TESTIMONY BEFORE THE COMMITTEE OF THE WHOLE,

DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA COUNCIL, OVERSIGHT HEARING ON THE DC PUBLIC

SCHOOLS FY 2009 AND FY 2010

Mary M. Levy March 15, 2010

Good morning. My first topic today is a study of recent new employee hiring by the DC

Public Schools (DCPS), for which I reviewed and checked data and performed analysis. The

study was initiated by a group of DCPS educators who were laid off last October. It was based

on two DC employee lists posted on the DC government website as of September 15, 2009 and

January 15, 2010.1 The lists include job titles, pay grade and step, and date of hire, but not salary

or school or office. Since these lists are published as .pdf “secured” files, they could not be

converted into Excel or text files; the study database was therefore created by a group of

educators who copied the data for new hires since March 1, 2009 into Excel spreadsheets. I then

compiled and integrated the spreadsheets, proofread them against the two original lists,

eliminating duplicates and listings mistakenly included and adding any listings mistakenly

omitted, then standardized job titles to permit accurate sorting, and classified the listings into the

six categories listed below. The study assumes the accuracy of DCPS date of hire and job titles.

Criteria for inclusion: all individuals hired subsequent to March 1, 2009, except

• Substitute teachers were not included

• After-school/Saturday teachers, aides, and coordinators with pay grades of ET-30, 15, and 35
respectively were not included
• Part-time jobs of teachers who also had regular school-day jobs were not included

The most striking finding of the study is that after the Reduction-In-Force was first

announced, DCPS hired 513 employees for regular school-day jobs, including:

• 109 teachers (including counselors and librarians) – most are full-time classroom/resource
teachers, and most have the job title “Teacher.”
• 34 local school administrators and office staff, predominantly clerical and coordinators

1
District of Columbia, Public Body Employee Information, as of Sep 15, 2009 and Jan 15, 2009
http://grc.dc.gov/grc/lib/grc/foia/publicbodyinformation.pdf
 • 25 other local school staff (instructional coaches, social workers, psychologists, therapists,
attendance counselors, in-school suspension coordinators, after-school coordinators, parent
coordinators, and computer lab staff)
• 216 aides, almost all special education aides
• 22 non-instructional service employees, mostly custodians
• 107 central office staff, mostly in administrative and business operations, including 9 directors,
32 coordinators, and various assistants, special assistants, analysts, specialists, and managers.2

If DCPS lacked the money to retain 388 employees, then where did the funding come from to

hire over 500 new employees, many of whom have the same job titles as those who were

dismissed in October?

More broadly, for many months, I have pored over various budget documents seeking to

answer questions such as where DCPS money was and is now going, and whether the major

disruption of school six weeks into the school year was necessary. I regret to say that as of now I

still have not been able to answer these questions. I hope to be able to with new data that have

recently become public, but am still trying to untangle:

• Repeated major changes in the DCPS budget document numbers over many months
• Inconsistent numbers among official sources for 2009 and 2010
• Lack of basic information such as school-by-school enrollment for the current year,
despite our being well into the second semester
• Changes in definitions of DCPS program/activity categories and frequent re-
organizations that are not announced – indeed the budget documents lack definitions at
all.

One question that can be answered from the publicly available data is the source of DCPS

revenues. That information is troubling, not for the current year but for the future. This year,

one third of the DCPS budget comes from the federal government -- $261 million dollars.

Almost $100 million is from temporary sources, the Economic Stimulus funding and the special

congressional earmark for school reform. Dr. Gandhi has continued to project ever-lower

2
Since we also looked at new hires from March 1 until shortly after the beginning of school, I can report that the
total was 1,698, including 925 teachers and 138 central office staff.

2
revenue estimates, and DC revenues are likely to lag behind the District’s economic recovery,

whenever it finally comes. What planning is in place for replacement of $50 or even $100

million?

My recommendations as to Council actions on DCPS fiscal activity are the same as they

were in testimony that I delivered last October:

• Arrange an audit to untangle the incomplete and conflicting data on budget, expenditures
and staffing and to make recommendations on remedies. Unfortunately, I believe that we
need to determine whether the DCPS budget and spending are effectively under anyone’s
control.
•
• Mandate that the CFO and DCPS establish a meaningful set of program/activity codes in
the budget, subject only to changes in program but not re-organization, and publish them
with full definitions; mandate the additional publication of a budget including all
organizational units.
• Require monthly financial reports in full detail.
• Identify means of enforcing existing laws in this area
• Investigate the lack of compliance with existing laws requiring reporting and public
information, for example the DC FOIA requirement that all public bodies post on the
Internet, inter alia (6A)

Budget requests, submissions, and reports available electronically that agencies,

boards, and commissions transmit to the Office of the Budget and Planning during
the budget development process, as well as reports on budget implementation and
execution prepared by the Office of the Chief Financial Officer, including
baseline budget submissions and appeals, financial status reports, and strategic
plans and performance-based budget submissions (DC Code § 2-536.
Information which must be made public, subsection 6A).

Given the DC Code provision just cited, the Council should not have to do any of this – but the

need for fiscal transparency and adherence to the rule of law requires some action.

Thank you for this opportunity to testify.