The fourth problem with schools planning in DC: over over capacity, which is further expanded with each new school
This isn't exactly a DCPS problem, unlike the others listed in the entry yesterday. Today's Post has an article, "KIPP DC proposes new high school in Southwest Washington," about how the KIPP DC charter school wants to create a new high school in Southwest DC. Meanwhile DCPS has 15 high schools (one is scheduled to close next year), and a majority of the schools are significantly under-enrolled. Most of these schools could handle 1500 to 2000 students if full. The two schools in Ward 4, Coolidge and Roosevelt, each have less than 600 students.
So why should we be building a new high school? (In fact, DC should not have rebuilt Dunbar, something I wrote about here, "More on a new middle school for Ward 3.")
The basic problem with both DCPS and charter schools is that they compete for students and that the student population isn't growing that much, considering the number of charter schools competing for students, of course, for the most part, DCPS's "market share" will decline.
But at the same time, it's uneconomic to keep building-renovating new schools given this reality.
1. The big problem with building-creating new schools in DC is that the overall student population (enrollments) is basically fixed. Yes, they're rising some but not hugely.
2. DC Public Schools has a relatively large footprint of schools, plenty large enough to serve the total number of students attending public school in DC.
3. But Public Charter Schools also compete for these students.
4. And in turn build/renovate/create their own schools and campuses.
5. The process for authorizing new schools by the Public School Charter Board allows for schools to be created solely on the basis of the application and certification procedure they have set up, but with absolutely no consideration of overall demand, and without an overall capital improvement budgeting process for school buildings.
That's not just an issue with this KIPP proposal. It's also an issue with other proposals for new charter schools.
For example, Rocketship wants to create as many as 8 schools in the city ("Rocketship Education to open eight charter schools in DC" from WJLA-TV) with an eventual enrollment of 5,200 students by 2019. Note that 5,200 students is 13.6% of the DCPS 2012 K-12 enrollment of 38,197 students.
But it's not like the student enrollment is increasingly significantly, so of course the success of the Rocketship Schools will be fully dependent on their ability to capture student enrollment from existing schools (not just public schools, charter schools too).
It's the market run amok.