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Op-Ed: Let’s Show Confidence In Mr. Kamras!

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Former Education Compact member Amy Wentz respond’s to last week’s editorial by Willie Hilliard, offering reasons why she believes Richmond Public Schools should renew Superintendent Jason Kamras’s contract for four years.

Well, well, well. Here we are again, Richmond Public Schools stakeholders: emotional, anxious, and exercising our thumbs in yet another high stakes debate. We are already stressed about the national political climate, the pandemic, injustice, and just ensuring our families are stable, but now we are adding to the long list of heated disagreements before this, like rezoning, facilities planning, toilet paper, meals tax, school closure/consolidation, and ultimately what is or isn’t best for students. What can I say? We are passionate about schools, sometimes to our own detriment.

First, I want to express that these are my thoughts. My thoughts are not more important or to be held at a higher regard than any others and it’s perfectly OK to disagree with me or counter with information of your own. Either way, the decision around Jason Kamras’ contract is now up to our new School Board, so don’t let it give you heart palpitations. Take a deep breath. Inhale. Exhale. OK. Now you can continue reading.

I’m going to make this easy, with just a rebuttal to the Op-Ed RPS Alumnus/Parent, Education Compact Member and Community Advocate Willie Hilliard submitted the other day in RVA Mag. Why? Because I share all of these titles with him and it’s important that fellow stakeholders can learn from different perspectives and viewpoints. (We have something else in common, but who really wants to bring that up again? Lol) I graduated from Huguenot High School in the late 90’s. My oldest graduated from RPS in 2016, and my youngest is a first Grader at JL Francis.  

Speaking to Willie’s assertion that “Mr. Kamras has brought a top-down approach to our community, caring more about corporate interests than including all of Richmond’s students, families, and teachers in the future of their schools.” Mr. Kamras has had a solid track record of using an extremely collaborative approach to his leadership. From my view, we have never seen the amount of grassroots partnerships, black led organizations, listening sessions, engagement opportunities and ways to give input and be heard that we have had these past three years. This is not something that should be reduced to unimportant. Consideration and compassion speak to culture, and that overwhelmingly matters to parents.

Willie says, “RPS students do benefit from stability during a pandemic, and therefore, Mr. Kamras’s contract should be renewed for two years. However, we should expect more of our public servants than using a pandemic to leverage for more, especially as Richmonders have, for the past three years, used our public dollars to pay him over five times the median Richmond salary.” Students benefit from stability in general. Not just during a pandemic. A two-year contract does not provide that. Anecdotally, the urban districts that are generally lifted up as some of the strongest examples of continuous improvement over the past 20 or 30 years had superintendents with nearly decade-long tenures, such as Carl Cohn in Long Beach, CA, or Thomas Payzant in Boston. Regarding salaries, I remember when Kim Gray was running for Mayor, she had a similar grievance, and Politico did a fact check. Also, here is some information on Mr. Kamras’s predecessor’s salary. And it’s important to note with the raises RPS has enacted since then, his predecessor would be making $254,209, more than Mr. Kamras, who has not taken any of these raises, makes now. To present additional context, in surrounding counties, Chesterfield County’s Superintendent Salary makes $217,726; Henrico County’s Superintendent makes $221,000.

“Mr. Kamras initially pushed for school reopening, but brave RPS families and teachers organized and spoke in no uncertain terms that reopening schools was not acceptable. It was the power of the people that forced Jason Kamras to acknowledge that a majority of his schools would be empty and unstaffed if he pushed to reopen schools,” says Willie. This isn’t even a reach; it’s totally false. He LED the NATION in quickly announcing that schools should and would close. Mr. Kamras closed schools before even the Governor made the decision to do so and was the first to extend the closure to go all the way through spring break. He has also been concerned about very high-need students and initially advocated for providing them with some in-person instruction in the fall, but ultimately recommended to the School Board that RPS open the 2020-21 school year virtually. Lastly, Mr. Kamras recommended that RPS remain virtual for the second semester while other districts have been opening and closing, causing incredible instability for families. Shout out to the power of the people, but when you can’t even give credit when it’s due, that’s a problem.

From Willie’s perspective: “But instead of bringing the community together, Jason Kamras has caused division and conflict, making decisions behind closed doors and bringing many highly-paid C-suite officers from Washington, DC. Even more divisive is his demand to receive a four-year contract or he will leave.” What evidence is there that Kamras has “caused division and conflict”? On the contrary, he seems to be working incredibly hard to bring the RPS community together. OK, he brought with him three colleagues. Fair, but isn’t that a sign of an effective leader? That people would want to uproot and move to work with someone? Also, these members of the Leadership team aren’t from DC: Sandra Lee, Chief Talent Officer; Shadae Harris, Chief Engagement Officer; Tracy Epp, Chief Academic Officer; and soon to be: Alana Agosto Gonzalez, Chief Operating Officer.

Willie asserts, “The only path to lasting school improvement is real partnership — not a series of backroom deals led by corporate interests that seek to reduce the public’s voice in our schools.” I actually agree and believe there has been real partnership. What backroom deals, Willie? Your associates list none in the reference document.

Another part reads, “In districts across the country, we have seen that divisive turnaround strategies can temporarily boost test scores while sowing the seeds of division. When superintendents move on to their next job, they leave communities with less ownership of their schools and no sustainable, shared, lasting commitment — the commitment that research shows leads to the deep change that our students and teachers deserve. And at this point, due to the pandemic and the cancellations of SOLs, we lack even the barest of abilities to judge the Superintendent’s performance while he fights for a four-year contract.” I feel like this is actually an argument against your write up. He’s showing us he wants a sustainable and lasting commitment. Also, is it not contradictory to hold up SOLs as support for this argument? Let’s all fight to cancel SOLs but then use it as leverage against our Superintendent’s contract?

“Black and Latinx communities are the most likely to have change done to them instead of with them. More than 80 percent of the students in Richmond’s public schools are not white. We reject approaches that are not led with the people most impacted, especially when we see alarming evidence of declining graduation rates in certain RPS cohorts.” OK, Willie, here is our Graduation Data from VDOE. A few points to note: Class of 2018 (Mr. Kamras arrived in February of that year): 75.4 percent. Class of 2019, the year in which Kamras ended unethical practices that were artificially inflating rates, was 70.7 percent. Class of 2020 is 71.6 percent, and we are moving back UP ethically. Do we want to see greater numbers? Absolutely. Give him a chance!

Willie says, “Time and time again, Jason Kamras has managed our public schools from behind closed doors. Instead of building strong public support for education through transparency and shared responsibility, the Kamras administration has made decisions in secret in violation of open meeting laws, hidden information that should be publicly available, and even restricted people’s ability to openly criticize the district.” Speaking to the resource linked, Mr. Kamras is on record not wanting to put the names of the cut employees out in public, as he thought doing so would be disrespectful. The democratically elected School Board voted to proceed without sharing the names. This was not a unilateral action by Mr. Kamras. I mean, Richmond will openly criticize any and everything. We aren’t a shy bunch at all, so I’m not sure I follow on that part. In transparency, I did not agree with the removal of these positions, but wanted to speak on the “secret meeting” referenced.

“The Kamras administration fought against reporting teacher retention data as part of the Dreams4RPS Strategic plan,” Willie says. I’ve seen this stated before, but it’s just not true. The Administration asked UVA to calculate teacher retention using agreed-upon common definitions and statistical analysis so that there is uniformity across all years of reporting. To read the administrations 87-page summary of how each goal is calculated, click here. UVA produces this data, in a partnership with the state, with about a year lag. The Administration did not fight against reporting the data, they just did not have it yet from UVA. And when they did get it, they reported it, and teacher retention was flat year over year.  I’ll add that I agree that teacher retention needs added attention. I’ll also add that teacher and staff satisfaction was up 5 percent year over year. Also,the 2018 Promise and Equity Audit was never funded by the Board, so that’s not on him. Let’s give this a push in this year’s budget cycle.

“Kamras is working for corporations and his personal networks, not our kids.” OK, many of our RPS teachers got their start with Teach for America. Is this something that has to negatively follow them for the rest of their careers? Here’s a list of non-evil people who are associated with TFA that went on to do good things. On his two years with the Broad Academy: This is a widely respected program and it’s unfair to associate some of its graduates to Mr. Kamras. If anything, he’s worked in the opposite direction in his time in Richmond. On Great Minds: The democratically elected School Board approved the contract with Great Minds for a math curriculum that is the most widely used in the United States. As far as Navy Hill: The only time Mr. Kamras did or said anything related to Navy Hill was acknowledging, alongside School Board Chair (at the time) Dawn Page, the Mayor’s commitment to give half of all revenues to schools. Should he have stayed out of it? I can agree on that. But is that working for corporations? Nah.

“Jason Kamras’s ties to corporations mean he won’t stand up to demand that they contribute to funding our schools through a higher corporate tax rate. The residents of Richmond should not be asked to bear the cost of schools alone when the corporate tax rate hasn’t been raised for 40 years, but Jason Kamras will not fight for fair funding.” We all know the Superintendent of schools has no control over our corporate tax rate. As the kids say, bruhhh! There are endless examples of Mr. Kamras fighting for our school district. Here, here, here, here, and here. In fact, he has supported every single tax increase proposed by the state and city for increased school funding.

“Kamras has not supported teachers or effective instruction, and we all know that the most important factor in a child’s education is the quality of their teachers.” In this section, Willie mentions the chosen curriculum, but it’s important to note that both were approved by the School Board, are highly respected, and were selected by a panel of RPS teachers. If the majority of teachers don’t agree with the decisions the panel made, let’s address that, but to imply that the collective decision means he’s unsupportive is unsubstantiated. As far as the “failed practices of Washington DC,” an independent study by UVA found that Kamras’s work in DCPS led to increases in teacher quality and student achievement. Assessing these practices is fair, but regardless how we feel about it, Mr. Kamras has not instituted any such program in Richmond.

I don’t want this to go to a fifth page, so I’ll get to the bottom line. We say that we want systemic and structural change, but to do so, we must understand and commit to doing this work for the long haul. Mr. Kamras came on board in February of 2018. That’s only one complete instructional year to assess before the pandemic hit and we were forced into a virtual environment. This is how we sound: “FIX OUR SCHOOLS! But you can’t adjust the curriculum, you can’t adjust teacher schedules, you can’t hire your own staff, you can’t adjust the calendar.” The way we fix schools is to be honest in our assessments. If you can’t even give credit where it’s due and have to inflate the facts to make your points, it’s a disservice to students. Let’s identify what we are getting wrong, and work with our school board to put the right measures in place to hold our Superintendent accountable. We can’t just continue to throw the whole thing away every few years.

Kamras has worked tirelessly to elevate our voices:

  • held over 170 community meetings for the strategic plan
  • launched five Advisory Councils: Students, Teachers, Families, Principals, and School Reopening
  • launched RPS en Vivo weekly livestream for Spanish-speaking families
  • launched RPS en Espanol Facebook page for Spanish-speaking families
  • launched RPS Live! weekly livestream for English-speaking families
  • appears weekly on the Gary Flowers show
  • appears weekly on Radio Poder with Oscar Contreras
  • appears weekly on Miss Clovia
  • has conducted hundreds of school visits, living room meetings, and community walks
  • answers every email from everyone – no matter who you are

I have to take into account the good with the bad:

  • tackling the Carver scandal that existed well before he arrived
  • tackling the transcript and graduation scandal that existed well before he arrived
  • tackling rezoning
  • creating a strategic plan with the community that was unanimously approved by the School Board – and actually implementing it
  • partnering with the Mayor and Council to increase RPS funding significantly
  • establishing a much better relationship with the VDOE
  • hiring many new principals with a focus on instructional leadership.

Every superintendent knows that anything less than a full contract is a vote of no confidence from a School Board. When Superintendent Cashwell had two full years left on her contract (Mr. Kamras has a few months), Henrico pre-emptively extended her contract two more years, in effect giving her a six-year contract. Why did they do so? As the RTD reported: “’We wanted to show our confidence in her,’ School Board Chairman Roscoe Cooper said after Thursday’s meeting. ‘We had the authority to do it, so we did it.’” Let’s show confidence in Mr. Kamras with a four-year contract, then work with our school board to ensure we add accountability measures towards our challenges.

Note: Op-Eds are contributions from guest writers and do not reflect RVA Mag editorial policy.

Top Photo via RVASchools.net

Op-Ed: RPS Students Deserve Better Than Jason Kamras

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City Council candidate and Mayor’s Education Compact member Willie Hilliard says Richmond’s School Board should offer a two-year contract for continuity amidst the pandemic, but should not commit to the four-year contract Superintendent Jason Kamras wants.

RPS students deserve an excellent education, and building a welcoming, rigorous public school system involves all of us. But superintendent Jason Kamras has brought a top-down approach to our community, caring more about corporate interests than including all of Richmond’s students, families and teachers in the future of their schools. RPS students do benefit from stability during a pandemic, and therefore, Mr. Kamras’s contract should be renewed for two years. However, we should expect more of our public servants than using a pandemic to leverage for more, especially as Richmonders have, for the past three years, used our public dollars to pay him over five times the median Richmond salary. 

Mr. Kamras initially pushed for school reopening, but brave RPS families and teachers organized and spoke in no uncertain terms that reopening schools was not acceptable. It was the power of the people that forced Jason Kamras to acknowledge that a majority of his schools would be empty and unstaffed if he pushed to reopen schools.

We can give him credit for listening. We can give him credit for working hard. However, ultimately we need to pursue the course of action best for RPS students and honor the school board that was just democratically elected by Richmond. That school board came to power as an expression of community will, and they should not tie their own hands by signing a four-year deal. 

The dreams of our students, not to mention our economy and our democracy, are built on a foundation of strong public schools. Now more than ever, we need to engage our entire community to put the needs of Richmond’s students first. But instead of bringing the community together, Jason Kamras has caused division and conflict, making decisions behind closed doors and bringing many highly-paid C-suite officers from Washington, DC. Even more divisive is his demand to receive a four-year contract or he will leave. 

Richmond Public Schools need change. By so many measures we can see that our children deserve better, but we know that a top-down, closed-door change won’t work. The people of Richmond are proud of their community, their teachers, their families and their young people. We want to be fully engaged in envisioning a new future. The only path to lasting school improvement is real partnership — not a series of backroom deals led by corporate interests that seek to reduce the public’s voice in our schools. In districts across the country, we have seen that divisive turnaround strategies can temporarily boost test scores while sowing the seeds of division. When superintendents move on to their next job, they leave communities with less ownership of their schools and no sustainable, shared, lasting commitment — the commitment that research shows leads to the deep change that our students and teachers deserve. And at this point, due to the pandemic and the cancellations of SOLs, we lack even the barest of abilities to judge the Superintendent’s performance while he fights for a four-year contract. 

Black and Latinx communities are the most likely to have change done to them instead of with them. More than 80 percent of the students in Richmond’s public schools are not white. We reject approaches that are not led with the people most impacted, especially when we see alarming evidence of declining graduation rates in certain RPS cohorts. Every parent in Richmond wants a quality education for their child. And a great education is only possible if we create a long-term, shared vision for the Richmond Public Schools. We have to be sure that we are listening to all of the RPS communities and not simply the loudest or the most active on social media. 

Our children can’t afford to wait. Their future is now. We call on the School Board to renew the Superintendent’s contract for two years. We call for the Richmond Public Schools to be guided by the collective expertise of our educators, students and families. 

Jason Kamras has not been transparent or accountable to the public about the management of our schools. 

Time and time again, Jason Kamras has managed our public schools from behind closed doors. Instead of building strong public support for education through transparency and shared responsibility, the Kamras administration has made decisions in secret in violation of open meeting laws, hidden information that should be publicly available, and even restricted people’s ability to openly criticize the district. The Kamras administration fought against reporting teacher retention data as part of the Dreams4RPS Strategic plan; has consistently failed to make school board documents public; and has failed to complete the 2018 Promise of Equity Audit, a much-needed examination of the district’s racial inequalities. Advocates including the Virginia Coalition for Open Government have spoken out about the blatant disregard for the law and transparency by the Kamras administration. 

Transparency is a core element of good government and effective public school districts. Parents and teachers cannot build trust with an administration that refuses to manage public schools with the help and cooperation of the public. Leaders who are committed to transparency and accountability don’t hide information from the public; effective public leaders have nothing to hide. 

To be clear, the job of the Superintendent is to execute and administer the governance of our schools fairly and democratically: it is not to be a communications or PR manager for the district. Jason Kamras’ daily newsletter, his social media presence, his discussion of social and political issues, and 30 minute math lessons during the spring are very effective at creating a sense of unity, connectedness, and progress in the district. But a fully effective Superintendent should be judged by how they made the least connected members of the RPS family feel. 

Kamras is working for corporations and his personal networks, not our kids. 

He got his start in education with Teach for America, and worked under Michelle Rhee in Washington D.C., both part of a national movement to undermine the role of teachers in favor of increasing corporate presence in schools. He trained at the Broad Academy from 2015 to 2016.

The Broad Academy is a leadership training program of the Broad Center, whose “graduates” have been associated “with corporate management techniques to consolidate power, weaken teachers’ job protections, cut parents out of decision making, and introduce unproven reform measures.” 

In Richmond Kamras has granted lucrative contracts to the Great Minds, an organization whose founder and CEO is linked to the right-wing American Enterprise Institute. He has hired associates from D.C. and charter networks for leadership positions in the Richmond Public Schools, giving them all significant raises. He’s also shown that he’s prepared to support the corporate interests over the public interest, backing the failed Navy Hill Coliseum deal proposed by Thomas F. Farrell, CEO of Dominion Energy, a lead advocate for hiring Kamras. Jason Kamras has consistently put the interests of corporations and his personal rolodex ahead of the children of Richmond. 

We want everyone to support our public schools, including our local business community — but corporations and personal associates shouldn’t have a seat at the table when teachers and parents are left out. When corporations and the wealthy pay their fair share of taxes then we have full public coffers, and all of us can democratically decide how to allocate funding – that’s the way to ensure students and families aren’t left behind. We can’t turn our schools over to interests driven by profit and efficiency, not equity. The values of all of the people of Richmond should drive the leadership of our schools, not corporate interests.

Jason Kamras’s ties to corporations mean he won’t stand up to demand that they contribute to funding our schools through a higher corporate tax rate. The residents of Richmond should not be asked to bear the cost of schools alone when the corporate tax rate hasn’t been raised for 40 years, but Jason Kamras will not fight for fair funding. 

Kamras has not supported teachers or effective instruction, and we all know that the most important factor in a child’s education is the quality of their teachers. 

Jason Kamras has brought the failed practices of Washington DC to Richmond, emphasizing standardization and testing over the development of a high quality, professional teaching community. Across the nation, in places where administrators blame teachers for the heavy burdens placed on schools by poverty, districts have turned to more rules and regulations over what and how teachers teach — all driven toward increasing scores on standardized tests, not building a healthy and vibrant school community. The Kamras administration has favored a “scripted” approach to curriculum, relying on rote scripts delivered by teachers with little room for creativity. These programs are often referred to as “teacher proof” and do not attract high quality, committed teachers to classrooms. Many talented teachers, faced with scripted curricula, choose to leave for another district that will treat them as professionals.

Research has clearly shown the power of excellent teachers in every classroom. Is Jason Kamras helping Richmond recruit and retain excellent teachers? Is Jason Kamras making Richmond a place where the most committed and talented teachers want to work? If one looks at his leadership, from his failed effort to implement a teacher comprehensive performance-measurement system in Washington, DC to his failing to provide contemporaneous teacher retention data, we should be worried that RPS is losing its long-serving, high-quality teachers, especially in light of the demands of them by the pandemic. 

Kamras has not built a shared agenda for our public schools. Our children deserve a uniter, not a divider. 

The families of Richmond are the people most invested in our children, their education and their future. Our families hold the highest expectations for their children, they pay the taxes that support the district, and they are the people, rooted here for generations, who make our community strong. 

We know, across the nation, that most superintendents stay in urban districts for less than 5 years. It is essential that all of Richmond’s families have a voice in choosing the leadership of their children’s schools because they will be the people advocating for their child from the time they set foot in a classroom for the first time to the day they cross a graduation stage. Superintendents and politicians will come and go, but we know that deep change takes time. Without a strong partnership, long-term change just isn’t possible. 

Black and Latinx communities in Richmond are disproportionately enrolled in our public schools and disproportionately underrepresented in the governance or leadership of the district. We don’t need paternalistic ideas of reform from Washington, DC. We need true collaboration to surface the best possible ideas from around the world and bring them to our classrooms. 

Jason Kamras has opposed the right of teachers to organize and advocate for better schools. Jason Kamras has fought public access to information. In the two years he has led the Richomnd public schools, Jason Kamras has not brought the community together to push for excellence. His hollow proclamations about equity and justice are not backed up by support for public access, teacher excellence, or elevating the voices of the black and brown families who the Richmond Public Schools seek to serve. 

Jason Kamras has been ineffective in bringing our community together to make the urgent, substantive change that our children deserve. 

We cannot wait four more years. Our children deserve an excellent education now, in spite of the burdens of this pandemic.

We can’t allow Jason Kamras to limit our community’s future with closed-door deals, corporate influence, and nepotism. There is a logic to maintaining continuity of leadership during a once-in-a-lifetime pandemic, but allowing a four-year renewal will allow the Superintendent’s lack of transparency and failure to build coalitions to continue harmfully for far too long. Our children deserve a leader who will bring the community together over the long term, and lead with transparency to build a shared vision of public education that honors the voices of our community, demands excellence, and puts racial justice at the center of transformation. 

For too long Black and Latinx communities in Richmond have been left behind. The racist defunding of the school system leaves it unable to deliver on the promise of opportunity. For equity and justice to move beyond lip service, the parents, teachers, and students of Richmond must be included in guiding the system that seeks to serve them. The demand of a four-year contract or nothing is very disturbing. It doesn’t say that he’s truly committed to this school system by using a take it or leave it approach. We’re not saying NO to Kamras, we’re saying two years is more than sufficient enough to prove that you’re worthy of further lucrative commitments from a cash-strapped school division.

Note: Op-Eds are contributions from guest writers and do not reflect RVA Mag editorial policy.

Top Photo: G.W. Carver Elementary School in Richmond. Photo by Noah Daboul. Research by Kath Connolly, Nat Hardy, Gary Broderick, Quinton Robbins.

Op-Ed: Kenya Gibson’s Substantive Racial Justice Leadership Is a Threat to the Powerful

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Richmond Third District School Board candidate Kenya Gibson has come under fire in the run-up to her election campaign. To Richmond community organizers Monique Drake and Brionna Nomi, the critiques are misleading and disingenuous.

At a time when people in Richmond and across the country are awakening to issues of systemic racism and racial injustice, leaders of color are standing up to represent the voices of their communities and serve as bold, undiluted agents of change. However, progressive Black leaders who dare to address and eradicate historic inequities face blowback from moneyed interests who seek to maintain their power, status and privilege. Kenya Gibson, who serves as the Third District School Board Member in Richmond, is one such leader.

Kenya Gibson is the most consistent and stalwart progressive elected official Richmond City has to offer. During her tenure, Kenya and supporting board members successfully fought for  the construction of three new schools without closing or consolidating existing schools. Kenya has secured more free speech protections for teachers and fought to improve teacher retention, a longstanding problem within the city. Kenya successfully sought to protect funding for Richmond Public Schools and helped to defeat the costly $1.5 billion real estate tax-funded Dominion Coliseum redevelopment plan. She pushed the School Board to adopt good governance policies that promote transparency, engagement, and a needs based budget. 

Yet despite Kenya Gibson’s substantive record – or, arguably, because of it — a group of parents, many aligned with the policies and initiatives of Mayor Stoney, are positioning themselves as “integrationists” and challenging Kenya. The “integrationists” accuse Kenya, a consistent progressive champion in her community and a woman raised by a white mother and a Black father, of supporting the Confederacy, opposing LGBTQ rights, and opposing school integration. This effort is a strategy devised by political interests on behalf of the elite establishment.  

Certainly, there are some good faith actors who differ with Kenya’s policy choices. However, these individuals are not the driving force behind the campaign against her.  

In the era of Black Lives Matter, BIPOC communities — using their voices and with a sense of agency — articulate a vision of racial justice that combats systems and policies of oppression. Black Richmonders such as Kenya have a conception of racial justice that includes removing Confederate monuments and names, but they don’t allow the conversation to stop there. Kenya has spoken out against new prisons and argued for the removal of police from schools. She has pushed for an understanding of racial justice that moneyed interests and wealthy donors don’t like. Kenya has pushed for progressive taxation — raising taxes on the wealthy with an eye towards promoting high-quality fully funded schools, secure housing, robust transportation, and other public services. 

A people of color-centered justice movement has been hijacked and misappropriated by some white liberals who wish to center themselves and their own needs without authentically engaging with Black communities. Often it is those with privilege who have access to resources and power in our society who benefit most from a more superficial understanding of racism. Non-profits reliant on funding from the wealthy can often reproduce a superficial understanding. Who benefits when racial justice is not about policy and systems, but rather about symbols or individuals engaged in self-help? Often, it’s professional-class white liberals who then get to feel good about themselves while ultimately leaving the power structure intact. In the end, their actions work against the very values they claim to champion.

Many of those engaged in this attempt to smear Kenya are supporters of Mayor Stoney and the Navy Hill Development/Dominion Coliseum proposal that Kenya helped defeat. Mayor Stoney has contributed to and endorsed Kenya’s opponent. Others are white parents newer to the district, who don’t seem to fully grapple with the contradiction of demands that the school system be responsive to their racial justice analysis in the absence of a well-funded broader inclusive process, where all parents are engaged. It’s a context where the form of racial justice can lose the content. 

Examining the specific accusations made against Kenya reveals how deliberately misleading her detractors have been. 

Cindy Menz-Erb, an ally of Mayor Stoney who lost to Kenya in a 2017 special election, wrote an email to an exclusive group of Third District parents making outlandish and categorically false assertions. The same assertions later appeared on a flyer for the suspicious and newly formed “Northside Parents Collective.” We know that these items would be disturbing if true, so they’re worth debunking.

For starters, Kenya’s detractors have accused her of being pro-Confederate because she was the lone vote against the renaming of J.E.B. Stuart Elementary — named for a Confederate general — in honor of Barack Obama. The context behind Kenya’s vote is that she wanted more time to consider renaming the school after local Richmond leaders, such as civil rights attorney Oliver Hill, or Albert Norrell, who was one of the first Black principals in Richmond. Kenya’s position echoed that of longtime community members who spoke out against the renaming process.

Image via Support Richmond Public Schools Facebook Group

Critics also accused Kenya of anti-LGBTQ+ sentiment for opposing a revised student dress code, which was more equitable for gender nonconforming students, within the Student Code of Responsible Ethics (SCORE). Kenya in fact supported the changes to the dress code for LGBTQ+ students, but voted against the SCORE document because it failed to address disciplinary procedures that, in practice, criminalize normal childhood behavior.

Further, Kenya is accused of being an integration foe because she opposed pairing, a severely flawed model for school integration. As part of Richmond’s rezoning process, Superintendent Jason Kamras and some school board members pushed the idea of school pairing as a strategy for creating a more diverse student body. Under pairing, a school district takes a majority-white school and a majority-Black school, both of which serve Kindergarten through 5th grade, and pools the students. One of the schools is then assigned to the K-2 students in the pool, and the other school to grades 3-5. 

The pairing idea for Kenya’s Third District — actually a tripling — would have combined three K-5 schools: Linwood Holton Elementary, which has a 55 percent Black and 45 percent white student enrollment, and Barack Obama Elementary and Ginter Park Elementary, both of which are more than 90 percent Black. The plan would have turned Obama and Ginter Park into K-2 schools, and Holton into a 3-5 school. 

It is true that pairing had some support from parents legitimately interested in racial justice. That acknowledged, pairing is a model that is in conflict with what we know are best practices for education. Public education advocates have pushed for a community schools model precisely because it promotes parental involvement. Pairing would have made parental involvement more difficult for those families who don’t have access to transportation and who work jobs that don’t afford them flexibility — in other words, the burdens of pairing would have fallen heavily upon Black working-class families. The Charlotte-Mecklenburg School District is one of the only school districts in the country that has attempted pairing. The superintendent who pushed it there, Clayton Wilcox, was suspended and ultimately resigned over a pattern of racist and sexist remarks. Parents have spoken out about the effect of pairing disproportionately burdening working-class families 

Superintendent Kamras falsely characterized pairing as a method of integration and likened those who had concerns about pairing to racist Jim Crow segregationists. Ultimately, he was unable to convince any school board member to back a pairing effort in their own district, yet tried to put Kenya on the spot and force the plan in Northside. Community members saw Superintendent Kamras pushing a policy lacking a track record and characteristically short on details, such as costs and what transportation would look like. Also lacking was data on the long-term impact the transition of pairing would bring on already traumatized and stressed children. Worst of all, white parents were centered in the discussions on pairing, while Black parents were misled, delayed, or altogether kept out of the process.

Here is a point we must emphasize: While integration must be understood as a tactic of achieving racial justice, integration itself is not necessarily a racial justice silver bullet. At the time of Brown v. Board of Education, integration was a tactic the NAACP used to intervene in the various components of white supremacist infrastructure. Their strategy was not based on the notion that the habits of poor Black people could only improve if they were exposed to the “middle-class” values of white people, or that diversity is a valuable pedagogical device. Rather, the NAACP understood the dynamics of white supremacist budget priorities that “separate but equal” school districts for white and Black students made it politically impossible for Black students to receive the necessary funding.

This should be instructive then in identifying the criteria to evaluate whether integration efforts are advancing racial justice and representing the transformation we need. Who does it place as the central protagonist? Does it reproduce existing power relations or transform them? Does it result in more overall funding for schools? Does it result in a gain in the resources being spent on students of color?

Kenya has stood up for parents, students, and teachers against an initiative she viewed as lacking in transparency, poorly thought through, and lacking consideration of the perspective of educators, as well as a significant representation of RPS parents. Kenya has extensively experienced and considered the role racism plays in schools, and remains a stalwart advocate of integration done well, led first and foremost by the communities integration is supposed to serve. Her commitment to racial justice is reflected in her endorsements by The Richmond Crusade for Voters, Justice and Reformation for Marcus-David Peters, Richmond For All, and others.

Kenya Gibson is what real social justice leadership looks like: substance over symbolism. She has won funding for students, supported community schools as a formula for success, defeated efforts that infringe on democratic governance, and made Black Lives Matter at Richmond Public Schools. Since Kenya’s positions are popular, adversaries attempt to challenge her with harmful statements and false accusations. We see through it, and we are confident voters in the Third District will as well. 

Note: Op-Eds are contributions from guest writers and do not reflect editorial policy.

Top Photo: Kenya Gibson speaking at a Justice & Reformation Fish Fry at Marcus-David Peters Circle. Photo by Kristin Reed.

Richmond Public Schools’ Chosen Name Practice to Take Effect This Fall

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As part of Richmond Public Schools’ effort to make schools a more inclusive space for the LGBTQ community, starting this fall, it will have an option for students to display their chosen name on virtual platforms.

Richmond Public Schools has introduced the option for transgender and non-binary students to display their chosen name on online platforms for the upcoming virtual school year.

Students who need to change their name on virtual platforms, such as Google Classroom, should contact RPS Chief of Staff Michelle Hudacsko, according to Superintendent Jason Kamras’ Aug. 20 newsletter. While this option does not currently exist due to official policy, Kamras said RPS is working on making it official.

With the assistance of Side By Side, a local advocacy organization dedicated to LGBTQ youth, RPS has been making important changes to its policies over the past year in order to be more inclusive toward LGBTQ students and staff. According to Side By Side, the implementation of a chosen name practice is an important component of that effort.

“It’s such a little thing to be able to consistently use the name [a student goes by],” said Ted Lewis, executive director of Side by Side, “but it goes a long way to the mental health of transgender youth.”

Not only has the organization been working with the school district to update their policies and students’ code of conduct, Lewis said Side by Side has been providing training for counselors and teachers as well as resources such as support groups and mental counseling for RPS staff, students, and their families.

Kamras said RPS revised the Student Code of Responsible Ethics (SCORE) to remove gender-specific guidelines, has removed gender-based color graduation gowns, and is looking to revise bathroom policy to “promote equity.”

“Our motto at RPS is to teach with love, lead with love, and serve with love,” said Kamras. “It’s really hard to live that if we’re not making sure that all of our students and staff feel welcomed or love for who they are.”

RPS Superintendent Jason Kamras. (Photo via rvaschools.net)

According to a University of Texas study, there is a 65 percent decrease in suicide attempt among trans youths who are able to use their chosen names at school in addition to home, work, and with friends; there is also a 71 percent reduction in depression symptoms.

RPS’ example of trans inclusivity may help influence other local school districts to do the same. Lewis said that families in surrounding counties have sent RPS’ practice to their school districts as an example for LGBTQ-inclusive policies.

RPS is not the only institution in the area to offer such service or policies. The Henrico School Board had recently adopted new non-discriminatory policies that extend nondiscrimination to programs, services, and activities on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. Virginia Commonwealth University has a program called “Call Me By My Name,” which allows students and employees to update the name, pronoun, and gender identity they associate with on various platforms. The University of Richmond has similar non-discriminatory policies towards their trans students and employees.

Currently, the Virginia Department of Education is developing model policies in regards to treatment of trans students in public schools, ranging from bullying and dress codes to students’ privacy and records maintenance. School boards are required to adopt these guidelines by the 2021-2022 school year. 

While Kamras does not know what the model policies will entail, he said it will support and “give further credibility” to RPS’ inclusivity efforts.

Side by Side also has been involved in conversation with RPS in regards to law enforcement and school resource officers in schools. The organization sent out a letter to the school district calling for the removal of School Resource Officers (SROs) from all Richmond Public Schools, citing that LGBTQ students are more likely to be mistreated by law enforcement.

“This mistreatment and harassment by law enforcement combined with increased surveillance in school leads to more LGBTQ+ youth being incarcerated,” the letter stated.

Superintendent Kamras announced in a “Civic Voice Town Hall” meeting with students in July that he;s recommending to the school board the removal of SROs from schools and reallocating funding for mental health counseling. Kamras said the RPS is still in the review phase, and the school board will consider the hearing testimonies and data to make a decision on removing SROs this fall.

RPS plans to carry their chosen name practice to in-person learning once schools physically reopen, with a similar approach.

“We’ve created a mechanism for students to share their chosen names,” Kamras said, “so we can carry that forward now, once we do return in person.”

Top Photo via rvaschools.net

As Virginia Grapples With Gun Violence, School District Looks for Solutions

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At a town hall held by Richmond Public Schools, city officials came together with parents to discuss solutions to gun violence, which disproportionately affects black males in Virginia.

In Virginia, where the annual number of firearm-related deaths paces the national average, black males are disproportionately the victims of gun-related violence. The state’s capital, Richmond, had the highest rate of gun-related homicides in the commonwealth each year between 2013 and 2017. 

These stats aren’t lost on Richmond Public Schools, which recently hosted a gun violence prevention town hall.

RPS Superintendent Jason Kamras recalled when a student told him it had become normal to know someone who had been shot. 

“That’s an incredible statement, but that’s from the words of our students,” Kamras said. “It’s the reality.”

Earlier this year, at least seven people were wounded in shootings on a single Saturday in Richmond, within a week of back-to-back mass shootings in Dayton, Ohio and El Paso, Texas.

Statewide last year, there were 1,036 firearm-related deaths; of that total, 674 were suicides and 347 homicides, according to the Virginia Department of Health. Gun-related injuries accounted for 1,667 emergency room visits in 2018, the same data show.

In both categories, black males are the victims at much higher rates than females and white males.

The number of firearms used in homicides in Virginia increased overall in the 10-year period from 2008 to 2018.

Last year, 49 of Richmond’s 52 homicides involved a firearm. There were 202 aggravated assaults using firearms in 2018, a decrease from the 231 aggravated assaults using firearms in 2017.

Richmond leaders hope those numbers continue to decrease. The town hall Wednesday at Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School focused on finding solutions and encouraged healing in a community beset by gun violence.

The crowd of about 100 included parents, students, city and state officials, educators, and activists. Nearly every person in the room raised a hand when asked who had been affected by gun violence.

Mayor Levar Stoney. Photo via Facebook

Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney told a personal story of his first encounter with a gun. He recalls as a child finding his uncle’s pistol on his father’s dresser and wondering why a weapon was necessary. He said the response to gun violence cannot be politically convenient. 

“I think we, collectively, we can design a future a whole lot better than the past we’ve been through,” Stoney said. “I want you to know I’m committed to that.”

Stoney introduced an ordinance to ban guns in city-owned buildings and public parks following the Virginia Beach mass shooting in May and the death of 9-year-old Markiya Dickson, who was shot in a Richmond park over Memorial Day weekend. City Council passed the ordinance in July, but the symbolic measure cannot be enforced under state law. 

Kamras also spoke on the impact of Dickson’s death and the emotional response he had seeing her casket at the funeral.

“I have no words,” Kamras said. “I can’t even imagine what that would be like if that was my son Ezra. It’s inconceivable, yet that is the reality for so many families.”

Gov. Ralph Northam called a special session of the General Assembly July 9 hoping to pass gun safety measures, but the session ended after just 90 minutes without voting on any proposed gun safety legislation.

Del. Jeff Bourne, D-Richmond, spoke of being frustrated by the political gridlock and a lack of legislative action. Bourne is running for reelection in the 71st District, against Libertarian Pete Wells.

Earlier this year, Bourne and Del. Lamont Bagby, D-Richmond, introduced HB 1644, requiring owners to report lost or stolen firearms, but it died in committee.

Other bills failed as well. 

HB 2492, introduced by Del. Kathy Tran, D-Fairfax, also died in committee. The bill would have prohibited any person from “importing, selling, bartering, or transferring a firearms magazine designed to hold more than 10 rounds of ammunition.” A similar bill, SB 1748, was introduced by Sen. Adam Ebbin, D-Alexandria, and it also died in committee.

“I will tell you what you all know — that common sense ain’t common when it comes to gun violence reduction measures,” Bourne said. 

Manager of School Climate and Culture Strategy Dr. Ram Bhagat led 10 student volunteers in a call-and-response with government and school officials advocating for reducing gun violence. Photo via VCU CNS

Ram Bhagat, manager of school climate and culture strategy for RPS, helped lead the forum. He introduced speakers, gave a brief testimonial, and led an exercise in which the audience clapped rhythmically and chanted “love,” “faith,” “justice,” and “hope.” 

Attendees wrote down ideas for strategies to reduce gun violence, and some were shared with the audience.

Spartan Academy Executive Director Ray Strickland said something he sees working is group counseling, which gives students an opportunity to exist in a non-judgmental space. 

“I think the first thing that we need to understand is having empathy,” said Strickland. “Before we can put different plans into place, we need to be empathetic to what our students are going through.”

Kristin DuMont, with Moms Demand Action Richmond, said her organization is excited that leaders such as Stoney, Bourne, and Kamras attended the event. The group MDA works to pass stronger gun laws through its nationwide chapters.

“There are a lot of parents who’ve lost children and young people, who have lost friends,” DuMont said. “We want to support them, and we want to make sure that this doesn’t happen to anyone else.” 

Written by Susan Shibut, Capital News Service. Top Photo: Attendees held hands in an exercise in remembrance of loved ones lost to gun violence. via VCU CNS

Not In My Schoolyard

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A recent “pairing” proposal to help integrate two Richmond city schools has run into a backlash that, in some eyes, harks back to the bad old days of Massive Resistance.

The Richmond Public School System’s solution to improve diversity has frustrated some residents to the point that they are threatening to leave the district. And some see the situation as a direct call back to the city’s mid-20th century struggles to integrate, which eventually led to the Supreme Court.

It all began when RPS employed the services of Cropper GIS, a company that works on demographic and facility planning for K-12 school systems, in order to alleviate overcrowding due to projections of a 6.6 percent increase in overall RPS enrollment within the next 10 years. The Richmond City School Board also hoped to place more students into new school buildings, and to increase student body diversity.

Cropper GIS proposed two possible solutions to take effect during the 2020-2021 school year, which would impact around 10 percent of students currently enrolled in RPS schools. One would move around 1200 students to different schools, mostly in the East End, with the goal of putting more students into George Mason Elementary, which will open in fall 2020.

The other option would impact less than half the number of students, and would involve the pairing of four elementary schools. Fairfield Court Elementary and Woodville Elementary would be paired, as would William Fox Elementary and John B. Cary Elementary.

“Pairing” is a process that involves combining student bodies, then putting fewer grades into each school within the pair. In the case of Fox and Cary, their respective school districts would be combined, with all students from the combined district attending Fox for kindergarten through second grade, and Cary for third through fifth grade.

When the pairing of Fox and Cary was announced, several parents within the Fox district spoke up in opposition to it, and that opposition has created tension throughout the Richmond public school community.

Both Cropper GIS and RPS were open about the fact that the pairing plan was introduced in order to improve the diversity of both schools. At the moment, students enrolled at Fox are 60 percent white, while Cary’s enrollment is 83 percent black. If the proposal goes into effect, these divergent numbers would stabilize, with Cary having a population of 52 percent black and 42 percent white, and Fox having a population of 44 percent black and 47 percent white.

Richmond Public Schools Superintendent Jason Kamras (Photo via rvaschools.net)

Richmond Schools Superintendent Jason Kamras expressed support for the proposals to diversify the school systems. “Anywhere we have an opportunity to create a more diverse, more integrated school environments is a great thing, and I want to work with [parents] to figure that out,” Kamras said in an interview with the Richmond Times-Dispatch.

However, several parents with children currently enrolled at William Fox Elementary have expressed their apprehension at the pairing on the Richmond Public Schools feedback form; responses to this form were obtained by the Richmond Times-Dispatch through a FOIA request.

“My youngest daughter would enter Kindergarten the same year that her older sister would be bussed over to Cary Elementary,” said one parent. “Our girls would never go to elementary school together and I would have two children at two different elementary schools.”

Other parents voice their concern regarding the developmental impact that switching schools halfway through elementary school would have on their children.

“Developmentally, this is a delicate time for children and they need the stability of their friends and resources they have come to be comfortable with,” said a parent from William Fox Elementary. Of course, friends who are in the same grade would be changing schools at the same time.

Several parents from Fox also claimed that they moved to the district specifically so their children could attend William Fox Elementary. They claimed that if the pairing of Fox and Cary went into effect they would either move out of the city, or enroll their children in private schools. 

“If option 2 is passed I know that I, along with many other neighbors, would carefully weigh the decision of whether to send my children to private school or to move out of the district for a better elementary school option for our family,” said a Fox parent. 

William Fox Elementary (Photo via rvaschools.net)

This is not the first time Fox and Cary have been at the center of an integration debacle. In 2013, the school district voted to move students from Clark Springs Elementary, a majority-black school, into the Cary district. Then, students from the majority white section of the Cary district were transferred to Fox. This reshuffling in 2013 increased the racial polarity of the schools.

That decision actually resulted in a lawsuit by Kimberly Johnson, who was then the parent of an RPS student. The lawsuit alleged that the 2013 redistricting was discriminatory, but it was ultimately dismissed due to the fact that Johnson had moved to Henrico County and no longer had a child attending RPS schools.

Witnessing the response to the pairing proposal, Kamras commented on Twitter about the ways those responses mirrored things white parents had said about public schools during Virginia’s attempts to integrate 50 years earlier.

“Re Fox-Cary pairing: The loudest feedback sounds eerily like Massive Resistance 2.0,” Kamras tweeted on July 17. “BUT I’ve also received a lot of feedback from families of all backgrounds who welcome the idea. In fact, I believe they’re the majority. I encourage them to share their perspective publicly.”

Kamras’s reference to Massive Resistance referred to an organized campaign in response to the Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown v. Board Of Education decision, which desegregated public schools throughout the country. Begun by Senator Harry Byrd of Virginia, the Massive Resistance campaign lasted nearly two decades, and saw some public school districts close for as many as five years in an effort to block white and black students from attending the same schools.

The threats of parents to move out of the city is reminiscent of the late 60s and early 70s, when Massive Resistance had been ended by a 1968 Supreme Court decision and Richmond Public Schools began a court-ordered citywide busing program in order to integrate student populations within different schools.

This decision brought about strong opposition from white families. Ultimately, in the 1973 Bradley v. Board Of Education decision, the Supreme Court ruled that inter-district busing had to be limited to one school district, meaning that students who lived in surrounding counties could not be bused into Richmond, or vice versa. This decision spurred an increase in “white flight” to the surrounding counties and to more expensive private schools, leading to de facto segregation in which black students in the Richmond metropolitan area made up the vast majority of students at city schools, while white students were the majority in private schools and the surrounding counties.

However, almost 50 years later, these trends have swung the other way — between 2005 and 2013, Richmond’s white population increased by 30 percent, according to StatChat. At this point, Richmond’s white population is growing at a faster rate than the city’s black population — and gentrification is at the root of this growth.

Massive Resistance protesters in Norfolk (via Virginia Museum Of History and Culture)

Kamras’s tweet struck a chord with many Richmond residence witnessing the tensions over the school systems proposal.

“We love Fox, but more importantly we love RPS,” one resident tweeted in response to Kamras’s tweet. “Any change will involve growing pains, but also a great opportunity for growth. We support rezoning that makes ALL RPS schools more equitable.” 

Some residents with students attending Fox recognized the weight of what the school board is trying to achieve, and voiced their support.

“Currently zoned in Fox with a toddler. We support all efforts that dismantle segregation, exclusion of Black families, and entrenched privilege for white families,” a supporter of the pairing proposal tweeted. 

The proposal has also sparked the interest of residents outside of Fox and Cary, who are calling for similar changes in their neighborhood.

“I’m a Northside parent affected by rezoning,” tweeted a parent. “My neighbors would love to see a plan similar to Fox/Cary pairing in our district that could unite our 3 elem. schools & promote path to middle & HS. We’re concerned current plans don’t go far enough to create integration & equity.”

In an effort to increase dialogue around the controversial pairing proposal, RPS held a public meeting at Fox Elementary last Thursday. Around 75 people came to offer feedback on the subject. According to the Richmond Times-Dispatch, one Fox Elementary parent expressed concerns about RPS’s ability to create diversity within the city’s student bodies.

“Most people in this community are committed to the ideal of diversity,” said the parent. “I think there’s concern about how capable the School Board is and [Richmond Public Schools] is in actually implementing that in a thoughtful way.”

Richmond School Board member Scott Barlow told the Richmond Times-Dispatch that the board could vote on the plan as early as November, though that would ultimately depend on feedback they receive from the public. Another public meeting on the subject will take place at Fox Elementary on Tuesday, August 13 at 530 PM.

Additional reporting by Marilyn Drew Necci. Top Photo via rvaschools.net.