In the days leading up to a House vote on a continuing resolution forcing more than $1 billion in local budget cuts and threatening the D.C. government, Belicia Reaves counted among those patiently waiting to assess if and how developments at the federal level would affect operations at the District’s multi-campus Two Rivers Public Charter School (PCS).
Amid the barrage of congressional attacks on District budget autonomy, Reaves continued to express hope that Two Rivers PCS will still be able to provide offerings enjoyed by students, including: math and literacy enrichment, campus visits by subject-matter experts, and field trips to the National Building Museum in Judiciary Square.
“Families come to Two Rivers PCS because… they know that students are applying what they learn to real-life problems,” said Reaves, who’s in her second year as executive director at the Northeast-based public charter school. “We do that from preschool to eighth grade, so our eighth graders can [be prepared] to give portfolio presentations demonstrating their readiness for high school.”
Since assuming the helm of Two Rivers PCS, Reaves has played a significant role in implementing a three-year strategic plan aimed at accelerating student achievement.
Part of realizing that goal, she said, involves attracting and helping new teachers, which she’s been able to do via a new teachers cohort that meets weekly and the allocation of professional development time and grade-level planning.
Though Two Rivers PCS, which celebrated 20 years of existence last fall, suffered significant levels of teacher attrition at the height of the pandemic, Reaves reported a changing of the tide with more than 80% of her instructional staff expressing plans to return next school year.
“Our progress has been phenomenal,” Reaves told The Informer. “It required work on the ground in giving competitive pay and planning time during the school day. Teachers that come in and teach know that their voices are being heard. I have an open-door policy so they know that if you knock on the door, and I’m not in a meeting, we can have a conversation.”
All Eyes Are on the U.S. Capitol
With President Donald J. Trump (R) in the White House, and Republicans wielding strong majorities in both congressional chambers, District residents, activists and officials anticipate intrusion in local affairs. Since his return to the Oval Office on Jan. 20, Trump and congressional leaders have already threatened to take control of local affairs and pass legislation that could be detrimental to Washingtonians.
This past weekend, the District’s budget battle intensified as public officials, agency heads and residents, all of whom are already weathering the storm of a years-long projected revenue decline, heard about House Republicans’ endeavor to alter the District’s fiscal year 2025 budget, which D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser (D) and the D.C. Council solidified months prior.
On Tuesday night, members of the U.S. House approved a continuing resolution intended to keep the federal government open at the expense of D.C. government operations.
The continuing resolution now goes to the Senate.
The resolution, introduced by the House Appropriations Committee, designated the District as a federal agency while setting its fiscal year 2025 funding at fiscal year 2024 levels, an amount much lower than what’s needed to keep the D.C. government functioning until Sept. 30. That means more than $1 billion in budgetary cuts for the D.C. government, which is more than halfway through the current fiscal year, and in the middle of a budget deliberation process for the next fiscal year.
In the hours leading up to the House vote on the continuing resolution, D.C. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D) counted among House Democrats who stood in opposition to Republican budget cutting measures, albeit for reasons specific to her constituents.
“This cut will likely force D.C. to immediately terminate progressive delay for both police officers, firefighters, other first responders, and teachers,” Norton said on the House floor on Tuesday before entering into the record a Bowser memorandum explaining the effects of the continuing resolution. “This cut does not prepare to save federal dollars because the federal budget consists entirely of locally raised revenues such as taxes and fees. The continuing resolution also fails to exempt D.C. from a federal government shutdown in fiscal year 2026.”
On Monday, Norton stood alongside Bowser and members of the D.C. Council as they painted a grim picture of how the continuing resolution would decimate the local economy.
Norton, who unsuccessfully attempted to advance an amendment to the continuing resolution that keeps D.C.’s fiscal year 2025 budget allocations intact while protecting it from a fiscal year 2026 federal government shutdown, criticized her Republican colleagues for what she called a lack of respect for the District’s budget autonomy.
“The omissions [of language from previous continuing resolutions] constitute a dramatic escalation in the Republican effort to undermine what small measure of democracy and autonomy the more than 700,000 residents of the nation’s capital currently have,” Norton said.
Norton later issued a call for what many call the final frontier in District residents’ fight for total self-determination.
“D.C. residents have fought and died in all this nation’s wars. We deserve statehood, the only measure that would bring D.C. equality, and the state’s full protection.”
Earlier that afternoon, Bowser, members of her cabinet, and the entire D.C. Council, with the exception of D.C. Councilmember Brooke Pinto (D-Ward 2), who was out of town, went on a 1.5 mile trip from the John A. Wilson Building to the U.S. Capitol. That’s where they reportedly appealed to Appropriation Committee Chair Tom Cole (R-Okla. District 4) and House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana-Dist. 4) to leave District operations untouched.
In speaking about the continuing resolution, D.C. City Administrator Kevin Donahue said D.C. residents, especially those working for their local government, would feel the effects immediately.
“We’d have an immediate hiring freeze. We’d follow up by identifying where we would begin layoffs, and we would have to relatively shortly begin layoffs to core services,” Donahue told reporters just feet from the U.S. Capitol on Monday. “We would try to protect and minimize the impact, but inevitably, if you’re making effectively four years worth of reductions in a single year over six months with five days warning, there’s not the time for the kind of planning we do each and every budget.”
Questions Linger About D.C.’s Current and Upcoming Budgets
Bowser is scheduled to present her fiscal year 2026 budget proposal in early April. For weeks, she’s hinted at education, capital investments, government operations among her top priorities as the District weathers a four-year economic storm spurred by federal government layoffs.
Last year, along the way to an approved D.C. budget, Bowser and D.C. Council Chairman Phil Mendelson clashed with Chief Financial Officer Glen Lee, who insisted that both parties dedicate a portion of the fiscal year 2025 budget to the replenishment of the District’s reserves.
Though Bowser proposed cuts to an early childhood educator fund, legal services, and other public programs, the council eventually restored much of that funding while maintaining a balanced local budget of $21 billion.
In his remarks on Monday, Mendelson noted that, despite the District’s inclusion in appropriations legislation, Congress usually goes no further than approving local taxpayer dollars that fund local programs — as seen in continuing resolutions of years past. He went on to emphasize that, in the event of the continuing resolution’s passage, the District will have to make more than $2 million in budget cuts — $1.1 million within a week and the rest during fiscal year 2026.
“By treating us like any federal agency when we are not, is to fail to recognize that the District operates as a state and that the so-called savings are not savings such as they would get by cutting a federal department or holding a federal department to fiscal year 2024,” Mendelson said.
“To switch the rules of the game in the middle of the game is even more damaging,” he continued. “The impact is on public safety, on policing, on fire response, on public education, our schools, our charter schools, on the cleanliness of our city, on housing, on dealing with the homelessness, on all these issues.
The continuing resolution, shepherded by Cole, follows Rep. Andy Ogles (R-Tenn. Dist. 5) and Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) introduction of the BOWSER Act to repeal District home rule and, more recently, a Trump executive order compelling the removal of homeless communities from federal land and legislation by Rep. Andrew Clyde (R-Georgia-5th Dist.) that renames Black Lives Matter Plaza.
In speaking about the continuing resolution, Bowser said that her office has been in conversation with the White House, who she said indicated no involvement in the provision decimating the local budget. Later, she questioned whether the resolution would, in fact, advance goals around which Bowser and Trump have found alignment.
“If the Congress goes through with this action, it will work against a priority that President Trump and I share,” Bowser said. “And that is to make Washington, D.C. the best, most beautiful city in the world. And we want to work with our partners in the federal government to ensure that D.C. always represents the strength and prosperity of this country.
During Monday’s press conference, Bowser refused to entertain the possibility of the continuing resolution’s passage, choosing instead to dedicate her attention to Norton’s amendment, which Bowser said would rectify a “$1.1 billion mistake.”
“The thing about mistakes is they can be corrected and there’s time to do that,” Bowser told reporters.
Keyonna Jones Reflects on the Current State of Affairs
As Bowser, Norton and members of the D.C. Council coalesced around the stability of their beloved city on Monday, demolition crews started removing the world famous Black Lives Matter street mural located along a stretch of 16th Street in Northwest between I Street and L Street.
The destruction of what was formerly known as Black Lives Matter Plaza continued on Tuesday as Keyonna Jones, a member of the collective that painted the mural, watched. Throughout much of her time near the White House, Jones engaged reporters and passersby, including a white male dog owner who expressed criticism of Bowser’s commissioning of the public art display in 2020.
Despite the ultraconservative blowback against multiculturalism and artistic expression, Jones remains hard pressed to continue practicing her craft and replicating the impact of Black Lives Matter Plaza in future works.
“Anybody that knows me knows that art is my lane,” said Jones, a lifelong Ward 8 resident and executive director of Congress Heights Arts + Culture Center in Southeast. “I believe that art saves lives and I use it as a healing tool for whatever comes up. So that’s my goal: to keep using art to have hard conversations. It’s a universal language that doesn’t need words.”
Since the unveiling of Black Lives Matter Plaza, District residents have enjoyed a cultural renaissance via the institutionalization of go-go as D.C.’s native sound and commissioning of local artists for beautification projects.
In Ward 8, residents will soon celebrate the opening of the brand new Cedar Hill Hospital, and Black entrepreneurs continue to spread their wings in a developing Downtown Anacostia. Even so, communities located east of the Anacostia River still suffer from a high concentration of poverty and violent crime, which Jones said speaks to the work left to be done.
“I see the changes in my neighborhoods and my people because I’m out there trying to make the changes,” Jones said. “But, on a general stance, Black folks live how Black folks have lived. This is [the] history that we’ve known, and so at some point we have to figure out where that break is and how we do it.”
Jones, whose portfolio also includes the Marion Barry memorial mural erected in the lobby of the Marion S. Barry Building in Judiciary Square, counts among those who closely watched developments on Capitol Hill as elected officials debated the merits of a continuing resolution that cripples the District’s budget.
With less than a year until another round of congressional races, and years before another presidential race, Jones continues to encourage others to mobilize for what she calls the fight of their lives.
“Stay accountable for what you do and what you allow [and] have grace because this is not an easy situation,” she told The Informer. “But also be active. Let your voice be heard whatever way that looks like. You need to be outside.”