Council Takes Action on Early Childhood Educator Pay, Local Rent Supplement Program

You’ve probably heard of musical chairs. But what about musical Chambers?

When a sudden power outage struck the Wilson Building just prior to the start time for our latest Legislative Meeting, it somehow severed the electronic connection between the Council Chamber and the offsite control room that televises our meetings. When power was reestablished, the needed electronic connection somehow was not. As Council staff made every possible effort to get our meeting televised, councilmembers and staff alike jokingly suggested everything from “going live” and filming the entire meeting selfie-style on a cellphone to subbing in live panda cam footage.

Yet remarkably, due to great creativity and heroic technical gymnastics by Council and control room staff, less than ninety minutes later, the entire Legislative Meeting (including the councilmembers!) had been shifted down one floor to Hearing Room 412, which did still have a functioning television feed. The last time the Council held a Legislative Meeting in Room 412 was a crisis session just prior to life shutting down in the earliest days of the COVID pandemic, in March of 2020.

Early Childhood Educator Pay Scale

Once everyone had shifted to the new meeting room, we were able to get down to business. One critical action taken at the relocated Legislative Meeting was passage of emergency legislation modifying the required pay scale for early childhood educators. The District set national precedent years back when the Council approved its FY 2022 budget including required pay rates for early childhood educators that sought to better match those paid to DC Public Schools teachers. In the most recent budget season, an unexpected and ultimately unjustified decision by the Chief Financial Officer (CFO) required substantial budget cuts very late in the game. In her proposed budget, to remedy the gap created by the CFO’s decision, the mayor recommended gutting out the Early Childhood Educator Pay Equity Fund.

Councilmembers, advocates, and the public spoke with a single voice in insisting that this nationally pioneering landmark Council-created program had to be restored. In the budget bill that was ultimately approved this past summer, fully $70 million was restored to this important fund, including critical expenditures for health insurance coverage for these essential workers. However, back at that time, the Council placed essentially placekeeping language in the Budget Support Act included language lowering the guaranteed salary for early childhood educators with bachelor’s degrees so as to buy time for the Early Childhood Educator Equitable Compensation Task Force could meet and hash out the most equitable, least punitive way of implementing the smaller but still needed cuts.

In the end, in late September, the Task Force issued its report with recommended lead teacher and assistant teacher pay scales and credential requirements. Through the emergency legislation passed at our most recent Legislative Meeting, the Council endorsed and enacted those recommendations. For this budget year, this concludes a process that once threatened to eliminate this essential and innovative program. While this result is not what anyone anticipated when the project was first approved, it is certainly the least bad result given the late-game budget circumstances, snatching partial victory from the jaws of defeat.

Local Rent Supplement Program Eligibility Act

At the most recent Legislative Meeting, in the first of two necessary votes, the Council passed a reform of the Local Rent Supplement Program (LSRP) that sought to strike a balance between ensuring the availability and quality of this needed affordable housing and social service program while addressing the potential risk of safety concerns that some associate with certain participants in the program. The primary goal of the bill is to ensure the availability of housing assistance to categories of individuals who are barred from receiving federal housing vouchers, including those with criminal records, who are seeking asylum, who are undocumented, or who are unable to provide required physical documentation of their eligibility. After all, the very reasons that some categories of individuals are barred from receiving federal housing vouchers are often the same reasons that these individuals most require housing assistance in the first place.

The bill as approved would not allow applicants to be removed from LSRP participation solely on the basis of having a criminal record. Applicants cannot be asked about their immigration status, and they can self-certify in cases where they cannot provide requested physical eligibility documentation.

In an effort to address perceived safety concerns expressed by some landlords and residents, the bill would allow ongoing and past criminal arrest and conviction information to come into play only when a resident is credibly accused of engaging in unsafe conduct while already participating in LRSP. In order for such consideration to take place, the resident must be determined to be a threat to neighbors, based on a preponderance of the evidence.

In Other Action

• The Council once again reauthorized the Mayor’s issuance of rules for minimum housecleaning standards for District hotels, extending a COVID-era measure. Hotel guests would maintain their existing option to waive housecleaning service, but other than that, hotels would still be required to clean all guest rooms daily.
• On the second of two necessary votes, current legislation emphasizing the availability and quality of cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) services by the District government would be expanded to ensure that schools have plans to respond to cardiac emergencies, in light of the recent uptick in such emergencies among student athletes.
• The Council passed a temporary bill on the second of two needed votes requiring all funds generated by the sale of decommissioned DC Circulator buses be used to support the Circulator employees who will lose their jobs as part of the abrupt cancellation of the longtime bus service.
• Also passed on the second of two necessary votes: a comprehensive measure expanding the availability of, and access to, electric vehicle infrastructure by facilitating District access to federal funds, mandating consideration of installation of charging infrastructure during major streetscape projects, and requiring installation of parking-adjacent electrical outlets during the construction or substantial renovation of commercial or multi-unit residential buildings.
• A measure was also passed on the second of two necessary votes that would declare the red-backed salamander as the official amphibian of the District of Columbia. Students of Powell Elementary School had first proposed the designation, since the salamander’s stripe echoes the District’s flag, and due to the Rock Creek Park denizens role in controlling the District’s mosquito population.

The Council’s next Legislative Meeting is expected to be held on October 29.