RVANews

School Board hires Richmond Public Schools CFO, approves Patrick Henry principal

Chris Dovi — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 00:16:19 +0000

After going more than two years without a full-time chief financial officer, Richmond Public Schools has finally hired a permanent replacement.

The School Board voted last night to hire Paul Andrew Hawkins, who most recently served in a similar capacity for Fauquier County Public Schools.

In that capacity, Hawkins currently oversees preparation of Fauquier's $140 million budget. He'd previously served in similar capacities in Fairfax, Orange, and Mecklenburg counties, as well as in finance posts with various state agencies.

Hawkins steps into a post that has largely been filled by Jim Damm, an outside contractor from Texas who was brought in on an interim basis to replace disgraced former chief operating officer Thomas Sheeran.

Sheeran was forced to resign in November 2007 after a succession of damning city audits and gaffes, including questions regarding his involvement in approving and overseeing an expensive and poorly planned effort to move the district's computer server room.

Members of the School Board questioned the move, which was determined to have cost in excess of $1 million, because the board had never voted to approve the funding.

After resigning, Sheeran threatened to sue the district, seeking a payoff settlement to compensate him for loss of his job. In 2008, Sheeran took an administrative finance post with Montgomery College in Maryland.

The School Board also approved appointment of Thomas Beatty (who was most recently principal of Richmond Community High School) as executive director of secondary education, a post filled on an interim basis for the last two years by Dionne Ward.

After meeting in closed session for more than three hours earlier in the afternoon, the board also approved Patrick Henry's new principal, Pamela Boyd. Boyd's posting had been threatened until the vote by the board, which had indicated that her approval would come only after Patrick Henry school officials signed a lease on their building.

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Patrick Henry School’s fate in question… again

Chris Dovi — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 13:24:55 +0000

The final act in the saga of the Patrick Henry School of Science and Arts charter school may well end with a hostage crisis at tonight's Richmond School Board meeting.

The Richmond School Board has indicated to Patrick Henry's leaders that it will not approve hiring the school's first principal, Pam Boyd, unless the charter's leaders sign a lease that potentially dooms the school.

The deal-breaker portion of the lease proposal, on which district officials have so far been unwilling to budge, requires the charter to provide proof that it currently has full funding to complete nearly $1 million in renovations to the Patrick Henry building. Those renovations, as well as nearly $25 million in renovations to other Richmond schools, are required under a federal court settlement agreement compelling the district to finally comply with the 20-year-old federal Americans with Disabilities Act.

Patrick Henry spokeswoman Kristen Larson says the unfavorable lease amendments present a Catch-22 for the charter's leaders.

On the one hand, with the school slated to open August 11, hiring Boyd is integral to ensuring new teachers are trained in the school's unique curriculum when students arrive.

On the other hand, charter leaders have been informed by Self Help that it would no longer lend that money if the lease required financial guarantees for the remaining two renovation phases. Self Help, a national lender specializing in loans to high risk charter schools, had previously promised a loan of $200,000 toward the estimated $285,000 in renovations needed in phase one.

"In theory you could look at this and say signing it is saying we should have a million dollars right now - that's how Self Help is looking at it," Larson says. "And Self Help won't give us the loan for phase one if these requirements are in the lease."

Calls to Richmond Public Schools were not returned.

The School Board has good reason to seek assurances that the charter school has funding to complete its renovations. The district's settlement agreement with a handful of plaintiffs who'd sued the district for violation of the ADA law sets rigid guidelines for renovating the district's more than four-dozen school buildings to allow access for people with disabilities. It also requires new schools to be fully accessible at the time they open.

Violating that settlement agreement could come with stiff penalties imposed by the federal judge overseeing the settlement agreement. Prior to the School Board vote earlier this spring to approve Patrick Henry's opening this year in a temporary space at Woodland Heights Baptist Church, the judge approved a plan to renovate Patrick Henry in three phases.

Now, it's left to lawyers for Patrick Henry and the School Board to haggle over whether that approval required the phased renovations to happen in three years. Patrick Henry already has agreed to a three year construction timeline with school officials, but putting that in writing in the lease is the sticking point with Self Help.

The School Board had been scheduled to vote to approve Boyd's hiring at its last meeting, but Patrick Henry representatives who attended that meeting were later told that deferring the hire was related to the lease.

School Board Chairwoman Kimberly Bridges and Patrick Henry president Deb Butterworth spoke by phone on Thursday night about the impasse. In a letter to Bridges, sent June 19, Butterworth asked that the board add a vote on Boyd's appointment to its agenda for this evening.

Bridges did not return calls for comment.

It is unclear whether Boyd's appointment has been added to the agenda -- personnel matters are considered in closed session -- and Larson says the school board has not responded to Butterworth's June 19 letter, but has requested the Patrick Henry officials attend this evening's meeting in case the board has questions.

The stakes tonight are simple, says Larson: "We need Boyd full time; that's only five weeks before the school opens... And if we can't get the loan, it all falls apart."

Richmond Ambulance Authority MVP threatens to walk

Chris Dovi — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 16:18:11 +0000

A long-simmering political battle for the leadership of the Richmond Ambulance Authority’s governing board threatens to lead to the departure of one of the organization's most valuable employees.

Dr. Joseph Ornato, the Authority’s chief medical officer is roundly acknowledged for almost single-handedly elevating Richmond’s EMS (emergency medical services) to a world-renown organization in response times and pioneering of new critical care techniques. Last week, responding to the possibility of a change in the Authority board’s chairmanship, Ornato threatened to quit, says board member Terone Green.

Green says Ornato’s threat came last Thursday while Green was in the VCU Emergency Room to see his mother-in-law. She had been in a serious interstate accident and had been rushed to VCU. Ornato, who also oversees the VCU ER, met with Green in a family lounge to discuss his mother-in law’s condition.

“Just to break the tension, I asked, ‘So how do you think things went yesterday?’ ” says Green, referring to a meeting of the Ambulance Authority they both attended the day before. “It shocked me (when Ornato) went into a tirade.”

During the meeting, board members got tied up on a vote to decide whether to elect Green as the new chairman or to keep the current chairman, Joseph P. McMenamin. The 5-to-5 deadlock is likely to return in a later vote, with Green already having requested a second vote on the chairmanship be placed on the next meeting agenda.

“(Ornato) threatened to quit the board if anything changes,” Greens says. “He specifically told me that if McMenamin is not the chair, he is resigning.”

Ornato did not return calls for comment. His contract with the Authority was renewed in April.

Green says he has since discussed the conversation with other board members and members of City Council, but he declined to say with whom. It is Council that appoints members of the authority.

McMenamin says the matter is a non-issue, and defends the appropriateness of Ornato holding public opinions on matters before the authority board.

“Number one, I understand the vote to have been taken,” McMenamin says, referring to the chairmanship vote. “Number two, why would it be not permissible … why would it be otherwise objectionable for the medical director of an organization to hold an opinion?”

In the past, Green has been critical of McMenamin’s leadership, calling into question whether the Richmond attorney, who is a partner at the McGuire Woods law firm, might have a conflict of interest since his firm is representing a health insurance company, Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield, in an ongoing suit related to a billing dispute against the Richmond Ambulance Authority.

McMenamin has defended his leadership, responding to past media inquiries about potential conflicts by insisting he recuses himself from all conversations within his firm or the authority related to the suit.

Regardless, McMenamin stands to profit from his firm’s representation of Anthem, Green says, and “ … the appearance of a conflict is a conflict. I have questioned it.”

The court decided in April in favor of the Ambulance Authority, but Anthem’s claim remains on appeal.

McMenamin has been chairman of the Ambulance Authority for 15 years and once served as an emergency room doctor.

Whether McMenamin or Ornato believe a staffer with the Ambulance Authority should voice an opinion that could sway a duly appointed governing body is of key concern to Green. He says Ornato’s promise to quit if a future vote removed McMenamin as chairman was just that: an inappropriate effort to influence decisions of the board.

And it is an effort that could have a ripple effect on other matters to be decided by the board, he says, if they come to fear that an important staffer like Ornato might quit if he finds fault with the board’s decisions on policy.

“I don’t mind people giving me their opinion, but this went beyond opinion to threat,” Green says. “Is he threatening to resign if we don’t vote a certain way?”

McMenamin said Ornato’s potential loss to the Ambulance Authority is to be avoided.

“My impression is Dr. Ornato is not a bluffer, and so I take what he says with the utmost seriousness,” McMenamin said. “Reading between the lines, speaking only for my interpretation of what I have heard he said, I would interpret it to mean that Dr. Ornato would not care to work in a system where political influences have an inappropriately significant impact on how the system operates.”

Charter school votes offer unprecedented insight

Chris Dovi — Sat, 08 May 2010 15:39:00 +0000

If any lessons come from Monday night’s School Board vote to grant permission for Patrick Henry School for Science and Arts to open in a local church this August, it’s this: Don’t count your chickens before they hatch... or you just might have to eat crow.

With that vote -- which decided in the charter’s favor -- Richmonders got something to chew on, too, thanks to a Round Robin-style forum prior to the vote during which each member gave a mini-stump speech to explain their reasoning.

In ways that transcend the charter school issue, those speeches provided unprecedented insight into what drives the politics and ideologies of their elected School Board representatives -- and left some charter opponents who thought they had a sure victory scratching their heads.

Going into the meeting, it seemed a veritable certainty that the end of the road had arrived for the charter. The opinions of five School Board members -- a simple majority of the nine -- were well known and all planned to vote no to the school. Another member, Adria Graham-Scott, seemed a likely no vote as well, according to observers.

Of the five who were known to oppose the school, Dawn Page, Maurice Henderson, Chandra Smith, Kim Gray, and Evette Wilson, there seemed little doubt that their votes were a lock. All have made no secret of the philosophical, political, or economic issues they have with the school.

With the question of moving to the temporary location came a far more fundamental question of whether the charter would be allowed to survive the evening, since a variety of delays have made moving into the Patrick Henry building by August a certain impossibility.

Most opponents of the school saw the evening as a period on the conversation. A no vote meant no charter school, end of conversation.

Henderson opened the forum. He represents the district in which the charter is to be located and who will face an election to remain that representative in November, and moved his objections largely away from his previous concerns about the school’s alleged shaky financial foundations, instead finding his new concern in locating the school –- even temporarily -- in a church.

The change, said Henderson, flies in the face of a sacred separation of church and state.

Henderson’s fundamentalist views on church/state separations were not mentioned during his earlier report to the board on the district’s Early Head Start program. The program for pre-kindergarten students is operated by Richmond Public Schools, but locates many of its programs at churches throughout the city.

Gray came next, indicating that the question before the board changed dramatically between Sunday night -- when she’d met with charter representatives and given them an emphatic ‘no’ based on the school’s finances -- and Monday when she voted yes.

The change came in the waning minutes of the board’s afternoon work session, during a presentation from Jane Ellis, director of charter school lending for Self-Help, a non-profit financial organization that specializes in high-risk loans to charter schools. Ellis, citing the proposed school’s innovative curriculum as the only collateral needed to secure financing, told the School Board that her group was ready to provide a $200,000 loan to the school. That loan makes possible the charter’s necessary renovations to the Patrick Henry building on Semmes Avenue.

Gray agreed in principle with Henderson’s church-and-state objection, but indicated that the district’s own precedent for co-locating in churches and its lack of a stated policy against such co-locations meant that the rationale was moot in assessing Patrick Henry’s request.

“If they met the requirements of that bank,” Gray said, “I do believe they can meet our demands.”

It was a view not shared by Dawn Page. Page represents the district where much of the political opposition to the charter school is centered -- the children of NAACP Richmond Chapter executive director and vehement Patrick Henry opponent King Salim Khalfai attend John B. Cary Elementary where Page once served as PTA president, and Khalfani spoke Monday objecting to Patrick Henry. Page said the school failed to show a "sustainable" financial model.

Norma Murdoch-Kitt gave her nod in favor of the school with little explanation other than that the school had adequately answered the board’s questions.

Coleman arrived for the long meeting wearing on his lapel a “Choice” campaign button, and cited Superintendent Yvonne Brandon’s signature drive to increase enrollment in Richmond schools from the current 23,000 to 30,000 students by 2012, as part of why he was voting yes to the school.

Coleman, an ordained minister with leadership ties to Richmond Hill and co-pastor of the East End Fellowship in Church Hill, gave no credence to Henderson’s religious objection.

“When we think of this building as a church, I have a church that meets in a theater,” he said. “Should people not go to the theater” because of its alternate church use?

Chandra Smith and Evette Wilson both cited perhaps the most surprising reasons for voting no. Both have made no secret of their objection to the charter school. When the School Board approved the school’s original charter two years ago, the pair joined then-Board member Joan Mimms in a walkout to protest the vote.

But on Monday night, both said their no vote was based almost entirely on the new location and its impact on students with disabilities.

“My problem is as an educator -- I’ve taken the time look at the data and it’s unproven,” said Smith, first reiterating to her objection to charter schools generally. But it is the school’s compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act that she cited as the key reason for her down vote on the move.

Wilson even more strongly objected to the school’s failure to address ADA issues when moving kids from the church to Forest Hill Park where the school’s outdoor classroom is to be located. That outdoor classroom is central to the schools curriculum.

“I have a higher standard” for ADA compliance, said Wilson, who admonished the school for not accommodating students with physical disabilities along the few blocks between the church and the park. “It concerns me that some of those children wouldn’t be able to walk on the grass path.”

This July marks the 20th anniversary of the federal Americans with Disabilities Act, an anniversary of no little significance to Richmond Public Schools which currently is in the midst of belated, multi-million-dollar renovations to its 50 or so school buildings to comply with the federal civil rights law.

Short of Gray’s switch, Adria Graham-Scott’s yes vote came as the biggest shock to the charter’s supporters, and surprised many at the meeting by revealing a sympathy for charters borne of her own child’s positive experiences in alternative education programs in Los Angeles.

She countered another of Smith’s objections -- using children to experiment on with alternative education programs – by saying “experimentation is good.”

“Think of the value of penicillin – it grew in a Petri dish,” Scott said. “We have to recognize that experimentation is part of growth and risk is part of development.”

Chairwoman Kimberly Bridges voted yes for the church site, making a point of noting that she is the last remaining board member who voted yes for the original charter.

“I’m going to stay on that road for now,” Bridges said, cautioning the school on another point of criticism heard from both supporters and opponents of the school.

“It’s a two-way street,” Bridges said of the need for open-mindedness from Patrick Henry supporters, who she encouraged to learn more about the other schools in the district and the challenges that have held them back.

And Bridges called for something that has yet to truly happen on the subject of charter schools in Richmond: “We’ve got to have a community dialogue.”

So far, that dialogue has been confined to pundits, and it’s one that Bridges said needed to happen more broadly because the charter school issue “is an undeniable movement” that “has only grown exponentially and it’s one that we need to come to grips with as a community.”

The Patrick Henry School of Science and Arts is scheduled to open in Woodland Heights Baptist Church in August. No date has been set for when the school will move from there to the Patrick Henry Elementary building.

An investor steps up for Patrick Henry — with a catch

Chris Dovi — Mon, 03 May 2010 16:34:10 +0000

Tonight's School Board vote on the Patrick Henry charter school could be decisive in determining whether the school will be allowed to open next August, but it also could be decisive in determining whether Richmond Public Schools has any interest in saving Richmond taxpayers more than $200 million, says Paul Goldman, a local pundit and Patrick Henry supporter.

Even as the Board prepares to vote tonight on whether to allow the city's first charter to open in an alternate location for its first year, Goldman says he has lined up a willing investor ready to step forward and renovate the Patrick Henry Elementary School building for free.

The only catch: Richmond leaders must step up lobbying efforts in Congress for two bills that would change federal tax code to allow federal historic tax credits in the renovation of school buildings.

Goldman, who already convinced Virginia senators Jim Webb and Mark Warner and Rep. Eric Cantor to introduce twin tax credit bills this past winter, calls Richmond "ground zero" in both the charter school and historic tax credit debates.

"This bill could be passed relatively quickly because it's already introduced," says Goldman. "And we're saying that once the bill is passed and signed into law, the next day we'll come forward and make an offer that even the Godfather wouldn't refuse."

Sen. Tom Harkin, who chairs the Senate education committee, also has expressed support for the bill, Goldman says, as have Virginia governors Bob McDonnell, Tim Kaine and George Allen, and charter schools are central policy issues for both McDonnell and President Barack Obama.

Tom Kasper, owner of Kasper Mortgage Capital and an expert in historic tax credit construction, estimates the city could save $200 million by using both state and federal tax credits to rehabilitate Richmond's aging school buildings. Mayor Dwight C. Jones recently announced plans to move forward with more than $150 million in renovation projects on four Richmond schools, all of which are old enough to qualify for both state and local credits.

Kasper says his company has successfully completed tax credit projects all over the country, and confirms that he is Goldman's ace in the hole. Kasper says that he is willing to provide financing for Patrick Henry.

"We would form an investment partnership and commit to providing all the funds and delivering back to the system a completely rehabbed building to be used by the charter school or something else," Kasper says. "All we're asking is that they do some work in Washington and give us an acceptable lease."

School Board Chairwoman Kimberly Bridges couldn't speak for the board, but says she personally is amenable to hearing a proposal that would eliminate the construction renovation cost that right now remains a key concern for the School Board.

"I can tell you that the building costs on top of the regular charter startup is definitely part of the Board's concern; is how that's going to get paid for," says Bridges, who also isn't certain how likely legislation in Congress is to be passed within the timeframe necessary to move Patrick Henry into the school building within a year. "I've spoken to Congressman Cantor in the past about his job, and as he put it, they don't call it an act of Congress for no reason. Timing may be the key issue for us right now and we haven't seen any proposal about this means of financing."

The School Board offered Patrick Henry a lease on the building for $1-per-year on April 15, but that lease has not yet been signed. Because of delays in offering that lease, Patrick Henry missed any hope of meeting construction deadlines that would allow it to open in the Patrick Henry building on Semmes Avenue this year. Tonight's vote is for approval to instead open in nearby Woodland Heights Baptist Church for the first year while construction is completed.

But adding some legitimacy to Goldman's tax credit cause is a clause in the School Board's already approved charter contract with the Patrick Henry School of Science and Arts stipulates that both parties "shall investigate and pursue all federal and state historic tax credits that may be available for construction/renovation projects at the Patrick Henry School."

Kristen Larson, spokeswoman for Patrick Henry, says the charter school's board already has been hard at work on the tax credit issue.

"We've actually put in part one of our [state] application" to use historic tax credits, Larson says, indicating that the school has consulted with another local historic credit expert, Mimi Sadler, as well as directed its own architect to assume that any renovation designs must conform to state and federal guidelines for historic renovations. "All along with the plans, everything he's been doing is with [historic credits] in mind."

New lease on life

Chris Dovi — Sun, 02 May 2010 02:00:19 +0000

One of the biggest hurtles confronting the nascent Patrick Henry School of Science and Arts – a lease to its building on Semmes Avenue – may soon be cleared. The Richmond School Board provided a proposed, but as yet unsigned, lease for the Patrick Henry Elementary School building to the Patrick Henry board on April 15, confirms Patrick Henry spokeswoman Kristen Larson.

The absence of a signed lease, according to school leaders, has repeatedly caused fund-raising efforts to stall, as potential donors have declined their support based on the lack of a building.

The news of a lease agreement comes even as the proposed charter school’s leaders face down perhaps an even bigger challenge on Monday night, when the Richmond School Board votes on a proposal to temporarily relocate the school to another facility.

The proposed lease is “with our lawyers,” Larson says, indicating that the lease stipulates the expected $1 yearly rent for the 80-year-old former city school.

The school’s board president, Deb Butterworth says the lease remains unsigned while lawyers for both parties iron out details and stipulations.

Larson says that even the promise of a lease can potentially have a positive effect on fund-raising efforts.

“I definitely think that having a signed lease on a building that we’re scheduled to do renovations on makes people somewhat more comfortable when donating money to the school,” she says. “We have heard from donors that raising money on a building that we don’t own and don’t have a lease on has made them less confident.”

The school, which would be the first stand-alone public charter school in Virginia, also is close to finalizing a lease with Woodland Heights Baptist Church, a temporary location that would allow the school to open on time this year while going ahead with long-delayed renovations at the Patrick Henry building. As part of negotiations on that second lease, school officials confirm that they’ve pushed back their first day of school to August 11 to accommodate an already scheduled summer vacation Bible school program at the church.

The wary feeling among potential financial supporters is clearly evident in the numbers.

Even a fundraiser at the school sponsored by Gov. Bob McDonnell, one of the Patrick Henry's most vocal supporters, has yielded only about $50,000 in new donations, Larson says. Overall cash donations so far toward the school’s ambitious $350,000 first-year goal have totaled $100,000.

Federal and organizational grants have made up the bulk of the school’s funding successes, so far totaling more than $700,000, and putting the school largely in the black in terms of ability to promote itself as fiscally sound to a questioning Richmond School Board.

Of equal importance to fund-raising in Larson’s mind is enrollment – commitment by parents to send their children to the school – and as of Thursday night, the last night of its open registration for children who won lottery slots, close to 130 children were signed up to attend. That number is just about 30 students shy of the school’s planned first-year enrollment, a difference likely to be made up when wait-listed families are offered the open slots.

“We were going out doing this fund-raising and saying this is what we hope and envision,” says Larson. “Now we have our families, we’re close to finalizing our lease. We’re close to something that’s real.”

Alternative (and questionable) test to be phased out

Chris Dovi — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 10:00:58 +0000

An alternative test once used by school districts to cheat their way around Virginia testing requirements – the state’s Standards of Learning Tests – will soon no longer be available, according to changes announced by the Virginia Department of Education.

Virginia’s superintendent of public instruction, Patricia I. Wright announced Thursday that the alternative tests, commonly called the VGLAs, which had been easy to abuse because they were graded and reported within the districts where the students took them, are being replaced by online tests. Those new tests will be administered by the state.

The first tests to be replaced will be the math tests, beginning in 2011, followed by the reading tests in 2012. The VGLA, or Virginia Grade-Level Alternative tests, were first implemented in 2005.

Issues with the VGLAs, which are administered to students with disabilities that prevent them from being assessed by Standards of Learning (SOL) tests, were first brought to light by a series of blog postings by a local state retiree, John Butcher, and a former Richmond Public Schools board member, Carol A.O. Wolf. Their findings were later, in part, reported by the Washington Post. The state’s changes were mandated after a bill patroned by State Del. John M. O’Bannon (R-Henrico) was passed by this year’s Virginia General Assembly.

"Today's announcement is the first step in carrying out the will of the General Assembly and addressing my own concerns about overuse and misuse of the VGLA," Wright said in a statement released by the Virginia Department of Education on Thursday.

Even with the change, Butcher remains critical of the state, which he suggests ignored signs that the tests were being abused.

“In light of the information … one cannot but wonder why it takes a new law to excite the Superintendent's ‘concerns’,” he wrote in an email and on his blog. “It seems to me that we need a Superintendent whose concerns center on Virginia's students, not the administrators who have been abusing them via these alternative testing schemes.”

Wolf said she's satisfied that some change is coming, but called for broader change -- and an acknowledgment of the real human cost of the cheating that already has been allowed to go on: "Teachers have been fired, students kicked out of school and denied regular diplomas, parents treated as if they are non-entities with no rights -- still, top-level administrators who knew of the cheating and chose to remain silent -- continue to be paid high salaries."

There was plenty of reason just in Richmond to suspect overuse when Wolf and Butcher began their investigation of the tests last year. According to a post on Butcher’s blog, crankytaxpayer.org, “Richmond has the second-highest rate of VGLA testing (substitute tests in grades 3-8 for kids with handicaps or disabilities) in the state” and “classifies an atypical number of black schoolchildren as ‘disabled,’ which contributes to Richmond's high rate of VGLA testing.”

Though other VGLA tests will continue to be administered until they are eventually phased out, the state also indicated its desire to see greater accountability with those tests. According to the state’s release, “this spring, the Virginia Department of Education (VDOE) directed assessment, special education and other staff in divisions with VGLA participation rates of 25 percent or greater to undergo training on proper administration of the test.” The state average is 20 percent in both reading and mathematics.

The press release indicates that no time table has yet been established to phase out VGLA tests in writing, history, and science.

Supporting articles:

Velvet van vandalized

Chris Dovi — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 10:00:23 +0000

Oh, what is the world coming to when a couple of pole dancers can’t go for an ice cream treat without drawing fire – or at the very least, poorly-rendered graffiti slurs -- from militant feminists?

What started as an innocent trip to one of Richmond’s favorite lunch counters for an old-time frosty milkshake turned into something far less wholesome for Dan Shorkey and two Club Velvet exotic dancers earlier this week after an unidentified vandal defaced their car in broad daylight.

“I took the two dancers to The Village for lunch,” says Shorkey, who is known simply as "Dan" to the seemingly endless parade of statuesque beauties who emerge daily from his Fan Tan salon on West Broad Street in varying hues of bronze, brown and fluorescent orange. Many are dancers at Velvet, says Dan, who has been good friends with the notorious Shockoe strip club’s owner, Sam Moore, for about two years.

After dessert, the milkshake-loving trio trotted down Franklin Street to Cous Cous for lunch “because we really like their lamb,” says Dan, clean-cut and 40-somethingish with sandy hair and an even, golden skin tone that indicates he’s not just the owner of his tanning shop, but also a client.

On returning to the SUV, Dan and the dancers discovered the cost of those milkshakes turned out to be the last few threads of gauze-thin dignity worn by the larger-than-life, pout-lipped models painted mural-like on all three over-sized SUVs in the strip club’s iconic fleet.

While they’d munched lunch kebabs, someone in full view of other patrons of The Village Cafe had scrawled in large letters with white shoe polish “Feminism” and “Pig” across the laser-rendered murals of lingerie-clad dancers that adorn the infamous purple and white Range Rover.

“One of the girls we were with was really upset – it was obvious that the people inside [the restaurant], they knew who did it,” Dan says, chuckling. “I thought it was funny.”

The anonymous graffitist’s attempt at preaching Women’s Lib was equally lost on the truck’s owner, Moore.

Driving back to Dan’s tanning salon, “we saw Sam in the Fan and showed [the graffiti] to him and he said ‘Leave it on there, I think it’s funny’.”

And so it remained for two or three days, one of the city’s most conspicuous vehicles parked along one of the city’s most conspicuous stretches of roadway, slowly drying shoe polish baking into the truck’s paint under unseasonably hot April sunshine.

Finally on Tuesday morning, the time came to scrub it off, says Dan. But it was a decision made not because the scrawled protests had started to sink in.

“One of the girls was taking her mother to lunch, and taking that [truck],” says Dan. “She didn’t want that stuff all over there. She thought it was embarrassing.”

By afternoon, the only words other than the Velvet logo left on the truck were those that are on all of Moore’s SUVs: “Always Hiring.”

(Image courtesy of Dan Shorkey. Nelly is on the left, Anna is on the right. Shokey identified both ladies as dancers at Club Velvet.)

A Richmond vignette

Chris Dovi — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 10:00:27 +0000

In any other city, heavy gray woolen coats aren’t presumed practical wear for a warm spring day. But, this is Richmond -- the former capital of the Confederacy and the very heart of vaguely uncomfortable anachronisms.

So, the recent sighting of a dozen grown men -- unkempt beards adding to the overall impression of itchy discomfort -- lining up in loose parade formation at the busy intersection of Laburnum Avenue and Hermitage Road provoked nearly no reaction from the busy flow of passing mid-morning traffic.

That three of the men, with ceremonial officers' sabers belted at their sides, bear uncanny resemblance to the daily stationary parade of bronze and marble statuary along nearby Monument Avenue proved equally unremarkable.

Their objective? They've come to place a wreath on the monument to honor A.P. Hill. Perhaps it is because so many lives have been hurt or lost, drivers instinctively know they must pay attention while in this often-dangerous intersection. Just ask any Richmond motorists who has struggled to circumnavigate the signalized four-way stop guarded by Hill’s central bronze effigy, stubbornly refusing to yield right-of-way to oncoming traffic.

This day (April 2) is General Hill’s day. The day 145 years ago that “Little Powell” lost his life while inspecting Confederate defenses at besieged Petersburg.

“It was a bad day for the general, but it’s a good day to honor the general,” says Patrick Falci, a similarly diminutive New York City native who has the distinct honor of portraying the deceased at today’s commemoration. Falci, who bears a marked resemblance to Hill both in height and profile, adjusts his nearly-elbow length calf-skin gloves and sword as a palm-frond memorial wreath is lifted from his nearby well-traveled minivan.

“We want to make sure he’s not forgotten today,” says Falci, who also played Hill on the Silver Screen in the 1993 film Gettysburg.

Forgetting Hill seems highly unlikely under circumstances that find his mortal remains entombed forever at ground zero of nearly-daily commuter traffic snarl. Directly behind Hill's monument, sits A. Linwood Holton Elementary, a monument of a different sort, this one named after Virginia Governor A. Linwood Holton, a champion of Civil Rights whose children attended Richmond Public Schools during the heyday of forced busing.

As Falci talks, a car hesitates too long before a planned left turn -- despite the lack of oncoming traffic -- in defiance of the growing line of cars stacking up behind. That this intersection is just that, an intersection, and not a traffic circle or some hybrid is perpetually perplexing to just enough Richmond drivers that it was the center of a swirling City Council face off with the Virginia Department of Transportation just a few months back.

Like the conclusion to the Civil War fought here 150 years ago, the resolution of this most recent face-off involving General Hill answered little in the minds of those with opposing opinions on the matter.

“I don’t like any of these French circles,” acknowledges another of the wool-clad men, Gregory Randall, whose resemblance to General “Stonewall” Jackson is both intentional – it’s the character he plays at Civil War reenactments – and striking. “They’re all over the place at Gettysburg – I’m a nervous wreck when we go up there.”

Randall, along with his twin brother, George Randall, and most of the other men and women gathered for the commemoration, is a member of the Rev. Beverly Tucker Lacy Camp of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, an organization of descendants who’ve taken it upon themselves to ensure dates like this one are properly and perpetually marked.

As the group makes its way across two busy lanes to the westbound median, a gold-trimmed Stars and Bars flag flits gently. Honks and friendly waves from passing cars are occasionally punctuated by angry shouts of “Aryan nation!” and rude hand gestures.

A head pokes out of a passing Richmond Public Schools bus. A young black man of high school age, with little patience for such commemorations or defenses of a past where his ancestors were bought and sold as property, shouts a few vulgar remarks. The bus driver tries to take the edge off by tossing a friendly wave.

The men in gray ignore it all.

“It’s just the way people act,” says George Randall. “We’re the true patriots.”

“Well, descendants of true patriots,” corrects Joe Wright, color sergeant for this Sons of Confederate Veterans unit. “The North fought to prevent a people from establishing a government of their own choosing.”

It’s a fine point of history long disputed -- and of increased relevance today with a resurgence of states-rights activism during this year's General Assembly session and ongoing by the anti-federal health care bill fight of Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli. And it's one held fast by most members of this assemblage.

Most, that is.

“Being a New York liberal, it’s hard to keep my mouth shut sometimes,” says Falci’s wife, Joan, her slightly nasal Northern accent standing out among the mostly rural Virginia voices she converses with. She frets as her husband and another man, Frank Earnest, make their way across the dangerous intersection bearing the commemorative wreath. The two bravely avoid sharing Gen. Hill’s unlucky fate.

Despite clearly differing political views from the others in the group, she says, Richmond traffic is far harder to negotiate than the mostly friendly political ribs she gets from her husband’s comrades. “Frank [Earnest] calls me his favorite liberal,” she says.

The men make it back from their brave charge across opposing lanes of traffic and safely curbside, gathering not far from another statue, a tiny cast of the peace-loving St. Francis of Assisi that graces the vacant triangle park to the northwest of Hill’s resting place.

Even having braved such mortal danger, these men and women are resolute about one point of honor: General A.P. Hill should stand tall where he’s stood for more than 100 years.

“His remains should stay there, under that monument,” says Falci, during a brief closing eulogy for the brave general. “Here in Richmond was where he trained the 13th Virginia Infantry Regiment, it was here that he trained that division.”

And as quickly as they arrived, Generals Lee, Hill, Jackson, and their entourage pile into a waiting caravan of trucks, minivans and SUVs all covered liberally in Confederacy-commemorating bumper stickers. Turning south on Hermitage, they’re off to Petersburg, the next leg in their daylong commemoration of Hill’s death.

Assuming they sort out who has right of way on the way through that pesky traffic circle.

Patrick Henry updates: funds, friends, and foes

Chris Dovi — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 10:00:39 +0000

Despite Gov. Bob McDonnell’s marquee sponsorship for Tuesday night’s high-powered fundraiser hosted at Patrick Henry School of Science and Arts, the cocktail dresses and tailored suits mingling about as a live jazz ensemble kept time were mostly stuffed with city political and schools leaders. They ran occasional strafing sorties on two tables of vegan-safe hors d’oeuvres, but most checkbooks stayed safely in purses or pockets.

As of April Fools' Day, school founders say the preliminary fundraising total from the governor’s event stands at around $50,000 – including the $25,000 check that McDonnell stroked out of his own inaugural event fund – far short of the ambitious $300,000-plus goal they’d set for the end of March.

“We're obviously doing a lot of follow-up [with guests] over the next couple of weeks,” says Kristen Larson, the school’s spokeswoman, who deemed the evening a success. About 40 guests turned out for a reception at the governor's mansion that preceded the event at the school, where she estimates 150 came out of the 250 people who’d received invitations.

"We were happy with the turnout," Larson says.

Mingling in that crowd was prominent local developer, Robin Miller, whose past development successes have included projects that converted former Richmond school buildings like Patrick Henry into condominiums.

Also present was current School Board Chairwoman Kimberly Bridges.

“I was just spreading my wishes that their fundraising went well,” Bridges says. “The funding for those ADA issues is critical.”

Critical, but perhaps less pressing if the School Board approves a charter amendment to allow the school to start its first year in the basement of nearby Woodland Heights Baptist Church. The building is not only ADA compliant, but has a seemingly endless supply of unused classrooms all tailor-made for a small school. The church’s kid-worthiness is further bolstered by the fact that the plaintiffs in an ADA lawsuit settlement agreement with Richmond Schools approved the site in a letter sent to schools officials this week.

Bridges says she hasn’t yet seen that letter and didn’t express an opinion on the proposed temporary relocation. “With the other request for material change, we got a letter saying can you put this on your agenda for consideration. That’s what we would do again.”

Bridges says she was an early supporter of Patrick Henry’s charter – she voted for it in 2008 – and says she’s continued to work diligently to overcome obstacles to the school’s opening, which include daunting needs to bring the building into compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act. Those renovations, she says, played a large part in the district’s decision to mothball the building just a few years ago.

“If that building was easy and inexpensive to rehab for ADA, we’d still have it open,” she says, de-emphasizing what King Salim Khalfani, executive director of the Virginia State Conference of the NAACP, and other detractors say was the real reason: White Flight in microcosm.

Khalfani has been relentless in his own disdain for the school, which he calls a throwback to everything ignoble about Virginia’s past resistance to public school integration and equal rights for black students.

“It’s been nefarious from the beginning,” Khalfani said, shortly after addressing the School Board at its Monday night meeting, which was largely devoted to lingering Patrick Henry-related matters. “I think we’re going backwards on this thing. It’s going back to being about race and class and privilege.”

For his part, Khalfani says, the state NAACP will consider filing suit to stop the school.

“We’re looking into it with the Richmond branch and the Virginia Conference,” Khalfani says, citing what he says are emails between Patrick Henry supporters that he’s obtained and that he claims show racist and segregationist designs by parents and supporters of the school.

Race seemed hardly an issue at the governor’s fundraising event.

Prominent blacks – including former School Board Chairman George Braxton and George Martin, a partner at McGuire Woods law firm – mingled with their white counterparts. The crowd, though predominantly white, was many hues, speaking to what school supporters say is proof that their efforts are sincere and aim only at reopening a cornerstone of this racially mixed Southside community.

If the crowd offered an at-least-partial answer the questions about race, it likely won’t answer any of the long-lingering questions about the biggest obstacle, financial support. Since its charter was first approved by the Richmond School Board two years ago, the school has had little success in attracting local big-money donors, having raised just a bit more than $50,000 in cash contributions in that time. The school has had more success with federal and foundation grants, so far amassing more than $570,000 from those funding sources.

Khalfani, needless to say, did not attend the governor’s fundraiser.

“The Woodland Heights people, they could have put their kids in the system,” Khalfani said at the Monday School Board meeting, accusing them instead of allowing the school to close.

Tichi Pinkney-Eppes, another advocate for Richmond school children, an early skeptic of the charter, and the current chairwoman of the education committee of the Richmond Crusade for Voters, voiced concern over Khalfani’s renewed strident talk.

If race dominates the discussion, “that would be a shame,” Pinkney-Eppes said Monday night after watching Khalfani’s speech, “because it’s really not about race.”

Rather, she says, it’s about the practical failures of Richmond Public Schools to provide substantive educations for the majority of the 23,000 or so children who attend. “If [charter schools] are about race, it appears the white folks are more knowledgeable about charter schools than black folks,” she says, defiantly challenging black leaders to see charters as a way to improve the system “instead of complaining endlessly about what the system is not doing.”

School ADA funds could go to business development

Chris Dovi — Fri, 02 Apr 2010 10:00:19 +0000

It certainly wasn’t the endless supply of free coffee provided by City Councilman Bruce Tyler that packed the Mary Munford Elementary School cafeteria early Saturday morning two weeks ago with sleepy-eyed Near West End residents.

Rather, it was the fate of the turn-of-the-century Westhampton Elementary School building (the dominant architectural feature on the corner of Libbie and Patterson avenues) that had so many in this community stirred up.

“I haven’t had my first cup of coffee yet, so forgive me,” says the as-always impeccably coiffed Tyler, offering his gathered constituents a self-deprecating joke meant to infer that he might not yet be on his game as the meeting starts.

Unlikely. Despite his purported low reserves of caffeine, it is clear Tyler is operating on enough juice to know how to disarm this crowd. This meeting, he tells them, will NOT focus on the Westhampton Building – with its beautiful art-deco influenced detailing and its deeply undervalued city assessed value of $7 million – but rather on the future of the entire area.

Murmurs of vague displeasure pass through the room, but Tyler keeps the meeting steered along a friendly course – there’s free coffee and pastries, after all.

The Westhampton Building is just the first of many city-owned surplus properties for sale that Tyler would like to use to seed a proposed economic development fund aimed at attracting and supporting businesses to the city. The councilman seeks to establish the fund in a new way - not the slush-fund approach of the past where the city freely passed out money and tax abatements to developers promising big returns only to find themselves and the taxpayers they represent on the hook for soaring debt and disappointing project results. Instead, he sees it working almost like a line of credit.

Tyler would like to see 25 percent of the proceeds of all city property sales to go to the fund.

“It won’t be a gift, it would be a fund that would have to be paid back to the city so we could grow this fund,” says Tyler, even envisioning the city becoming a profit-sharing partner. “For instance, if a developer comes to the area and he needs capital to finish out a building, when the building is sold or as the payments go down, we would get a return on investment.”

But there’s a hitch. As currently proposed, Tyler’s proposal may shortchange the most vulnerable city residents – not only children with handicaps who attend Richmond Public Schools, but the roughly 23,000 students who attend schools in buildings, many of which lack modern libraries, computer labs, athletic facilities, and adequate and accessible playground equipment.

Two years ago, then-Council President Bill Pantele pushed through an ordinance that sets aside all proceeds from the sale of surplus school buildings to pay for capital improvements in the schools, which would include the cost of bringing the schools into compliance with the nearly 20-year-old Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).

Pantele’s ordinance came at a time when former Mayor L. Douglas Wilder refused to allocate any money to pay for the tens of millions of dollars needed to bring Richmond’s 50-plus school buildings into compliance with both state and federal laws and the terms of the settlement agreement of a lawsuit brought in U.S. District Court by parents and children with disabilities against the city school system.

Tyler’s plan to partly undermine Pantele’s ordinance isn’t raising hackles yet, but schools officials and advocates for the disabled are cautious and want to know more.

“I have reached out to Councilman Tyler to get more information,” says School Board Chairwoman Kimberly Bridges, who says she only recently became aware of Tyler’s proposal and is working on a time to meet with Tyler to discuss his proposal. “I would want to find out how this would impact our ADA funding.”

Carol A.O. Wolf, an advocate for the disabled and former School Board member who pushed hard during her time on the board to bring city schools into compliance with ADA, credits Tyler with pushing through a $25 million Council plan to fund ADA improvements. But, she says she remains skeptical of a plan that might take any other funding resources away from school ADA projects and other capital needs of the city schools.

“I’m relieved to hear he’s only talking about 25 percent here,” Wolf says. “I think we need to get the ADA improvements made in the schools and that most people know that the economic development that will do the greatest good for Richmond is to make all of our schools models of excellence that are 21st century learning environments.”

Wolf’s concern is in part due to the possibility that a desire to feed the fund could lead to an overly hasty sale of historically significant school properties that – like Westhampton Building -- are worth far more than their apparent market or city assessment values. Valuable historic tax credits – amounting to as much as 45-percent of the value of the properties – are only available to whatever parties move forward to renovate the buildings, and with past school sales these potential credits were not factored as part of the sale price.

"I was really surprised to hear now with the properties coming available – properties that carry substantial historic tax credits that are gold to developers – that he now wants to take back the money promised in the ordinance,” Wolf says.

For his part Tyler says he’s ready to talk – and possibly willing to make compromises like a sunset clause for school sales that would expire after the renovations imposed by the school district’s ADA settlement are completed.

“I think it’s reasonable to have the conversation,” says Tyler, hammering on the bad deals Richmond taxpayers have continually been saddled with when good economic development ideas have gone wrong. Besides, he says, “three years ago when [Pantele’s] ordinance was introduced, there was no [ADA] money going into Richmond Public Schools. That has changed and I think it’s fair to look at it in a different light – and we’re going to look at some of this money for different purposes.”

Patrick Henry School finds a new home (for now)

Chris Dovi — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 15:37:06 +0000

Borne upon by an impossible-to-meet construction deadline to renovate the old Patrick Henry Elementary building, Richmond's first charter school is now considering moving into temporary digs.

Leaders with the Patrick Henry School of Science and Arts confirm that they are in talks with Woodland Heights Baptist Church on 31st Street, just three or so blocks away from the Patrick Henry building.

If an agreement is reached, and if the Richmond School Board agrees to what would amount to an amendment to the school group’s charter agreement, Patrick Henry would rent unused portions of the church on a temporary basis.

Patrick Henry’s board sent a letter Wednesday seeking permission from the Richmond School Board to move its planned July opening day to the church facilities. The church building already is compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), one of the major construction stumbling blocks at the 80-year-old Patrick Henry building. Woodland Heights is already is used as an election polling station, a duty that requires ADA compliance to meet federal election guidelines.

“This is not a permanent alternate location,” says Patrick Henry spokeswoman Kristen Larson, who confirms that a lack of a lease agreement with Richmond Schools in part pushed them to the decision to seek other space. “In order to open in July, we have to begin construction by April 15. This is March 23 and we don’t even have [construction] permits yet.”

Larson also confirms that because of the nature of the negotiations with the Richmond School Board, which have been slow, school leaders began hedging their bets early this year by opening talks with the church.

The church, says Larson, represents a temporary – and hopefully agreeable – compromise.

The astringent smell of fresh paint and newly laid carpeting greets visitors to the church, which was built in 1917. Workers have been busy here, readying the building for the congregation’s 100th anniversary in April.

A large painting of the Christ praying in the garden of Gethsemane looks down from one wall as a delegation from Patrick Henry, along with City Councilman Marty Jewell, tour the facilities. Jewell’s satisfied smile gave way to a soliloquy on the importance of small class sizes and a mourning of the loss of the community classroom.

“I’m a country boy from Goochland County and we had a three-room school,” Jewell says, rocking back on his heels delivers the punch line to his folksy yarn: “They only used two rooms -- But I will go toe-to-toe with anybody that I got a good foundation in elementary school.”

The lower-level subbasement that house the church’s vast catacomb of classrooms gives a first impression of coziness – two or three classrooms maybe – but Jewell is about to be surprised.

Robert Johns, a church member providing today’s tour, begins opening doors. Up to nine classrooms are available just in this area, he says. If the charter school were opening at Patrick Henry, only nine classes were planned, and other areas of the church house more rooms that could serve as classes if necessary.

There's also a full cafeteria and an elevator to the street level.

The church’s pastor, the Rev. Terry Green, says he believes the church can meet nearly any reasonable request Richmond Public Schools might seek before approving Patrick Henry’s temporary move. Among possible changes, he concedes, is that the ADA-accessible bathrooms have adult-sized facilities.

“If it were a fairly small change, my guess is that the church would try to make it,” he says. “It would improve our space, as well.”

The religious iconography, like the painting of Jesus, will come down or be covered, as is currently done when other Richmond schools utilize church facilities around the city.

That’s plenty to satisfy Jewell.

“It’s a good space, but what do I know?” he summarizes, directing his comments at nine other elected officials who are not here, but with whom the decision rests to approve Patrick Henry’s request to move here. “I’m just fearful that you have a different School Board than the one that approved the application.”

Two years ago, Jewell was an opponent of the school, concerned that it might be an unhealthy avenue for white families in the Forest Hill area to create what amounted to a private school for their children. Since then, satisfied with the school’s commitment to diversity and including students from all over the city, his position has done a full 180-degree reversal.

It’s a reversal likely to be bolstered for others in the black community by the school’s announcement today of its first principal, Pamela L. Boyd, a Henrico County middle school technology teacher. Boyd is black.

“Our schools are reflections of our neighborhoods,” he says, worried that Richmond’s schools aren’t much to look at and ideas that could come from charters might provide inspiration to improve their looks. In the meantime, he says, “our villages are broken.”

For those interested in learning more about the Patrick Henry School of Science and Arts, take a look at the charter agreement with the Richmond School Board and the school's proposed transportation policy (both are PDFs).

Storm water over scholarships?

Chris Dovi — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 17:50:57 +0000

There was a time not long ago that the sanctuary at Second Baptist Church on Broad Rock Road was more likely to echo with elevator music and the rattling clatter of shopping carts full of produce than the hum and harmony of sacred music.

Last week it echoed with dissent over the city’s storm water runoff fee.

Adopted by City Council in 2009 to meet a federal Environmental Protection Agency mandate, the tax was only earlier this year revealed to be what some businesspeople and residents are calling a draconian and regressive tax.

Calling it the Noah Tax, about 80 residents and business owners – most constituents of Southside districts where storm water-related drainage issues are a historic sore spot – gathered at Second Baptist last week to plot strategy for seeking a repeal of the fee. The group also traveled en masse on two church buses to the March 22 City Council meeting, but their comments were largely lost to the din of Mayor Dwight C. Jones’s 2011 budget presentation.

But their message is one that the group promises won’t be flushed away so easily.

The $8,500 utility fee bill that the Rev. Ralph Hodge paid to cover the converted Winn-Dixie store that now houses Second Baptist was money he should have been able to apply to vital community service projects.

“That’s as much as we give in scholarships to high school graduates every year,” he said. “That’s our whole scholarship fund. We don’t think they should be charging churches at all.”

But fees – though they act as a tax – are not assessed as taxes, meaning churches pay equally to other businesses. Second Baptist was hit so hard because the fee is assessed on commercial properties based on the square footage of impervious surfaces like roofs and parking lots. Richmond hopes the fee will generate about $7.8 million annually toward utilities projects required to comply with EPA standards.

“It’s not based on the business’s ability to pay at all,” says Hodge, noting that a business with $1 million in revenue operating out of a small storefront pays only according to their roofline, where a business with higher impact and land-use needs but lower revenues, like an auto shop, is assessed many hundreds of times more.

Such inequity, businesses argue, could drive out many smaller businesses – particularly the sort of trade- and service-related businesses that thrive in the economically depressed Southside of the city.

“You have worked a law that has placed a noose around property owners’ necks,” said Ophelia Powell Daniels, addressing her accusations at Reva Trammell, the lone City Council member to attend the meeting. Others were invited. Marty Jewell had promised to attend, but never came.

“As Americans we need an explanation,” Daniels declared.

Daniels called on Trammell to step down if she “couldn’t do the work” and asked her to submit a Council paper to rescind the tax.

Trammel sat tight-lipped with her arms crossed.

Nick Eubank, of Eubank Trucks Inc. on Hopkins Road, said he might soon have to shut down his business.

“It’s just $10,000, but it’s $10,000 every year for the rest of my life,” Eubank said, noting that customers “aren’t going to pay me any more for my services tomorrow because they laid this tax on me.”

Other business owners asked why they were not excused from the fee for having their own storm water mitigation efforts in place. One woman noted her business has a retention pond that means no runoff from the business goes into the city’s storm water system.

“So it sounds to me like the city is taxing illegally,” grumbled another man.

When her turn came to speak, Trammell was emotional.

She told the group that when the proposal first came to council from Mayor Dwight Jones, she and fellow councilpersons were told it would be a $3 charge.

“Reva is here!” Trammell told the room, promising support. “We could lose our businesses, we could lose our homes.”

But when another organizer of the meeting called on Trammell to introduce a proposal to eliminate the fee, Trammell shook her head.

“No… no… it’s not going to work,” Trammell said, turning the tables. “You put [the proposal] in. You come down there! It will not go anywhere with this new form of government. Unless I can get three or four more council people to support me, it won’t go nowhere!”

Her audience rippled. Ralph Cramer, another angry business owner and an organizer of the meeting, growled at Trammell’s suggestion that business owners “still have time” to tell Council of their objections, saying that many of businesses already have sent their first fee payment away.

“Well, a lot of people still haven’t paid,” Trammell countered.

“Ain’t gonna pay,” muttered another man, folding his arms across his chest.

“Remember, you and [9th District Councilman] Doug Conner replaced two people who were too arrogant to listen to ‘we the people’,” Cramer shot back at Trammell, who countered by noting Jones’s absence at the meeting.

“The mayor won Southside and he should be here to listen to you,” she said.

Crusade for Voters president and VP step down

Chris Dovi — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 21:27:43 +0000

"The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves, that we are underlings."

Most mystery dinner theater productions come with a shoe-leather-tough steak, but last night’s planned political assassination of Antione Green, president of the Richmond Crusade for Voters skipped the dinner course and went straight to indigestion, resulting in heavy collateral damage for both Green and Crusade vice president, James “J.J.” Minor.

It was a dizzying evening of political jockeying for the 200 people in attendance that swung between discussion of arcane points of the Crusade’s procedural bylaws and a free-for-all of shouts, jeers and insults. Nearly three hours later, both Green and Minor had resigned their respective posts with the Crusade, each citing fatal conflicts of interest for their roles in other political organizations or issues.

The meeting and its body count underscore a growing shift in black political circles, in part created by the vacuum left by Gov. L. Douglas Wilder’s effective withdrawal from the scene and the resurgence of Wilder’s longtime political rival, State Sen. Henry Marsh. Marsh, a mentor to many current city leaders, including Mayor Dwight C. Jones, is seen by many younger Crusade members as resistant to a progressive movement in the local black community that shadows a similar national movement.

“It’s the Marsh Democrats against… well, against everybody else,” said Carrie Cox, chairwoman of the Crusade’s membership committee, expressing anger and frustration before Green’s resignation announcement. She called Minor’s claims of conflict “the pot calling the kettle black” and a clear political maneuver.

Green has been under fire since his March 1 slip before a General Assembly education committee appearance testifying on behalf of proposed charter school law changes. Green also serves as chief executive officer of the proposed Patrick Henry School of Science and Arts charter in Richmond, and members of the committee he addressed were members both of the Assembly’s black caucus and the Crusade.

Prior to his testimony Green repeatedly was asked if he was there representing both the Crusade and the charter school. He now says he was mistaken when he replied “yes.”

The night of Green’s appearance, the Crusade’s executive committee met at O’Toole’s Irish Pub on Forest Hill Avenue to consider his mistake. Minor assailed Green for the comments, saying his own phone had been ringing off the hook with complaints and calls for Green either to explain himself or to step down.

Green later emailed a letter of apology to the organization’s membership, explaining the slip as being unintentional but inexcusable.

But the controversy continued to simmer, the spark fanned by a variety of interests within the Crusade who’ve been unhappy with Green’s role with the charter school. Last night, forces rallied against Green, led at times by Marsh, revealing deep rifts in the Crusade, which was founded in 1956 to register voters, combat school inequality and Massive Resistance to desegregation.

Minor, whose mother is Del. Delores McQuinn, a close political ally of Marsh and Mayor Dwight Jones, also shared in the assault. He said Green’s testimony at the General Assembly gave the false impression that the Crusade endorsed charter schools, when in fact “this body voted no to what? Charter schools.”

In a move that Green’s supporters claim as proof of conspiracy, Minor convened a meeting of the group’s executive committee just before last night’s meeting. Only a handful of the executive committee were invited – all opponents of Green -- with Minor saying he “called all I knew about.” None of the members who attended the March 1 meeting at O’Tooles were notified.

Minor’s meeting voted to report out a recommendation that Green step down or that a vote be taken on his removal.

Attempts by Green’s supporters to suppress the coupe were futile. “This is ugly,” summarized City Councilman Marty Jewell, a former Crusade president credited with recruiting Green to the organization nearly a decade ago. Jewell said he suspects Marsh and Jones are behind the push to remove Green. “In my 32 years here [in the Crusade] this is the second time I know of [when a president was removed by force].”

The last time, Jewell says, the organization presented a “long bill of particulars” against the then-president, Charles Chambliss, while in this Green’s case “this young man made one mistake.”

In the end, it was another former Crusade president, Terone Green (no relation to Antione Green) who brokered the solution that called for both Green and Minor to step down. It was a solution that he said best protected the interests of all parties, but that also may well serve to leave open the question and debate over charter schools, an issue that some black political leaders see as a solution while others view as a return to segregationist policies of Massive Resistance and White Flight from Richmond Public Schools.

“To me, this will elevate the argument – the debate,” Terone Green said.
Marsh disagreed. “It’s going to keep the peace,” he said of the resignations, but he called charter schools “a different issue” and Antione Green’s misrepresentation of that issue “a serious mistake.”

(Image courtesy of Antione M. Green)

Crusade showdown could bring shakeup

Chris Dovi — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 19:34:24 +0000

Tonight could bring a bloody end to a tense Mexican standoff among the top officers of the Richmond Crusade for Voters.

The Crusade’s president, Antione Green and his vice president, James “J.J.” Minor, represent opposing factions on the non-partisan civil rights organization founded during Massive Resistance to fight school segregation.

The two recently came to loggerheads over Green’s leadership position with the Patrick Henry School of Science and Arts. If Green’s detractors have their way, he could be voted out of his presidency post tonight.

The Crusade, a history-laden and venerable local institution, has raised its profile significantly during the three years Green has led. During the 2008 mayoral race, the Crusade’s monthly meetings played host to a series of important forums, including the only full School Board election debate. During the tumultuous tenure of Mayor L. Douglas Wilder, Green courted newsmakers to the meetings where their remarks frequently made headlines.

Green, who also serves as chief executive officer of the fledgling Patrick Henry School, has been in hot water with Minor and other Crusade members since his testimony earlier this month before a Virginia General Assembly education committee examining proposed changes to the state’s charter school laws. During the committee meeting, Green identified himself by both titles and when asked by a member of the committee whether he was here representing both, he answered that he was.

Since then, Green has indicated that he only meant to verify his titles to the questioner, but that answer has not satisfied other Crusade members.

At a recent meeting of the Crusade’s executive committee, Minor called Green out telling him he had to “fix this” and inferring further action might be necessary.

Minor last month was elected as the chairman of the Richmond Democratic Committee, a position that may conflict with his own leadership with the Crusade.

Minor’s mother is Del. Delores McQuinn (D-Richmond), and Green previously has served as a legislative aide to both Del. Joe Morrissey (D-Henrico) and Gov. George Allen while the latter served as a U.S. senator.

Green’s misstep before the General Assembly committee has also riled other Richmond political leaders.

Richmond School Board member Yvette Wilson sent a letter to the Crusade and cited her disgust with Green in canceling her membership. She has since rescinded that resignation, but members of the Crusade’s governing body indicate that she has failed to pay dues for the past three years, making her act of protest moot.

It is unclear from the Crusade’s bylaws whether there is a mechanism whereby an officer -- either Green or Minor -- can be removed early.

The Richmond Crusade for Voters meets tonight at 7pm at the Military Retirees Club on Chamberlayne Avenue in Bacon’s Quarter.

(Image courtesy of Antione M. Green)

Patrick Henry lottery an emotional night for parents

Chris Dovi — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 21:44:29 +0000

With a wane smile tugging at the corners of her lips and eyes ever so slightly red-rimmed with sadness, Kristen Larson sat drained at the end of a row of metal folding chairs. Twenty minutes earlier, the chair had held another parent anxiously listening to the bingo-style lottery drawing that would determine whether their child would be in the first class of kids to attend the Patrick Henry School of Science and Arts.

Barring a miracle policy change by the Richmond School Board, Larson's son Everett will not attend Patrick Henry next year.

His number was drawn 68th, leaving him far outside of the 57 slots available for his grade level.

"I'm really disappointed," Larson says, an understatement betrayed by the conflict of emotions rolling across her pretty features, now familiar to Richmonders following the ongoing political drama surrounding Richmond's first charter school. "I spent at least forty hours a week to build this school."

Larson was not alone in her disappointment at the Thursday night event.

Patrick Henry founders and board members' children were never guaranteed attendance at the school and a number of them found their children on the long side of the short list for the school's 130 slots.

Some left the lottery drawing in tears, overcome with raw emotions long restrained during the past three years of almost constant political, financial, legal and emotional struggle that surrounded this little community school building on Semmes Avenue just up the hill from Forest Hill Park.

For Larson, the tears remained in check, held back by the greater success of the evening. She'd shared the joy felt by parents whose children did get in.

Parents like Jen Britt, whose daughter, Stella, got a first-grade slot next year.

"I didn't think it was actually going to happen," Britt said, weeping as she sat slumped on the stairs that lead to the school's first-floor classroom hallway. "For us, this is the neighborhood school."

She stood, walking up the steps to the well-lit corridor that's still faces the hurdle of needing hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of renovations and unknown political threats, wrangling and negotiation before it's ever allowed to be filled again with giggling students on their way to recess or lunch.

"Momma, can we take a detour of the school," asks Stella, begging and dancing at her mother's feet.

Britt knows that her daughter's chance of getting more than a "detour" at Patrick Henry remains a big unknown. The political winds continue shifting.

At the Thursday drawing, that shift was on full display. The drawing – done bingo-style – was conducted by City Council President Kathy Graziano and Virginia Secretary of Education Gerard Robinson. Councilman Marty Jewell, once a committed foe of the school but now an active proponent, was supposed to be here but was kept away by a sick family member.

Since the idea of opening a charter school was first suggested by then-School Board Chairman George Braxton to a group of Forest Hill parents interested in reopening the then-recently shuttered Patrick Henry Elementary School, the school has become an unwitting lightning rod for social, racial and plain-old partisan politics both city and state-wide.

It was not what this group of Southside parents – coming from diverse racial and economic backgrounds – intended. They wanted a neighborhood school that would focus on good teaching and on the environmental and earth-friendly values that seem common in here in a tight-knit community defined by its proximity to the river and the park.

Even the Richmond School Board appears to be caught in the shifting winds, uncertain where they'll be blown next. Board Chairwoman Kim Bridges has voiced support, but is having to tow a careful line in her correspondence with the school. Most recently she sent a carefully crafted e-mail admonishment to the school's founders for seeking to override a rule prohibiting guaranteed attendance to founders' children. The letter cited such efforts as grounds to revoke the charter.

And the board has yet to sign a lease agreement with the school or to include the $1.3 million they've promised for operations in their budget. Both delays have exacerbated the school's fundraising crisis and created an unlikely schedule for construction if the school is to open in July as planned.

But the board's immediate past-chairwoman, Chandra Smith, in the past vocally opposed to the school, most recently sent an e-mail to fellow board members voicing her hope that the school succeeds.

Other one-time critics like Richmond political and social justice activist Art Burton have changed their sour tunes to ones of support.

"I hate when people say this is a racial thing or an economic thing," says Britt, a waitress at a nearby tavern, who says she can't see any politics in her desire to see Stella happy and learning at a neighborhood school. "I just see this as an opportunity for a school district to explore new ideas for education."

So does Larson, despite her son Everett losing out in the lottery drawing.

The journey that's gotten Larson here, to the disappointment of a hard metal folding chair in Patrick Henry's sweaty-hot cafetorium on this rainy March night, has been extraordinary.

Little more than two months ago, she and her son were special guests at Gov. Bob McDonnell's inaugural event, standing to be recognized by the newly minted governor as he pointed out Everett as hope personified for his plans to expand charter school options in Virginia.

On March 30, Larson likely again will pass before the governor's eye, as McDonnell holds a fundraiser at the school to raise badly needed money for Patrick Henry's renovation. With a guest list filled with big-name donors, hope is high at the school that this sure sign of the governor's support for Patrick Henry will open wallets.

And with luck, Larson hopes to be here in July when the school opens its doors to the first class of Richmond children to attend a public charter school.

"At some point, you – I made the decision that I was doing this for the bigger purpose," Larson says, planning to reapply for Everett to attend next year. "It is what it is."

Photo by: Ralph Cramer

Cuccinelli weighs in on Patrick Henry School

Chris Dovi — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 15:43:30 +0000

Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli has blocked an attempted end run by Del. Joe Morrissey around the Richmond Public Schools charter school agreement with Patrick Henry School of Science and Arts.

Last month, Morrissey (D- Henrico) sought Cuccinelli’s opinion on that contract and its requirement that Patrick Henry founders bring their 80-year-old former public school building into full compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act before the school’s planned opening this July.

In a brief, three-page opinion released March 4, Cuccinelli rejects Morrissey’s attempts to lawyer Patrick Henry’s way out of having to pay for or complete the agreed-to renovations of the old Patrick Henry Elementary School on Semmes Avenue near Forest Hill Park.

“It is my opinion that the provision of the charter agreement between the School Board of the City of Richmond and the Patrick Henry School of Science about which you inquire does not conflict with [Virginia law],” Cuccinelli writes, indicating that nothing in current Charter School laws prevents Richmond Schools from requiring Patrick Henry to meet federal standards for access to people with disabilities.

Richmond Public Schools is subject to a legally binding settlement agreement requiring that it bring its own facilities into full compliance with that federal law. The suit, settled in 2006, was filed because only a handful of Richmond’s nearly 50 school buildings met basic accessibility requirements.

After nearly four years of a snail-paced approach to those repairs, the district remains only in the first year of the agreed-to five-year schedule of repairs.

In seeking Cuccinelli’s opinion, Morrissey suggested that Richmond’s own procrastination should provide some leniency to Patrick Henry, but Cuccinelli rejected this argument, as well as Morrissey’s suggestion that Richmond was illegally applying a “financial disincentive” to Patrick Henry’s founding.

State law says “[f]unding and service agreements between local school boards and public charter schools shall not provide a financial incentive or constitute a financial disincentive to the establishment of a public charter school…”, but Cuccinelli writes that such a stipulation applies only to operating costs and not to start-up.

Cuccinelli also rejected a suggestion that industry-standard lease agreements rarely require tenants to do substantial repairs to an owner’s property to meet ADA requirements.

Cuccinelli agreed with the latter suggestion, but indicated that the signed agreement Patrick Henry has with Richmond, while not typical of such agreements, remains legally binding.

For the time being, Morrissey’s question and Cuccinelli’s answer remain, to some degree, moot. Richmond has granted Patrick Henry a charter contract, but the district has yet to sign a lease agreement allowing the charter school’s founders to take full possession of the building or to affect any of the renovations stipulated in the charter contract.

Patrick Henry School: Gubernatorial support

Chris Dovi — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 03:10:41 +0000

If any question remains regarding Gov. Bob McDonnell's commitment to Patrick Henry School of Science and Arts, his plan to personally host a fundraiser for the city's first charter school should dispel all doubts.

Officials with the school confirm that McDonnell, along with delegates John M. O'Bannon (R-Henrico) and Joe Morrissey (D-Henrico), have committed to hosting an invite-only event on March 30.

"As of right now the details are still being worked out," says Antione Green, chief executive officer for Patrick Henry. "It will be a community fundraiser. People will have the opportunity to demonstrate their financial support for Patrick Henry and at the same time get an opportunity to meet the governor."

Among details remaining to be decided are where the event will be held. Plans are currently being made to hold the event at the Patrick Henry school building on Semmes Avenue.

A call to the governor's press office was not returned by time of publication.

Political support for the school has been strong. In addition to McDonnell making Patrick Henry a central character in his broader legislative plan to encourage new Virginia charter schools, a host of state and local politicians have indicated their support for the school, including former governors Tim Kaine and George Allen. President Barack Obama also has made charters an important component for states interested in securing new federal education grant funding.

This past Saturday, Richmond City Councilman Marty Jewell sent an email to School Board Chairwoman Kimberly Bridges in which he reiterated a previously stated "deep concern that RPS needs to urgently embrace fundamental change in educational delivery." Jewell offered to act as a mediator in ongoing issues between the School Board and Patrick Henry leaders.

Those issues are myriad, but largely come back to a single Catch 22 issue daunting Patrick Henry leaders: A lease.

The Patrick Henry charter is tied to the Patrick Henry building, which must be renovated in accordance with federal Americans with Disabilities Act requirements and basic safety standards, but funding to do those renovations cannot be secured without a lease to the building. The School Board so far has not signed that lease, citing Patrick Henry's lack of funding to meet its renovation obligations.

Jewell's letter lays bare the reality of the problem.

"There has been a new development: Paul Goldman has secured $100,000 in pledges from some very prominent members of the business community who want to help," he writes. "But due to the current [lease] situation, he can't nor could anyone else, answer for them the most basic of questions that any person willing to write a $50,000 [check] would, indeed, should, want answered."

At a February 1 School Board meeting, Patrick Henry leaders acknowledged that local fundraising remained an issue, and that it had not yet secured a construction loan necessary to do renovations at the 80-year-old facility. While there, Green indicated a new fundraising initiative that aimed to raise $300,000 by March 1.

That deadline, says Patrick Henry spokeswoman Kristen Larson, has since been pushed back to the end of March.

"I think a lot of our supporters feel they need some resolution on the lease, on the budget, on some other key items" before writing checks, Larson says. "I know there are a lot of pledges out there in addition to Paul Goldman's [pledges]. As far as big money is concerned, we're still in this holding pattern."

The school already has secured more than $500,000 in various federal grants, in addition to various local donations that have yet to total much more than $50,000.

According to Larson, the lag in local fundraising does not yet hamper the school's timeline for renovation and opening. Actual construction, she says, does not need to start on the building until April 15.

The school is slated to open this July.

Unexpected bedfellows

Chris Dovi — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 15:59:26 +0000

Common causes can make unlikely allies. Just ask members of the Richmond School Board and the hundreds of parents, children, teachers, and just plain old concerned citizens with whom they linked arms to march on Richmond's Capitol Square on Sunday, February 21.

It is a truce that parents say doesn't come without a whopper of a caveat.

"First we grab the [state] money back,” says Kirsten Gray, one parent adding her voice to the din of chanting marchers at the rally, “then we turn to Richmond Public Schools - the public schools are our schools."

"Save our schools! Save our schools!" the marchers shout, hoofing up 9th Street from the old Bell Tower toward the General Assembly Office Building on Broad Street within view of State Senators who are meeting above to hammer out details of Virginia’s tortured budget.

Amidst all the good will between the marchers is a shared hope that this partnership – between local elected officials and the people who elected them -- will outlast a few shouted slogans on a day when the brutal chill of recent weeks has given way to an almost spring-like Sunday afternoon.

"We're going to expect (School Board) to be transparent and accountable," says Gray, positive about this newly minted relationship she and other parents have found with Richmond Schools. That said, "we're going to want them ... doing the right thing with the money."

Gray was a co-organizer of today's event, which grew out of a parent meeting with school leaders at Albert Hill Middle School. The topic of the meeting, held the Thursday prior to the protest, was budget cuts.

Till now, most parents have focused their ire on Richmond budget planners, who have dropped programs and teaching staff like extra weight from a fast sinking blimp still filled with central office administrators who have largely been spared cuts.

But during that meeting, disagreements over Richmond's schools budget gave way to discussion of the state’s proposal to unfreeze the Local Composite Index - a complex formula whereby state revenues are apportioned to localities according to needs.

By unfreezing the LCI - by not figuring this year's apportionment according to last year's data - an anomaly caused by disproportionate drops in property assessments in Northern Virginia has resulted in a net loss in funding to Central Virginia schools. In Richmond, this translated to an additional $11 million shortfall, on top of an already projected loss of local funding to the tune of $17.8 million.

By the meeting's end, the fuss was no longer over local administrators’ proposed steep cuts to instruction, teaching staff, and special programs, says Gray, who, with parents Sarah Gross, William Bruce Smith, and Barbara Haas, began an online campaign that after just two days managed to mobilize close to 200 people to give up their Sunday afternoon for the cause. A Facebook page, the not-so-cleverly titled Metro Richmond Parents Against Cuts In School Funding, was started by Smith and currently has more than 600 friends.

What's perhaps even more befuddling than the group’s Facebook name is that the entire Richmond School Board took an active hand in publicizing the parent-organized rally at the Capitol.

Richmond School Board member Donald Coleman stands on crutches next to the black iron fence ringing Capitol Square. He still looks haggard after a recent medical crisis that left him fighting for life late last year. In spite of his health, Coleman says being here to support parents is far too important to miss.

"We've been totally on board with this [protest]," says Coleman. So much so that Richmond Schools posted notice of the protest on its web site and did a robo-call to parents, encouraging them to attend.

"That's what's encouraging about today," Coleman says of the swelling crowd of parents. "We all are fighting for the same things. Let's hope we can keep finding ways to work together."

Nearly all of Coleman’s fellow board members attended the rally. And of those not seen, Maurice Henderson was among the first to suggest and push for an active School Board collaboration with parent organizers.

Yvette Wilson, another board member in attendance, sounded like a throwback to marches of the 1960s and 70s, expressing her frustration at the perceived injustice of not being allowed directly onto Capitol grounds because of a lack of a proper permit.

“I think the parents have a right to express themselves,” Wilson says, casting a disgruntled eye toward a clutch of Capitol police walking the perimeter alongside marchers. “I think it’s about time we stood up to say ‘Education is our priority.’”

Coleman and Wilson's sentiments have been shared quite earnestly by parents throughout the recent Richmond Schools budget process. Those parents say they tried to engage the same level of cooperation from the School Board before current crisis over the unfreezing of the LCI. Some express frustration that it’s taken this shared crisis to foster mutual understanding.

Just a week before the protest, Sarah Gross, a mom of two and president-elect of the Fox Elementary Parent Teacher Association, sits at the Starbucks coffee house on Robinson Street. She shares the results of dozens of volunteer man hours contributed by other parents who pored over Richmond Superintendent Yvonne Brandon’s proposed budget in search of possible administrative and other non-instructional budget cuts to spare classroom teachers and instruction.

Somewhat ironically, their efforts -- eventually largely rebuffed when the Board voted February 16 on that budget -- were at Brandon’s request. At the beginning of the budget process, at a time when it was known the economy would mean cuts “to the marrow,” she issued a public plea for help.

“We went through our PTA rolls,” Gross says, of Fox Elementary parents’ earnest interpretation of Brandon’s request. Their search yielded a team more than qualified to provide budget-cut suggestions: an Internal Revenue Service director, a variety of local business leaders and executives, a veritable host of current and former educators. The group began with various recent audits of the school system, including one conducted in 2004 by the administration of then-Governor Mark Warner.

“We said, there have to be additional creative ways to deal with the gaps,” Gross says.

Before voting on the proposed budget, the School Board had little time for those suggestions. During a budget session, School Board member Kimberly Gray was assailed by fellow board members, and by the superintendent, for asking questions related to some of the parent-suggested cost savings proposals. Proposed salary cuts to administration – including Brandon – were especially poorly received, with Brandon suggesting she was underpaid for the work load she shoulders.

Even before the meeting, Gross said she and her group of parent budget planners were prepared for – but undeterred by -- likely resistance to their suggestions.

“That’s our job [as parents] is accountability,” says Gross. “I think it’s a positive accountability. We have no time to fight. The $11 million [in lost state funding] is overwhelming.”

Gross looks on the rally as a hopeful sign, but not any new assurance that parents will be included going forward.

“I did get some sense that the School Board understood that we are here to help,” she says of the rally, but when it comes back to analyzing the district’s own budget, it’s as likely that thinks will be right back to the way they’ve always been. “When the money comes back I can only hope we can maintain that solidarity, but I don’t know. Have they had some character transformation? I don’t think so."

“They do have it in them,” she says. “Because we all stood there together.”

A second rally, again supported by the Richmond School Board as well as the Virginia Education Association, and titled Stand Up for Public Education, is planned for Saturday, February 27 at 11am.

Image courtesy of John Murden. See more images of Sunday's rally here. To learn more about the Local Composite Index and what it means for school all over Virginia, check out our coverage from earlier today.

Richmond School Board cancels weekend retreat

Chris Dovi — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 20:47:57 +0000

Editor's note: Since we originally published this story School Board Chairwoman Kimberly Bridges got back in touch with us. We've updated the article to reflect her comments.

The Richmond School Board has canceled a planned -- but never publicly advertised -- weekend leadership retreat in Charlottesville.

Under Virginia law, government bodies are required to advertise public meetings at least three days in advance and to publish an agenda for those meetings. Richmond Schools did not do that. As of 11:30am. Thursday, the board's clerk had not yet published any official meeting notice on the School Board's web site, and no notices had run in local print publications in previous days.

Maria Everett, executive director of the Virginia Freedom of Information Advisory Council, says she received a call from Angela Lewis, clerk of the Richmond School Board, early on Thursday afternoon asking for advice on whether the meeting could go ahead despite the failure to advertise.

The answer, Everett says, was yes and no.

"The definition of a [public] meeting is a gathering and a discussion of public business," she says. "If they were all out playing golf and talking about their golf game, it's not a meeting under FOIA."

Everett advised Lewis that it would still be legal to hold the retreat, so long as the Board's attorney was present to ensure conversation stayed far clear of anything related to official School Board business.

The published agenda for the Friday meeting included a closed session meeting, while both days of the retreat included an official call to order of a board session and an "open agenda" period. Agendas for both meetings were sent to board members just after 10:30am on Thursday morning.

The retreat agenda also involved team building exercises for the board members and, Everett says, she told Lewis that learning "how to get along as a group" doesn't require public advertisement.

"It's not a violation of FOIA," Everett says, though the fact that the meeting is planned to take place in Charlottesville at University of Virginia's Darden School of Business, and so more of a hardship for the public to attend, "it's in my opinion not the smartest thing you can do politically, but it's not a violation of law."

Apparently, Richmond leaders decided to take both her advice and her personal opinion.

"We don't want a whiff of that," says School Board Chairwoman Kimberly Bridges, who says the entire meeting, including the team building exercise, is now cancelled to avoid even the perception of impropriety. The plan now is to reschedule, she says. "We'll just start over again and make sure everyone gets ample notice."