This article has been edited since it first appeared online.
Parents and advocates raise their hands in support as City Councilwoman Ellen Robertson speaks during a joint meeting between City Council and the Richmond School Board on Tuesday.
The return to the classroom was joyous for students at William Fox Elementary. After five weeks in virtual limbo thanks to a three-alarm fire that ravaged their school on Feb. 11, students returned last week to makeshift classrooms at First Baptist Church on Monument Avenue. The move, which wasn’t expected until after spring break, represents a small but important victory for a school system that seems to be in constant upheaval of late. Superintendent Jason Kamras and Fox Principal Daniela Jacobs greeted students at the door with hugs and smiles.
Those warm fuzzies, however, didn’t last long.
At a work session March 21, the board picked up right where it left off in late February — failing to resolve a still-unfinished budget it has yet to submit to City Council and Mayor Levar Stoney, who set a deadline of Feb. 25. At the same meeting, the board decided in closed session to block Kamras from hiring a key administrator, citing budget constraints, deepening a growing rift with the superintendent. And then on March 22, after months of political wrangling with Stoney and City Council over building plans for a new George Wythe High School, both governing bodies met in hopes of resolving the impasse. It didn’t go well.
After a contentious two hours of back and forth in the basement auditorium of Richmond’s Central Library, Councilwoman Ann-Frances Lambert and School Board member Cheryl Burke walked out. A second School Board member, Vice Chair Kenya Gibson, also left roughly an hour into the meeting. It was a remarkable public airing of grievances. In addition to disagreement among the two elected bodies, the most aggressive exchanges took place among the School Board members themselves. The meeting came to a head when School Board member Nicole Jones addressed the “elephant” in the room: the disunity on the board.
“We are not aligned. … If we were talking as a board, we wouldn’t be sitting here,” said Jones, who is part of the board’s minority, which includes members Cheryl Burke, Elizabeth Doerr and Dawn Page. “I am very frustrated right now because we sat here, and we are still walking out without a resolve. I’m sorry, but it’s just, like, ‘Enough is enough.’ ”
Stephanie Rizzi, a member of the School Board’s majority bloc, which includes Gibson, Chairman Shondra Harris-Muhammed, Jonathan Young and Mariah White, concurred that the board needs to have more internal discussions, but things quickly derailed as she spoke. She stopped and glared at an audience member who she said was disrupting her train of thought.
“Can we get this person in the audience quiet? I cannot concentrate,” Rizzi snapped. Council President Cynthia Newbille responded, “I’m not hearing anyone.” (The woman, RPS teacher and parent Lakeisha Williams, was, at worst, grumbling disapprovingly.) Newbille tried to restore some semblance of order, but it was too late. Burke and Lambert got up from their seats and left shortly after the exchange. “Are you guys getting up while I am talking?” Rizzi chided. “Wow. Now we get to see.”
The ruckus helped obscure an otherwise important debate over the future of city schools. The overarching issue is one of democratic prerogative — Which elected body should drive the process of school construction? — and how best to use seemingly limited public resources. First and foremost, the joint meeting was called to resolve a straightforward question: Should the new George Wythe High School be built with a capacity for 2,000 students, or 1,600?
The School Board’s majority is pushing for a smaller school, citing available capacity across the district to absorb students if enrollment continues to surge on the city’s South Side. Coupled with plans for a new career and technical center not far from Wythe, Young offered that building a new high school with a capacity for 2,000 students is unnecessary. Building a smaller school was more prudent, he said, and would free up money to devote to other school building projects. And there’s plenty of capacity at other high schools if enrollment at Wythe exceeds expectations.
“We have 2,500 vacant seats right now in our high school buildings across town,” said Young, who suggested that redistricting would solve any potential overcrowding. “That’s nearly the entire enrollment at George Wythe and Huguenot put together.”
Council and the mayor, citing census data and current overcrowding issues, see more growth necessitating a larger school. A demographics consultant hired by the School Board in 2019, Cropper GIS, projected Wythe would reach 1,779 students by 2029 (its current capacity is 1,401). And those numbers might be too conservative. Cropper’s estimates were provided prior to the 2020 U.S. Census, which shows an even faster rate of population growth throughout the city. What’s more, Wythe is one of the few Richmond schools with a majority Hispanic population, a demographic group that’s historically undercounted in the census data.
Young countered that the consultant’s projections have already proven inaccurate, considering that enrollment at Wythe this year is just under 1,300 students (Cropper projected enrollment at Wythe would reach 1,541 students in 2021). His detractors point out that Cropper’s analysis predates the pandemic, which has led to enrollment decreases citywide, a short-term trend that isn’t expected to continue.
There is enough existing capacity across the district’s 41 schools to accommodate the overall student population of 21,179, but utilizing that capacity would require redistricting, something RPS has only done piecemeal. There’s been no discussion of engaging in a citywide redistricting process, which comes with its own set of political obstacles.
Ellen Robertson, vice president of City Council, proposes a compromise during Tuesday's meeting with the School Board: Build a new George Wythe High School with a capacity of 1,800. Council is expected to vote on whether to transfer $7.3 million to the school system to begin design work on the new school on Monday night.
The overarching point, Gibson said, is that these are decisions to be made by the School Board, which is legally responsible for school construction decisions. Council’s role, she said, is to simply transfer the funds.
“Ultimately, this is quite simple. All that we need at this point to begin is for Council to transfer funds that have been already allocated to school construction to another account that is allocated for school construction,” Gibson said of the $7.3 million that City Council has delayed allocating to begin the design process for a new Wythe. “City Council has no legal authority to determine the size of the school or other matters. So, forcing the board to jump through hoops and answer question after question after question … it’s not been cooperative by any measure. And it’s worth noting that the same people that elected you all to address policing in our city, to ensure that the roads are paved, to make sure that they have homes over their head — those same people elected this body to govern over schools.”
Council has the ultimate responsibility of allocating taxpayer funds to the school system. In Virginia, school boards have legal oversight over school operations, but no taxing authority. In Richmond, where resources are limited, the construction piece had long been delegated to City Hall, which gave it a greater voice in decision-making. That all changed in April 2021 when the School Board decided to bring design, procurement and construction of schools in-house. Plans for a new Wythe — the mayor’s administration had already issued a request for proposals (RFP) — got caught in the crosshairs.
“George Wythe would be under construction right now if schools hadn’t taken back construction. Look, the mayor had his RFP out already,” Councilwoman Katherine Jordan said at the joint meeting on Tuesday. She pointed out that the city already has the construction and procurement expertise while the school system is still developing theirs.
“We have a full construction team, that’s just a fact,” she said, turning to Rizzi. “You spoke to the fact that there’s not enough resources in George Wythe. That’s heartbreaking. And when we build a new, larger one, where are we going to come up with those resources? I would rather have the School Board apply their funds to those needs and let the city use our existing construction to [build a new Wythe].”
Rich Meagher, a political science professor at Randolph-Macon College, says the School Board’s fight over Wythe is akin to “taking a stand on democratic accountability,” which is certainly valid. The responsibility for schools, including construction, is important. But this current board hasn’t given the public much reason to trust them, he says.
For example, the School Board’s majority attempted to ax its superintendent’s chief operating officer and a vacant wellness officer position even as it takes on more administrative duties — like managing the construction of new schools — and help students recover, academically and emotionally, from the pandemic. It’s also now a month late sending the mayor and City Council it’s budget request for fiscal year 2023.
The School Board also has a knack for contradiction. At one point during its work session last week, two board members began questioning the need for a district-wide facilities assessment to evaluate “the overall condition of each RPS school.” This was an assessment the board asked Kamras to solicit bids for a year ago as it began the herculean task of managing school construction. “I’m not convinced that we don’t already know what we need to be doing,” Gibson said, questioning the assessment’s price tag. “I can walk around this building and tell you what the problem is. We don’t need to spend $500,000.”
At times, Meagher says, the School Board seems lost in the forest.
“The School Board has not provided a lot of evidence to be trusted. They don’t have a good institutional memory or history, or even a clear understanding of what their role is,” says Meagher, who lives in Richmond. “There’s not exactly a coherent agenda.”
On Monday night, City Council rejected an ordinance to release to RPS the $7.3 million to begin design work on a new George Wythe, citing the same concerns about the new school's capacity. But it will likely be back on the agenda in the next few weeks. Regardless of what happens, Harris-Muhammed insists the disagreements and infighting won’t get in the way of the School Board doing its job.
“Yes, it is evident that there are board members who disagree,” she said in an interview on March 23. “But I don’t think the disagreements … will hinder us going forward.”
