An open letter on RPS facility needs
A call for Mayor Jones and City Council to fund urgent and essential repairs needed in Richmond Public Schools.
On Friday, the School Board of the City of Richmond sent a letter to Mayor Jones and Richmond City Council (PDF) asking for additional funds to complete urgent, essential repairs needed in our schools. These repairs (see itemized list at the end of the letter) are not frivolous, nice-to-have items but rather essential to the health and safety of our students, teachers, and administrators. Mold, lack of heat and air conditioning, and failing roofs are things that we wouldn’t tolerate in our homes and workplaces, and we shouldn’t accept them in our schools.
It’s shameful that our schools got to this state in the first place, but placing blame does not fix roofs. We’ve had enough press conferences and calls for yet another task force. We call upon Mayor Jones and City Council to take immediate action to protect the health and safety of the children, parents, teachers, and administrators of Richmond Public Schools.
We demand that you do your job and act in one of three ways:
- Fund all of the urgent school repairs.
- Fund some of the repairs by prioritizing the repair list. Create a plan to fund the remainder as soon as possible.
- If you think the list is exaggerated or contains non-urgent items, tell the public specifically which items you object to and why.
Once the immediate health and safety needs of the schools are met, then the School Board, City Council, Mayor Jones, and all Richmonders need to work together to make every Richmond school a place we would be proud to send our children. Richmond Public Schools needs a long-term vision, but the lack of one is no excuse to ignore the immediate needs of unsafe buildings.
Buildings with mold, lack of heat, and failing roofs are not places humans should live and shouldn’t be places we send our children to learn. School is a community responsibility, and it’s time for the Richmond City Council and Mayor Jones to take that responsibility seriously.
Sincerely,
Sarah Milston and Sam Davies
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Notice: Comments that are not conducive to an interesting and thoughtful conversation may be removed at the editor’s discretion.
How about some accountability in the dollars that the RPS already receives. RPS already leads the state in $ spent per pupil yet testing results are always at the bottom of the state results. More dollars thrown at public education does not equal better results.
@Brian E, accountability on how RPS spends its dollars is important. A discussion needs to occur, but separate from the immediate health and safety needs of our students.
Brian – I agree totally. But, did you look at their requests? The link is above at the bottom of the letter. Did you know that Capital Improvements for RPS lags behind every other school district? If you add that in, RPS has almost the lowest cost per pupil. the solution isn’t less money, its more students. We need good schools for RVA families to send their kids there.
Also factor in the amount of parents avoiding sending their kids to public Richmond Schools. I dont have numbers but i would assume it is significant.
@Brian
1) Isn’t the per pupil spending only reflective of operating budget and not the facilities budget?
2) Because of the age of RPS buildings, they are probably going to need more money per pupil for facilities than other districts.
I don’t disagree about accountability. I just think these should factor into how we judge the job of RPS.
Thanks for writing this letter, Sam and Sarah!
Great letter. We need to get everyone on the same page. As for those who are trying to twist this back on the school board, I will say this- there is no excuse for shortchanging the schools in the fist place, which has been done for decades. However, I will say that its going to be very difficult for anyone to budget properly if multiple requests for funding are sent every year. In other words, I do think the schools need to be restored with lots of funding to make up for years of neglect, but it needs to be done without having to go back to City Council again and again.
Scott–agreed. The school board needs to move to address a few of the issues first before they ask for more money.
@morgan: I disagree with the timing, kids are in these schools *today*. Look at the list, there is nothing a reasonable person would not consider urgent. The School Board has specifically said what they need the money for, line-by-line.
However, I completely agree that we need to fix the systematic problems that got the schools in this state. The need for that discussion shouldn’t stop us from fixing roofs.
The obvious “miss” from the list is closing schools. RPS has too many schools given its student population. Consolidating schools and saving millions — which can then be reinvested in the remaining schools — is the only long-term sustainable solution. Otherwise, we will never work through the repair list. There is not enough money. Period. A closing/consolidation conversation must occur. It will require the most courage. The School Board, the Mayor, City Council and WE CITIZENS need to get real about our situation. We need an honest conversation, not one demanding more money with no reform.
does the current budget of rps not include any money for the list that they’ve had for a few years now? these problems didn’t just happen. i haven’t seen the budget, but i have a hard time believing there isn’t money in there *somewhere* that they can work with
Ultimately, there needs to be systematic change AND these urgent repairs need to be made. Process improvement is an ongoing process, it never ends. Closing schools may be an option, but keep in mind that if the school system improves, the system may start to see more students. We need enough schools open to account for growth. Beyond that, yes, there should likely be a a closing of some facilities. Does the school board have any sort of long term plan? Maintenance is short term planning and cost of operation. It’s hard to make effective short term decisions if there is no long term goal to be achieved.
The school board needs to get their shit together, fast, and establish a long term 5-10 year plan. This shouldn’t take months. Once that is established we can make more informed short term decisions about maintenance.
…..and now we find out RPS failed to update its curriculum and has not been teaching for the updated SOL tests (WWBT website). And yet you blindly want to throw more money at this massive failure?
The fact is that the maintenance budget is different from curriculum and SOLs. Does RPS need more reform? Most definitely. But I would rather ‘throw more money’ at RPS rather than subsidies for rich people’s opera. aka Center Stage, or other corporate white elephant projects that do not make promised returns on their investments.
The fact is that no matter how it is spent, the money goes through RPS..and it appears a huge chunk of it is wasted. Your use of the term “rich people’s opera” is rather class envious I must say, does that mean you feel that poor people are not supposed to enjoy or appreciate the opera? And I do believe Center Stage offers more than just opera. I’d say the returns on Center Stage, albeit full of cronyism, is probably still much better than the return from all the millions and millions and millions that have passed through the RPS. That is unless you consider crumbling schools, low test results, school staff that views parents as the enemy and potential litigants, $$$ spent to pay off multiple ex educrats who came and failed, school board members who fake their credentials and have illegal drugs growing on the decks of their homes…yeah you keep throwing your money at the RPS…
I am looking at the big picture, which is that millions (possibly billions) in public money have been spent on private ‘downtown development’ while school building maintenance has been lackluster to none. I could bring up past corruption and drug abuse by the City Council and Mayor in response, and while that could be interesting, what I am focused on is the overall City budget. Part of the problem is that the City Council deals with budgeting too often in an ad hoc, moving basis manner. Let’s see some pie charts with more fixed expectations. Let’s do some annual comparisons- how much is going to Center Stage under its secret deal, Redskins training camp, Venture Richmond vs. maintenance for the public school buildings.
It’s kind of a bummer hearing people who have no experience with RPS except through the media vilification of our school system try to make decisions about schools they are unfairly afraid to visit. Have you been into any of these schools? Where are the empty classrooms you expect to place students in after you close their schools? Our tiny school has very large class sizes and about 400 students that need a place to learn. It was one of the schools that met the testing requirements for accreditation, but the same students shoved into an even larger school with even larger class sizes would most likely not have succeeded on the exact same assessments. I know RPS has issues and certainly not the best reputation, but I’m in the schools everyday. I see the improvements coming! I see the new lesson plan format we are using helping teachers to better think through what they are teaching as it correlates to the new SOL standards…not really sure what you’re talking about as far as using the old SOLs? Every teacher I know is following the new ones? I see our new superintendent valuing the arts as much as he values arbitrary scores on tests that don’t assess the things we really teach that change students’ lives-responsibility, accountability, respect for others, caring for one’s self and one’s environment. The neglected buildings are a symptom of a larger problem, as has been stated, but it’s a problem that we are obviously working on every day! If we weren’t trying to fix it, the school board and superintendent wouldn’t be asking for help to fix the schools. They wouldn’t be supporting the programs that keep kids in school-the arts and sports-with high standards for achievement and character as well as financial support. I actually see our school board rep in my school at least 3 times a year for PTA meetings. Each time, she speaks with teachers, parents, and students to hear their concerns and encourage us all. These things are all things I didn’t see when I first started in RPS. A change is coming. And it starts with saying that we value our students’ health and safety as much as their test scores.
rps teacher–how do you know i don’t have any affiliation with the schools? doing weekly lesson plans that are >50 pages is an effective use of teachers’ time? and as for closing the schools, look to your superintendent. he himself as said that resources could be better spent than in schools with few students (talking specifically about upper schools).
no one is saying that teachers are at fault here. the school board is the one responsible for the decisions. they are responsible for the maintenance of the schools. the budget should include dollars for school maintenance and repairs, it shouldn’t be the responsibility of the mayor and council. bottom line. this isn’t different from other localities.
Morgan-I was equally annoyed by the new lesson plan format initially, but I have found my lessons to be better thought out and more effective. I have also chosen to write unit plans, not weekly plans by simply specifying the dates for which the plans will be used. The new format is more focused on beginning with the end in mind (to use the 7 habits lingo!) and many of the pages we end up with are simply directly copying and pasting the SOL objectives on the plan or copying and pasting the key vocabulary words for the lesson. Dr. Bed den has certainly mentioned closing schools, that may be an unfortunate reality, I was just adding my two cents from a teaching stand point, not a financial one.
I didn’t mean to insinuate that no one here knows what they are talking about, I’m sorry if that implication made you angry. But not everyone who comments on these things or talks so negatively about our school system really takes the time to visit any of the schools. I often hear people (making decisions about where to send their children) discouraged about RPS before they even tour a school in the system. Everyone agrees that there is room for improvement, and I just dislike the negativity that gets in the way of progress. Clearly I didn’t get the point across!
At the end of the day, the school board is trying to repair the errors of the past. The superintendent and school board are not the ones who created the problem, but they are eager to fix it! They have and continue to allocate the funds they have toward this effort, but you can’t close schools in the middle of the year to repair others. They need funding to fix the most dire situations now, and it would be great if it could be all of them! I don’t expect the city or school board to find 35 million bucks laying around. Both need to work together to scrape up as much as they can to fix as many things as they can right now. And Morgan, as someone who is affiliated with RPS, you more than anyone are aware of the gravity of the situation. The school board and superintendent scraped pennies together to do what they could, now the mayor and city council must do what they can as well. It shouldn’t be like this right now. We shouldn’t need so many repairs at once! You are so,so, SO right about that! It should never have fallen into such disrepair! I understand the mistrust, since things have been so mismanaged! But these new folks coming in trying to change the state of our school system need help to make the drastic changes that will make RPS more successful as a whole.