RPS Recap: A School Construction Update
Happy December, Board Watchers! It’s been a crazy season following the RPS Board, and trying to keep up was a bit like trying to drink from a fire hose. We only have one more meeting of 2023, though, so I’ll be playing catch up throughout the month with a few themed posts.
Today, we’re talking about School Construction; a “where are they now” for Richmond High School for the Arts (George Wythe), William Fox Elementary, and the Schools Build Schools resolution.
It’s long, but I do recommend reading it through instead of the usual a-la-carte format. Enjoy!
Richmond High School for the Arts
There hasn’t been a whole lot of visible progress on the new-George Wythe High School since the official groundbreaking ceremony on July 15th.
This event was supposed to mark the beginning of 6 months of “early site work” - preparing the land for new construction - and it did! Sorta.
The contractors stayed busy clearing trees, removing cobblestones around the old amphitheater, fencing off the site, and packing up the stadium lights for safe-keeping until they can be set up along the new athletic fields in 2027.
Unfortunately, a major part of the site work - the installation of a huge sewage pipe - got stuck in City-paperwork-hell, and added an extra 5 weeks to the project timeline.
RPS eventually posted the RFP (request for proposal) for construction on November 14th. They’ll bring the most responsible bid (qualified and cost-conscious) to the Board for approval in January.
Construction work is expected to take 2 full years.
If all goes according to plan, the new school will open to students in 2026.
Until then, it’s just a work in progress. Dirt. Trees. Cobblestones. Fencing. Sewage pipes. Ho hum. Wake me up when we get to the good part, right?
Local media will let us know if something important happens - if the project gets delayed or goes over budget - so that we can hold our leaders accountable.
What you’re not going to hear about, though, is the RHSA sophomore who came to the podium at the November 20th Board meeting to explain how challenging it has been to participate in sports this year.
The new school is being built on the old Wythe athletic field - so he and his teammates ride a bus 1.5 miles down the road to Westover Hills Elementary School. They practice football on the baseball field, where it’s apparently easier to roll an ankle? (Idk, I don’t speak sports.) It's dark when they get there, and dark when they leave.
He’s just one of the 1,284 RHSA students living in limbo.
1,284 students are in a mildew, mold, and rat-infested school that has too many doors - a feature the Board knows leaves students and staff vulnerable to individuals and weapons that bypass security checkpoints.
1,284 students have to watch a new school get built, knowing most of them will never learn inside of it…
Which is only slightly better than the 1,309 students who had to watch the story of their school play out in two years worth of dramatic, depressing Wythe construction headlines.
(We just got an RPS enrollment update, can you tell?)
It’s no wonder they’re tired, and eager for all of this to end:
“I just wanted to know if y’all could do better? Hopefully get the school built a little faster?” - Chris “Jr” Erby, RHSA sophomore
Unfortunately, RPS cannot build Wythe a little faster now. But they could have.
“George Wythe would be under construction right now if schools hadn’t taken back construction” Councilwoman Katherine Jordan, March 2022
Jordan is referring to the 2021 “Schools Build Schools” resolution (SBS), which ended the existing, collaborative construction process city leaders had just used to build three new schools in 2 years: Henry Marsh Elementary, Cardinal Elementary, and River City Middle School.
Those projects had gone $36M over the “initial estimates of $110 million, provided in 2017” which “under-represented the true cost of construction.” Part of that increase was due to the increased project “scope” - expanding Cardinal from 650 students to 750 - but mostly, the price tag of these schools was a result of “construction costs outpacing the rate of inflation.” This was a major bummer. RPS had hoped to build 4 schools with the $150M in Meals Tax revenue that new Mayor Stoney had levied (over heavy opposition from business leaders) specifically to fund new school construction; now they’d only get 3. Still, these schools had been built quickly, and provided additional safe, modern learning environments for 12% of RPS students (2,549). The Mayor took a victory lap:
“[City leaders and School Board have] proven this is possible when we put aside the self and focus on the community. Together, we’ll build a [new George Wythe] high school that reflects the potential, innovation and spirit of the students inside.” Mayor Stoney
And then, in March 2021, announced additional funds to keep the 4th school construction project - George Wythe - on track for a Fall 2024 opening, despite that earlier $36M setback.
“Mayor Levar M. Stoney’s administration …recommended that City Council increase the total amount available in the city’s capital budget for the school replacement from $100 million to $200 million, just in case.” Richmond Free Press
The City and School’s Joint Construction Team (JCT) wasted no time working up a Wythe design RFP (Request for Proposal) to release on April 26th, 2021 - but got cut short 6 days earlier when the Board passed a surprise, same-night motion: the Schools Build Schools resolution.
Here’s where the Wythe delays begin.
When Schools decided to Build Schools, they had no staff to oversee that work. They would need to hire folks, and build their own construction team from scratch. The superintendent warned: this process could take months.
“We would have to staff up… not just in our facilities department, but also in our procurement department. Doing so would take several months, and that in turn would delay the start of these projects rather significantly.
… If we take on this work ourselves, I do not anticipate such an RFP [design] going out until 2022. That’s just being realistic about what would need to happen for us to staff up to the point that we could execute on that process.
… I strongly urge the board to continue with the collaborative process [ with the city] which has worked very well…
…If we take on this process ourselves, [George Wythe] will not open until the Fall of 2026 at the earliest. That is just the reality of the decision that is before us.” (Watch)
You know that story about the man and the flood? He tells three different rescue boats that he doesn’t need their help - God will save me! Then he ends up drowning. When he gets to heaven, he asks God why didn’t you save me? and God says what do you mean? I sent three boats to rescue you!
The Richmond School Board is “drowning.” They can open a new George Wythe High School in 2024, but they’ve got to hop on a rescue boat to avoid significant delays.
Jason Kamras’ warning is the School Board’s first rescue boat.
The Board rejects his advice, and passes the SBS resolution anyway.
The Mayor sends the second rescue boat. He offers a short-term compromise: Use my design RFP, it’s ready to go out. Use my construction team while you hire people to staff your own.
“My administration will release the RFP for design services tomorrow and begin early site work in early weeks so that we reach our goal of getting kids into a new state-of-the-art George Wythe High school as soon as possible.” Mayor Stoney
The Board minority (Doerr, Burke, Page, Jones) are on board:
“Doerr suggested the school board should move forward with the mayor’s RFP and take him up on his offer to take over construction once the district has a full team.
Doerr’s resolution failed by a 5-4 vote. She voted against Young’s proposal, which she believes will delay the reconstruction of GWHS” VPM
School Board said “no.” They also instruct the superintendent to issue (procure) a Wythe design RFP by August 31, knowing full well that he does not have the staff to do this.
“We haven’t been able to hire [a procurement specialist] because most people who are worth their salt in this field watch our board meetings and don’t want to have anything to do with this process, to be quite frank. I have literally reached out to construction firms in this town begging for recommendations, and they tell me… they wouldn’t recommend anybody to come to RPS right now anyway, given the dysfunction that they see with this process.” Jason Kamras (Watch)
He calls this aggressive deadline a set-up - “so that when it [George Wythe] doesn’t open up in the fall of 2024, the Board can blame the administration.”
It takes RPS 6 and 7 months to assemble a construction team. There had been qualified applicants by month 3, but they’d “witnessed the back-and-forth over George Wythe” and “determined this would not be the best career move at this time.” (Watch)
Our Schools Build Schools champions weren’t exactly sending encouraging job stability vibes, either. Kenya Gibson tried to cut construction staff salaries by 20%, and Jonathan Young “submitted proposals to cut… two construction management jobs” from the 3-person construction “team.”
By now, there were sharks in the water, circling the drowning Board.
The SBS resolution that Gibson had branded an “act of community-first representation” - hadn’t actually involved the community at all. Nor did the Board’s July decision to shrink the promised 2,000 student school to 1,600.
“…there was backlash from city council members. Stephanie Lynch raised concerns that the community was supposed to be involved with the building of the new school and these proposals [for a 1600 student school] were sent out without efforts to gather different opinions.” ABC8
Their 5th District School Board representative swore that this decision was in the children’s best interest:
"Larger, consolidated schools make existing systemic problems worse (like poverty, racial discrimination, mental and physical health issues), while smaller schools can reduce the impacts these problems have on students." Rizzi
But any benefit-of-the-doubt was eroded by her colleagues, who were saturating local media with less sympathetic talking points:
“…[Young] wants to see the roughly 2,500 vacant seats in [other] high schools in the city utilized before they spend more money creating more space.” CBS6
Building a smaller school also belied census projections and plain old common sense:
Resident: “I’m wondering if you’re aware - they’re building about a 2,400-units apartment on Hull street, about the same on Midlothian behind the McDonalds; and also on Jahnke Road. I’m not sure what impact this will have…”
Principal Olds: “A big one.”
Resident: “Yes. So I think you said you’re building a school for like 1600 kids? 1800? Go back to 2000. That’s what they’re going to need. Those kids - from those apartments - some of those kids will come to George Wythe… the School Board and City Council need to be aware of what’s going on in our city. They need to be working together for the sake of the kids in the City of Richmond.” (Watch)
Besides, the optics of the whole thing were hard to ignore. A couple of representatives from wealthier, whiter districts had swatted away the Mayor’s promised 2,000-student-school-by-2024 6 days before the project was set to begin - then they’d replaced it with their own plan to disinvest in and significantly delay the opening of a new school that primarily serves Black and Hispanic students. (Watch)
Community members were angry and confused. They begged the School Board to meet with them, and organized a townhall to chat-it-out. It did not go well.
“…many board members were absent from the [Wythe community’s] town hall; including those who voted against working with the city, drawing criticism from those at the town hall.” NBC12
The Board didn’t know it yet, but repeated invitations to meet with community leaders was the Board’s last rescue boat, and they’d just shooed it away:
“It’s disrespecting us. It’s making us aware that they have no intention of engaging us, and that what we think and what we want does not matter to them because they’ve already decided,” Wythe Alumna, Rev. Robin Mines
Community members were furious. They sought help from the NAACP, considered legal action - even recalling obstinate Board members - before asking City leaders to take drastic action: hold the Wythe construction money until the Board engages the community, and address their concerns. City Council agreed:
“As chair of the finance committee, I guarantee you, I am willing to hold [Wythe] funding until we get a plan, until we know where we’re going,” 9th District Councilman, Mike Jones
School Board refused to meet City Council for another 4 months.
They felt their authority was absolute. Sure, they need to submit detailed spend-plans to the VDOE anytime they want to spend a few million dollars worth of State money - but City Council should just write RPS a $200M school construction check and bugger off.
Weeks passed before the Mayor made another plea for compromise. There was no way the City’s construction team could build a school by 2024 now, but if the Board followed the city’s advice, and used the city’s resources, they could still open Wythe by the Fall of 2025.
The Board’s response?
“Get out of our way, we’re going”
They decided to defund maintenance projects across the district - a new generator for Blackwell, a new fire alarm system for Brown, new roofs for Carver and Chimborazo elementary schools, and tennis courts for Boushall - in order to press forward building Wythe without the City. (Using maintenance funds for new construction was not exactly legal, and would not actually fund a 1600-student Wythe design, but did delay these facility repairs by a year.)
“They've basically put their fingers in their ears and decided they didn't want to listen to the administration any longer." Mayor Stoney
That was a fair assessment. They could not even agree on basic facts. If the Mayor said the sky is blue, half the Board would say “totally.”
“The city has extended an olive branch to collaborate with the school board many times, and that has not happened" Page
And the other half would say:
“I think the delay is happening because the city is refusing to collaborate with the School Board.” Rizzi
Gibson, the Board’s new Vice-chair, seemed poised to keep this up forever. She dismissed calls for collaboration with the city and getting along:
“This is about politics. And there are two sides. And one is in the right.” (Watch)
Her colleagues were running out of steam, though. They eventually met with City Council to negotiate an 1800-student school compromise. Gibson showed up late and left early.
Somehow, the superintendent managed to quickly release a Wythe design RFP despite significant Board-inflicted turbulence that caused the school construction team’s boss to resign.
“Despite my best efforts to retain her, [Chief Operating Officer Alana Gonzalez] felt she could not effectively perform her duties given the current political climate, in which she has felt harassed, undermined and demeaned… I am working on a plan to manage her portfolio once she leaves, but do want to be clear that many operational projects will be delayed, as the team is already stretched to the breaking point.”
The Wythe project officially began in May 2022 - just over a year after the Board passed the Schools Build Schools resolution. This timing was exactly as the superintendent had warned.
So, sadly, no. RPS cannot build RHSA any faster. The Board is fresh out of rescue boats, and any hopes for a 2024 or 2025 reopening sank with them. They tread water for 11 months and ignored the advice and pleas of everyone around them in a fruitless effort to save $40M.
In 2021, Wythe was expected to cost $140M.
Today, that estimate is $154M.
To shrink that price tag, Young and Gibson are again considering reducing the size of the school to reflect current enrollment (1300).
”I appreciate Mr. Young asking his question regarding enrollment at the school formerly known as George Wythe. Given the acute issues we are having with our facilities, it makes it even more critical that we are being very intentional about how we spend our limited capital dollars.” Gibson, Nov 2023
Fox Restoration
Note: I will call William Fox Elementary School “WFES”, and our Chief Operating Officer Dana Fox just “COO Fox.”
There’s also a sorta slow bit in the middle of this essay where we talk about government procurement lingo (like that) for a minute. If you stick with it, you’ll be rewarded with some juicy accusations of collusion towards the end!
If the Wythe delays are a story about ego and obstinance, Fox’s is a (mostly) boring story of government.
William Fox Elementary burned down 659 days ago. It sat empty and waterlogged for months, just waiting.
Waiting for the Richmond Fire Department to return the property to RPS. (July 2022, 5 months post-fire)
Waiting for the Insurance company to finalize their damage assessment. (January 2023, 11 months post-fire)
…and payout the claim (March 2023, 13 months post-fire)
Waiting for the release of construction funds - $15M from the City, $5.6M from the State. (July 2023, 17 months post-fire)
Waiting for the Department of Historic Resources to amend-and-approve the new building design, so that RPS is eligible to receive historic tax credits. (October 2023, 20 months post-fire); and now…
Waiting for the bidding window to close, so that RPS can award the construction contract to the most responsible bidder. (November 2023, 21 months post-fire)
Construction will begin in the new year (or maybe this month?) - and the school will open in the Fall of 2025. Fear not, naysayers! This is actually written into the construction contract:
…the Undersigned agrees to complete the work by the following dates:
Substantial Completion: May 1, 2025
Final Completion: July 1, 2025
Like Wythe, the Board’s decisions have had a significant impact on the WFES timeline.
They refused the Mayor’s offer to use his construction team while RPS was still struggling to hire their own. They also ignored the city’s advice to use a construction strategy that would “ensure quicker completion” of the WFES restoration. (By July/August 2024.)
The School Board decided to do it their way. They would contract a design in June 2022, finalize that, then pursue a separate contract for construction in October 2023. This process is called “Design-Bid-Build,” and the idea, very simply, is that by procuring (purchasing/contracting) these services separately, and receiving multiple bids for each, RPS can negotiate the best deal for both. But, since the design and construction timelines don’t overlap, this method pushes the project completion out a year.
The City prefers “Construction Manager At Risk” (“CMAR”) - an all-inclusive contract that “allows faster completion and greater control over costs.” It’s still bid competitively, just as a bundle deal at the beginning of the project. It includes the design, construction, and someone to oversee all of the moving pieces. CMAR bids consider cost - but weigh other factors (like qualifications), too.
CMAR generally benefits larger construction companies. Contractors need to have access to a lot of money - because they are “at risk” of paying any costs over the agreed upon “guaranteed maximum price.” A CMAR may still sub-contract work to the smaller companies - but those jobs generally pay less than if the smaller companies had negotiated their price directly with the owner (RPS).
This is why, in 2018, when the Mayor announced his intention to build three new schools (Marsh, Cardinal, River City) with CMAR, he got a letter from Jack Dyer, president of Virginia Contractor Procurement Alliance.
The smaller construction companies Dyer represent would struggle to compete for CMAR contracts, but they still want a piece of the $150M Meals-Tax-School-Construction pie. Please use DBB instead?
The Joint Construction Team (RPS+City) had been expecting this.
They had just weighed the benefits of CMAR (quicker completion) and DBB (bidding design and construction separately to drive down costs), and decided that CMAR best suited RPS’ aggressive construction timeline:
“RPS has requested that, if possible, the completion of the 4 new school investments be completed as soon as three (3) years versus the original five (5) year plan.”
The city’s procurement director agreed with this decision, but warned:
“Virginia Government Procurement Group may contact members of this group and try to persuade them not to use CMAR, but we must look out for the City’s interests first.”
The School Board was excited. Gibson, who had studied architecture in school, said “we must be saving a considerable amount” by ensuring the designer and construction team work collaboratively.
She was concerned that they were “making solid decisions based on [2017 cost] estimates,” though. Interim Superintendent Kranz had suggested these 3 new schools would cost $110M; but Gibson knew “as the project becomes more real, the numbers become more real.”
That didn’t stop her from experiencing sticker-shock when the CMAR released updated estimates in March 2019:
“The $110 million projected cost attached to the three schools has increased 27 percent, to $140 million, in the 15 months since the board’s approval [of a 5-year construction plan].” Richmond Times Dispatch
Gibson, Young, Sapini (5th) and Cosby (6th) wrote to the JCT and the press demanding answers.
Dyer was quick to step in with his own explanation. He compared regional school construction costs and “found that the city is paying significantly more per square foot for schools than neighboring Chesterfield.” He credited Chesterfield’s savings to their use of Design-Bid-Build, and recommended the city abandon their use of CMAR:
“When you eliminate competition, the cost of your project is going to increase.” Dyer
He was right and he was wrong. Richmond paid $267 sq/ft for a 750 kid school in 2020 (Marsh), while Chesterfield had paid $221 sq/ft for a 800-kid school (Matoaca) just a year earlier - a difference of $46 sq/ft. But the procurement method isn’t the only variable that affects school construction costs. In fact, I’m not even sure that it affects school construction costs much at all. Consider these two examples:
Example 1: Henrico built two identical high schools in 2020 - both via Design-Bid-Build - and one school still ended up costing $20 sq/ft more than the other.
Example 2: RPS (CMAR) paid $15 sq/ft more than Chesterfield (DBB, single bid) to build their middle schools. They both exceeded state cost per sq/ft, and both came in under the state average for cost per pupil.
Regardless, Dyer shared his findings with the press. The very next day, he joined a press conference with Gibson and councilwomen Kim Gray and Kristen Nye (Larson).
Nye had introduced (and passed) her own Schools Build Schools resolution a year ago to ensure that RPS wouldn’t experience construction surprises like this one. Now, she and her fellow-former-Board colleague, Gray, had become DBB evangelists, too. They parroted Dyer’s talking points and urged the city to abandon its use of CMAR. (This did not pass.)
[The JCT defended their use of CMAR. CMAR wasn’t in the best interest of Dyer’s lobbying group, but choosing the quicker construction process was in the best interest of the kids:
“We’re proud of the decision and the process to build three new state-of-the-art schools ready to serve 2,800 children… The use of CM At-Risk to make this happen was an easy decision: We prioritized kids over contractors.” Chief Administrative Officer Lincoln Saunders
The Richmond Times Dispatch offered this very-relevant context:
“George Mason was almost closed in 2017 because of rodents, poor air quality and leaking bathrooms, among other problems. Greene and Elkhardt-Thompson Middle School are also in poor shape, with the new schools providing relief for the school facility itself and overcrowding in South Side schools.
With the widespread issues, school and city leaders have said they need to get as many students in new schools as soon as possible. Under the current construction plans, that’s the fall of 2020.”
But Gibson had her own theories about the Mayor’s (city’s) “arbitrarily compressed timeline:”
“Ms. Gibson said that the high cost Richmond is paying was “designed to ensure the schools were built before the (mayoral) election” in November 2020.” Richmond Free Press
“Rushing these projects to win re-election headlines seems audacious, but unfortunately, I worry that’s exactly what happened,” Gibson
She also suspected the Mayor “selected construction and engineer firms that have donated to the mayor’s political campaign for the school construction projects, alleging that the city’s procurement process steers contracts to the mayor’s political patrons.” (Richmond Times Dispatch) Per usual, Gibson offered no evidence to support these claims, and none were challenged by Richmond area reporters.
Young’s opposition was much simpler:
"The taxpayers got hosed" Jonathan Young
Richmond might have saved $8M on construction costs - but it was too little too late. Our DBB-zealots wouldn’t get another chance to win the construction-method debate until early 2021, when the Mayor committed an additional $200M towards school construction in his FY2022 budget.
Young and Gibson were determined to spend this money more efficiently.
They were determined to use Design-Bid-Build.
And they were determined to build these schools alone.
Boooo, Schools Build Schools again? And after such a long story-time! Wasn’t this essay supposed to be about the reconstruction of Fox?
It was, and it is.
Fast forward to October, 2023.
COO Fox releases RPS’ first school construction RFP. (Request for proposal)
In it, she includes that aggressive 19-month completion deadline.
She knows that quick turnaround will deter some bidders, but is encouraged when 18 folks show up for the “pre-bid meeting” anyway. (That’s a walkthrough of the property, where contractors ask questions about the project and have their own sub-contractors along to provide cost estimates.)
She posts that sign-in sheet online.
Many of these contractors followed up with RPS and the design firm, Quinn Evans, in the weeks to follow. She told the Board:
“The RPS Procurement Team and Quinn Evans have received several questions from interested bidders about the project and drawings.” (Nov 6)
Unfortunately, come bid day (Nov 9) - only one contractor showed up. Gulf Seaboard will do the work for $30M.
This was not ideal.
The beauty of Schools Build Schools and Design-Bid-Build was (supposed to be) lower construction costs as a result of increased competition. This one bid had no competitor, and it was about $5M higher than the division was expecting.
COO Fox spent the next 6 days calling up everyone on the pre-bid meeting sign in sheet. Why didn’t you bid?
On Nov 20th, she shared their answers with the Board. Here are a few, in her exact words:
It’s going to take a lot of attention.
It’s an extremely short schedule for the task.
Overall, felt the complexities, the media attention on this project, and the short length were all reasons to not bid.
Didn’t think they would be competitive based on the scope of the project, and the other [general contractors] who attended the pre-bid.
They have two other very large projects, this was bad timing
Gulf Seaboard are “tough competitors.”
“Overall, the theme was, it’s a contractor’s market, they are cherry picking the jobs they want to do, and this is a very time consuming project. It’s a historic project. It’s an existing building. It’s hard to get in there and get the work done quickly versus new and shiny new construction.” (Watch)
This frustrated Nicole Jones. She’d asked COO Fox if there was anything about this project that would limit contractor participation, and obviously parts of the scope (short timeline, the complexities of repairing a historic building) had turned away quite a few bidders. She berated Fox for withholding information, like that sign-in sheet. It was “very unfair” to receive this information now, when they were expected to vote on the contract.
Fox had not asked or recommended Jones/the Board approve the contract that night (or at all) - but WFES parents surely had.
If the Board rejected this bid, and put the contract back on the street, it would delay the project by months and push back the completion date well past the administration’s promised Fall 2025 reopening.
Besides, there had only been one bidder. There was no reason to believe that waiting around would produce any other bids, much less better ones.
Dr. Harris-Muhammed piled-on, telling COO Fox that the Board will never trust the administration until they learn how to read the Board’s minds.
(They really, really do not seem to like her very much.)
Gibson defends COO Fox. (Weird, right?) The administration didn’t hide anything, all the information was on the website - just like every other RFP the Board has ever issued - if only her colleagues had cared to look.
Gibson also shares her single-bid disappointment. It doesn’t “highlight any impropriety on the part of the administration;” but, maybe the bidders colluded? Maybe they agreed “you get that project, I’ll get this one” so that each could set a higher price? Maybe we can have our lawyers investigate that?
Of course, they already know why they didn’t get other bids. The GCs had told them:
Gulf Seaboard are ‘tough competitors.’”
And, they “didn’t think they would be competitive based on the scope of the project, and the other [general contractors] who attended the pre-bid.”
These contractors didn’t bid because the winning bidder, Gulf Seaboard, is a big fish in a small pond. Not big enough to compete against CMAR contractors (who are basically whales, the Walmarts and Amazons of the construction world) - but they’re still big enough to chase all the little guys away.
The Board accepts this bid because - what else can they do?
They’d gambled big:
Pushed the project's completion back an entire year.
Paid $500k/year to maintain their own in-house construction team.
Soured the trust of the community
Set fire to their relationships with everyone in City Hall.
All for one over-budget bid with no competing offers.
The only winner here is Jack Dyer, who is laughing all the way to the bank to cash his $30,437,000 check.
What’s that? Oh. Yes. Jack Dyer is the founder and owner of Gulf Seabord. He’s also the president of the Virginia Contractor Procurement Alliance.
You knew he was self-interested all along though, right? C’mon. This is business! Jack was expanding the DBB market, and stood to benefit greatly if Richmond leaders used their position of influence to nuke the CMAR-competition.
The VCPA is going around the state - suing Roanoke - and pushing the DBB agenda because it “ensures that the same handful of firms don’t automatically get all the business.” But really, DBB ensures the same handful of CMAR firms don’t get all the business, because those construction giants don’t usually waste their time on smaller DBB contracts.
Dyer, Gulf Seaboard, others in the VCPA - they’re big fish in a small pond. All they have to do is put their name on a pre-bid sign-in sheet and the little fish pack up and move on to the next gig.
So, no. Jack Dyer didn’t need to collude with other bidders to win the first Schools Build Schools construction contract. All he had to do was ask nicely and wait 3 years for Young and Gibson to fight off city leaders, their own school administration, and all his big CMAR competitors.
Thanks to the work of his pro-bono lobbyists on the Richmond School Board, Dyer had plenty of time to pursue a senate campaign, where he promised to “fight back against woke school boards” and “get CRT out of the classroom.” He also donated $2,500 to oppose a democratically elected school board in Hanover, and $250 to Kim Gray’s mayoral campaign in 2020. (I wonder if they met at that press conference?)
Fortunately for us, Jack’s construction quality is better than his politics. His company, Gulf Seaboard, practically installed the new roof on WFES overnight. This prior experience with RPS and their familiarity with the building make them an ideal candidate to do this work.
Thanks to design-bid-build, and the absence of CMAR rivals, Gulf Seaboard has built quite a sizable portfolio of school projects in the region. They’re building two new middle schools in Chesterfield and recently wrapped up Highland Springs - one of the two Henrico high schools we talked about earlier. Highland Springs was the more expensive one. It cost $18M more than the 2018 estimate, and $6M more than it’s twin, JR Tucker.
By contrast, RPS’ 3 CMAR schools cost $36M (total) over their 2017 estimate - about $12M more per school. They also opened a year sooner than Jack’s DBB school.
I’m still not sure which construction method is cheaper. I also super duper don’t care. Local government is there to provide me a service - like, replace my kid’s burned down school as soon as possible. If our leaders are going to slow that process down, I expect them to justify it with more than a local business’s self-interested plea, or their own suspicion towards a Mayor they begrudge for winning re-election.
So, I think Gibson is right:
“This is about politics. And there are two sides. And one is in the right.”
I just suspect the right side is this one:
“We prioritized kids over contractors.” Chief Administrative Officer Lincoln Saunders
In their defense
“Look… it is a well known fact that there has been - um - conflict between RPS, the city, and various government entities. But… the work of the JCT has been quite noteworthy - (To the press) in fact, if any of you want to do a story on it - I’m always told that news is the uncommon thing. Well, RPS and the City getting along and achieving things for kids is the uncommon thing.
…and I think our kids and our families and our city would be well served if - instead of us continually retreating to our position of distrust - and I understand there’s good reason for that - [continued city/rps cooperation] could be a trust-building measure…” Jason Kamras, October 1, 2019
Nobody in this story is stupid.
Maybe naive.
Definitely bias.
But not stupid.
Every objection Gibson and Young share is rooted in some fact, somewhere, in recent city history.
Kristen Nye served on School Board in 2015 when RPS built Huguenot High School with the City. It was plagued with issues from the beginning, including a failed gym floor installation that cost RPS $131,331 to replace 3 years later.
Nye and Jonathan Young - her successor on School Board - believed these deficiencies were the result of poor project management and a lack of accountability.
“I am very disappointed with all the problems that we have [at Huguenot] and what that means - first and foremost for our students and staff - but also for the taxpayers.” Young
This experience prompted now-Councilwoman Nye to introduce a school construction reform paper in April 2018.
“As long as the School Board and the school system has the capacity to support school construction and oversee the process, they should… I think schools should build schools and the city should build city buildings.” Nye
This paper came as a surprise to the RPS administration, “Mayor Levar Stoney and the School Board — other than the board’s 4th district representative Jonathan Young.”
Council granted RPS oversight of the design and construction of public schools a few weeks later.
Of course - RPS did not have “the capacity [ie, staff] to support school construction” - so brand-new Superintendent Jason Kamras recommended the continued use of the city’s construction team, and the creation of a “Joint Construction Taskforce” to oversee the process.
This didn’t quite go far enough for Young, who held a HUGE-enot grudge against the city’s construction team.
“I think it’s imperative for us that we hold some people accountable… but I understand because of our past arrangement [city-led school construction], that’s more difficult for us as RPS asbent city intervention.”
He and Gibson were the only ones to oppose the JCT on May 7, 2018.
“Though I am eager to get our students out of some awful facilities ASAP - and it's imperative that we do that - I am also eager to see that the tax payers not be taken for another right and, uh. They have been.” Young
Gibson’s focus was less on city incompetency and more on city suspicion.
Earlier in the evening, Superintendent Kamras presented RPS and the city’s conflicting financial records. RPS believed they had $18M remaining from the last round of school construction projects (2012-2015), but city records only showed $16.6M remaining.
There was a super boring explanation for the missing $1.4M: the city records are coded one way, and the schools’ are coded another. Kamras suggested the two parties work to align their records, which they go on to do via the JCT. This work even gets a shout out in this 2019 City Auditor Report: “communication between City and RPS staff has improved since FY17.”
Gibson, of course, defaulted to suspicion.
Mayor Dwight Jones’ administration had built those schools, and he had just recently left office under investigation for possibly using “city contacts to get lower prices on [his] church[‘s] construction.” (Style Weekly)
Mayor Jones had a deeply antagonistic relationship with Richmond Public Schools. According to RPS lore:
He refused to fully fund public schools he considered “mediocre”, and assembled a “Schools Accountability and Efficiency Review Task Force” (paid for and made up of self-interested local business leaders) to justify budget cuts. When the Board refused, he stocked the School Board with allies (his deputy chief of staff, his son), forced out the superintendent, hand-picked her successor. When asked to fund the RPS facilities repair/replacement plan, he maintained that RPS was wasteful and threatened to close under-enrolled schools instead. He also tried to tie funding to academic performance, needlessly humiliated teachers, and generally ran the city in a way that “smacks of cronyism” and benefits Richmond’s “old corporate elite.”
There’s a whole lot of fiction mixed in with facts there, but yeesh. I wouldn’t wanna build schools with that guy, either!
The voters had shaken the etch-a-sketch in 2016, replacing city leadership with new “Education Mayor.” Levar Stoney. He’d been endorsed by the Richmond Educators Association, hit the ground running with the “largest increase in education funding by any mayor in Richmond’s history,” and spent his first year overcoming opposition from business leaders to launch a new Meals Tax to fund $150M in new school construction. He was reading poetry with the School Board, trading jokes with Board members, and building trust in an effort to heal old divisions.
“In order for us to get what we want out of our school system - out of our city - it’s going to take us reaching some sort of grand compromise amongst all bodies.” Stoney
These were new, exciting, build-new-schools times - or they could have been.
Instead, the new School Board (and the city they represent), could not move past the enormous shadow of Mayor Jones’ 8-year reign, and the 4 years his “street fighter” predecessor (Douglas Wilder) spent evicting RPS from City Hall and getting sued by RPS and City Council at the same time. (I really don’t have the energy to go down the Wilder legacy rabbit hole, but I bet that’s a solid read.)
Gibson wasn’t the only suspicious one. Local politicos and RPS employees were suspicious of our new Mayor, too.
Was Stoney using Jason Kamras to consolidate power and take control of RPS?
Would the Mayor use the city’s construction department to embezzle RPS funds?
Can they be trusted?
These questions are reasonable. The Richmond they had left in 2016 was absolutely crazy. A real life Gotham City (but, with more potholes and a reputation for the gratuitous use of Sriracha sauce.)
But, when you read Richmond’s school-construction story backwards - as you just have - you start to realize how many of the characters in it are fighting with ghosts. Some more than others:
“We have decided as a Board that enough is enough with whatever cronyism is going on. We will build these schools right. We will spend money efficiently and fairly, and build great schools.” Kenya Gibson
“We can fix even another school - as long as we’re not pocketing the cash or giving it to folks that donated to our campaign.” Kenya Gibson
“As the mayor pushes for casino deals we must ensure school construction prioritizes students rather than political priorities” Kenya Gibson
Stoney has gone on to make hundreds of his own mistakes since this saga began. Kamras, too. All I’m saying is - building schools together wasn’t one of them.
“Just to be frank - Bricks are not our core competency. Books are. And I believe we should continue to keep our focus on teaching and learning. If we are the ones overseeing day-to-day [school] construction, that means a lot of my time and energy, and a lot of the team's time and energy are focused on that, when really, I want the team spending +90% focused on MAPs scores and PALs scores and the social and emotional wellbeing of our children.” Jason Kamras