A Facilities Recap: 2015-Present

Happy Wednesday, Board Watchers! RPS is set to approve its final budget in 5 days (Feb 20th) - and things are getting heated. Here’s a quick recap:

  • RPS’ draft budget asks the City of Richmond for an additional $28.3M. (pg 16)

  • The City has indicated that’s too much. Cut back. 

  • And the School Board hasn’t offered a single cut yet.

  • Instead, the budget wish-list has grown:

    • The Board wants to increase compensation for office staff, and increase retention bonuses

    • The Administration wants to include a 200-day calendar pilot program at Fairfield Elementary

    • The LULAC taskforce wants a new Department of English Learners

    • Fox Elementary needs $15M to complete reconstruction

All of this appears to have the City in a bit of a panic. City leaders (Council + Mayor) don’t want a budget this big falling in their lap for two reasons:

  1. They don’t want to cut an under-funded school district’s budget themselves, and

  2. They don’t want to find the money (via other cost-cuts or using savings)

I’m sure we’ll discuss the Board and Admin’s budget priorities at tonight’s Budget Meeting. We’re also scheduled to hear about the LULAC taskforce’s findings/proposal at the Feb 20th Board Meeting. So today I am focusing on an upcoming CIP debate: who will pay for Fox reconstruction, and how will it impact RPS’ existing new-construction priorities: Wythe and Woodville? 

To answer those questions, we need to take a deep dive into RPS’ long-term facilities plan(s). Settle in, yall, it’s story time:

In 2015, the Richmond School Board worked with Chief Operating Officer, Tommy Kranz, to develop a 20-year facilities plan. He warned of a facilities funding-cliff:

Many of our school buildings are failing. We can’t afford to maintain them all, and we can’t afford to replace them, either.

“23 of the 44 schools are in need of either a complete renovation/replacement or a major renovation.” (Source)

He recommended - and the Board supported - a long-term plan of consolidating 16 schools, building 7 new schools, and renovating others. (pgs 7&8, “Option 5”) But it came with a $563M price tag that no one would fund:

  • RPS only received $96,042 for their facilities that year; and the average facilities investment over the next 3 years was only $97.7K. At that rate of investment, it would have taken RPS 576 years to pull off “Option 5” alone.

  • The City didn’t have the money, either: 

  • The State hadn’t funded school facilities since 1932. They told localities to figure it out, and left 1,000+ schools to crumble all across the state. 

0.0% in FY2016??

Time made a bad problem worse. School buildings kept decaying, exceeding their capacity, and racking up repairs that no one could fund. 

Then, in 2017, Interim Superintendent Kranz got a second chance to move RPS away from its pattern of reactive facility investment, to proactive facility investment. He and a new School Board agreed to “Plan A” - an $800.1M facilities plan that prioritized school repairs and replacements by need. Ex: Woodville Elementary was slated for replacement in 2022. Fox Elementary, on the other hand, only needed renovations, and could wait until 2033.  

The first phase of “Plan A” included the construction of 3 new elementary schools, one new middle school, and one new high school, with an estimated price tag of $224.8M. 

New Mayor, Levar Stoney, promised that the city would fund the effort this time: “I remain committed to partnering with you to meet the needs of our schools. Our children deserve nothing less.”

In February 2018, he and City Council passed a Meals Tax increase that would:

  • “Generate $9.1 million in new funding per year” 

  • Increase the City’s debt capacity (or borrowing limit) from $66M to $150M; and,

  • Eventually pay off that debt.

The debt “payback” period got longer, though, as the first three construction projects went over-budget, and used up all $150 of the Meals Tax funding:

  • Cardinal Elementary: Projected $35M; Actual $42M.

  • Marsh Elementary: Projected $25M; Actual $40.1M

  • River City Middle: Projected $50M; Actual $63.9M

  • Source: Projected Costs / Actual Costs 

For the most part, these overages are due to the increased cost of labor and materials since 2017. However, the City (who managed the construction process) also outspent the state average on each project. 

Mayor Stoney and the City celebrated these projects none the less. In 2021, they even pledged an additional $200M for school modernization in their 5-year construction plan (FY22-FY26), to help RPS finish the remaining “Phase 1” schools, Wythe and Woodville.

The RPS School Board, however, was less enthusiastic about the City/School construction partnership. They blamed the school construction overages on City cronyism and corruption - but have offered no proof of these claims. They passed a Schools Build Schools resolution, cutting out the City, and instructing RPS to “solely own and oversee the bidding, design, and construction process for future schools built in the city of Richmond.” 

This officially ended the era of City/Schools facilities collaboration and general goodwill. The Mayor said of the Board:

“...they're unwilling. They've basically put their fingers in their ears and decided they didn't want to listen to the administration any longer." (Source)

Two weeks later, the School Board amended their “Phase 1” construction priorities to:

  • First: Construct a new George Wythe High School 

  • Second: Renovate the Altria property into a new career and technical education high school

  • Third: Construct a new Woodville Elementary School

The abrupt transition from City-managed construction to School-managed construction created quite a delay, though. RPS had no staff - and no budget for staff - to run an in-house construction department. The recruitment and hiring process took months.

There was also a highly-publicized battle between the City and RPS over the size of the next school project, replacing George Wythe High School. 

  • The Mayor, City Council, and 4-of-9 School Board Members favored a 2000 student school. This was the plan in “Option 5” (pg 5) - build bigger schools so the division could close down smaller, rapidly decaying school buildings that were now too expensive to operate and maintain. The larger school also reflected the census data that forecast growing student enrollment South of the James.

  • The slim Board Majority (5-of-9) favored a smaller Wythe (1,500 students) for a few different reasons: 

    • A smaller construction project would leave money leftover for the next projects in the queue (Altria, Woodville). 

    • They also believed smaller schools were safer and created a more welcoming environment for students. 

Each side dug their heels in - with the Board refusing to meet with City Council, and City Council refusing to release the funds for Wythe. Meanwhile, pandemic-era supply chain variability and inflation made the Wythe estimate jump from $85M in 2017, to $140M in 2021. 

The School Board hadn’t even received the $200M yet, and already the future of the $50M Altria renovation and the $20M Woodville replacement were in jeopardy. 

Then they all got slammed with a curveball. 

Enter: Fox Elementary School. When Covid forced students out in 2020, a rodent infestation moved in and munched on wires behind the walls. By the time schools reopened in the fall of 2021, the school needed constant electrical repair. In February 2022, the building caught fire, and a series of fumbles (RPS’ faulty fire alarms, RFD leaving the site after a hasty 12 minute inspection) left a shell-of-a-school vying for RPS’s limited Capital Improvement funds. Reconstruction will cost an estimated $27M.

Initially, the school’s insurance policy promised to cover the cost of a full rebuild. But as VaCorp’s months-long investigation wore on, and the building’s neglected* condition became apparent, that narrative changed. They offered $10M for the structure, and another $2-3M for the furnishings. (Last week, they increased that offer by $1M.) Still, that leaves a $15M funding gap that our City leaders need to address. 

*The 112-year-old school definitely had the bare-minimum maintenance for decades, but I refer you back to the part of this post where “the State wouldn’t help” and “City leadership gave RPS less than $1M/year for facility repairs for years.” Schools can not fix properties with money they do not receive.

The RPS administration acted first, asking the State’s General Assembly to foot the bill. Delegate Jeff Bourne - a former RPS Board member - introduced a bill to set $15M aside for Fox reconstruction. When that bill died a couple weeks ago, it set off a game of hot-potato between the already-dueling City and School Board. Who will pay?

Councilwoman Jordan wants RPS to reassign a portion of the $200M the Board is scheduled to receive in July 2023. She’s found an ally in 2nd District School Board Rep, Mariah White. Besides, the City had already lined up Diamond District developers to fund RPS’ Altria Trade School project (kinda), so all our CIP projects are covered, right? Not exactly. 

This installment of CIP money could pay off Wythe and renovate Fox, but it leaves nothing left for Woodville.
This $200M is also the only City CIP funding RPS is expected to get through FY26.
If RPS is going to replace Woodville before the current structure fails - they’re going to need more money.

This would all be really sad for Woodville if there were no other options. But there are other options:

The days of Mayor Jones’ maxed out city debt are over. In fact - just a couple of months ago, the City had so much extra money that they gave $18M dollars back to Richmond property owners (who also happen to be some of the city’s biggest businesses). That’s because the City of Richmond has had several years of surplus revenue: $21M in 2022, $22.3M in 2021, and $19M in 2020. Last week they reported $107.8M in unassigned general funds, $57.6M in unassigned capital funds, and a $25.2 stabilization contingency reserve. (pg 59)

City leadership could dip into any of these buckets of unassigned funds to offer a one-time $15M payment to rebuild Fox, and preserve the CIP funds for Woodville. They could even take a little bit of money from each! But they’re opposed to doing so because they want to maintain the City’s high (AA) bond rating. (Nevermind that they had $18M less in reserves last year, and still had a AA bond rating. Pgs 5 & 62) 

There may even be other viable funding sources! In which case, I’m all ears. But under no circumstances should Richmond settle for leaving Woodville to slowly crumble with students still inside it. 

Besides - reassigning $15M of that CIP money for Fox is not a sure thing. It’s a Board vote, and Mariah is only one of 9 Board members. If their choice is “Fox or Woodville?” they may just decide that the $2.5M they invested into renovating Clark Springs for Fox students was enough. They’d have a legitimate argument, too: Why should they give Fox students two “new” schools and Woodville none?

“Who pays” for $15M obviously has big implications on both the School’s and City’s budgets. The Board would have to move fast to incorporate a $15M ask into their final budget, though, which isn’t exactly the speed they’ve chosen so far. I’m hoping the Board weighs in on Ms. White’s Fox-promise at tonight’s budget meeting, or during Monday’s Fox update. I will of course let you know either way!

Update 2/20/2023: Since I published this article, City folks have suggested that there’s plenty of money for Woodville construction whenever School Board is ready for it. At this time, they still have not offered any proof that RPS will receive any additional CIP moneys through 2026. I will happily update this post if/when they do.

Becca DuVal