Patrick Henry lottery an emotional night for parents

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.

March 12, 2010; 4:44 PM • by Chris Dovi

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