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School pairing advocates held signs that said "Better Together" at the Monday meeting of the Richmond School Board. The board opted to keep school lines in the North Side unchanged. (Photo by Rodrigo Arriaza)
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Richmond School Board members opted to keep North Side school lines as they are after turning down a rezoning proposal backed by 3rd District member Kenya Gibson. (Photo by Rodrigo Arriaza)
At its 59th meeting dedicated to rezoning, the Richmond School Board opted to maintain the status quo for North Side schools by leaving existing school attendance boundaries intact.
The much-awaited decision came after board members shot down a motion by 3rd District representative Kenya Gibson to redraw North Side school lines according to Option 5, one of six new rezoning proposals that consulting firm Cropper GIS prepared for the board just last week. After the plan failed to pass, the board abruptly moved on to its next agenda item, drawing laughs from some audience members.
“We have had a very detailed rezoning discussion and there was nothing done, and then the conversation about what the next steps are — we have a North Side community that is essentially in limbo," 6th District board member Felicia Cosby said as she asked for clarification on the North Side decision.
In response, School Board Chairwoman Dawn Page said that by not proposing any alternatives, board members were agreeing to keep zones in the North Side untouched.
The non-vote added the final piece to the School Board's months-long rezoning process. Earlier this month, the panel rezoned schools across the rest of the city according to Proposal Y, one of four plans recommended to the board by its Rezoning Advisory Committee. The plan mainly shifts elementary school boundaries in the South Side and West and East ends, and will take effect at the start of the 2020-21 school year.
Gibson's proposed Option 5 would have sent Linwood Holton Elementary School students living east of Brook Road, and north of Ladies Mile Road to Ginter Park Elementary, while students living farther east of Brook Road, south of Laburnum Avenue and north of Ladies Mile Road and other areas to the east would have been rezoned from Ginter Park Elementary to Barack Obama Elementary School. Finally, Obama Elementary students living south of Brookland Park Boulevard would have gone to Holton Elementary.
She said the plan would have fixed existing North Side school lines, which she described as being extensively gerrymandered. According to data from Cropper, just 38% of Holton students are economically disadvantaged, as opposed to 69% of students at Obama and 80% of students at Ginter Park.
Board members who voted against the measure said they weren't afforded enough time to study the six new rezoning options prepared by Cropper, a sentiment that was echoed by speakers during the meeting's public comment period.
"I came into tonight being willing to support any of the four existing options on the table — X, W, Y or Z — I’m not prepared tonight to support options one through six," Vice-Chairwoman Elizabeth Doerr said before the vote. "I think adding six options and then creating 10 new options is confusing, and I don’t think we’ve done our due diligence from a transparency and public engagement perspective.”
RPS parents, alumni and other speakers focused mainly on Proposal X, one of the Rezoning Advisory Committee's recommended plans that would have moved students halfway through their elementary school education in an effort to integrate racially segregated student bases. Under the controversial pairing plan, students would have gone to the majority-black Ginter Park and Barack Obama elementary schools from kindergarten to second grade, and then moved to Linwood Holton Elementary School for grades 3-5.
While a handful of speakers said they supported the newly-introduced Option 5, most said that the six new rezoning options should be ignored by the board because they were introduced without time to be sufficiently vetted. Proponents of the pairing plan said it should be rolled out after a one-year delay, giving RPS a buffer to properly address concerns like transportation.
“You have the opportunity tonight to move the needle on a part of our history that is one of our greatest shames as a country. You have the opportunity to integrate RPS students in a meaningful and powerful way," Teresa Kennedy, a member of the School Board's Rezoning Advisory Committee, told the board. "Resources and access follow privilege, and the only way to equitably distribute resources and access is to bind our futures together."
Its opponents said the plan's high implementation costs would be better spent on repairs and additional resources for schools. In a presentation on rezoning implementation in October, RPS Superintendent Jason Kamras estimated that pairing would cost between $617,500 and $842,500 per school pairing.
"There isn’t enough buy-in to justify this; people have legitimate concerns about the effects on their children, families and communities," said Robin Keegan, a teacher at Ginter Park Elementary School. "The emotional, social and financial risks have not been deeply discussed or outlined."
The School Board also agreed to allow a special provision to the rezoning plan that would only be available during the 2020-21 school year. Rising fifth, eighth and 12th-graders will be able to choose to stay at their current schools even if they're rezoned, through a voluntary "grandfathering" process, though their siblings at other grade levels will be required to abide by the new school zones.
The new school lines will take effect during the 2020-21 school year.