Critical needs of RPS buildings dominate new school year
Now what are the mayor, superintendent, and school board going to do about it?
Students, teachers, and principals have known for years just how rundown Richmond Public Schools buildings are: mold, leaky roofs, and dicey HVACs are as common as homework and pop quizzes.
Three weeks ago, Richmond learned just how much years of neglect has cost: $35 million.
Documents
In an 11-page report by Tommy Kranz, assistant superintendent for operations at RPS, 135 critical facility needs (see sidebar) span nearly every school in the RPS system.1
From roof replacements at Armstrong High ($1.6 million), replacing steam boilers at Elkhardt Middle ($800,000), to clearing mold at Ginter Park and Swansboro elementary schools ($750,000 each), the sum total of RPS disrepair stunned Kranz, who only arrived in Richmond this summer and who has served public school systems throughout the country.
“He said it’s the worst he’s seen in his time,” said Dr. Dana Bedden, the superintendent of RPS since early this year, about Kranz’s assessment. Bedden echoes it. “This is some of the worst conditions I’ve seen in educational facilities.”
The sky-high list of costly repairs should’ve galvanized support across all levels of City government. But at a press conference last week, Mayor Dwight Jones minimized concerns, saying RPS should focus on “rightsizing”3 and academic accountability. His remarks made many question the Mayor’s priorities with RPS and question whether the key players that ultimately decide the fate of city schools will be able to work together.
“That’s our goal”
The first RPS superintendent to come from outside of Richmond in 17 years, Dr. Dana Bedden took over in January.
“My job is to try and find solutions” to the problems facing city schools, he said by phone last week. “My first concern is about our ability to have an education environment conducive to learning.”
To help him, he brought in Dr. Tommy Kranz and others. “Our new team has come from a lot of different places,” he said. “They came with the belief that they can help make [RPS] better. That’s our goal.”
He said the $35 million figure in Kranz’s report has been largely misinterpreted, “reported as us seeking the money.”
Instead, the 11-page report was a re-prioritization of existing critical need projects. “These are the most egregious and needed improvements,” Bedden said. The report merely called out those that will likely need the most attention soonest, even though all projects need to be addressed. “This situation didn’t happen overnight,” he said. “This is years of deferred maintenance” that began long before he and Mayor Jones arrived.
Bedden said initiative behind the report was a “combination of the [Facilities] Task Force that was commissioned by the [School] Board…but also, as a professional, Dr. Kranz doing his due diligence before the schools opened,” Bedden said.
He agrees with the Mayor about rightsizing city schools. “This district has to go through a rightsizing process,” Bedden said. But the urgent issues outlined in Kranz’s report also need addressing. “We have to develop a short-term and long-range plan to address these challenges.”
He said the biggest obstacle facing the city is the lack of trust, which is “one of the most destabilizing things” affecting RPS improvement. The Mayor, superintendent, and School Board have to trust each other to make any meaningful changes. “That will go a long way toward progress,” he said.
But Bedden said he has “no conflict” with the Mayor’s administration: “I’ve gotten nothing but support from them.” He says he meets regularly with the City’s chief administrative officer, Byron Marshall, and will “continue to communicate with my counterpart in the City.”
Although the challenges at RPS are some of the most difficult he’s faced in his career, Bedden believes brighter (less moldier) days are coming. “I wouldn’t come to work everyday if I didn’t believe it,” he said.
One boat
School Board member Kristen Larson (4th District) says the Kranz report underscores the realities of RPS facilities.
“This wasn’t an exercise in finger pointing,” Larson said by phone last week. “There’s just shock at what we have to deal with on a daily basis to keep our schools running.”
She said the Board acted last week to adopt the report’s list of critical needs. The re-prioritized list of issues will be managed on a “case-by-case basis,” meaning that as HVAC malfunctions, leaky roofs, and other critical issues come up, “our superintendent and his folks have the authority to move forward and take on the projects on that list,” she said.
Like Bedden, Larson and the Board would love to have the full $35 million to address all needs, not just the most dire. RPS will get $7 million as part of the Capital Improvement Program. “But a lot of that is already allocated,” Larson said.
City Council president Charles Samuels, speaking last week by phone, said the $10 million in the city budget that Council approved for a new baseball stadium–a project the Mayor pulled from Council consideration amid large public opposition to it–could go toward repair costs.
In addition to securing city funds, RPS and the Board are investigating additional funding options like special loans. “We see all this other development [around the city],” Larson said. “Let’s all make this decision that we are going to invest in our schools…and just get on board.”
“Good schools are good economic development,” she said.
Whereas partnership and trust between the major players affecting Richmond’s schools hasn’t been a hallmark in recent years, Larson thinks the tide is changing. That the zeal of a new superintendent flanked with a new team, and the 11-page report’s clarion call for change will get everyone (the Mayor, the City Council, and the School Board) in the same boat working together.
Hints of that occurred last week when Tommy Kranz led Larson, Councilman Jon Baliles (1st District), and Mayor Jones chief of staff, Grant Neely, on a tour of city schools.
“It would benefit all of us to see all city officials working together to come up with a plan,” Larson said. “We can all make a decision to start paddling in the same direction.
Related
- Mayor’s diversion won’t help city schools; Richmond Times-Dispatch
- The Good and the Forbidden; Style Weekly
- Richmond schools in dire need of attention; Richmond Times-Dispatch
- Richmond schools tour raises awareness of facility issues; Richmond Times-Dispatch
- Sell naming rights to public schools; RVANews
Photo by Jim
- Over 40 schools in total. ↩
- Ensuring schools are adequate sizes for the communities they support, a process that can lead to school closures, merges, or consolidations. ↩
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Nathan Cushing
Nathan Cushing is a writer, journalist, and RVANews Editor.
Notice: Comments that are not conducive to an interesting and thoughtful conversation may be removed at the editor’s discretion.
This is heartbreaking…think of how this looks from the eyes of a child because the condition and appearance of the building DOES have an effect on their ability to learn…it says how much you value the child and the education you say is important. I wonder how many of us could continue to be productive, enthusiastic and engaged in a work environment that was leaky, moldy, and without heat/ac…the leaders of our city should be touring our schools EVERY day because the children are, after all, “the future” as quoted from every politician’s speech you ever heard…And, while you’re at it, you might consider the TEACHER who returns to deplorable conditions EVERY year…heartbreaking …
More heartbreaking than that is the millions and millions and millions in tax dollars thrown at RPS and this is what they have to show for it…how many folks are in the RPS central office receiving $100K plus salaries while the schools rot away?
This is what happens when you have a City leadership that has been myopically focused on convention centers, art centers, and stadiums instead of education, transportation, and basic services. This is what happens when Richmond Renaissance/Venture Richmond is able push its corporate welfare agenda in front of everything else.
SCHOOLS BEFORE STADIUMS!
To echo what Brian E is saying, there is not a shortage of money to fix these issues. There is simply mismanagement of the funds. RPS receives millions of dollars a year but it is so absurdly managed that none of it actually makes it to the level of infrastructure. It goes in the pockets of the administrators, failed “technology projects”, and the six figured salary of the administrators’ under-qualified church friends.
You are correct Brian E. The problem is not lack of funding. Check out the RPS payroll audit from last school year.
When discussing RPS funding, it’s useful to remember that capital budgets and things like salaries are appropriated/budgeted differently. If one feels that RPS is spending money on the wrong things, make sure you petition City Council and the Mayor’s office to put funds where you believe they should go.
It is interesting that over the 35 plus years I have lived in Richmond that the city school system has systematically had millions poured into it and they consistently have the poorest schools, some of if not the worst test scores in the State, the highest cost per student in the state and in some instances of like size cities on the East coast. So when I hear the cry for more money, I say get people in place that know how to allocate the funds they are given, develop a short term and long term plan to bring these schools up to code, get the students a cost effective and well balanced education for the massive amount of money spent per student and get their collective act together. This has been the norm for way too long and something needs to be done.
For years the cities schools were not ADA compliant, they were built knowing they were not, which is outrageous to say the least and then the only way they were brought into compliance was by way of a lawsuit. This is the way things go in the city, waste, BS and cronyism, too much, too late too far gone.
Please get someone who can see the path ahead and set things straight, do not ask the taxpayers for yet more money to fix something that has been brushed aside for decades and knowingly so, fix the damn problems, if they can’t fix them then get someone who can, enough is enough.
@Mike LaBelle Your wish for someone who can see the path ahead and set things straight has been (theoretically) granted!
The new RPS superintendent, Dr. Bedden, took over in January and was brought in from outside of the current system to avoid (and combat) the cronyism and corruption you mentioned. He had nothing to do with the past 35 plus years of waste, and shouldn’t be blamed for it. He should, I think, be given the benefit of the doubt.
I encourage you to go hear him speak some time. I went to an event a couple of weeks ago where he used almost exactly the same words you use: his job is to create a short-term plan to make our schools safe and habitable while also building a long-term plan to make them worthy of our kids.
Mike LaBelle, your comment about ADA is not quite accurate. Many of these buildings were built before ADA requirements were in place. The school system was sued because the city refused to pay for the retrofits. It seems to me, that many OTHER repairs were set aside in order to address the ADA requirements. I will say that particular process was way drawn out though.
What some folks may not know, is that the school buildings are owned by the city. The school system basically leases them. When RPS presents budgets, it is only asking for funds to administrate the schools, not to maintain the buildings since that comes from a different budget. So it’s become a situation similar to when a resident of an apartment building is complaining about the leaks in their kitchen, and the landlord is refusing to repair them. The resident shouldn’t have to pay to repair a leaky faucet, right? I’m pretty sure, though, that an accurate report of the buildings’ condition hasn’t been available previously due to the poor abilities of the past administration.
I always thought that bringing the last Superintendent, Dr Yvonne Brandon, from within a broken system was a poor idea. All the folks that reported to her had been in place for years too. Dr. Beddon on the other hand, has cleaned house so hopefully it will be more responsive and active.