Education Reform
The Federal City Council has a long history of efforts to improve educational outcomes for students dating back more than 30 years, and the Council remains committed to improving DC’s public education system. The Council’s efforts in recent years included helping to shape the thinking around the mayoral control of DCPS and improving the efficiency of several key functions (e.g., building repair and maintenance and textbook availability). In part due to these contributions, the public school system is, we believe, reaching an important turning point. With the continued alignment of the Mayor, the City Council, the Chancellor, and the DC Board of Education around education reform, we believe that DC could experience dramatically improved results in public education. With reforms in DC already attracting national attention, success here would provide a model for other challenged urban school systems.
The changes that have been instituted over the last 4 years are fragile, however, and, with pushback from major interest groups, risk becoming stalled. Therefore, it is important that the FCC continue to monitor the 
current pace and direction of public school reform during this crucial transitional period. On an encouraging note, the Chancellor has requested the involvement of the Council on several projects that are key to DCPS education reform. Specifically the chancellor has requested help in evaluating and making changes to the financial management processes that provide information on budgeting and budget execution that is critical to management decisions. The Chancellor has also asked that members be available from time to time to provide feedback on various business systems issues that may arise.
While the Council should clearly remain involved to help ensure continued public school reform, the appropriate role should be the subject of continued discussions between the Federal City Council, the Chancellor, and relevant District officials.
Over the next year, the Council will consider establishing a mechanism connected to - but housed outside of - the workings of the Federal City Council in order provide a vehicle to focus business efforts to continue DCPS reform and success into the future. The goal would be to provide an ongoing structure within which business and civic leaders could generate support to continue improving public school education in the District of Columbia.