The Richmond School Board hears comments at George Mason Elementary School in July. (Photo by Stephen Clatterbuck)
Hope Talley’s morning routine for a decade has included covering her mouth and nose with a surgical mask before entering George Mason Elementary. She keeps a wad of the masks in her purse. Once inside the East End school, she sweeps rat feces from her classroom’s floor and desks before her fourth-graders arrive.
“From 2006 to 2017, I’ve cleaned up rat poop every morning before my kids come in,” Talley says. “Every. Day.”
So it goes in what division leaders, including interim Superintendent Tommy Kranz, have labeled the “worst” building of the 44 that Richmond Public Schools operates. One of Talley’s colleagues started an online petition asking the division to take action; it has garnered more than 14,500 signatures to date.
The Richmond School Board weighed whether students and teachers should return to the nearly century-old elementary school. The air conditioning is faulty. Natural gas sometimes seeps from the boilers in the winter. The school reeks of urine. Kranz says the building is not unsafe for students or staff.
“I walked into George Mason … and I put on my hat as a parent and said, ‘Would I want my child to go to school here?’ And I do not,” says Cindy Menz-Erb, the North Side 3rd District representative on the board. Faced with a tight timeline and limited budget, the board decided in August to spend $105,000 on repairs and keep the school open. George Mason is far from the only building with issues. The former School Board approved a plan that would close decrepit facilities across the division and replace them with new ones over the next two decades. That plan has stalled for lack of capital funds, but the administration plans to take it up again.
Talley understands the financial realities. She says a move to another nearby school building — Franklin Military Academy, for example — would be better than staying at the current school, even if it means shuffling around other students.
“We know that all of the options that are out there are going to affect children, because all the facilities are old and are in terrible condition,” she says. “But it has to happen. It cannot keep going.”
