RPS Preview: The FY24 Budget Finale

Happy Saturday, Board Watchers. Our Board is set to approve the 2024 budget in 2 days, so I’d like to give you a quick run down of the Board’s budget priorities, how they’re feeling about it, and how it compares to the counties. I’ll close with a quick look ahead to Monday’s meeting. Let’s jump in!

  • Consensus Tracker

  • CIP Concerns

  • Conflict

  • Agenda Preview 

(Sorry, my OCD friends, who expected more alliteration.)

Consensus Tracker

Thus far, Superintendent Kamras has had a tough time getting this Board to focus on the budget. Instead, they’ve been hellbent on delaying decision making - either by asking for more data, asking for data they’ve already been given, or making entirely unrelated same-night motions.

Enter: The Consensus Tracker. A tool he used to go line-by-line, collect Board feedback, then highlighting each budget priority in green (for “fund”) and red (for “cut”). Here’s what RPS will be asking the city to fund: 

  • All Teacher & Staff raises, which now includes Office Associates. (The idea is to make RPS the highest-paying school district in the region.)

  • NO Crisis Support Team (Which is a bummer; I’ve since learned that Henrico and area private schools rely on them.)

  • New Student Wellness Positions: 5 Social Workers, 2 Care & Safety Associates, 1 Counselor and 1 Coach.

  • Athletic Investments (1 coordinator, 2 grounds maintenance personnel, and $500K for equipment and facility maintenance.)

  • 4 New ESL Teachers, 2 Bilingual Social Workers, 1 Welcome Center Counselor, & misc training for existing staff.

  • Moving all full-time staff off of one-time Covid relief funds, and onto the permanent payroll (operating budget). 

  • All Board Priorities (including a deputy clerk, $100K towards school renamings, all specialty school tuition increases, etc.)

  • All Central Office cuts except the gifted and talented coordinator position, and a (vacant?) Office Associate position.

  • There is no consensus about facilities upgrades/maintenance. (These are called “Capital Improvements” or CIP.)

It’s important to note that this is the funding stage of the district’s 2023-24 planning. There are still many implementation questions the Board has to make between now and then. For example:

  • Do they want to fund the same 30 positions in the Richmond Virtual Academy? Or, for example, would they like to swap a teacher position for a coach or specialist position?

  • They funded additional seats to specialty schools, but they can still decide how to award those seats most equitably. 

Of course, “consensus” means these decisions are supported by a majority of the Board - not all of the Board. Several agreed-upon items have fierce opposition by a minority of members, and will likely spark additional debate on Monday night.

CIP Concerns

The biggest budget questionmark remains the division’s CIP investments. This is our facilities, or “Capital Improvement” plan for the next year, and it’s controversial for a few reasons.

First: It doesn’t go far enough. The proposed improvements amount to $9.5M in a district with a $1.5-2 BILLION dollar deferred maintenance list. 

Second: The suggested improvements to athletic facilities and playgrounds have mixed-support. 

  • The Superintendent intended these athletics improvements to be part of a plan to support student’s social, emotional, and physical health. He also hopes these amenities improve student’s attendance by making school more appealing.

  • Board members like Dawn Page (8th) and Chairwoman Rizzi (5th) also know that students cannot pursue athletic interests if they’re never exposed to them. (For example: Rizzi notes that it’s a “deep shame” that the city that produced Arthur Ashe doesn’t even have a single High School tennis team.)

  • Mariah White seemingly argued both sides of the coin - surrounding communities will hate the bright stadium lights, but also it’s so dark that my sons can’t play sports in the city - RPS teams travel to the counties to play.

  • Third District Rep, Kenya Gibson, talks about the investments into bleachers, tennis courts, and running tracks as luxuries in a district with schools that have buckling walls. 

  • Per usual, the former Chairwoman, 6th District Rep Harris-Muhammed, uses this discussion to criticize the administration. Where are the surveys to support these recommendations? 

The bottom line is this: RPS facilities are in dire condition because - as Page says - they “never received the appropriate amount of funding.” She’s right, of course. The city “kicked the can down the road” for years, appropriating less than a million dollars a year for facility maintenance - often making up 0.0% of the RPS budget. (*No, you’re not crazy! I shared that factoid in a blog post earlier this week that I have temporarily unpublished while I do additional research.) 

The Superintendent understands that this is a hard decision. He agrees that the division's “needs are legion” but offers a familiar reality check: “resources are scarce.”

Rep Young takes a slight tangent, hinting at a much larger conversation for another time:

The Board’s 5-year facilities plan is way off course. Every project has come in over-budget, and it’s “highly unlikely” that they’ll be able to fund the Wythe and Woodville replacements, the Altria building renovation, and Fox reconstruction with their remaining City CIP monies. If his colleagues won’t consider his proposal to shut down several RPS Schools - they won’t - they’re going to need to prioritize which of their existing CIP “commitments” they will honor. (If the Board makes it to the 17th and 18th items on Monday’s agenda - Fox and Wythe updates - I’m sure we can expect more discussion on this.)

Conflict

The early days of budget season were full of promise, as though the Board had just received an enormous gift card. Think of all the initiatives we can fund! 

But reality has gradually set in: 

  • The Board will not be able to fund all of their “wants”

  • Their colleagues disagree on which budget priorities are “needs” 

  • The political work of consensus-building is hard

  • The potential backlash for defunding their friends’ and constituents’ priorities is hard; and

  • Being accountable for the impact of their budget decisions is hard

What hasn’t occurred to several of them, though, is that none of this is the superintendent’s fault. 

Virginia has a Republican Governor whose legislative majority in the House opted not to put more money into public schools:

At the local level, Richmond City leaders have a lot of competing budget priorities. They already gave back last year’s $18M surplus to taxpayers, they have critical staffing shortages in both their police department and their jail, and collective bargaining demands are popping up everywhere. 

All of this appears to have overwhelmed and/or frustrated the Richmond School Board. Since they cannot control these State and City forces - they spent Wednesday night shooting the messenger instead. Take the conversation of RIFs, for example:

The Board has a number of budget priorities they’d like to add, but the budget is tight. To free up the necessary funds, Superintendent Kamras asked each member of his cabinet to identify cost savings within their departments. Some Chiefs cut software or other non-critical expenditures. Some Chiefs suggested RIFs - a reduction in their workforce. 

By cutting central office staff, Kamras can continue to fund current school staff and student services. 

The Board responded to these RIF recommendations two ways:

  • Why would you fire these qualified, hard-working people? (Watch) And,

  • Do the Directors in each department support firing these positions? (Directors report up to Chiefs.) Why don’t you know? 

It’s a curious line of questioning that suggests the RIF recommendations are personal - as though the Superintendent is sacrificing because he doesn't like them, or doesn’t value the work that they do. 

“Do I want to make any of these cuts? No… In fact, RPS can use a lot more help. What I was trying to do was prioritize schools above all else.”

(This does little to comfort Rep Harris-Muhammed, who illustrates her support for potentially RIFed staff by throwing down her glasses and warning the Superintendent that she’s “coming on Monday.”)

The other suggestion - that Directors must approve hiring/firing recommendations - implies that the chain of authority should actually work in reverse:

  • The superintendent should yield decision-making to his cabinet members…

  • Who should yield decision-making to their directors…

  • Who should yield decision-making to principals…

  • Who should yield decision-making to teachers. 

Resenting the chain of command is a theme we see a lot on this Board. Every decision must be made by a teacher, parent or student survey. BIG decisions are entrusted to hastily compiled taskforces. Sometimes they accept principal feedback (usually when it aligns with their own instincts.) But under no condition will the Board trust recommendations from the superintendent or his cabinet - no matter how urgent, or how inconsequential. 

“Mr. Kamras, do we have a survey or anything indicating that the staff and the community and the students wanted to resurface the tennis courts?” - Dr. Harris-Muhammed

Honestly, this goes back to how hard it is for this Board to build political consensus, and how terrified they seem to be of owning any consequences of their decisions. It’s probably why they make so few of them - instead pretending the Superintendent hasn’t adequately prepared them to act, as though he hasn’t answered every one of their 58 budget questions.

For his part - Superintendent Kamras is fighting no battles. He has been an absolute door mat, repeatedly assuring the Board that the budget is their work, and that he will update the proposal any which way they tell him to:

“Again - I am happy to change anything in this proposal. I just need clarity from the Board as to the direction that they would like to go.” 

Agenda Preview

We’re in for another long night on Monday. The agenda is 19 discussion items long, and most of them are the kind of big, important decisions that make the Board panic:

  • Should we approve the budget?

  • Should we renew the Patrick Henry charter?

  • Should we fund the recommendations of the English Learner taskforce?

  • Should we adopt this county-aligned calendar?

  • Should we move ahead with the 200-day calendar pilot program? 

If the last year is any indication, they’ll spend a lot of energy on the first agenda item (the budget). Each subsequent discussion will get less and less consideration as the meeting drags on well past 10PM. A few of them are bound to get spicy, though:

I’m not sure what the “Receive for action Head Start Spend Plan” means. There were a lot of vague concerns about this program last year that led to staff turnover. The discussion then about greater oversight by “policy council” suggested there were compliance issues, but no specifics were ever shared in open meeting. 

Then, at the last regular Board Meeting, the former-Chairwoman erupted about emails the Superintendent exchanged with officials in City administration. She and other Board members suggested our federal funding for this program was at risk, and instructed the Superintendent to stop all communication with the City. 

I’m not expecting any more clarity about this matter in open session, but it’s clear that whatever problem exists behind the scenes, Dr. Harris-Muhammed obviously believes its best resolved with a public display of mistrust and admonishment for the Superintendent. (This is pretty par for the course for her, though.)

The discussion about “R200” - the extended calendar pilot program - may get interesting, too. The Board has been talking about this project since 2021, and it passes the Board’s gold-standard data point (a 97% approval rate on a teacher survey). But it’s late in the meeting (agenda item 13-of-19) - and consistently meets objection from some of the Board’s most “show me the data” critics. My crystal ball says they defer the conversation because of the hour, then revisit it in a few weeks and say “its too little too late to adopt this program now.” 

We’re also going to get our first glimpse of LULAC’s English Learner (EL) Taskforce and their recommendations. The taskforce has been hard at work, and drafted a detailed, 8-page report of their findings. 

The Superintendent has read and responded to the findings. On Wednesday he told the Board he would bring a “revenue neutral” proposal to create the taskforce-requested Department of English Learners. 

The Board has also taken the taskforce’s proposal to heart. They shifted funding around and instructed the Superintendent to hire additional dual-language social workers to address the unique trauma of RPS’ newcomer population.

I hope the taskforce feels represented in this budget, and that they continue to identify even more funding recommendations ahead of the next budget cycle. I’m optimistic about this community-RPS partnership!

Lastly - We’re getting an update on RPS’s Memorandum of Understanding with VDOE. Our school district is still on the struggle bus, with 5 of our schools on a “Comprehensive School Improvement Plan.” 

The update on Board Docs suggests the VDOE is keeping an especially watchful eye over the district’s use of “Evidence-Based Interventions.” This may be an echo from the Fall’s curriculum debate, where the Office of School Quality objected to the Board’s attempt to replace their VDOE-approved curriculum for one designed in-house. That chapter in RPS-VDOE relations ended with the RPS Admin and Board accusing the VDOE of overreach. Maybe they’ve put all that behind them, and Monday night is just a boring old MOU update. Or maybe we get a window into this ongoing tug-of-war for decision making authority. Time will tell!

That’s all I’ve got for you tonight. Thanks for tuning in! If you’ve got budgeting concerns or interests, make sure you share those with your school board representatives ahead of Monday Night’s meeting. Or let the Board Clerk know you’ll be giving public comment in-person.

Becca DuVal