations at convenient times and locations. School staff stepped up to update families on their students’ vaccine status, helped set up appointments, and input and crosschecked data to ensure students could stay in school and continue to learn.  

It is important to note that while we appreciate all the hard work school leaders and staff put into family communication and data management, educators are not medical professionals and immunization enforcement should not be a task which consumes their attention. Schools need to have the capacity to focus on teaching students, and medical professionals should lead immunization compliance efforts. We hope to see DC Health and the school nurses continue to support these efforts in school year 2023-2024. 

Learning acceleration is also top of mind for our educators. Thousands of public charter school students have benefitted from high-impact tutoring, summer acceleration programs, summer youth employment, or other enrichment opportunities the city funds. And our schools host many of these efforts on site. In addition, teachers and aides have taken it upon themselves to tutor students after school on top of their regular workload. Schools have hired additional staff to provide more small group instruction focused on foundational math and literacy skills. Supporting our students to recover from the pandemic is a multi-year effort, but our schools are proud of the work they have done since all students returned to classrooms. 

While we are very proud of the work the District and schools have done in the last year, there is still much work to do. This school year, many of our schools have lost students and/or family members to gun violence. Violence and harassment plague many neighborhoods and routes to school. Our youth report feeling nervous on their ways to school, and while they appreciate the city’s safe passage efforts, many still feel that the efforts are not widespread enough to truly keep them safe. We need to be focused on keeping students safe within and outside of our school buildings. DC PCSB hopes to see expanded safe passage efforts next school year, and a real plan for how we will replace the vacuum of support left by the phase out of School Resource Officers.    

Our students’ safety also connects to their mental health. When students are exposed to violence in their neighborhoods and on their commutes, their trauma needs to be addressed. We have heard from students and teachers for three years now about the importance of ensuring there are adequate mental health supports in schools. The challenge has been and continues to be the lack of a pipeline for social workers and mental health clinicians. 

DC PCSB greatly appreciates the investments Council and the Mayor have made in the School Based Mental Health program, but those investments will only go so far until we create a more sustainable and representative pipeline of clinicians. We have heard from schools that their clinicians have full caseloads and waitlists, and some clinicians spend a significant portion of their time fulfilling mandates in IEPs which means the needs of the general population of students must take a backseat. Clinicians and social workers want to support all the students who need services, but they do not have the capacity to do so. This means we need to focus our efforts on recruitment. Not only do we need to incentivize people to enter the mental health profession, but we also need to further incentivize them to work in schools and other parts of the public and nonprofit sectors. 

Right now, schools and their educators feel responsible for student safety, mental and physical healthcare, and learning, and they are burned out.  As an oversight body, DC PCSB holds schools accountable to their academic goals and financial commitments.  While we do not provide direct support services to schools, whenever possible we elevate LEAs concerns and partner with other agencies to facilitate service delivery to schools. DC PCSB and public charter schools need all agencies to commit to supporting youth in their areas of expertise. I know DC is up to the challenge.  

Thank you, Chairman Mendelson, and the rest of the Council for your commitment to equity and education. I look forward to engaging with you further on how we can best support our city’s most valuable assets, our students and their families.