Below please find the full and final Education Committee Report and Recommendations on the Fiscal Year 2016 Budget Request and Budget Support Acts. The report and recommendations were unanimously approved by the Committee on May 14. Please note that all information contained here is subject to change prior to the full D.C. Council votes on the budget on May 27 and June 16.
The budget includes a historic investment in renovating the District’s central library, Martin Luther King, Jr. Library, funding for a new early childhood literacy project to promote 3rd grade reading success, and a new approach to capital funding for D.C. Public Schools (DCPS) based on data not politics. The Committee’s budget fixes the at-risk funding for schools mandated by the “Fair Student Funding and School Based Budgeting Act of 2013,” allocating funds proportionally to schools based on their at-risk student population. The Committee also makes a number of important policy recommendations regarding discipline, truancy, Empowering Males of Color Initiative, per-pupil funding minimum increases, and more, so be sure to read those. The budget also includes the following enhancements:
- $1,600,000 for early childhood literacy interventions to improve 3rd grade reading outcomes
- $266,000 for expansion and evaluation of the Community Schools Program
- $450,000 for OSSE to offer SAT & ACT prep classes
- $40,806 for school athletics programs
- $693,970 for projected enrollment increases at DCPS
- $2,000,000 to increase the facility allotment for public charter schools
- $1,000,000 for D.C. Public Library (DCPL) libraries’ collections
- $300,000 for DCPL digital literacy programs
- $451,000 for implementation of the Books from Birth Act
- $3,322,000 to continue implementation the Healthy Tots Act
- $324,634 for an environmental literacy pilot program under OSSE