Jason Kamras addresses the crowd at the Richmond School Board meeting. (Photo by Sarah King)
Jason Kamras received a unanimous vote to assume the superintendent position for Richmond Public Schools at an unusually crowded School Board meeting Monday night, concluding a four-month-long search to fill the position prematurely vacated by Dana Bedden in June.
Kamras, the current transitional chief of the newly founded Office of Equity for Washington, D.C., Public Schools, has also served as chief of instructional practice and chief of human capital for the school system. He emerged as the top candidate for the superintendent position during the search spearheaded by law firm Hazard, Young, Attea and Associates and comprising a 26-person committee chaired by Dominion Energy CEO Tom Farrell.
During a news conference immediately following the School Board vote, Kamras pledged his commitment to work with parents, school staff, students, business and faith leaders, and elected officials “at all levels” to ensure RPS has the resources it needs to succeed. He added he will be holding a series of listening sessions throughout the next two months to learn “what you love about RPS, and what you want to improve.”
“Children deserve a few very important things from their schools: to be loved and nurtured, to have their unique identities affirmed and celebrated, to be engaged in rich and rigorous learning every single day and to develop the academic, social and emotional skills they will need to pursue their greatest aspirations,” Kamras says. “That is what I will strive to do each and every day for all 24,000 of our students.”
Binford Middle School guidance counselor Antuane Moore, who served on the 26-person search committee, says he is looking forward to Kamras taking the helm of RPS and participating in the listening sessions he has planned with the community.
“Relationships are very important,” Moore says. “He was a teacher, so to have a teacher that’s really willing to work with us — we are so very excited.”
Kamras was joined by his wife, Miwa, and two sons, Ezra and Akiva, who are in the third and first grades, respectively, during the news conference. Ezra, who is a self-proclaimed “big sports fan,” says he is, among other aspects of his family’s move to Richmond, most looking forward to attending VCU basketball and Flying Squirrels baseball games.
Kamras’ term will begin in February 2018 and last until June 2021. Interim Superintendent Tommy Kranz will serve until Jan. 31, 2018, in his current role as interim superintendent,since Dana Bedden’s abrupt departure last spring after he and the board mutually agreed in a closed-session meeting to curtail his contract two years early with a severance package totalling $294,571.81.
Kamras’ superintendent salary was not immediately available Monday night, but as an administrator in D.C., his earnings total $196,691. He holds a bachelor’s degree from Princeton University and a master’s in education from Harvard’s School of Education, and has worked in urban public school education for more than two decades.
“Kamras is practically an anomaly when it comes to administrators in urban school districts,” says Eva Colen, founding executive director for the nonprofit education advocacy organization Virginia Excels. “He taught in the same, high-poverty school for almost a decade, ultimately earning the nation's top accolade for his profession and afterwards, he spent almost a decade in administration of the same district. Unlike many of his peers, he hasn't bounced from district to district.”
Kamras began his career in education as a math teacher at Sousa Middle School in D.C. in 1996. He was awarded the 2005 Teacher of the Year Award by the George W. Bush administration for melding math and the arts to increase achievement at one of the district’s lowest income schools. In 2008, he served as an education policy advisor to the Barack Obama presidential campaign.
“I’m so excited for Richmond, as I’ve witnessed firsthand the incredible work Jason led in D.C.,” says Arne Duncan, former secretary of education in the Obama administration. “You won’t find a leader more committed to equity, to working collaboratively with the community, and to ensuring an excellent education for every single child.”
Perhaps Kamras’ most lasting impression on D.C. students is the IMPACT teacher performance review policy, which first implemented in 2009. The evaluation system hinges on criteria including students’ test scores and reviews of their educators. Low performing teachers are threatened with termination, while high achievers are lauded with permanent bonuses as high as $25,000.
Another policy, LEAP, aims to enhance teachers’ classroom success teaching the DCPS Common Core-aligned curriculum through weekly development trainings in small-group settings of their colleagues.
Colen says she first encountered Kamras in 2006 at a Teach For America training shortly after he was awarded Teacher of the Year. Cohen says what she finds most striking is Kamras’ commitment to better serving students, in both classroom and leadership roles.
“DCPS has seen remarkable gains in student achievement during his tenure,” Colen says. “IMPACT has garnered a lot of attention, but I've been most impressed by LEAP — meaningful evaluation of educators is definitely important, but I think what comes next is even more important. LEAP engages educators in comprehensive, participatory professional development that has proven beneficial both for teachers and their students.”
While the policies have been lauded for increasing student performance despite higher-than-average teacher turnover in D.C., some local education advocates are more apprehensive about such initiatives taking hold in Richmond.
“Mr. Kamras, with all of his credentials, worked incredibly close with Michelle Rhee, former D.C. Chancellor appointed in 2007,” former Richmond School Board member Mamie Taylor wrote in a public Facebook post Sunday.
“[Rhee’s] appointment was followed by the dissolution of the local school board, and the centralization of school decisions redirected to the mayor's office,” Taylor wrote. “Soon thereafter, there were more charter schools, teacher evaluations based on student test scores, and pay for performance, which is not equitable based on distribution of resources and segregated communities.”
Taylor also expressed disillusionment with relying strictly on data as benchmarks for system-wide achievement.
“Leaders often scream that the data shows strides in student learning, but data is also collected, analyzed, sometimes manipulated, and distributed secretly, and as a former board member, I can attest to that,” Taylor wrote. “The data will also show racial and socioeconomic achievement gaps, which are also explained away as growth — and the gap continues to widen.”
In July, the Washington Post reported that the D.C. Public School system had a number of undocumented student suspensions contradicting the school system’s reported 40 percent decline from 2014 to 2016. Some educators and advocates credited the disparity to incentivized performance programs, where principals’ evaluations partially depend on reducing suspensions and showing a track-record for progress.
RPS is currently under federal investigation for disproportionate suspensions among minority students with disabilities in a complaint brought forth in part by the ACLU and Legal Aid Justice Center.
Kamras said at Monday night’s news conference that he looks forward to working with RPS students and stakeholders, and to follow in the image of icons such as Maggie Walker, Arthur Ashe and Linwood Holton. He then invoked a quote from the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., which he says has inspired his years as an educator.
“I believe, and I continue to believe that [the arc of the moral universe bends toward justice], because of the students I have taught and served for more than 20 years,” Kamras says. “They inspire me with their brilliance, creativity and passion. They're why I do this work. And they're why I believe that together we will bend the arc of the moral universe closer to justice in the city of Richmond.”
