The District’s proposed fiscal 2025 budget would increase the amount of money the city spends per student, but it may also cut hundreds of jobs.
The spending plan, which is part of Mayor Muriel Bowser’s overall city budget, calls for a 12.4% increase to the uniform per student funding formula. That’s the formula used to allocate funding to schools for every D.C. student, and it’s the primary funding source for the city’s public and public charter schools.
The increase is needed to cover pay raises from recent agreements with unions and the loss of pandemic recovery funding, Bowser’s office said in a news release.
The type and exact number of positions that would be eliminated under the budget proposal isn’t known, but D.C. Public Schools Chancellor Lewis Ferebee said schools won’t lose more than 5% of their submitted budget.
As schools across the D.C. region work toward finalizing budgets for the next fiscal year, many are grappling with where to prioritize spending, now that stimulus funding from the local and federal governments is running out and won’t be replenished. That funding allowed D.C. to expand its workforce by 18%, even though student enrollment only grew 2%, Ferebee said.
In a statement, Bowser called this the most difficult budget season since the Great Recession.
“This loss of federal funding, in combination with other economic factors, necessitates that districts nationwide examine their budgets with a critical eye, looking for efficiencies where possible and weighing programmatic and workforce reductions,” Ferebee wrote in a letter to the DCPS community.
Yesim Sayin, executive director of the D.C. Policy Center, said when the extra funding ends, school budgets are projected to “experience a loss of about 15%.”
Many of the city’s public charter schools used the funding to hire staff, Sayin said, so “when the money disappears, they really don’t have much of a choice but to cut that position because they’re not able to pay the salaries.”
While DCPS will get millions more in extra money because of the formula increase, almost half of it will likely be used to backpay previously negotiated salary increases as part of a deal with the Washington Teachers’ Union, Sayin said.
“Even though DCPS is receiving more money, they’re not going to be able to expand their teacher force,” Sayin said. “They may have to let go of some other positions, maybe teacher aides or other positions, because the salary increase is exhausting a lot of their resources.”
Without the stimulus money, Sayin said school leaders will have to focus not only on retention, but also, “How can I have smart retention, where I do have to cut my staff, but I’m cutting in a way that makes sense for the students’ needs.”
The city will also be challenged to help students catch up in the classroom without the extra money, Sayin said.
“How do we solve this recovery problem if the money goes away, and if you’re not able to invest in new programs?” Sayin said. “That I believe is going to be the biggest challenges for D.C.’s public schools, public charter schools and the system-level agencies to really investigate.”
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