Denver, Washington D.C. leaders tell Indianapolis alliance: shared standards, funding and transport underpin coherent school systems

A pair of national education officials who led large urban school systems told the Indianapolis Local Education Alliance on Tuesday that creating coherence across district-run, charter and innovation schools depends on shared performance measures, transparent funding formulas and reliable transportation.

Alyssa Whitehead Bost, founder and CEO of Attuned and former chief academic officer for Denver Public Schools, and Paul Keine, deputy mayor for education for Washington, D.C., described how their systems used common school performance frameworks, student-based budgeting and centralized admissions to align schools while preserving site-level autonomy.

The presentations were offered as background for the Alliance’s work on governance, facilities and transportation. Both speakers emphasized that the policies they described required long-term political and relational investments to persist.

Whitehead Bost said Denver’s approach centered on three “equities” that all schools signed onto in 2010: equity of opportunity (equal access to dollars, buildings and supports), equity of responsibility (schools taking a proportional share of system-level obligations) and equity of accountability (a shared definition of what “good” looks like). She described a collaborative council with equal district and charter representation that translated vision into detailed rules and business processes.

"All schools in Denver agreed in 2010 to sign on to a charter-district compact and in so doing committed to three really important equities," Whitehead Bost said, adding that the system used a common school performance framework to trigger supports, interventions and, when necessary, charter exit strategies.

Whitehead Bost said Denver used a strategic regional analysis that combined performance and enrollment data to decide where to open or not open new seats. She also described a student-based budgeting formula that allocated base funding plus extra dollars for students with higher needs and said most funds were controlled at the building level.

Paul Keine explained Washington, D.C.’s highly centralized structure, where the mayor directly oversees the traditional district (DC Public Schools), while an independent, mayor‑appointed Public Charter School Board serves as the single authorizer for charter schools. Keine described three infrastructure pillars he said underpin D.C.’s system: a student-based funding formula that follows students to their chosen school, a centralized admissions system (MySchoolDC), and a transportation approach that relies primarily on the city’s public transit system with targeted special‑education transportation.

"Each student is assigned money based on how we perceive their needs and that money then follows the student to whatever school they go to," Keine said, noting D.C.’s per‑pupil local budget this year is about $28,000 and the city serves roughly 100,000 public school students.

Both presenters cautioned against assuming the same tools will produce identical results everywhere. Whitehead Bost noted Denver’s policies were designed during a period of enrollment growth and warned declining enrollment, rising facility costs, and political change can alter tradeoffs. Keine said D.C.’s governance permits close cross‑agency coordination — for example, placing nurses and mental‑health clinicians in schools — but the model requires strong institutions and sustained leadership.

Alliance members asked detailed questions about how Denver enforced proportional service to high‑need students, how the D.C. funding formula was adopted and governed, and how transportation models might transfer to Indianapolis. Whitehead Bost said Denver used common enrollment systems and contract provisions to require charters to serve students with intensive needs and to accept midyear transfers. Keine said D.C. relies heavily on public transit for older students and operates special‑education buses where required by students’ individualized education programs (IEPs).

Both said community engagement and pacing of reforms were central and difficult: Whitehead Bost said Denver sometimes moved too quickly and that deeper engagement and co‑design with families would have helped. Keine said long spans of consistent policy and staffing helped D.C. build trust across sectors.

The Alliance does not appear to have taken formal action at this meeting; the presentations were framed as informational background to upcoming task force reports on transportation and facilities.