RPS Agenda Preview: Feb 1, 2023 Budget Meeting
Remember way back on Saturday, January 28th when I said a RECAP wouldn’t be necessary this week because the budget meetings were getting repetitive? I was so young and naive then.
Just 3 days later - the landscape going into Wednesday’s budget meeting has dramatically changed.
[This post has been updated to include a discussion on funding pilot programs for an extended year calendar.]
School Sale(?) Shocker
First, there’s an aggressive proposal to close (and sell?) 5 RPS schools. Representative Jonathan Young (4th District) wants to use the profit from those closures to develop an elaborate city-wide bussing system that allows students to attend their “choice” of under-enrolled schools, well outside of their neighborhood.
Let me be very clear: There is no indication that the rest of the board supports this plan. Last time he floated a remarkably similar school closure, school-choice and transportation-overhaul (2019), his Board colleagues rejected the proposal. I very much expect the same response now. Especially since influential area leaders are chiming in with their disapproval.
What’s different between now and then is that Richmond’s schools are rapidly deteriorating, and RPS falls further behind each year because they cannot afford to make much needed repairs. The schools are failing faster than the city can build them. (See: “unfit” Elkhardt-Thompson Middle, toxic-mold at Elkhardt Middle, a suspected gas leak at Bellevue Elementary, and of course the Fox Elementary fire, just to name a few.)
This doesn’t mean school closures are imminent - but it does mean that a long-term solution deserves urgent attention.
Previously, that plan had been to dispose of vacant RPS properties, and use money from their sale to fund maintenance at other buildings. As these February 2020 meeting minutes show, the Board and Admin have been collaborating on this plan for a while.
Mr Young has spearheaded this work, leading RPS’ Vacant Property Committee. He’s proposed selling several vacant properties now, with mixed/little success.
Some properties are no longer vacant. Norrell School serves as office space for Central Office personnel, who no longer have room to operate in City Hall; and Clark Springs Elementary has reopened full-time to accommodate Fox Elementary students.
Some vacant properties aren’t ours. (Or are they? Story #3) The City intends to sell Arthur Ashe Jr Athletic Center and keep the proceeds - despite 40 years of this property being used and maintained by RPS. That’s an estimated loss of $8M.
Some vacant properties are in motion… but barely. Watching the sale of Moore St. is like watching a painfully slow game of Pong - where lawyers for the City and Schools are softly volleying tasks to one another. The community, Board, and City all want this sale completed, it’s just going at the pace of… well, government.
Some vacant properties are stuck in limbo. The third district and their representative are holding tight to a property adjacent to Holton Elementary School called “thirteen acres” (pictured below). They don’t want to keep it, necessarily, they just don’t want the city to sell it until the community knows who it will be sold to, and how it will be used. Sort of a “NIMBY” situation, except nobody really knows what they are opposing. (The value of this segment of the property is unknown, though the full acreage + Holton is estimated at $11M.)
All-in, that’s a lot of revenue Mr. Young was really counting on to develop a new trade school on the Altria site. He says that this vacant property is the “most ripe for retention and renovation by RPS” - though it will take an estimated $50M to get it done.
Today’s plan to close 5 active RPS schools to generate this revenue is sort of a plan B - er - plan C. (Advocating for a smaller George Wythe High School so there’d be leftover funds for a Woodville renovation and Altria Trade School was “plan B”.) These school closures are a hail-Mary pass when all his other attempts to generate CIP funds have failed.
Note: I go back and forth between whether I understand Young’s proposal to include sales or just the closures. On the one hand, he promoted the energy savings in his message to NBC12’s Henry Graff. This will bring some savings, especially since Dominion energy is increasing energy costs for RPS by 25% (or $1.38M) this year - while simultaneously lobbying to lift the cap on their profits.
On the other hand, I don’t understand how turning off light switches allows RPS to complete a $50M “Redesign of Career and Technical Education.” Hopefully I’ll have more details to report back after his pitch tonight.
I still think there’s a possibility of the City swooping in with CIP funds from either their Covid relief money, or their savings/reserves (which I opine about at length here). Coincidentally, I found a precedent for this kind of generous giving when researching this post.
In 2018, “Richmond City Council pumped about $4 million worth of renovations” into Overby-Sheppard Elementary School. Interim Superintendent Kranz said:
"I think the school system showed with this project that if you give us the funds we can get the job done."
Ironically, the public grievances between the Mayor, Council, and School Board over Arthur Ashe ownership, and money to rebuild George Wythe High School - which both featured a rather adversarial Rep Young - now cast a gloomy shadow over potential City/Schools CIP cooperation. Especially because the School Board worked so hard to embarrass the city over their prior construction work with RPS.
In any event - all of this is bound to absorb much of tomorrow’s 1-hour budget work session. It’s a very real problem, met with very little urgency by Young’s colleagues who rejected a Facilities Conditions Assessment last year, and no clear plans other than those Young has brought to the table.
Statewide Whoopsie-Daisy
This week we learned that “human error” has resulted in Virginia further cutting public school funds for the upcoming school year. Richmond is reportedly out another $3.2M in state funding. If we revisit some of our Board’s funding priorities from the Superintendent’s Draft Budget, we see that $3.2M roughly equals
Language-Justice initiatives for English Learners AND a 25% jump in energy costs to Dominion; or
All the district’s 2023 investments into athletics facilities; or
Student Wellness investments AND Playground investments AND saving 11 Nurse positions; or
The Richmond Virtual Academy
All that to say: losing this $3.2M dollars is a big deal, and it will not make the Board’s job of whittling down their budget any easier.
This is just the latest financial blow from a Governor whose legislative agenda continues to defund public schools across the state. As a reminder, the RPS Director of Advocacy reported last month that “the Governor’s budget proposals do not include any additional funding for the At-Risk Add-On, school construction, or other reform of education funding streams.” Those funding formulas - the LCI - lost RPS $10M last year, and RPS will “receive comparably less funding every year moving forward.”
We’re not the only ones in this pickle. Superintendents across the State are decrying this latest State funding shortfall:
“You’re robbing the poor and it’s not fair by any means... Your poorest districts are the ones get hit the hardest and that obviously is not a good idea.” - Kelly Wilmore, Grayson County Superintendent
This quote from the Pulaski Superintendent resonated, too, in light of Richmond City Council and Mayor’s recent $18M tax rebate:
“It appears that the state is flush with money in Richmond, proposing tax cuts and other spending, but that money is not getting down to the local level for public education.” - Superintendent Chris Stafford
For his part, Governor Youngkin “is confident that localities’ concerns will be addressed” - whatever that means.
I hope the Mayor and the rest of our elected officials are working as hard to lobby the Youngkin Administration for education funding as they are for a second casino referendum. After all, the city is destined to carry the burden of whatever the State won’t pay. (And the children will carry the burden of whatever the City won’t pay.)
This is important context for a claim the Mayor made in his State of the City address last night. His administration has increased funding for Richmond Public Schools by 33% since 2017.
A 33% increase may sound substantial - and it is! As Superintendent Kamras said last week - Richmond has been good to RPS.
But the city’s generosity does not mean that RPS is brimming with cash. It simply means that the City has had to fund more because the State will not. This was true before the pandemic, as this review of the state’s 2018-2020 budget shows:
“Virginia continues to disproportionately rely on local governments to fund public schools compared to other states – ranking in the middle of the pack in combined state and local spending per student, but in the bottom 25 percent of states (40th) in terms of state per pupil spending. These low levels of state funding have forced local governments to spend over twice as much as the state requires to meet the state’s Standards of Quality (SOQ) – spending $7.6 billion when the state requires $3.6 billion.” Commonwealth Institute
But the spread between the state and city’s contribution has only continued to grow - particularly under the Youngkin administration.
Calendar Craze
CBS6’s Tyler Layne reports that the Board will also discuss an investment in piloting an extended calendar at some RPS schools. There’s no mention of this cost in his piece, but a quick search through my archives shows that RPS has recently discussed a few district-wide measures to increase student class time. Both extending the calendar, or extending the school day have about a $50M price tag, to be paid for with remaining ARPA Covid relief funds. (Funding a few pilot programs would be considerably less.) Here’s my synopsis from November 21, 2022:
Year Round School. This proposal is ever-present in RPS the last couple years, and meets firm opposition from a loud contingency of parents and staff. It’s supported by several Board members, including Jonathan Young, who has seen its success at the Patrick Henry charter school in his district. Board skeptics include Stephanie Rizzi, who prefers our calendar to match surrounding localities, and Cheryl Burke, who worries about the impact on teacher turnover. In an earlier YRS presentation to the Board, the superintendent estimated the extra weeks of instruction would cost the district $50MM.
Extending the School Day. Experts suggest this is a great way to build in extra class time for tutoring and enrichment activities that would hasten the country’s academic recovery. We know that the RPS academic team favors this strategy. Just last month they proposed using “embedded 5th periods” to improve student graduation rates. There’s no associated cost listed in that presentation, but if we use the MLK/Henderson STEM academies as a guide - the “5th period” model carries a cost of roughly $1MM per school. This obviously isn’t a perfect comparison, but puts the cost of the extended school day strategy in the same ballpark as YRS ($50MM) if implemented in every district school.
What’s interesting about this, and Layne’s reporting yesterday, is that Rep Gibson appears to disregard the months and years of discussion, feedback, and surveys that have gone into this proposal:
"We have to have a budget finalized in just a few weeks at this point, and so it's just too late. It's too late to be entertaining this, and I think that unfortunately, it puts everyone under stress when there are such big unknowns looming," Gibson said.
As a district, Richmond is definitely late getting their 2023-24 calendar finalized. But the Board had deliberated an extended year plan for years now.
In March, 2021, when considering what RPS’ first post-pandemic in-person year (2021-22) would look like, the Board voted against an extended calendar.
"This is a change that that really requires considerable thought and planning," said Kenya Gibson, District 3 board member. "And, I think the consensus was that as a district, we just weren't there yet.”
In November of that year, the school division issued a survey testing the community’s appetite for various 2022-23 calendars, including one that extended the school year to 190 days. The Board passed a “traditional” calendar instead. Per the January 18, 2022 meeting minutes:
“The calendar recommendations for 2023-2024 school year was withdrawn for further discussion and deliberation.”
For those keeping track, that’s now two years worth of time to “deliberate.” This is certainly not a new or un-explored idea. It also made a comeback on the Board stage in November 2022, and in the press in December 2022. In that article, the Superintendent opines on this seemingly-endless discussion:
“It feels like the mantra is: ‘Fix everything, but don’t change anything.’”
This is one of the Board discussions (that is also enabled by the administration) that just needs to end. If this Board won’t pass the plan, try again with the next one. But Board members shouldn’t mislead the public into thinking RPS is blindsiding them with a proposal that is many years and many hours of discussion in the making.
One last thing to watch for:
A passionate stand over three of Rep Gibson’s budget priorities: the Richmond Virtual Academy ($3M), cell phone lockers ($250K) or pouches ($151K-$201K*), and a Deputy Clerk ($70K). She wasn’t at the joint meeting on Thursday, and she left Wednesday’s budget work session before some of these priorities were discussed, so I’m expecting to hear her thoughts on these chopping-block budgetary items that she’s long advocated for.
*Pouches are estimated at $15-20/person, and there are just over 10K 6th-12th graders enrolled in RPS this year.
That’s all for now - join Emily for a live-tweet of this budget meeting tomorrow at 6PM, then check back here for any new summaries/analysis.