Questions Re: Closing 5 RPS Schools

Happy nearly-February Board Watchers! I hope you’re ready for this one because things are about to get messy. 

Last night representative Jonathan Young followed through on his promise to propose closing no less than 5 RPS schools. You can read that proposal here, but spoiler alert, he does not identify the schools in question. (He did so later, in an interview with NBC12’s Henry Graff. More on that in a bit.)

This is absolutely a conversation we as a community should be having. Let’s dive in…

School Board members and City Council agreed last Thursday in their joint meeting: Some of our community centers are ghost towns. Some of them are vastly underutilized. 

Young says the same of our schools. Some of them have a lot of vacant seats. It’s a lot harder to stretch a student’s limited per-pupil funding to cover the cost of a new roof (for example) when there are only 150 kids in a school built for 300. 

Closing schools lets us take some very expensive, run-down schools off RPS’ property portfolio, while also generating revenue to help support the maintenance and construction of others.

But there’s a lot of trauma in this plan, and there’s no getting around that. I can pull from my own recent experience. My family lost our kids’ “neighborhood school” and spent much of the last year adjusting to a new routine of catching the bus and familiarizing ourselves with a new schoolhouse.

In Richmond (and elsewhere) the practice of consolidating schools also disproportionately impacts marginalized communities. The schools in majority-minority communities often receive less maintenance funding, decays faster, then “makes the most sense” on a list of schools to close. These school closures are destabilizing, demoralizing, and extremely disruptive.

This is almost certainly the case with the schools on Rep Young’s proposal. (Again, we’ll get to that.)

So this brings me to a series of questions I have for city leaders, and for the community. I do not know all (or most) of the answers, but I think they’re worth all of our consideration as we open this discussion.

#1. If Community Centers are “ghost towns” - and these schools are much-loved and brimming with life each week day - why are schools the facilities we’re talking about closing?

Councilwoman Katherine Jordan (2nd District) asked on Thursday night: can we make better use of our schools after hours? Can we give the community something to do (and a safe, well-maintained place to do it) with a more intentional collaboration between Parks and Rec and RPS?

It certainly sounds like a reasonable idea to me. 

#2. Council has earmarked some of their pandemic relief funds to build new community centers. Again - if taxpayers are maintaining “ghost town” community centers - do we need more? 

Everyone loves a new community center! Give kids a place to be after school hours - give them a constructive way to use their time. Give adults a place to be and stay active, expand their skills, and be social. It’s a winning platform all around - especially if these new centers are built where they are more geographically accessible, and updated to reflect the current needs of city residents.

But again - we have “ghost town” community centers now. And we're not talking about closing those. We’re talking about closing schools. Do we need new community centers more than we need to keep RPS schools open and well maintained? Has the city considered using some of their pandemic funds to maintain RPS’ decaying schools instead? 

#3. Is it financially responsible to close schools now, while our city population is only expected to grow? Will the revenue we get from selling these properties even come close to the cost of building new schools in the (very near) future? 

Rep Young’s proposal looks like it intends to break even - spending the money from any school sale to expand transportation, enable more students to attend the school of their choice, and further a “Redesign of Career and Technical Education.” “How will we find the approximate $37M/school to build new schools and accommodate a population boom in the near future?” is in no way addressed in this proposal. Finally,

#4. Last week, City Council sat and told the RPS Board we don’t have enough money to fund your needs. But how credible is this claim? Do we really have no funds saved up to maintain schools and build new community centers?

City leader’s recent act to return a $18M surplus to city residents doesn’t exactly scream “we’re strapped for cash” to me. I cannot fathom why our elected officials would give hundreds of thousands of dollars to cigarette company Phillips Morris, Dominion Energy, and miscellaneous property developers, whilst simultaneously telling their constituents “we cannot deliver on the basic social services we’ve promised you, like funding the maintenance needed to keep all of your school buildings open.” 

(Yes, this financial responsibility falls at the feet of the City. School Boards manage the facilities, but they have no power under Virginia Law to raise their own funds to do it.)

Besides. Where there is a city surplus, there is a reserve - a “rainy day fund.” The Free Press reports we have quite a sizable ($70M!?) surplus from this year alone. There was also a $22.3M surplus in 2021, and $19M in 2020. Some of this money gets spent - but some of it goes into savings, where it helps maintain the city’s high bond rating (AAA), and allows them to borrow money at a cheaper rate. 

I don’t know why we haven’t used these surplus’s, year after year, to make large, single-use payments to ease RPS’ burden of building maintenance.

I don’t know at what point city “savings” - or their AAA bond rating - become luxuries that our post-pandemic city cannot afford to maintain.

And I don’t know if it’s too late to use those funds now to prevent school-closure tragedies in 5 Richmond communities.

But I do know that the community needs to have their voices heard. It’s our city, and our leaders are obligated to each of us. 

  • Do we want a school system built on shuttling children further distances to “better utilized” schools with bigger student bodies?

  • Do we need new community centers? Or schools in our communities? 

  • Do we need a AAA bond rating? Or safe, open, accessible schools for our children? 

Let the push/pull of Corporate, Community, and Political interests begin.

NBC12’s Henry Graff reports Jonathan Young proposes closing the following RPS schools. I’d love to hear your thoughts. 

  • Woodville Elementary

  • Swansboro Elementary

  • Fairfield Court Elementary

  • Henderson Middle School

  • John Marshall High School

Want to know more? Young’s multi-year journey to sell off RPS properties - and invest in others - is on the Agenda Preview for Wednesday’s budget meeting.

Becca DuVal