RPS RECAP: Feb 7, 2023

Happy Tuesday, Board Watchers. I greet you today with a Matrix-style choice: Red pill, or Blue pill? 

Red Pill: You watch the first hour of the School Board meeting. You’ll get goosebumps hearing a 10th grader perform Lift Every Voice and Sing, and your heart will burst into a million pieces when a 2nd Grader from Fairfield Elementary introduces her school choir (and Black History Month), proudly declaring “We celebrate Black History in February but we are Black and rich in history 365 days a year.”

The Student Representative, Brigade Commander Jaheem Hewlett of Franklin Military Academy, will impress you with his honest and courageous assessment of school conditions, and advocate beautifully for his fellow students. I will happily give him my vote for School Board should he ever volunteer for that service.

You’ll grin ear-to-ear as the division’s Teacher of the Year, middle school science and civics teacher Christal Corey, just about dances down the auditorium aisle to receive her recognition surrounded by family - her father, who is an RPS teacher at Franklin Military Academy, her mother who (is?) was an RPS preschool teacher, and her sister who teaches at George Wythe High School.

The party continues with a recognition of guidance counselors (including the School Board representative from the 8th district, Ms Page!), and closes with appreciation for the School Board itself and their very hardworking clerk, Ms. Patrece Richardson. (Also: shoutout to Ms. Burke who missed the meeting to testify to Congress on behalf of public education!)

Then we all packed up and went home with full hearts, grateful for the enthusiastic teachers in RPS (shout out to the Fairfield Music Teacher!) and the support staff that provide for the city’s kids day in and day out.

Or, you take the…

Blue Pill: You see all the problems of the District. All of them. Starting with public comment, which had the whole room alternating between gasps and whispers. I do not report public comment here because I cannot substantiate the claims, but the allegations made last night were some of the worst we’ve heard yet. (Note: there is one comment that we at RVA Dirt elected not to tweet out of respect for the student’s privacy.) Some high (low) lights: injured and assaulted students, threats of legal action against the school system, insults for the superintendent and his CWO, the threat of mass teacher exodus, and declaring RPS a plantation and the Superintendent as the slave master. 

Many comments broke the “no naming individuals” rules, and none of them went checked by the new Chairwoman. (Emily has all those details on twitter.)

Then there was the business of governing. And someone flushed the toilet and sent all the business of the district right down the drain. 

  • Budget Bruhaha (Medium)

  • A Safety and Security Interrogation (Long)

  • Calendar Confusion (Short…ish)

Budget Bruhaha

The Richmond School Board has now met and deliberated the draft budget four times, and they’ve got 13 days left before they’re scheduled to adopt a final budget on February 20th. 

So far they’ve spent their budget talks asking the superintendent for more information. Their question-tally is roughly 47, which he’s provided answers for in various detail in this 17 page document. (I summarize this in the first part of last week’s recap.) 

Now, they should be going line-by-line and building consensus. We will fund this, we won’t fund that. The superintendent asked for this rather weakly in the last meeting, but now he’s being crystal clear. If the Board doesn’t start making decisions, his team cannot assemble a final budget, and the Board is going to miss their city-given deadline.

So that’s exactly what they do. A robust discussion, friendly discourse, and red ink everywhere.

Just kidding - they make absolutely no decisions. They stall with more questions like:

  • We need a detailed breakdown of collective bargaining. What is the total cost associated with each part of the agreements?

  • The State gives teacher raises, right? Will they pay for those?
    No, the State is more in the business of demanding raises, not paying for them. They chip in the first ⅓ and tell the localities to cough up the rest. 

  • Can we see how much RPS has increased staff compensation over the last 10 years? Can we get that information in pie charts, please?

  • What would it cost to move central office and school office personnel to a “decompressed” salary with a “step increase”? Translation: research compensation for each role, offer them the most competitive salary in the region, and a 1.17% increase each year. 

  • Can we see a list of contracts for outside companies and software we can cut? (I hope the administration also includes what it will cost for his team to make up for the functions this software and contractors provide.)

  • They still don’t know what the Crisis Team would do (#1, Pg 1), how many support personnel are at each school (#21, Pg 8), individual school enrollment numbers, or what portion of each school’s students are economically disadvantaged (all on the VDOE and in dozens of board docs I’ve encountered over the last year of Board Watching.)

  • Also we need to add that $155K auditor, and budget for a new Department of English Learners.

  • We can “play with this budget or do it for real.” (SHM) Principals need to be at the table telling the Board what they need. (They do, via the Superintendent. #25, Pg 11)

It’s a lot. And it gets worse.

Former Chairwoman, Harris-Muhammed - who is “trying to remain professional” - raises her voice and demands (and motions) that social workers immediately stop doing any work related to attendance tracking. She’s tired of hearing objections to same-night motions (and her colleagues don’t offer any.) 

The motion passes over the objections of the superintendent, who warns that the district will quickly fall out of compliance with the State and that this work will fall onto other also-overburdened staff. (Read: teachers.) 

The Board doesn’t wait, doesn’t discuss the “profound implications,” and also proactively deflects all responsibility any negative impacts.

Dr. Harris-Muhammed says RPS is “playing with SEL” (Social Emotional Learning). The Superintendent should have “adequately and equitably rendered” the surge in pandemic-related administrative work “prior to putting [social workers] in these roles.”

As a closing reminder, the Superintendent cannot staff the division with money the Board doesn’t ask for, and the City and State don’t provide. RPS is currently operating with a Board-induced $12M cut to their FY23 operations budget, and the State still has a cap on their funding for support staff which has lost Richmond “over $47 million” since 2011. 

A Safety and Security Interrogation

Last night we met the RPS Director of Safety and Security, Mr. Mauricio Tovar. He describes his job as: “keeping our staff, our students, our visitors safe from harm.” He manages the school system’s 68 Care and Safety Associates (CSAs). (Several of these positions are currently vacant.) He and his team also train principals and other school staff in how to respond to threats - like active shooter drills. (They recommend this training be mandatory.)

One of the overarching goals of this department is to implement and enforce the Student Code of Responsible Ethics (SCORE). This is a document that details expected student behavior, and the consequences of violating those behaviors. It is, in a sense, a book of protocols, policies, and procedures that students, staff, the superintendent, and the school board agree to follow. It is revised annually by a team of principals, security staff, Board members, and more. 

Per memory - and twitter - Rep Jones served on last year’s committee - which updated the SCORE to include an addendum on trauma-informed responses that reflects this Board - and the administration’s - priority. 

As the SCORE changes, so does Mr. Tovar’s job. He tells the Board that throughout his tenure, School Resource Officers (SROs) have been rebranded as “Care and Safety Associates.” They have a challenging, sometimes-contradictory job of both responding to real safety and security threats, and promoting a “loving school culture using both trauma and restorative lens.” 

CSAs receive Mandt de-escalation training, which has “dramatically” reduced the number of restraints they perform. They also engage in more relationship-building with students both informally (on-the-spot interactions) and formally (mentoring conflict resolution, leading community circles). This is important work that helps them to better understand their students, and when to engage counselors and social workers to meet student needs. 

“The Goal is to interact with students where they are, when they are, and in the moment.” - Angela Jones, Director of Climate and Culture

It’s immediately evident, though, that whatever the CSA’s current enforcement-or-loving balance looks like - the Board is not impressed.

Rep White is up first, and wants to know where is RPS in percent of safety readiness? Mr. Kamras doesn’t know what this means, nor, it appears, does Mr. Tovar. (I don’t either, but Google suggests the Army’s Readiness Assessment Program, which measures organizational safety, and makes sense given Ms. White’s military background.) She is not satisfied with Mr. Tovar’s answers, or the training of his employees.

Rep Page wants to know how the CSAs are distributed. Sometimes CSAs are requested by school admin (or, in the case of Carver Elementary, by their Board representative, Ms. White). Other times they are distributed by the number of infractions at each building. Superintendent Kamras notes that he is asking for more CSAs in the budget - but I’d inferred from Ms. Page’s questioning that there were too many - especially at Elementary Schools. (I could, of course, be wrong.)

Chairwoman Rizzi wants to know how Mr. Tovar prevents student conflicts. She wants RPS to “disrupt the school to prison pipeline” and offer students “guidance, structure and love.” In addition to the community circles, mentoring, and conflict resolution we’ve already heard about - he points to Gaggle - an internet monitoring program that flags student conversations that may indicate or result in conflict. But this isn’t restorative, and so gets immediately dismissed. 

Rep Jones wants to know - and asks in a few different ways - what are Mr. Tovar’s safety and security goals, and what implementation strategies does he use? I expect that “goals” might look something like “20% fewer infractions” or “weekly community circles” - but I really don’t know what implementation and strategies mean. The SCORE  is a 50 page document that outlines dozens of student infractions - which Angela Jones says trigger a variety of responses “depending on the level” - and type? - “of infraction that has incurred.” There is no one answer to Ms. Jones’ question. 

Mr. Tovar (who multiple sources have told me hates public speaking) stands at the podium sort of dumfounded, and obviously shaking, while Ms. Jones says she is concerned that “he is the Director of Safety and Security and cannot speak to the processes that are happening in these schools when our young people are in crisis.”

Rep Harris-Muhammed doesn’t really have questions for Mr. Tovar, but she does scold him for not being prepared. Blames Kamras for this. If she were in charge, this wouldn’t have happened.

Jonathan Young is the only representative to disrupt his colleague’s assault. He holds up a mirror and suggests that the Board is the reason the district’s “restorative approach is not working.” 

Students violate the Student Code of Responsible Ethics in serious ways like possessing controlled substances and firearms, or battering school staff that - per SCORE and State mandate - should see these students expelled for the safety of their peers and school staff. But the Richmond School Board instead approves appeals at a very high rate. (Remember: this document is revised every year with the help of these same school board members! These are their “procedures and protocols” and they are not following it.)

Analysis of the last 10 Disciplinary Meeting attendance and voting records. “Overturn” is my shorthand for this line in the meeting minutes:
“The committee of the School Board voted to grant the appeal of expulsion and to modify the recommendation of the administration.”

This has me - and Dr Harris-Muhammed - asking “What are we doing? Are we truly making safety an issue?” (But for very different reasons.)

School safety and student misbehavior is a crisis. It’s the number one concern of Virginia’s teachers. In RPS, there were “1,439 behaviors that endangered students” reported to VDOE last year. And this year there have been 2,533 Gaggle alerts - including 1,189 for violence.

The message from the school staff appears to be “some of these kids are dangerous, and they need consequences” - while the Richmond School Board says “no.” And Mr. Tovar is caught squarely in the middle, at the podium, under fire with a stunning swirl of answer-less questions and demeaning reviews of his work, as though he (or his staff) should never be referring students before the disciplinary committee in the first place. This scene is brutal by any measure, but it's made completely inappropriate by the fact that it was done in an open meeting. 

I add his name to the growing list of staff and community partners that this Board has combated, and I’m growing wary of the constant damage the Board does to their - and the district’s - reputation.

[2/8/23 Update] Chairwoman Rizzi released a public statement on social media explaining that:

“The panel hearings are often spaces where we get to talk to these children, ask them about their hopes and dreams, help them see that continuing down a dark path will only lead them to darkness, show them kindness, offer them support. Their needs are so large, we can’t possibly fulfill them all, but we try to offer salve for their wounds…”
”…almost 100% of these children are Black and Brown and living in poverty. Hunger makes you stressed, makes you angry, makes you want to fight…”
”…Portraying our youngest, most vulnerable as child criminals when often they are acting out of a need to survive is foul and reprehensible.” And,
”Suspending these children does no good.”

I’d like to note that I agree with all of that, and I recognize that this Board is sending students back into schools that are sharing a single counselor and psychologist amongst several schools (#21, Pg 8), and so do not have the means to support the mental health of these students who have demonstrated an extra need. There is a friction here between the world as it is and the world as this Board wants it to be.

Society has failed - most obviously in the realm of funding. Its why the State should lift its support staff cap (discussed above), why the City should be really generous this budget season, and why this Board should support (not fight) the superintendent’s proposal for a Crisis Support Team (#1, Pg 1) so that school level staff has relief, and our wellness leadership can step back and breathe long enough to put together an actual plan to address student mental health needs. Until then, the interests of these individual children have got to be weighed against the safety of everyone else in these buildings. Its a terrible decision they’re asked to make, but they’re the ones elected to do it.

Calendar Confusion

Superintendent shared the results of the calendar survey that just closed:

  • Parents, Students, and Staff mostly want a calendar that matches surrounding school system’s.

  • Teachers also want more non-instructional days so Professional Development (PD) and parent conferences aren’t combined on the same day. This isn’t possible without starting earlier, ending later, or falling out of compliance with the State’s minimum number of instructional days.

  • Ditto for extending breaks or adding holidays, which was also favored.

  • Most respondents were neutral-to or supportive-of the current bell schedule. (But barely.)

  • Only 13% of respondents are unsatisfied with the 4x4 Block schedule for secondary students.

The Administration recommends: “...start the 2023-24 school year on Monday, August 21 (the start date for both Henrico and Chesterfield) and end between Friday, May 31, and Friday, June 7;” and keeping the 4x4 schedule and the bell schedule.

Doerr wants to see a later start for families who already made plans the week of the August 21. She and Gibson “support” a 2 year calendar so we don’t “create a lot of anxiety” by putting out calendars on short notice. White agrees - she wants to see a calendar “as soon as possible.”

Talk of a 200 day pilot gets less agreement.

Kamras announces that 96% of staff at Fairfield Elementary want to move forward with the pilot. The administration will now begin polling and outreach in the community. Overby-Sheppard and Cardinal Elementary Schools are undecided, and Westover Hills is a “no.”

Rep White wants this investment to go to schools who “need this” - and these schools have all “shown growth.” Schools opted-into exploring an extended calendar, though, so I’m unclear on whether or not she wanted to see the Superintendent more proactively recruit at schools with less academic growth?

Young is all-in.

Rep Harris-Muhammed favors using instructional time more effectively, and/or offering extended day learning. She doesn’t think the Board has “enough metrics to justify” this investment. She asks (and says she has asked before) for data that supports this proposal. 

Quick search through Board Docs reveals 1, 2, 3 presentations on the merits of an extended calendar, and both an Academics presentations and a Graduation presentation - both of which “demonstrated a need” and inspired the superintendent’s recommendations for more “contact time.” 

The 6th district Rep echos (what I think was) Ms. White’s suggestion, that the superintendent more proactively recruit schools. Why didn’t they give MLK Middle School a courtesy call to fill out the R200 application? (Even though both Board and community members have construed this behavior as unfair administrative “pressure” in the past.)

Rep Gibson doesn’t have budget information for this - it’s too late now and the cost would be inappropriate anyway. 

So basically… We want shorter school years. And also fewer instructional days. And even though surveys say the bell schedule has support, we should change it because we get a few emails about how the elementary schedule doesn’t fit families’ schedules. 

Also, the Superintendent should prove that pilots work, beyond the data he’s repeatedly presented, and without collecting data from his own pilot program. He should also have demonstrated the academic need with the student performance data he got in September, analyzed and presented in October and November - but he shouldn’t have waited to initiate this plan in December because now it’s too late. And even though we wouldn’t consider this plan for all the above reasons, he should have reached out to more people to apply. By the way, where’s the budget data for the schools you don’t know will participate because they’re engaging in staff surveys we would have insisted you do if you hadn’t already started them yourself?

Like January’s cell phone policy discussion, like the FY24 discussion above, and so many other topics in these Board meetings - nothing gets done because nobody is ever prepared to act. There are times “I need more data” is a valid concern, but I’m jaded after the last few months which prove that - more than anything - the constant cry for data is really just a desperate delay tactic to push off decision making - and any potential progress along with it.

So there you have it. The Board managed to delay all budget decisions, sic more administrative work on teachers, tank staff morale, and tee-up the demise of another extended calendar conversation that the Fairfield principal, 96% of her staff, the Richmond Crusade for Voters, and the President of the REA (speaking in her capacity as Education Chair for RCV) all showed up to support. 

The honeymoon is over, folks. Our newly “Unified Board” is entirely off the rails.

Oh yeah. There was also something about the Headstart preschool program that was frankly too vague for me to follow. (Something about emails.) But if you’re following City/School Board Relations, you should know that Dr. Harris-Muhammed got Board consensus on this whopper of a statement:

“If nothing else, communication with the superintendent needs to stop with the city.”

Becca DuVal