Despite D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser’s proposed Uniform Per Student Funding Formula (USPFF) increase, public charter school leaders are decrying the outside dollars that D.C. Public Schools (DCPS) receives for utilities and facilities maintenance.
Patricia Brantley counts among those who say that, without a similar type of assistance for public charter schools, students in that sector will suffer under the weight of steadily increasing expenses.
“One of the hopes that I have is that the city has thought about a way, where if D.C. Public Schools’ [DCPS] fixed costs are transferred to another agency, something like that could also be done for charters,” said Brantley, CEO of Friendship Public Charter Schools.
During the latter part of March, Brantley and other members of Friendship Public Charter School community recognized Nijah Brown, a teacher at Friendship’s Blow Pierce Campus, as its 2026 Teacher of the Year. The banquet at the National Building Museum took place months after the District’s public charter ecosystem commemorated three decades of existence.
Brantley, who sits at the helm of one of the District’s largest and longest-running charter networks, told The Informer that Brown’s record speaks to the caliber of education that Friendship Public Charter School has been able to curate.
“That really was a moment saying that for 29 years, we’ve been doing this, and I think we’re doing something right,” Brantley said as she recounted the night of March 28. “There’s always more to do, without a doubt, but one thing I said is when we get to the 30th year next year, we’re not just celebrating longevity or age, we will be celebrating outcomes driven by teachers.”
However, for Brantley and several others, there remains the question whether public charter schools will be able to fund investments in teacher compensation while keeping up with fixed costs— such as utilities and facilities maintenance— that the District covers for DCPS.
Last year, the D.C. Council approved a budget that allowed public charter schools to tap into the funds managed by the District Workforce Investment Council only for one fiscal year, and not throughout the duration of D.C.’s four-year financial plan. In Bowser’s FY2027 proposal, only DCPS has a total of $96 million outside of its budget for: IMPACT-related teacher bonuses; the program known as Early Stages that evaluates children for developmental delays before their enrollment in the system; and utilities and facility maintenance covered by D.C. Department of General Services (DGS).
Despite the mayor’s budget proposal allocating $1.45 billion to public charter schools — an increase of $52.6 million from the 2026 fiscal year — leaders are pointing out a funding gap of $2,000 per student between the public and public charter sectors.
In the mayor’s capital budget, public charter schools receive $187 million for facilities, while DCPS receives $484 million. If approved in its current form, the Fiscal Year 2027 Budget Support Act would eliminate a mechanism that triggers an annual 3.1% increase in charter facilities allotment throughout the four-year-financial plan.
That’s why Brantley counts among those in the public charter sector calling the mayor’s proposed per-pupil funding increase insufficient in providing an equitable educational experience.
“The estimate on the 2.55% is $3 million,” Brantley told The Informer. “It makes up for what the [workforce investment] grants lost, but now I have to use the 2.55% over everything — utilities, water, teachers, paraprofessionals, and principals.”
Three Decades Later, Charter Leaders Lead Call for Equitable Funding
In a statement, the Office of the Deputy Mayor for Education (DME) alluded to circumstances precluding it from including fixed costs for public charter schools in its budget.
“Fixed costs were removed from the formula last year as part of the approved FY2026-2031 financial plan,” DME’s statement read. “This would require over $100 million in additional UPSFF growth which we were unfortunately unable to add…in FY27 given the 4% contraction in the city’s budget.”
Amid pushback from District residents and advocates, DME reiterated a point made by Bowser in her budget presentation weeks prior.
“The mayor’s FY27 Grow DC budget reflects the hard realities that the District is facing, including a nearly 4% decrease in operating funds and the highest unemployment rate in the country,” DME said. “Our region has lost over 100,000 jobs in the last year. Despite the challenges, Mayor Bowser makes clear with her proposed budget that she continues to prioritize school funding.”
That school funding, DME said, accounts for collective bargaining-triggered teacher compensation increases across the public and public charter sectors.
“We are committed to supporting a strong cross-sector system through significant, strategic investments and policies so that every student has access to a high-quality school,” DME said. “To be clear, the premise that schools are losing out on teacher compensation or overall funding is incorrect.”
Last year marked the 30th anniversary of the D.C. School Reform Act (SRA), legislation passed by Congress to allow for the creation of public charter schools in the nation’s capital. In its December 2025 report, the D.C. Charter School Alliance, issued a call for, among other things, equitable funding that “maintains the spirit of SRA.”
That crusade continued on April 22, when Ariel Johnson, the D.C. Charter School Alliance’s executive director, spoke before the D.C. Council’s Committee of the Whole in opposition to Bowser’s budget proposal.
“Instead of working collaboratively across sectors to address shared priorities such as student safety, transportation, literacy, and attendance, we are forced into a recurring defensive posture around funding equity,” Johnson told Committee of the Whole members. “This moment calls for a reset. As the District prepares for future leadership, both in the mayor’s office and on the council, we have an opportunity to recommit to a public education system that partners with students, families, educators, and school leaders.”
Since 1995, public schools and public charter schools, the latter of which are highly concentrated in Wards 5, 7 and 8, have taken nearly an equal share of District students. Both sectors currently count among the District agencies with the highest spending.
Bowser administration officials attribute a growing population of students with Individual Education Plans, also known as IEPs, as a key factor in expanding public charter school budgets.
At Thurgood Marshall Academy Public Charter High School, where most of the student body hails from Wards 7 and 8, Raymond Weeden aspires to create an environment that adequately prepares young people for life after high school.
“No matter what skill set they come in, we’re going to get them ready for college,” Weeden told The Informer. “We use law themes to help them understand how to navigate the world and make it a better place. Our goal is to make sure that our students have all the opportunities that they can to be successful in life.”
Weeden said teachers have been a critical part of that endeavor. A key part of his “secret sauce,” he said, involves attracting the best teachers and maintaining a small student-teacher ratio that provides each student with the attention needed for academic success.
“We want to make sure we have high quality staff in our building, so that what the student receives in terms of their instruction, the quality of their teacher, pound for pound, is going to be the same,” Weeden told The Informer.
For Weeden, the leader of a Ward 8-based single-site public charter school, achieving such a feat will likely become harder under Bowser’s budget proposal.
“Where it eats into our budget is that we are being asked to take what is essentially supposed to be used for instruction…to pay for our utilities,” he told The Informer. “We need to use that to pay for programming that we do for our students.”
For the better part of a decade, Weeden has met with the D.C. Office of the Deputy Mayor for Education (DME) and testified before the council in support of equitable funding for public charter schools. He continues that push as the council examines a budget proposal where each of his students receives $1,850 less than their public school peers.
“[That] $1,850 is somewhere around $650,000,” Weeden told The Informer. “That’s easily equivalent to five teachers plus a social worker or programming that we can do with our students. It adds up really quickly in terms of what is possible.”
Today, students at Thurgood Marshall Academy Public Charter High School have at their disposal nearly 70 instructional and non-instructional personnel. Beyond their District-mandated courseload, they can also tap into after-school tutoring, personalized mentoring, sports and enrichment activities, along with more than 20 student-led clubs.
Weeden and his colleagues have also worked to boost student civic engagement. During what’s one of the District’s most consequential election seasons, students met nearly two dozen local candidates on school grounds and participated in a mock ranked-choice voting exercise.
Last year, during the special Ward 8 D.C. Council race, Thurgood Marshall Academy Public Charter School served as a ground zero for vigorous debate about quality-of-life issues. In years past, students have also been able to embark on out-of-town visits to Civil Rights landmarks.
Whether those school-sponsored excursions continue, Weeden said, depends on changes he and his colleagues can make under financial pressure. He has mulled securing pro-bono teacher professional development services or working with another school for that resource.
Other options include proactively making building repairs and cutting the civil rights trip from three days to two.
“We don’t want that opportunity to be missed for them,” Weeden told The Informer. “We have to maneuver things in our budget to make that possible, but we’re already starting with less.”
A Ward 7 Charter Leader Pushes Back on Notions about Outside Funding
Public school advocates are pushing back on the public charter sector’s fight to secure additional funding. Amid rumblings of the council possibly diverting funds from the Advanced Technical Center to fulfill the public charter sector’s demands, the Coalition for DC Public Schools & Communities is gearing up to send a letter to D.C. Council Chair Phil Mendelson next week.
Coalition member Scott Goldstein told The Informer that the debate about school funding is more nuanced than what public charter school leaders make it. While speaking on behalf of EmpowerEd, he pointed out that both sectors enjoy “tons of things” funded outside of USPFF.
“Community schools, truancy pilots, Advanced Technical Center, school-based behavioral health,” said Goldstein, EmpowerEd’s founder and executive director, as he challenged public charter’s leader assertions about the current funding model. “We wouldn’t have equity [with focus just on the funding formula] because we want to tackle schools that have the most need. We have to tackle school-based mental health and the crisis of chronic absenteeism.”
While Goldstein acknowledged teacher retention challenges at public charter schools, he said that’s an issue more common to smaller local education agencies (LEAs). That’s why he’s making the push for what he described as a targeted teacher retention fund.
“We think it’s appropriate to give…money where smaller charters aren’t able to compete with salaries,” Goldstein told The Informer. “The conversation is more nuanced. Larger charters have access to outside dollars so it’s not equal, and they have a facilities allotment. There’s a lot of arguments about who’s disadvantaged but the money should be targeted.”
In years past, philanthropic organizations, like Education Forward DC and CityBridge Education, have poured money into public charter teacher development and expansion of public charter schools in communities east of the Anacostia River. Public charter schools— like KIPP DC and Friendship Public Charter School— have used SOAR Act Grants to fund facility improvements.
Even as she acknowledges this to be the case, public charter school leader Amy Helms says that the public charter sector relies on taxpayer funds.
“There was an era…where…there was more philanthropy flowing into charter schools. That hasn’t been my experience or the experience of my colleagues in the present day,” said Helms, head of schools at DC Scholars Public Charter School. “We do some fundraising. We apply for some private grants. DCPS does as well. Our predominant driver of our revenue is the per-pupil funding formula, the title funds we receive at the federal level, and some OSSE [Office of the State Superintendent] city-based grants.”
Helms said she and her colleagues at DC Scholars anticipate spending at least $430,000 on telecommunications, utilities, and garbage collection during the upcoming school year. Other obligations, including the construction of a new playground, and HVAC and roof replacement are anticipated to cost more than $3 million over the next three years.
Those expenses, Helms told The Informer, will come out of the per-student funding allocations that’s primarily intended for teacher salaries.
“We have a teacher workforce that mostly doesn’t live here because they can’t afford to do so,” Helms said. “We have to make commitments to make increases to our staff salaries to keep up with the cost of living, but we are also responsible for some other expenses that maybe DCPS schools are not.”
DC Scholars Public Charter School, a Pre K-to-Grade 8 school located on East Capitol Street SE, counts among Ward 7’s top performing LEAs. A total of 55 teachers and teacher associates serve a student population of 530.
Students at DC Scholars Public Charter School receive mental health support, and families, by virtue of the school’s relationship with Martha’s Table, have access to fresh food. In the years following the pandemic, school leaders invested in high-impact tutoring, foundational reading services, and the expansion of a workforce that Helms said halved chronic absenteeism during the 2023-2024 academic year.
“Many of our teachers came on Saturdays and stayed after school to meet the need,” Helms told The Informer. “We also did bring in some supplemental programs. We found all of those interventions to be tremendously impactful, along with just strong student-family partnerships and a really robust student support team.”
As Helms recounted, DC Scholars Public Charter School made such strides amid incremental salary audits aimed at keeping teacher pay competitive. During this budget season, she said she’s fighting for an outcome that allows her to pour more into her teacher retention efforts.
“We recognize that the mayor is not a magician and can come up with additional revenue overnight, but my concern is around equity for all the students that attend schools in the District,” Helms told The Informer. “In Ward 7 in particular, there are actually more students who attend charter schools than District schools, and those charter schools are serving kids here pretty well. We want to make sure that we can continue to do that.”
An Issue That Might Not Get Resolved This Budget Season
Mendelson said the problem facing public charter schools has been a long time coming.
“This is a trend that I have been criticizing for several years,” he told The Informer, “because on a much smaller level, the mayor was funding DCPS $20-$30 million outside of the per-pupil formula, but it’s now $100 million, so that’s a problem, and it’s an equity issue.”
During his May 4 press conference, Mendelson said it’s not quite clear how the council plans to approach the public charter school funding issue, especially with the District in such a precarious financial situation.
“Theoretically, because the council is the appropriator, we can fix it, but we would have to unfund something in the mayor’s budget in order to properly fund,” Mendelson said. “We could cut the funding to DCPS so they have no money for energy or maintenance, or we could put the money entirely into the formula, which means we would have to roughly double it, find another $100 million so the charters are funded equally.”
Weeks ago, Nijah Brown’s recognition as Friendship Public Charter School’s Teacher of the Year came on the cusp of what leaders at her public charter LEA described as strong post-pandemic recovery. Today, Friendship Public Charter School boasts an 85% teacher retention rate across all campuses, while nearly 9 out of 10 principals have also risen through the ranks at Friendship Public Charter School, either serving as classroom teachers or instructional aides first.
For Brantley, teachers are the engine of academic success at Friendship Public Charter School, and must be treated as such.
“People talk about professional development and mentoring them, but it’s also about compensation and benefits,” Brantley told The Informer. “We want teachers who are making a choice to be with Friendship to have the support that they need so they can stay here for the long term.”
Brantley, however, questioned the degree to which Friendship Public Charter School would be able to meet its obligations to teachers and students under current circumstances. Roof repairs and HVAC upgrades, she said, will more than likely eat into monies intended for student programming.
“In the past, I’ve walked into a classroom [where] the air conditioning was starting to fail. It was so loud, the teacher had to speak above it,” Brantley said. “These [are] little things… [to] stop you having the height of learning that you need. I’m proud that at Friendship, we’ve been able to use both the facilities allotment and to do a lot of borrowing in order to deliver those things, but it’s harder and harder to do it if there aren’t increases when all the costs are going up every year.”
