On October 1, 2025, Executive Director Yesim Sayin testified before the DC Council Committee of the Whole on the B26-0327 – Schools First Amendment Act of 2025. Her testimony focused on the financial challenges created by the act and the need to emphasize student outcomes in education budgeting practices. Read the complete testimony below or download a pdf version here.
Good morning, Chairman Mendelson and members of the Committee of the Whole.
My name is Yesim Sayin, and I serve as the Executive Director of the D.C. Policy Center—an independent, nonpartisan think tank dedicated to advancing policies that make the District of Columbia strong, competitive, and compelling. Today, I will focus my testimony on the fiscal feasibility of the Schools First budgeting practices.
Key Concerns with Schools First Budgeting
The D.C. Policy Center has testified on this matter multiple times. Our concerns remain consistent and fall into four broad categories:
- Resource allocation constraints. Prioritizing individual schools over the system as a whole restricts DCPS’s ability to invest in cross-cutting initiatives—such as strategies to improve attendance, academic outcomes, and school environments, or evidence-based interventions like high-impact tutoring and programs aimed at college and career readiness.
- Entrenched inequities. By locking in historical funding patterns, this model prevents adjustments to meet evolving needs. It also curtails DCPS’s ability to respond when demand shifts across schools.
- Inefficiencies. Schools retain allocations even when students transfer within DCPS, move to public charter schools, or exit the system entirely. This cements both inefficiencies and inequities, as resources cannot be adjusted dynamically or distributed on a true needs basis.
- Misaligned incentives. When dollars follow staff positions rather than student needs or effective practices, DCPS has little incentive to examine what is working at either the school or system level. Preserving small class sizes is not the District’s most urgent educational need—especially given existing contractual class size minimums and the limited impact of small variations in class size on student learning. [1]
Today, we are adding a fifth concern: fiscal infeasibility. When budgets are declining, Schools First budgeting becomes an arithmetic impossibility.
Fiscal Year 2027 Outlook
The Council’s adopted four-year financial plan for fiscal years 2026 through 2029 includes a 6.7 percent reduction in the per-pupil funding formula starting Fiscal Year 2027. According to the Chief Financial Officer’s fiscal impact statement, this change will result in a net loss of $88.9 million for DCPS, partially offset by a shift of $46.7 million in fixed costs to the Department of General Services.[2] Even with this adjustment, DCPS will face a funding decline of$22.2 million.
At the same time, the most recent WTU collective bargaining agreement requires 4 percent annual salary increases for teachers. [3] 4,591 teachers[4] averaging $130,753 per year[5] translates to an additional $24 million in personnel costs.
Projected enrollment growth of 193 students in 2027 will bring in roughly $4.7 million,[6] but this growth is uneven. Fifty-five schools are projected to lose a combined 1,120 students. Under Schools First rules, 38 of these schools cannot reduce their budgets, even though absent these rules, their budgets would collectively decline by about $8.2 million. This shortfall must therefore be absorbed elsewhere in the DCPS budget.
In sum, in Fiscal Year 2027 DCPS faces a structural $49.5 million deficit relative to Fiscal Year 2026 before accounting for other potential cost pressures. Some may assume the Council will simply reverse these reductions, but the District’s fiscal outlook does not support that assumption.
The Council’s Role: Oversight
What can the Council do now? The most powerful lever is oversight. The Council must insist on rigorous accountability by asking not just what is funded, but what is achieved. Schools First budgeting shifts the focus away from outcomes to inputs. This is precisely the wrong direction. Given the District’s fiscal constraints and educational challenges, oversight that emphasizes return on investment is urgently needed.
Thank you for the opportunity to testify. I am happy to answer any questions you may have.
Focus on oversight.
The most important task the Council has in improving education outcomes is to focus on oversight. This means asking a lot of questions on “return to investment” for different interventions. The Schools First budgeting takes away from oversight by moving the Council’s position from “What is achieved?” to “What is funded?” Both are important but the Council has the ability to hold DCPS accountable for what is achieved. This is badly needed.
Thank you for the opportunity to testify. I am happy to answer any questions that you may have.
[1] Research also finds that small class sizes matter the most in earlier grades, with effects disappearing after Grade 5, and they are more important for students from economically disadvantaged backgrounds, boys, and students of color. For details, see Chingos, M. & Whitehurst, R. (2011). Class Size: What Research Says and What it Means for State Policy. Brookings Institute. Retrieved from: https://www.brookings.edu/articles/class-size-what-research-says-and-what-it-means-for-state-policy/
[2] Fiscal impact statement prepared for the second reading on the Fiscal Year 2026 Budget Support Act of 2025. Available at https://lims.dccouncil.gov/downloads/LIMS/57846/Other/B26-0265-FIS_Fiscal_Year_2026_Budget_Support_Act_of_2025_2nd_Reading.pdf?Id=218119
[3] Fiscal Impact Statement – Working Conditions and Compensation Agreement between the District of Columbia Public Schools and the Washington Teachers’ Union, Local #6 of the American Federation of
Teachers Approval Resolution of 2024 Information from the fiscal impact statement prepared for the approval of the contract. Available at https://app.cfo.dc.gov/services/fiscal_impact/pdf/spring09/FIS%20WTU%20FY%202025%20to%20FY%202028%20CBA.pdf
[4] DCPS in numbers available at https://dcps.dc.gov/page/our-schools.
[5] Retrieved from the Fiscal Year 2025 Budget Books.
[6] Enrollment estimates available at https://dme.dc.gov/publication/2024-master-facilities-plan-supplement. Average funding per student is derived by dividing the estimated USPFF funding for DCPS by the estimated DCPS enrollment in fiscal year 2026, and then reducing it by 6.7 percent.