Wilson is set to lose 340,000 dollars for the upcoming school year in the budget allocated by DCPS, and eight staff positions within the school have been excessed as a result. If the budget is approved by the City Council in June, Wilson will face its third consecutive year of reduced funding.

According to Wilson Principal Kimberly Martin, this year’s cuts are an especially hard blow to the school. “As far as budget and staffing is concerned, we don’t have a lot of fat. Our in-school suspension coordinator is really a dean, but also runs ISS, and also runs after school programs. People are already doing multiple tasks to make the school flow, and I don’t think that’s a sustainable model,” she said.

Without any staffing changes from the 2016-2017 school year, Wilson would be spending 1.3 million dollars more than the proposed budget allows. This is partially because the cost of employing teachers has increased by 13,000 dollars in two years. “If teachers are more expensive and you have less money, that obviously means that you’re going to have fewer teachers,” said Martin.

When Martin received Wilson’s initial allocated budget months ago, her first response was to ascertain the extent to which she could reduce non-personnel spending. “But every principal knows that you can get pretty quickly fired if kids come to school one day and there’s no toilet paper,” she said.

“I sat for days and days with all the [Assistant Principals] locked in the office thinking how are we going to make this work, how are we going to do it. I was looking for where I can afford to take staff. And the answer to that question is, well, really nowhere,” said Martin.

The Wilson administration followed DCPS’s Comprehensive Staffing Model (CSM) when evaluating which staff positions could be terminated. The CSM sets a baseline number of staff members for schools, and requires that each high school fills certain required positions. For example, under the CSM, every public high school in the District is required to have an athletic director.

DCPS Deputy Press Secretary Janae Hinson aid that DCPS works to “ensure that every school has certain resources that are needed for the school to operate, and also provide school leaders with the flexibility to staff their school in ways that support the school’s unique goals.”

According to Martin, all the staff members whose positions will be terminated next year have been notified. In addition, four positions vacated by teachers who are leaving voluntarily will be left unfilled. In total, the school will lose one social worker, one art teacher, two administrative aides, one In-School Suspension coordinator, and one Director of Strategy and Logistics. Martin was unable to disclose the names of staff members who were excessed.

“Everyone in the building is going to be facing reorganization, and they’re going to have to do some rethinking of how they do their work in order to make it through next school year,” said Martin.

Wilson is not the only school whose funding will be significantly decreased this year. Anacostia High School, Ballou High School, Columbia Heights Education Campus, and Cardozo Education Campus are among those who will also be losing funds. Budgets for individual schools are allocated by DCPS based on the amount of funding that they receive from the DC government in the Mayor’s budget. The standard increase in per-pupil funding per year has been 2 percent for the past ten years, but per-pupil spending was increased by only 1.5 percent under Mayor Muriel Bowser’s budget.

“It’s pretty mystifying, frankly, why the Mayor says she cares so much about education and then presents a budget that underfunds education. I don’t get it. Nobody gets it. The City Council is flabbergasted, anybody close to education is flabbergasted,” said DC public schools activist and former Wilson parent Ruth Wattenberg.

Wattenberg has been urging community members to take action since the release of the budget. “The important thing is for people in the community to be in touch with their city council people, as well as the mayor. Right now the ball is in the mayor’s court, and people need to let them know specifically how this is hurting their schools,” she said.

DCPS distributes funds to schools based on enrollment and “other key factors,” according to Hinson. Wilson has experienced a multi-year pattern of enrollment increase. However, the DCPS budget for Wilson is based on a student body of 1783 students, which would be a projected enrollment decrease from the 1806 students who currently attend the school.

“Setting the budget based on an unrealistically low enrollment projection will not right-size the school. It is simply a way to cut the budget. It does not change the reality that more students are attending Wilson each year,” wrote Bethany Nickerson, Chairwoman of Wilson’s Local School Advisory Team, in a letter to the City Council.

Principal Martin has remained optimistic. “In my experience, schools are pretty well-oiled machines. And in spite of the fear or concern people might have, or the love that students might have for a particular teacher or staff member, they usually find a way to just move right along,” said Martin. •