RPS RECAP: June 20, 2023
Welcome back, dear readers! For those on the RPS calendar, I hope you’re enjoying the first part of your summer. I’ve embraced the chaos and am just now finding time to write up the June 20th School Board meeting summary.
In today’s Boardwatch, we’ll catch up on:
Safety Protocols
Legal Services Anti-climax
Fire, Fire, Sewage Pipe
Listen to Teacher
The Still-Not-Final Budget
Here we go!
Safety Protocols
It’s been a few weeks, so let me set the stage:
On June 6th, a Huguenot student and his father were fatally shot while leaving his graduation ceremony. Harris-Muhammed, Jones, Kamras, Rizzi, Young, and White were on-site. Board members were whisked to safety (and profusely thank their rescuers). The Superintendent rushed to the crime scene, where video shows him in his full graduation regalia, standing lost in a sea of first responders.
These memories are fresh and heavy when the Board meets for the first time since the incident. Members are tearful, shaking, and otherwise distressed throughout the meeting.
3rd District’s Kenya Gibson wants to talk about it. She adds this discussion to the top of the evening’s agenda - though it also bleeds into a later discussion on the SCORE, the Student Code of Responsible Ethics. For brevity’s sake, I’ll combine those summaries for you here.
“I am scared. As a parent, I am scared. As a member of the School Board, I feel that we have to do something….” - Gibson
She revisits her months-long request to hire a senior auditor. This individual will work for the School Board, and provide greater oversight of the administration.
The division has been without an auditor for about a year now. The last one quietly left after his viral accusation that the division bought 20k unnecessary chromebooks was quickly debunked with - you know - actual receipts.
Anyway, Gibson believes “we have no choice as a district” but to hire a replacement now. She calls an auditor critical to school safety and a necessary “checks and balance” on the administration.
“There are things that are not getting checked…
We are only going to make a difference if we are honest that there are problems that need to be addressed.”
This is an uncomfortable start to the discussion, mostly (I think) because of the mental gymnastics involved in resolving school safety via bureaucracy. There’s also the dubious optics of Gibson (who did not attend the tragic graduation) preaching to 6 folks on stage who did.
Dr. Harris-Muhammed echoes Gibson’s vague accusation of dishonesty. She wants to know who will be held accountable for this shooting outside of the Altria theater.
“I am not on the school board to fight for my life… none of us should have been placed in the position of what occurred on June the 6th. It is beyond time for us to have honest conversations about what is truly happening in all of our schools.”
She holds the schools (instead of? In addition to? the gunman charged with the murders) responsible.
Nicole Jones urges her colleagues not to “blow it up” and have a reactive conversation.
“We really need to stop... This issue has been something that we’ve all been talking about, but we’re not talking about it in the manner of solutions. We’re talking about it as reaction. I would like to hear what is in place? What is going to be steps taken forward since this matter has happened, and how we can support that.”
There’s been talk of policies and protocols, but Chairwoman Rizzi says “there’s one P I don’t want us to end up focusing on. We do not want our schools to mirror penal systems… this is a multi-layered, multi-faceted issue and putting Punitive Band-Aids will not address the underlying issues.”
Doerr agrees - it’s incredibly frustrating that schools are asked to fix all the problems of the world.
Vice Chair Burke is tired. “At some point - can we leave this meeting tonight? Or our meeting in July? and decide this is how we want to move forward with some framework? Otherwise the discussion continues, continues, continues… I just want to move forward with some answers.”
Despite all the talk of entertaining all suggestions and finally taking action, the entire Board ignored (for a third meeting in a row) Rep Young’s request to discuss his “Safe and Loving Schools” proposal or any of the 10 tangible solutions in it.
They generally agree, though: they want a plan. They don’t want to be reactive (ie, Gibson’s auditor demand), or default to blame (as Harris-Muhammed is preparing to do.)
A despondent Gibson same-night motions to hire senior auditor anyway. “We must make a hasty decision!” She says.
Rep White and Rep Page are confused. What is this person’s job description? How will they improve safety? (They got an unsatisfying answer.)
Besides, White says, “we just received a [new] Director of Security. Maybe we should just give him a chance to put those protocols in place? I mean, I see him right here tonight... Let him put his ideas to… where he needs to put them.”
The motion fails.
Chairwoman Rizzi, who walks on eggshells around Gibson, tells her former-ally that she’s not a “no” no, she just wants to hear the security director’s recommendations first. They’ll get that presentation at their (next) July 10th meeting.
Minutes later, Gibson’s friend, 3rd District mentor, and Style Weekly fairy godmother publishes a Rizzi hit-piece full of unflattering, and off-record comments about an RPS vendor. I can’t promise this is connected, but the timing is notable.
Rep Jones wants to talk about the Director of Security, too. She’s sore that the public (me) called the Board (her) a bully for “asking questions.” This is a mostly-accurate callback to the time the Board interrogated their Safety Director (the safety-infrastructure and fire-drill compliance guy) about restorative justice. When he - thoroughly confused by the questioning about student mental health crises - offered an unsatisfactory answer, the Board deemed him unqualified, smeared him in the press, and pressured him to resign.
His replacement now assumes the impossible task of maintaining order in schools where there aren’t enough Care and Safety Associates (CSAs) to man all entrance/exit points or break up student fights, while also navigating Board pressure to avoid giving students consequences. (Especially since the Board will overrule them 92% of the time, anyway.)
Rep Gibson blames the administration for this: “It’s become too easy for us to default to the most extreme disciplinary measures.”
Rep Young isn’t having any of that. He urges his colleagues to recognize the risks of student misbehavior, noting an uptick in fights on buses and students taking property by force.
The Superintendent - who did little and less to defend the Security Director back in February - finds the courage to do so now:
“We do have to hold our students accountable. We try to do that in the most loving way possible, but I can’t stand by while a lot of really good people in our schools continue to be denigrated for doing not only what we ask them to do, but what is required by state law. Most of the SCORE is written by the General Assembly.”
The SCORE - Student Code of Responsible Ethics - outlines the division’s expectations for student behavior. It also lists all consequences for misbehavior. Students sign this contract at the beginning of each school year.
Rep White and Vice-Chair Burke think part of the problem is that students and parents don’t understand the expectations outlined in the SCORE. (I’d argue that the conduct the Board is discussing - fist fights, weapons and drugs on school property, threatening to kill staff - are all pretty obvious no-nos.) Admin agree to summarize it in a handout for students and parents; but, if the Board wants to “enshrine progressive discipline into policy” - they’re going to have to do that through the policy committee and within the State’s legal mandates.
If your head’s sort of spinning reading all this, then you’re understanding it perfectly.
The Board doesn’t want to punish students.
They want schools to address student’s underlying mental health instead. (“Restorative Justice”)
They do not have the resources to do this effectively, so instead they’ve enforced an informal top-down, zero-consequences “strategy.”
The Law (via the General Assembly) says this “strategy” is not allowed.
School staff are also telling them it’s not working.
So the Board spends 52 minutes finger-pointing and dismissing an opportunistic motion designed to catch the administration failing somehow (anyhow!). They never once take seriously the administration's proposal to increase security staff or their colleague’s 10-part proposal to address a variety of things contributing to the current chaotic climate in RPS schools.
Around and around and around they go, taking their anger with state law and insufficient state funding out on the administration, the security director, the CSA’s, the media, parents, or whoever else they see discussing these schools as though they’re all “unsafe, flawed, violent institutions.”
They bemoan their fate overseeing a school system that’s been left to address “all the world’s problems” - and then - without a hint of irony - expect their superintendent to solve all the world’s problems. (Mr Kamras, Why isn’t RPS going door to door giving out all childhood vaccines, independent of the Virginia Health Department?)
It is every bit as unproductive and relationship-eroding as it sounds.
Legal Services
The time has come to say goodbye to Attorney Lilly. She’s officially off the RPS roller coaster, and onto the stage where she receives a thank-you gift and a photo with 9 grateful Board Members. (Scratch that, on further inspection, I see that Gibson took this moment to step out.)
Last month, the Board announced Ms Lilly’s replacement: a much pricier law firm. To fix their costs a bit, they’ve agreed to delegate less-specialized legal matters to a new in-house attorney.
Ms. Lilly advised Chairwoman Rizzi on another cost-cutting measure, too:
The Board should be more disciplined with how and how often Board members interact with their attorneys. “Every call, every email, becomes a bill.”
The new law firm is aware and supportive of the Board’s hybrid model for legal services. They will help draft “guardrails” to ensure the School Board interacts with them in a way that is fiscally appropriate.
This is a surprisingly anticlimactic resolution to what has otherwise been a contentious, years-long breakdown in relationship between Ms. Lilly and the Board she’s served for at least a decade.
Two Fires and a Sewage Pipe
Fire 1: Bus Depot
Last year, in a remarkably ill-timed turn of events, RPS renewed their Bus Depot rental contract a day before the building burnt down. This has been a whole tangled mess, and the bulk of the financial burden has fallen on the mechanics who worked there - some of whom lost upwards of $30-40K worth of their own tools and materials in the fire. Mechanics say RPS’s insurance will not cover these reimbursements. They are organizing to elect union leadership now, so I’m sure we’ll hear more about this in coming months.
Fire 2: Fox
Fox Elementary School burned down in February, 2022. Now, reconstruction funding is rolling in from insurance ($12.4M), state grants ($5.6M), and the city ($15M).
The century-old building is also eligible for Historic Tax Credits (HTCs) - but only on the city’s $15M. (RPS cannot make a profit from insurance money or grant funding, that’s sorta “double-dipping.”)
RPS can’t use these tax credits (because they don’t pay taxes) - but they can earn $2-3M from selling them to someone who can.
They need to set up a separate LLC to do this, though, which the superintendent asks the Board to vote on tonight.
Mariah White, 2nd District Rep, speaks for “all” of the Fox community when she says no. She thinks this is a trick to turn Fox into a charter school and slow down the construction process. [watch]
It is not.
She also has some concern with the timing. She thinks it’s suspicious that RPS wasn’t pursuing HTCs until the City pitched in $15M for reconstruction.
Again, this is the only HTC-eligible portion of Fox funding.
She also thinks RPS will have to pay $300-400K in federal taxes for… something. (They won’t.)
Based on Kamras’ disappointed reaction (and White’s past accusations) - I interpret her overall objection as a veiled accusation of profiteering.
There is no obvious explanation for any of this, nor does White offer one.
She is the only vote opposing RPS’ pursuit of HTCs. Motion passes.
Sewage Pipe: Wythe
It’s time for early site work! The Board approved a contract to prepare the land for construction. (This primarily consists of relocating a very large, very expensive sewage pipe on the city’s behalf.)
Prepare for groundbreaking!
White asks “when is Fox’s groundbreaking?”
A bewildered Kamras responds “you were at that press conference.”
[Watch]
Listen to Teacher
Last year, schools across the country saw more teachers leave the workforce - and the field of education - than at any other point in more than two decades.
In Richmond, our Board responded in a number of unconventional ways - like, trying to throw out the curriculum, and secretly coordinating a parental-overthrow of a principal some teachers didn’t like) - but, the most productive response (by far) was the creation of a Teacher Retention Taskforce.
Under the leadership of 2019’s National Teacher of the Year, Rodney Robinson, a team of 15-20 teachers met to brainstorm ways to retain and develop RPS educators. Recommendations include:
Offering language classes for RPS staff who want to better relate to the division’s growing number of Hispanic students.
Pairing teachers with mentors who also teach their grade level.
Building a library of lesson plans that align with each SOL objective that teachers are expected to teach.
Create positive incentives for student behavior, and offer more trauma informed professional development for school staff.
Clarify (establish) a cell phone policy.
These were real tangible suggestions, complete with a budget and assigned spending priorities.
Young appreciates the note on cell phones.
Rizzi likes the idea of a teacher newsletter.
White was really impressed by the teacher townhall, and hopes there will be more of them. (Maybe then they’ll stop emailing her all of the time thinking she can “solve everything.” Those two policies restricting Board-Staff Communications are just for show, I guess.)
Ms. Gibson - who championed the creation of this taskforce - has a bit of buyer’s remorse. Why didn’t Mr. Robinson’s team recommend policy proposals, instead?
“As a governing Board, there’s nothing we can do to make sure these things happen.”
RPS has many outdated policies and procedures. “If the administration’s not going to update them, help us help you by making those recommendations.”
Typically, the Board relies on their Policy Council to design and vet policy; but we learned back in April that this group hasn’t been meeting with any regularity. Frustrated by the delay, Gibson has repeatedly advocated for the Board to bypass that step. (“Procurement Policy”) Here, she’s asking the Teacher Retention Taskforce to do so, too.
If Mr. Robinson is a bit put off by this apparent lack of gratitude, he’s not alone. The engagement team gets a similar treatment when Board members hold their nose and approve the new Binford and Wythe names: “Dogwood Middle School” and “Richmond High School for the Arts.”
Chairwoman Rizzi acknowledges the hard work of Dr Harris’ team. She experienced it firsthand while participating in the Binford renaming meetings.
But, Rep White can’t believe that this is the best the community could come up with, and votes “no.”
Rep Gibson abstains on the grounds that schools should be named for influential local leaders. This was a missed opportunity. (This expectation was not communicated over the last 6 months. It also did not come up in 2020 when she approved the names for Cardinal Elementary School or River City Middle School.)
The Still-not-final Budget
Alright! This was not on the Board’s June 20th agenda, but Virginia’s Governor Youngkin is intent on making me provide yet another not-final budget update for y’all. (He must know how fun these are for me to write 😵💫😵💫.)
Last we left the budget, the Board had spent 9 meetings building up their $29M wish list, and absolutely refusing to find a way to fit their ask within the extra $10-15M their friends at the city said they could expect in the upcoming fiscal year (FY24).
The City ended up giving RPS an additional $21M, leaving a $10M-ish gap in revenue for FY24.
Some less-serious Board members and their allies have branded this as the Mayor’s “budget cut,” which completely misunderstands how local government works. (This is especially concerning because they ARE the local government…)
In reality, the Board had asked their boss for a 14.5% raise, and got a 10.6% one, instead. That’s still a raise. (Can you tell I’m a bit exhausted from playing whack-a-mole with RPS budget misinformation?)
Anyway. This is when the Board told the superintendent to just find some money from somewhere instead. Which he did by placing temporary hiring freezes on some departments, and increasing the division’s overall projected enrollment.
This wasn’t a perfect plan, but they’d all hoped it would end up being unnecessary. Surely, by mid-June the State would come to their senses and pass a compromise budget that increases our division’s funding by $10M-ish.
Instead, the Governor poo-poo’ed 3 different compromises suggested by senate democrats, and refuses to budge from his demand to permanently cut $1B in taxes.
July 1 came and went, and here we are in FY24 with no final State Budget. We’re expecting a special session next week to maybe *maybe* strike a deal.
Maybe.
Cross your fingers, write a lawmaker, tell a friend. At a minimum, they need to know their tax-free weekend was canceled over this Budget stand-off.
That’s all I’ve got for you today! Tune in to Emily’s live tweets tonight. She’ll be serving up Board updates with a laugh. Cheers!