Y’all, I gotta tell you. Sometimes I get bored of writing meeting summaries. I went to school for creative writing, and - sometimes - I get the itch to tell a story instead.

Well here’s one that fell into my lap at last week’s School Board meeting. Take my hand, will you? We’re going on a journey. (Pack a snack, it’s kinda long..)

Chapter 1: “Dillon”

Meet John Forrest Dillon - a judge in Iowa who was as crazy about government systems as I am with school board politics.

The Civil War was a bit of a mixed bag for Ol’ Johnny. He was a Unionist, and a Republican. He was relieved that the war - and slavery - had ended; but it was a sad, hollow sort of victory, too. So many people had died, and the country had only just begun the overwhelming process of rebuilding its destroyed infrastructure (roads, bridges, buildings) Butttt, the country was rebuilding and redesigning their state governments, too, and that had Dillon SUPER jazzed.

Some people loved all this rebuilding (called Reconstruction); and a lot of them supported the taxes funding it, too. In Virginia, these were the “Radical Republicans” who championed the Readjuster Movement for equitable taxes, public education, and civil rights. (Think Bernie Sanders, but in the late 1800’s. So like, Bernie’s dad.)

Virginia’s Conservative, white, land-owning Democrats, though, absolutely hated it. Northerners had swept in, taken their properties and sold their land to fund:

The Union Army occupying Virginia communities, and
The needs and welfare of half a million survivors of chattel slavery.

They viewed these Readjusters as outside agitators - a “motley group of scalawags, carpetbaggers, and Negro allies who met under the protection of military authorities and assumed to speak for the people of Virginia.” And somehow, they’d gotten in their heads that Virginians wanted stupid things like public education for *gag* everyone. They expected Democrats to pay taxes for it, too; something about it being “a task of patriotism, of humanity, of civic duty” and - c’mon Democrats, it’s the least you can do after defunding all* of public education to pay for the war. Drama queens. Someone had to reign these spend-happy socialists in.

*Don’t be silly. They still used tax money to pay for their rich white sons to go to State University (UVA).

Our pal Dillon watched these rival factions with interest. This battle was playing out all across the re-United States, and he was convinced that a good model of government was just what we needed to keep the (uneasy) peace.

He worried about powerful local governments in this age of rebellious thinking. A powerful local government could raise all kinds of money (taxes) and either pocket it (corruption) or use it to rise up against a weak State.

Besides, if Republicans wanted to offer all these public services, it would be way more efficient if the State handled that for folks. Wouldn’t want to waste taxpayer dollars to run a bunch of small, independent, duplicate programs (like, construction teams?) when a strong state government could manage cooperative, regional programs instead.

No - what Americans needed was a strong state government; a sort of kingdom state:

Let’s give the State dibs on all power (like taxes).

Then let the State decide just how much of that power they’d like to share with local governments.

The kingdom-state would be a benevolent leader, providing order, oversight and ensuring a more equitable distribution of wealth.

“But what if the State isn’t benevolent? What if giving the State all the power and all the money makes them corrupt? What if the State doesn’t do a very good job of redistributing wealth? Or they keep local governments so weak that they can’t meet their community's basic needs?” His critics asked.

That’ll never happen, said Dillon. But just in case, try adding in a sort of appeals process, where local governments can come to the kingdom-state, tell them what’s up, what they need, and why they really need it. I’m sure the masses will elect reasonable State leaders who will work together to make timely, ethical decisions and use this power responsibly.

Virginia’s Readjusters weren’t so sure. The way Conservative Democrats were grinning wickedly and drooling over this plan made them nervous. What if they gained power, and they used the kingdom-state to obstruct local governments, or roll back State funding for the programs and services that their communities rely on?

“I’m telling you, you’ve got nothing to worry about!” - Delusional Dillon, probably

Just in case, the Readjusters took out a sort of insurance policy on public education, adding this into the new (1869) state constitution:

“The Constitution of Virginia shall never be so amended or changed as to deprive any citizen or class of citizens of the United States of the school rights or privileges secured by the Constitution of the said State.”

Over the next half century, 39 States adopted “Dillon’s Rule” - including Virginia in 1896.

Virginia’s Conservative Democrats finally had the majority, which they used first to aggressively pay down the Republicans’ debts to Northern Investors - who’d gotten rich off the war effort, and now were profiting from its recovery.

Then they used all the power of Dillon’s kingdom-state to rewind their Reconstruction nightmare. They segregated Republican’s beloved schools and defunded all kinds of programs they felt had made African Americans the “special favorite of the law.” (Ugh.)

Dillon’s rule had made local governments entirely dependent on the kingdom-state, and their message was clear:

You will comply with our Jim Crow agenda, you “don’t have a choice.”

Chapter 2: Harry F. Byrd

This didn’t go super well for Virginia’s Conservative Democrats, though. Defunding state programs and ignoring the needs of local governments had a sort of step-on-a-rake effect. Youchies!

Turns out, when you don’t give local governments the money or power to maintain their own infrastructure, things sorta go to 💩.

This eventually became a problem for Conservative Democrats when their buddies - the Agrarian Aristocrats - had a hard time getting their products to market. They were losing a lot of time “bumping and jumping over the rutty roads” of Virginia’s poor, neglected, rural communities. Harry Byrd, a 28-year-old Orchard Oligarch from the Shenandoah Valley, called this inconvenience a “mud tax,” and ran for Virginia Senate in 1915 vowing to fix it.

Conservative Democrats loved this guy. He was a thrifty self-starter, a racist dirtbag, and the apple of their eye (hah). In 1926, they made him Governor.

Byrd was ruthless. He ran Virginia’s state house like a mafia boss: rewarding his loyal allies with appointments to key government positions, and crushing his critics’ political careers. The resulting “network of courthouse cliques” became known as the Byrd Machine - “the most urbane and genteel dictatorship in America.” (Source)

Byrd used his total control of the State money (thanks, Dillon!) to enrich his rural allies and their “grossly inefficient” local governments who received handsome payouts “on the basis of contribution and subservience to the [Byrd Machine].”

In 1932, he hooked them up with the Byrd Road Act, too - an aptly-named program to build state-funded, state-maintained roads and highways across rural Virginia.

Cities were on their own. (No roads for you!) Byrd thought cities were yucky - ew, immigrants! - and had no sympathy for their diverse, rapidly-growing populations, much less any of their resulting infrastructure needs.

If these local governments needed new roads or schools or whatever - they’d just have to stop being so wasteful with the money they already had. (Ie, funding social programs like public schools.)

“Byrd was largely a self-educated man, and had no great interest in educational institutions.” (Source)

This is probably why the second part of his 1932 Road Act said:

“Look. I’m giving (some of) you these spiffy new roads - but I will NOT under any circumstances help you fix those crumbling schools you’re always yammering on about.” (This is not a real quote.)

Local governments groaned. School conditions were overcrowded, unpleasant, unsafe - even immoral. Doing nothing wasn’t an option; but without taxing authority (thanks Dillon!) or state aid (thanks Byrd!), they’d have to borrow the money instead.

Byrd hated this idea. He had a “near pathological hatred of debt” - and made the state’s high-interest Literacy Loans - a stupidly-named school construction fund - nearly impossible to get.

First, he used state powers to make local government even weaker. If they were gonna take out school construction loans, they’d have to get the voters’ sign-off first. (Fat chance convincing them to spend big during the Great Depression!)
Then, the Byrd Machine went ahead and defunded the Literacy Loan program altogether. (Haha, losers!)

“Without some help of this sort [loans] it will be a long time until the school districts can raise enough funds to build suitable houses.” (Source)

Byrd wanted local governments to run like good little businesses anyway - to save up their money and pay-as-you-go - a principle that “frequently sacrificed people’s urgent needs for the fiscal orthodoxy.”

Peery = the Machine’s successor to Byrd’s term as Governor

Eventually, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) rolled his eyes and started slipping construction funding to local governments directly - intentionally bypassing Apple Al Capone and his courthouse cronies. By 1938, the “federal government funded 45 percent of local construction costs.” (source) Then another world war came calling and Federal aid stopped, too.

The Byrd Machine had devastated public education in Virginia:

“Years of neglect in school facilities had created critical inadequacies in the localities throughout the Commonwealth”
Virginia was “next to the bottom among former confederate states in educational expenditures,” and
We “continued to lag behind sister states in educational standards”

Oh! But He did leave us with a $2.6M Surplus. And look, shiny new literacy tests!

“As a result, the number of blacks qualified to vote decreased immediately from 147,000 to 21,000 as well as that of poor white voters.” (Source)

… and he definitely delivered on the whole “new roads” thing. I bet his apples made it to market in record time. 🥰

"Roads can't be racist. You can't build racism into a road."
-Tucker Carlson

Whoops - how’d that quote get there?

Chapter 3: Barbara Johns

In the end, it would take the heroic efforts of a 16 year old girl to topple the Byrd Machine’s 70-year reign.

Barbara Johns was a student of Robert Russa Moton High School - a small, segregated school in Farmville, Virginia.

Moton was desperately over-crowded. If kids were lucky, they got to learn in a modest, squeaky-floored auditorium they shared with two other classes.

Less-lucky students had to learn in outdoor shacks they called “chicken coops” - a completely inhumane version of today’s schools’ trailer classrooms.

“It was obvious to anyone that schools attended by African-American children were considerably inferior to schools serving white children.” (Source)

Unluckier still were the kids who never made it to school at all.

In March, 1951, Moton’s white-school-hand-me-down bus broke down on the way to school. It…

“…had not quite cleared the [train] tracks when a train blasted by, ripping off the back end of the bus and taking with it the lives of five young people.” (Source)

Barbara Johns was devastated. Then outraged. These school conditions could not, would not continue. She organized a student protest - a school strike - that lit a match to Virginia law.

The Byrd Machine’s cocktail of Dillon-rule powers and pay-as-you-go handcuffs went all the way up to the United States Supreme Court, where it faced the judgment of *dun dun dun* Radical Republicans. Perhaps you’re familiar with their unanimous ruling:

"We conclude that, in the field of public education, the doctrine of 'separate but equal' has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal."
Brown Vs. Board of Education (1954)

Now - we tend to remember Brown as a “we fixed racism!” fairytale. We remember the brave kids and the photos of jeering parents shouting racial slurs. We totally forget that this was a story about educational facilities, too.

Brown was about prejudice and politics.

It was a grenade launched at Virgninia’s state government that had built itself quite a reputation for reducing “the autonomy of local governments substantially” - and preventing the “expansion of services, such as education, public health, and welfare.”

Conservative Democrats had never wanted a system of free public schools in the first place. They didn’t like the mission, and they refused to properly fund it. Dillon’s Rule just gave them the kingdom-state powers they needed to make sure local governments couldn’t properly fund it, either.

Local governments had become hungry rats fighting over an impossibly small piece of school-funding cheese. Those with the most power and influence over that funding (white people) hoarded it, choosing to prioritize the maintenance and construction of their own segregated schools.

Then in comes the Warren Court demanding “You can’t do that! You’ve got to make room for all kids in your nice schools!” - knowing full well these local governments had no way to fund such a thing.

“The problem of integrating schools became a financial dilemma because it would require the erection of new facilities to meet the demand of the increased enrollment of African- Americans.”(Source)

If they couldn’t raise or borrow the money - they would need State aid and… well, have you met the guy running the show?

Yield power to local governments? Oh Powell, you silly, silly man. The Kingdom State doesn’t do that!

Chapter 4: The Comeback

By now, Byrd had graduated to the US Congress where he could keep a watchful eye over the new Republican president (Eisenhower) and his spendy ways. This guy had fought for American ideals of freedom and democracy on the battlefields of Europe, and - for some reason - wouldn’t stop trying to fund them once he got to DC.

Lucky for Byrd, he held the country’s purse strings. He was Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee - and was prepared to block any big spending bill the new President asked for.

He was not, however, prepared for the Warren Court or the Brown-Grenade.

When Byrd got the news, a contemporary joked: “the top blew off the U.S. Capitol.”

Byrd had spent his entire political career segregating things and defunding them too. Now some dude in a robe was abusing his courtly powers, sticking his nose in state affairs, and “jeopardizing the caste system” that Byrd and his Machine had worked so damn hard to maintain. He launched into action:

“…the massive Byrd machine of Virginia swung into high gear and took over the leadership of the interposition* strategy.”
*this is fancy for “State Temper Tantrum”

In my head, this plays out like the sorcery-battle scene in Aladdin:

Byrd-Jafar rubs the magic “Dillon rule” lamp.

Johnny-Genie pops out.

“Genie, WOKE WARREN must be stopped! He wants to desegregate our schools, and *gasp* make the State pay for it! I wish for all the powers of the State to defy these court orders! I wish for… MASSIVE RESISTANCE!”

Johnny-Genie - reluctant, but powerless to resist Byrd’s command - zaps a school-closure plan into the hands of Virginia’s Byrd-Machine Governor, Tom Stanley - another reluctant co-conspirator in Byrd’s plan.

It didn’t seem to matter what the people of Virginia thought.

Byrd’s allies in democratic strongholds loved it. They called themselves “The Defenders” - and were more than happy to watch the world burn. They ignored the integration order altogether. When the Warren Court was all “You’d better knock it off (Brown II, 1955) or we’ll… I dunno, we’ll take away your education funding” - they said “Don’t threaten us with a good time!” - and closed entire school districts in Prince Edward County, Warren County, Charlottesville, Norfolk, and Front Royal. Then they laughed themselves all the way to the bank - where they cashed their state-funded private school tuition check, and dropped off their kids at segregation academies instead. They were the loud minority, and they proudly boasted their outsized role in the state’s response to Brown:

"In Virginia 12,000 members of the Defenders of State Sovereignty have been more effective politically than 100,000 moderate citizens."

Those moderate masses were like the people of Agraba - totally annoyed by the chaos and destruction. Their fellow Virginians had lost their ever-loving minds. How on Earth were they supposed to pull off Massive Resistance? Homeschool? Did Byrd know how many kids they had? 1947 and 1949 had smashed the country’s birth rate records. Now, all those baby-boomers were school age and their parents needed them out, out, out of the house - err - properly educated.

Lots of folks fell somewhere in the middle. Definitely not interested in integrating, but couldn’t score a seat in a segregation academy, either. They self-segregated to the ‘burbs, taking their tax dollars with them to new communities that couldn’t build “good” schools fast enough to meet demand.

It was a cluster. And this whole weak local government experiment was really biting Virginians in the tushy. How were they supposed to build or repair these schools now? They can’t tax, they can’t borrow, and now Byrd&Co. were slashing their public school funding and sending it off to private schools.

I mean - you know things are bad when the business community rises up (Virginia Industrialization Group) against conservative policies defunding public education.

Virginia citizens were grumpy. And those grumpy citizens made their politicians scared.

Publicly, many State Democrats applauded their tyrant king’s rabidly pro-segregation positions; but privately, they groaned that Byrd had never been “so out of step with the Congress and the country.” The ol’ Byrd Machine was sputtering out - cracking under mounting public pressure - when integration came to Virginia “peacefully” on Feb. 3, 1959…

“The governor did not stand defiantly in the school room door, and the state police protected the children from any potential violence (which never materialized)." (Source)

Byrd’s bruhaha had been an absolute embarrassment - and it had done nothing more than further devastate school conditions for everyone. Byrd’s Virginia allies were in full retreat. They refunded that poorly-named Literacy Fund, and started throwing around school construction funding like it was confetti via the newly-formed Virginia Public School Authority (VPSA, 1962).

“Pssttt, parents! Put down your pitchforks! Here, take these dirt cheap loans to build yourselves some new schools. Just… be cool. Byrd’s gonna hate all this debt stuff.” (You guessed it! That’s a made up quote.)

The VPSA was specifically designed to bypass obstructionist politicians and/or an unsupportive public. It was also an acknowledgment that Virginia’s Dillon kingdom-state had failed to meet their basic fiscal responsibilities to local governments.

The public had rallied to the support of public schools - and public school funding. In 1970, they marked the end of massive resistance with the election of Governor Linwood Holton - a pro-integration Republican who represented the interests of the working class. He oversaw the 1971 revision of the state constitution, striking the Byrd Machine’s original language which emphasized frugality…

“The General Assembly shall establish and maintain an efficient system of public free schools throughout the State”

And replacing it with the language we have today:

“The General Assembly shall provide for a system of free public elementary and secondary schools for all children of school age throughout the Commonwealth, and shall seek to ensure that an educational program of high quality is established and continually maintained.”

Holton’s State locked arms with the Federal Government, rallying to turn the tide of 100 years of Public School disinvestment. Virginia schools enjoyed wave-after-wave of sweeping federal investments in public education:

1956 - National Defense Education Act (NDEA) 💰💰💰💰
1958 - NDEA Extension 💰💰💰
1965 - Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) 💰💰💰💰💰 (Includes “Title 1”)
1972 - Emergency School Aid Act (ESAA) 💰💰💰

This funding broke the dam of Virginia’s school construction needs. New, magnificent schools popped up all across the state, and public education was fixed forever.

Just kidding.

Local Governments had been so desperate for so long that they sacrificed construction quality for speed:

“…all too often shoddy facilities were built on the cheap, and have required high cost of maintenance, renovation, and early replacement.” (Source)

A third of all Virginia’s schools were built during this 20-year Golden Age of school construction. The state - and the country - had never seen a boom like this before - and they haven’t seen it since. That's why, today, the average American school is about 55 years old (circa 1968).

Chapter 5: The Decay

Virginia’s public school honeymoon phase didn’t end so much as fizzle out.

The Republican Party that Holton had epitomized, though - that vanished in a near blink-of-an-eye.

The folks who had loved their public schools, and either tolerated or embraced desegregation, drew a line at bussing their kids for the purposes of integration. They also soured to a federal government so big that they’d reach into their lives and rob them of their “good” neighborhood schools.

Then the 1973 Roe decision kicked the Christian Hornets nest, and sent Republicans in full retreat. They devised a whole “Southern Strategy” - begging these ticked off voters to give them another chance, and swearing to be their champions of small government, and conservative, Christian values.

The political parties of the 1960’s would slowly blur together and come out the other side having swapped most of their platforms and constituencies. None of that matters much to the next 30-40 years of our story, though. Instead, the conditions of Virginia's public schools became an issue of bipartisan concern, and bipartisan indifference.

By now, all those cheap, shoddy post-Brown schools were in rough shape. They were also all starting to fail at the same time.

Local governments started looking around for help to fund their repairs and replacements - but they were not going to get it from their new president. (1980)

Ronald Reagan had run (and won) on a presidential platform of Defunding the Department of Education. He didn’t succeed, but he did dramatically reduce its size, influence and funding. He would do to America what he did as Governor:

“…he consistently and effectively opposed additional funding for basic education. The result was painful increases in local taxes and the deterioration of California’s public schools.”

Reagan also “took steps to increase state power over education at the expense of local school districts. Federal funds that had flowed directly to local districts were redirected to state government.”
No more bypassing neglectful or obstructionist state legislators.

The federal government had turned a blind eye to Virginia, and our state leaders fell right back into old Byrd-era habits…

…reducing “the autonomy of local governments substantially” - and preventing the “expansion of services, such as education, public health, and welfare.”

In 1983, the state froze VPSA funding for 18 months. (That’s the school construction program they created in 1962.)

[Dramatic narrator voice] “Obviously, new school construction was dealt a severe setback for years to come.” (Source)

Then, the state began a decades-long process of using VPSA funding to pay for teachers’ retirement benefits instead.

In 1980, the State offered $31M in school construction funding. By 1994, it had dwindled to half a million. (Source)

Our weak local governments looked at their leaky roofs and busted HVAC units, sighed, and jumped to the back of a multi-year waitlist. Dillon's rule hadn’t really given them any other choice. Their school facility needs had been entirely dependent on State and Federal aid, and without it, the rate/speed of school construction was cut in half. This back-up came at a serious cost:

By 1993, Virginia had $3.8B in deferred school maintenance.

They rolled back so much school funding that local governments had to start paying for school staff out of their school maintenance funds.

The Federal government watched the backslide with little interest. They really stayed out of it, except to pop in on occasion and demand “costly capital adjustments” - expensive building modifications to make schools ADA-complaint.

Unable to build new schools or expand old ones, local governments started to rely on trailer classrooms to relieve their overcrowded schools instead. (History, it doth repeateth itself.)

The state’s advisors (JLARC) knew this was a crisis. They’ve been sounding the alarm on all this longer than you’ve been able to buy a whopper with a credit card.

Buuuut, State leaders didn't want to hear it. For 5 years, they did next-to-nothing while Virginia’s deferred school maintenance estimate nearly doubled to a staggering $6B:

“The magnitude of Virginia's unmet needs in school construction, renovation and repair can be described only as a crisis.”

That same year, Governor Jim Gilmore passed a “landmark” plan that offered $110M “for state assistance to local school districts to help pay for construction.” Woohoo! Only $5.8 Billion dollars to go!

Then, in 2009, the State decided to brace against the Great Recession by capping the state’s contribution to schools’ support staff salaries.

Schools - that had already been paying for staff out of their construction monies for 2 decades - now had to make impossible decisions like: Do I fire the librarian? Or the HVAC technician?

By the mid-2010’s, Richmond Public Schools’ Chief Operating Officer was warning: “23 of the 44 schools are in need of either a complete replacement or a major renovation” and devised a $563M plan to address this at… about the same time the pressure of the state’s support staff cap forced the division to gut their school maintenance team.

“The state has provided no funding for [school maintenance] since the Great Recession [in 2009]. The localities are so stretched that they can’t take care of it locally.” (Source)

And that is a huge freaking shame, because:

41% of divisions require “HVAC systems upgrades or replacements in at least half of their schools.” They are the “most common out-of-date feature” in schools.
20-35% of divisions have “serious deficiencies in at least half of their roofing, lighting or safety and security systems.” And,
The average school is “toward the end of their expected and useful lives, and need to be replaced or fully modernized.”

As with most things in America - the worst effects of this facility neglect have been carried on the shoulders of our most needy communities.

As reported in the 2021 State of Our Schools

We cry about “waste” and “fraud” and “mismanagement” when we talk about these places. They have the money, they just choose not to spend it! Or They just don’t care. But that is not what the data says:

Divisions with the oldest buildings “tend to have higher levels of fiscal stress.”
Divisions with the longest deferred maintenance “tend to have higher levels of fiscal stress.”

Schools aren’t neglecting maintenance. They simply have not received the funding to fix it. And now? They don’t have the manpower to do it, either.

We really, really needed a cure. We got Covid instead.

Our State and Federal leaders panicked. They’d read all 30 years of reports I’ve linked to here. They’d just ignored the decaying condition of Virginia’s schools (more or less, because they could.) Now the bill to fix it all was estimated at t w e n t y f i v e b i l l i o n d o l l a r s.

Two. Five. Billion with a “B.” $25 Billion.

Local government panicked, too. How were they going to combat a new, deadly, airborne virus with dead-and-dying HVAC systems? These things had already been causing problems: generating too much humidity when they ran cold air, making classrooms a breeding ground for mold and mildew. (This is a problem that has only gotten worse with climate change, as schools need to run cold air for way longer than they had to in 1968. Just look at what the hottest summer on record has done to Richmond’s classrooms!)

The Federal Government said “Here, Virginia! Use this $250M in ARPA-dollars to renovate those HVAC units.”

We said “Hey, thanks” - and immediately* got to work. By June 2021, “62% of divisions” had used covid relief funds to address urgent HVAC repairs.

* Oftentimes, “immediate” repairs weren’t an option. These construction projects were at the mercy of chaotic markets. They faced supply chain delays, soaring material costs, and long waits on labor.

“…it can be a challenge for districts to use [Covid relief funds] for facilities, where their needs are often greatest. For example, districts may have to find the capacity to manage the projects internally…”

That’s why divisions also used covid funds to re-hire the maintenance staff they’d laid off over the last decade. (At least, RPS tried to.)

These Covid relief packages were massive. And they barely scratched the surface of Virginia’s deferred maintenance needs. Take RPS for example:

We got $122.9M in Covid funding.
They allocated $16.8M of that to facilities.
Minus the cost of custodial services and personnel, the division had $4.9M assigned to building repairs

I’m not a super math-y person. These numbers sound like a lot. Way, way more money than I’ll ever have in my lifetime, and I really have no idea what this kind of money could buy. So here are those numbers again in normal-people terms.

$4.9M is 14,000 Xbox consoles
$16.8M is 69 starter homes, or 9,882 months worth of rent.
$122.9M is 3 Taylor Swift private jets.

That’s a lot right? Well. Here’s more math:

If we used every penny of our $122.9M in covid funds on deferred maintenance, we would need *16* Covid spending packages to get through the division’s $2B* to-do list.

*(Source: that time I ambushed Kamras when he was taking public questions on Gary Flowers’ radio show; 1:00 mark and onward.)

$2B = 833 years of the city’s average annual contribution to school facilities. ($2.5M), or
$2B = 8,000 years of Superintendent Kamras’s Salary

And still RPS’ needs only make up a small fraction of the $25B need across Virginia. That’s 5.2 Steven Speilbergs.

We’re gonna need a bigger… budget

Local Governments have been asking for this. In this year’s budget document, a salty Chesterfield had this to say about the state’s contribution:

“…our collective pressure must lean on [the state] to step up their commitment to our county - from education funding, to funding the numerous unfounded mandates which place undue fiscal pressure on county residents.”

Our state representatives have been asking for solutions, too. New taxes? The Kingdom-State says “nah.”

A Republican-led House panel voted Friday to kill legislation that would have allowed localities to raise local sales taxes in order to fund school construction costs.
The party-line vote came as a blow to many cities and counties across Virginia, as well as a growing — and bipartisan — contingent of legislators focused on school construction needs. While Virginia’s aging K-12 infrastructure has been a focus for nearly two decades, a recent report found that more than half of all school buildings are more than 50 years old. Replacing those buildings is estimated to cost roughly $25 billion.
Virginia Mercury, Feb 25, 2022

State aid? “Nah”

If Dillon’s Kingdom-State were working as designed - benevolent, and responsive to the needs of local governments…

Virginia wouldn’t have a $5.1B surplus right now. That money would have been responsibly distributed to divisions across the commonwealth to address what is really The State’s long-deferred school maintenance problem.
Our State leaders wouldn’t be pointing to that $5.1B surplus as proof that we can afford to permanently slash $1B in state revenues by “cutting Virginia's top income tax rate from 5.75% to 5.5%.”
They wouldn’t hold $650M in education funding hostage for 6 months to get those tax cuts.
And they sure as 💩 wouldn’t be telling local school divisions to get creative using this money (what translates to an extra $9M for RPS) to meet virtually all their student’s needs. Don’t spend it all in one place!
They also wouldn’t be giving colleges like William & Mary - with a $1.3B Endowment - $20M in taxpayer dollars to improve their facilities; or $20M to ODU to renovate a baseball stadium while public school divisions are begging their local governments for $175,000 for *bleachers* and their local governments are saying no, ‘cause… well, divisions already needed them to chip in an extra $21M to help pay for staff at the *expletive* schools.

Y’all. We should be able to maintain the buildings - and the salaries of the staff inside it. A state that is bound by law to provide and maintain a high-quality education is responsible for doing so.

The State’s not being a total deadbeat. Our new “Education Governor” did pledge $1.25 billion for school building upgrades. Woohoo! Only $23.75B left to go!

About a third of this funding ($400M) are loans that weak-local-governments will need to pay back.

“Loans are good, interest-free loans are good. But localities still need revenue streams to pay them back.” Del Sally Hudson, 2022

So, yeah. Your kid’s school probably has mold in it. Both of my kids’ do.

The HVAC unit that needed to be replaced 10 years ago is probably making students sick - especially those with underlying conditions like asthma. Did you know sick kids with asthma is a leading cause of student absenteeism? The Kingdom-State does. That’s in the flier they told school divisions to share with parents to… solve absenteeism. (Hey now, they made pretty pictures for their websites, too.)

My friend Josh’s kid’s school in PECPS has roof leaks so bad, they’ve attached hoses to drain rainwater into enormous trash cans in hallways, classrooms, their gym, and cafeteria.

I swear I still had his photos, but here’s a similar one from the Roanoke Times.

And my kid’s rodent-infested school burned down last year. Our facilities team had been playing whack-a-mole replacing gnawed-on 110 year old wires for months before one likely sparked a flame that the fire department didn’t know about because the school’s fire alarm panel predates 10-digit phone numbers, and could not be programmed with an area code.

Byrd’s beloved pay-as-you-go, no-debt-for-you, policy has divisions like ours in a choke hold. That’s why this school sat in RPS custody for a year before the insurance company and the city gave our division the money to even start rebuilding.

School facilities are in crisis.

You know who has been trying to fund it. (Weak local governments)

You know who has been (often intentionally) looking the other way for 150 years. (The kingdom-state)

You know who has the power to - but has not been - enforcing a minimum standard for America’s schools. (Federal government)

The question now, friends, is what are we going to do about it?

*Safe Schools Can’t Wait.* Thanks forever to the RTD for this photo!

“I learned of other districts around the nation that are all dealing with these same issues. I think this has a lot to do with the systemic, and constant, defunding and disinvestment of public schools, and that we really do want to consider putting pressure on our State and Federal government to help us address these issues.
A recent NPR piece reported that 41% of districts in the US needed to update or replace HVAC systems in at least half of their schools. So I want everyone to know - this is not just an RPS issue. This is a nation wide crisis that should not just fall on the shoulders of localities to address.
I agree that these conditions are at crisis levels, but I also want us to recognize that this is historically what has happened to our schools as a result of disinvestment of our funding.”
Stephanie Rizzi, Richmond School Board Chairwoman
September 18, 2023

I tried - and failed - to work this quote about Dillon’s Rule into the post; but I thought it was silly so I’m sharing it totally out of context now:

“We have to go to the General Assembly for pretty much everything except to brush our teeth in the morning.” Arlington County Board Chairman, 2001

“Well, actuallys” are always welcome at info@rvadirt.com. Though I’ve read a LOT, I am not an expert in this field by any stretch, and will gladly correct anything I may have gotten wrong. Thank you!

A (sometimes silly, sorta sarcastic) History of Virginia School Facilities