What is the greatest measure of a school’s success?
As an authorizer, I spend a lot of time thinking about what success looks like. We measure academic growth, financial health, and organizational effectiveness. But every so often, a different measure stands out: a former student who returns to serve the very school that helped shape their future. This year, I was reminded of that through the stories of two remarkable public charter school alumni.
Michael Toussaint first walked into Washington Latin Public Charter School as a sixth grader. He graduated as part of the school’s inaugural senior class in 2013, built a successful career in restaurant management, and could have gone anywhere. Instead, encouraged by former classmates who had also returned, he came back to Washington Latin Public Charter School this time as Dean of Students.
Viviana Patarroyo Ulloa arrived in Washington, DC, from Colombia with limited English and no local support network. Carlos Rosario Public Charter School became more than a place to learn English. It became a community that believed in her. Today, she serves as the school’s Manager of Strategic Policy Collaborations.
Their stories are different, but they share a powerful truth.
When graduates return to serve the schools that helped shape them, they aren’t simply filling jobs. They are living proof that schools can cultivate not only academic achievement but also purpose and a lifelong commitment to community.
As another school year begins, that is the promise I hope every family sees when they walk through the doors of a DC public charter school.
This fall, more than 48,000 students (half of DC’s students) will attend a public charter school. Behind every one of those students is a family placing enormous trust in educators. They trust schools to challenge their student academically and support them socially and emotionally.
That responsibility is both profound and personal.
Too often, conversations about education focus only on costs. Certainly, educating a student requires significant public investment. Through the District’s Uniform Per Student Funding Formula (UPSFF), our city invests more than $15,000 per student annually, with additional funding to meet the needs of students requiring specialized support. But I believe we should spend just as much time talking about the return on that investment.
Every dollar invested in public education is an investment in our future workforce, our civic life, and the strength of our communities. It makes career and technical education programs possible. It gives students access to dual-language instruction, the arts, college counseling, mental health services, and countless experiences that help them discover who they are and who they can become.
The return on that investment isn’t measured only in diplomas. Sometimes it is measured years later, when a graduate walks back through the very same school doors, not because they have to, but because they want another young person to experience what they did. That is education coming full circle.
Public charter schools were created with a simple but powerful idea: give educators the flexibility to innovate while holding them accountable for results. Every day across the District, public charter schools demonstrate what is possible when schools are empowered to meet students where they are while maintaining high expectations for where they can go.
At the DC Public Charter School Board, our role is to ensure that every public charter school remains worthy of the trust families place in it. We celebrate excellence, support continuous improvement, and make difficult decisions when necessary because every student deserves access to a quality education.
As backpacks are packed and classrooms once again fill with energy and possibility, I encourage everyone in our city to reconnect with our schools.
Attend a school event. Volunteer at a school. Mentor a student. Thank a teacher. Visit a classroom and witness firsthand the extraordinary work happening every day.
And perhaps one day, years from now, one of the students beginning school this fall will walk back through those same doors, not as a student, but as a teacher, a counselor, a school leader, or a mentor.
When our graduates choose to come home, we know we’ve done more than educate them. We’ve inspired them to build the future of our city.
To learn more about D.C. Public Charter Schools, go to dcpcsb.org.
