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RVA Shows You Must See This Week: March 2 – March 8

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FEATURED SHOW
Saturday, March 5, 7 PM
Banding Together: A Benefit Concert For RPS Elementary School Music Programs, feat. No BS! Brass, Fear Of Music, Prabir Trio, Erin Lunsford, Landon Elliott, Buenas @ The Broadberry – $20-$100 (order tickets HERE)
It’s been a rough ol’ decade so far, folks, and 2022 is clearly trying to make sure no one thinks it’s calming down this year. Not only is there a terrible war in Ukraine courtesy of that despicable dictator Vladimir Putin, and not only is Texas literally attempting to put parents in jail for being supportive of their transgender children, but things are pretty dang rough right here in RVA, the most obvious example of that being the fire that gutted Fox Elementary School recently. Considering how much trouble Richmond Public Schools always has coming up with the funding necessary to give our local children a good public education, this is definitely not the sort of thing we as a city needed.

Luckily, a whole bunch of Richmond musicians feel exactly the same way, and they’re doing more than ranting about it on the internet somewhere; they’ve actually gotten together with local music education-focused nonprofit JAMinc to organize not one but two benefit concerts for Richmond Public Schools’ musical education programs, both of which take place at The Broadberry this Saturday. The more kid-friendly one takes place at 2 PM and features children’s hip hop group The Diggity Dudes, Jonathan The Juggler, and more. If you’ve got little ones in the house, you probably should take them out to this one, especially since kids 12 and under get in free. But RVA Mag is for the adults, so we’re officially recommending the grownup-oriented show at 7 PM, as it features an incredibly stacked lineup of local musical talent.

Topping the bill is No BS! Brass, a band who shouldn’t even need any introduction to Richmond music fans after all these years. However, on the off chance you pulled into town last week, I will tell you that this collection of horn players, percussionists, rappers, singers, and all around fun-loving troubadours incorporate everything from soul, funk, and classic jazz to hip hop, metal, and hardcore punk into their hype-as-hell tunes and incredibly energetic performances. They’re reason enough for you to be at this thing all by themselves, but the fact that talented local Talking Heads tribute act Fear Of Music, veteran power-popsters the Prabir Trio, excellent singer-songwriters Erin Lunsford and Landon Elliott, plus even more great acts will all be on this bill makes it easily worth the $20 price of admission. This is especially true when you contemplate the fact that every dime you pay will go toward Richmond Public Schools’ elementary music programs. And don’t worry — if you want to donate more, tickets with face values up to $100 are available in order to make your donation as easy as possible. Because as we all know, life’s hard enough right now.

Wednesday, March 2, 7 PM
Spirit Of The Beehive, Body Meat @ Richmond Music Hall at Capital Ale House – $14 in advance, $16 day of show (order tickets HERE)
Psychedelic ensemble Spirit Of The Beehive have been around for a while now, and you might think you’ve got them all figured out. But honestly, if you haven’t checked them out in the past year or so, you might get a big surprise when you show up at Capital Ale House’s Richmond Music Hall tonight. For one thing, the band’s lineup has shifted considerably since the pandemic shut down live music for 18 or so months. Their most recent keyboardist switched to drums, and everyone else other than co-founders and lead vocalists Zack Schwartz and Rivka Ravede left. Last year’s Entertainment, Death LP was their first as a trio, and it foregrounds the experimental, electronic, and sonic-collage aspects of the group in new and fascinating ways that led Pitchfork to give Entertainment, Death a much-sought-after Best New Music designation.

One listen is enough to see why; the hypnotic, psychedelic space pop that’s always been a part of their sound has gotten even more unmoored from conventional reality, even as it has absorbed everything from vaporwave vibes to thrift-store “world music” cassette compilations, shoving it all in alongside their tendency toward abrupt sonic shifts and jarring blasts of noise that depart as quickly as they arrive. What’s left is the kind of head-swimmy dance groove that always makes for the best parties; you’re tapping your feet even though you don’t know the song, but you have no idea what the DJ will reach for next or even if they’ll let it play to the end. After a while, though, it starts to make perfect sense. So come down to Capital Ale House tonight and get on Spirit of the Beehive’s level, because rest assured, no matter how weird it seems from the outside, it’s got a lot to offer.

Thursday, March 3, 8 PM
Well Wisher, Strawberry Moon, Closet Space @ The Camel – $12 (order tickets HERE)
I’m always a sucker for some catchy guitar-driven indie tunes with an undeniable undercurrent of melodic punk, and therefore I can’t in any way resist this performance by New Jersey’s Well Wisher, coming to the Camel on Thursday night to get you spiritually prepared for what the weather people are saying will be an at least semi-warm late-winter weekend. Most recently, Well Wisher graced our cooped-up pandemic time with a series of acoustic singles that did what they could to brighten up the precarious summer of 2020. However, to get a sense of what this quartet is capable of when they’re at full strength, we’ve got to go back to their 2019 LP, This Is Fine, which was chock full of great tunes played on pretty dang loud guitars — the sort of sound that would please any lover of PS Eliot or Speedy Ortiz.

It’s likely that this full-strength melodic indie-punk-pop sound will be what Well Wisher bring to The Camel tomorrow night; however, I’ve got to say, even if things focus on the acoustic moods, it’ll still be great. These songs are more than capable of standing on their own. The same can be said of Strawberry Moon, who’ve been bringing the powerful voice and catchy tunes of Katie Bowles and co. to the RVA music world for several years now. All we’ve gotten since pre-pandemic days from them have been a few minimalist demos, but their Bandcamp page heralds a new LP coming this summer, and that’s sure to be a highlight of 2022 for the entire local music scene. In the meantime, see what sorts of new and old tunes they’re bringing out for this Thursday night shindig, and make sure you show up on time to hear what indie-rock newcomers Closet Space have to offer as well. You’ll be glad you did.

Friday, March 4, 8 PM
Phantom Handshakes, Night Idea, Hotspit, Young Scum @ The Dark Room – $10 (order tickets HERE)
Here’s a night of cool moods for a dark room in a historic old building in a hip local neighborhood. Yes, I am of course talking about the Hofheimer’s Dark Room, where a night of excellent local bands will be headlined by visitors from New York. Specifically, I’m talking about Phantom Handshakes, a duo that brings their gorgeous dream-pop tunes south of the Mason-Dixon line to grace all our ear canals. The mix of ambient synth beds, chiming guitars, bouncy programmed beats, and adorable vocals on their 2021 full-length, No More Summer Songs, is truly wondrous, and will surely shine even brighter when it comes to us all from inside a very dark room. Make sure you’re there to see this one glow.

But look, you’ve got a lot of other reasons to be there too, and all of them speak to the always-deep pool of musical talent that has been RVA’s excellent legacy for decades now. Night Idea, a name I haven’t heard in a long minute now, is bringing their melodic math-rockin’ sound back to a Richmond stage at The Dark Room on this fine evening, and what’s more, we’ll also get the first live appearance I’ve heard about in quite a while from incredible local power-pop quartet Young Scum. This is a real dynamic duo of Richmond music right here, and if you’ve been paying attention at all, you know you’ve got to be there when these bands share a stage (and if you don’t know, this is your urgent notice that you need to get familiar ASAP). Rounding out the bill is local buzz band Hotspit, whose lovely indie-shoegaze sounds are getting a warm reception both within and outside of RVA lately. Make sure you don’t miss a moment of this one, folks. It’ll be a night to remember.

Saturday, March 5, 7 PM
Coheed And Cambria, Sheer Mag @ The National – $40 (order tickets HERE)
I’m not as good at being an emo girl as I used to be, and I know this because every time I turn around lately, Coheed and Cambria have yet another new album out, and I’m finding myself once again playing catch-up. I still haven’t really gotten my head around 2015’s The Color Before The Sun, and that’s a seven-year-old album now! Meanwhile, the band has launched into yet another of their multi-album prog epics, in the form of Vaxis. Act I: The Unheavenly Creatures came into the world back in 2018, and Act II: A Window Of the Waking Mind is due out this May, with two advance singles having made it into the world thus far. Oh my goodness! I’ve got a lot of listening to do.

Luckily, at first blush, Coheed’s long-established reputation for metallic, progressive, and eminently melodic emo quality remains sterling — brand new single “Shoulders” shows that they’re still at the top of their game, literally 20 entire years after I saw them for the first time (oh my god, I’m so old). So yeah, all the new jams they’re breaking out for the first time on this tour are sure to knock everyone on their ass, and no doubt they’ll be busting out legendary fan faves like “A Favor House Atlantic” and “Here We Are Juggernaut” to get all us old heads singing along as well. Plus, get this: the opening act on this tour is none other than power-pop-garage-punk titans Sheer Mag, who might not quite be worth the full price of admission just to see them if you don’t dig Coheed (and… why, pray tell, would you not dig Coheed?), but they’re certainly going to provide an excellent bonus for all those in the know who show up on time. So hey, make sure you do that, OK?

Sunday, March 6, 7:30 PM
Summer Salt, Renata Zeiguer, Kate Stephenson @ Richmond Music Hall at Capital Ale House – $19.99 in advance, $23 day of show (order tickets HERE)
Winter’s been rough around here this year, speaking strictly in terms of temperature: like, I can’t remember the last time we got a heating bill as high as the one we were slapped with last month. For that reason alone, it’s good to hear that Texas pop duo Summer Salt are coming through town to wrap up all of our weekends with a lovely performance at Richmond Music Hall Sunday night. You see, where Summer Salt are concerned, the warm sunny sea breezes aren’t just implied by their name; they come through in their glowing, gorgeous pop tunes, to the point where you can almost feel that warm wind on your face when you listen to them. It’s a pleasant prospect, especially with the kind of winter we’ve had.

Summer Salt’s current tour is even more likely to bring the beach vibes; the band is touring in support of their upcoming album, The Juniper Songbook, which will be released mere days after their performance at Richmond Music Hall. It’s a collection of Summer Salt favorites re-interpreted in a more stripped-down, acoustic fashion. And in order to get everyone in the mood, their current tour features the same feel. So not only will we be getting a laid-back acoustic take on Summer Salt’s tunes at this show, we’ll also be getting similarly stripped-down performances from singer-songwriters Renata Zeiguer and Kate Stephenson, each of which has plenty to offer in their own right. Clearly you know what you must do: come down to Capital Ale House’s downtown location and enjoy the vibes this Sunday night.

Monday, March 7, 7 PM
Computer, ApathyFire, K!LL SCREEN @ Fallout – $7 in advance, $10 day of show (order tickets HERE)
This show at Fallout had me ready for some serious goth vibes, as I usually expect from any musical performance taking place at Richmond’s premier fetish bar. However, they threw me for a bit of a curve with this performance by Computer, a mysterious, prolific New York-based project whose work veers between ominous electronic sounds and outright harsh noise in a manner that’s likely to please fans of everything from Pharmakon to Author & Punisher.

Computer’s music seems less likely to inspire dancefloor action than Fallout’s usual fare, but their atonal sonic approach definitely seems at least somewhat appropriate for the moody atmosphere this place always has in abundance. Opener ApathyFire has plenty of additional noise with which to bewitch all comers, while the pounding techno of K!LL SCREEN should be able to at least start the evening with some dance beats before diving fully into the chaos. Jump in and ride the wave, folks.

Tuesday, March 8, 7 PM
Rick Maguire (of Pile), Allie Smith (of Blush Face), Brent McCormick (of The Wimps) @ Gallery 5 – $12 in advance, $15 day of show (order tickets HERE)
I’m guessing it’s the pandemic that did it, but lately we’ve been seeing a move toward more stripped-down, acoustic takes on bands’ and songwriters’ previous material. Indeed, it’s a phenomenon that already appears elsewhere in this very column. However, it takes on a whole different feel when it’s explored by someone like Pile’s Rick Maguire, who normally plays a loud, distorted guitar and hollers animatedly overtop of Pile’s pounding noise-rock anthems. He’s completely subverted that formula with his 2021 solo album, Songs Known Together, Alone. This album sees Maguire stripping Pile’s blasting tunes down to their core elements and converting them into songs full of ambient sound, singular emotion, and lyrics that take on a whole new meaning with the harsh pounding of his backing band stripped away.

It’s an interesting choice from a musician whose songs normally sound like they wouldn’t work at all without all the distortion and screaming noise. What Maguire proves on his new solo album is that you can just as easily love a quiet, bare-bones recreation of a Pile tune just as much as you loved the chaotic, raging original. His set at Gallery 5 on Tuesday is sure to bring that fact home in even more dramatic fashion — and what’s more, it’ll give Richmond heads a chance to see local talents Allie Smith of Blush Face and Brent McCormick of The Wimps do similar things with their own bands’ rockin’ tunes. The results are sure to be illuminating — so come down to Gallery 5 on Tuesday, and let the light shine upon your face.

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Email me if you’ve got any tips for me about upcoming shows (that take place after the week this column covers -– this week’s column has obviously already been written): [email protected]

When Black [Girls’] Lives Really Matter

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“The most disrespected person in America is the Black woman. The most unprotected person in America is the Black woman. The most neglected person in America is the Black woman.” – Malcolm X

This quote by Malcolm X is well known by Black women in my community because it still rings true today. It is also true of Black girls, who grow up to be Black women. Black girls are one of the most untapped resources on this planet. Nationally, Black girls are nearly six times more likely to get out-of-school suspension than white counterparts and more likely to be suspended multiple times than any other gender or race of student, according to research by the African American Policy Forum and Columbia Law School’s Center for Intersectionality and Social Policy Studies. Before Black girls get a driver’s license or go to prom, the school-to-prison pipeline is a significant reality. Until we value their lives and see their potential, we will never see an equitable world where we know women and women of color have proven to be our most impactful and compassionate leaders, though underrepresented.

What an equitable Richmond looks like

An equitable Richmond is one where we see, hear, and celebrate Black girls. It’s one where we experience Black girl “magic,” and we give them every opportunity and resource to achieve and thrive. When we invest in developing resilient, confident children, we will get resilient, confident changemakers who will be Richmond’s teachers, doctors, and artists. 

In research for my upcoming book, I found that most Black teens encounter at least one act of discrimination every month and others experience numerous microaggressions weekly. Examples of these microaggressions vary, but I will share one example from a Girl Action Team participant and previous Chesterfield County High School student. She was told not to wear her headwrap to school despite it being an expression of her culture and heritage. After questioning the reasoning behind this rule several times and not receiving an answer, she decided to wear it in protest. That day, she started her cycle and needed a sanitary napkin from the nurses office. She was told she could not have a sanitary napkin unless she took her headwrap off. This policing of a Black girl’s body because the school’s administration did not agree with her headdress is unnecessary and distracting. Girls in our Girl Action Teams experience discrimination like this regularly. In fact, one of my Girl Action Teams brought more incidents like this to the forefront in an article in Style Weekly. 

Often, Black girls are silenced when they are restricted from wearing culturally appropriate hairstyles. Their feelings are disregarded when they have to constantly ask people not to touch their hair. Their bodies are hypersexualized. Their passion is criminalized and overly punished when they are vocal.

Young people spend a lot of time and energy thinking about and processing how to respond to racially charged incidents that happen in and outside of school. Could you imagine what their lives would be like if they didn’t have to spend so much mental and emotional energy — daily — on racism and explaining their existence?

To realize a racially equitable Richmond, allies must flex their equity muscles to minimize these damaging experiences, while also giving Black girls space to learn and build the confidence to be their best advocates and unapologetic Black selves.

Angela Patton

When Do Black Lives Matter? 

In my work, Black lives matter yesterday, today, and tomorrow. Black lives also need to matter to those who are overtly or inadvertently upholding centuries-old systems of oppression. Black lives matter, broadly, when we all genuinely care about – and champion – issues in the Black community, particularly those issues that don’t always impact us, like homelessness, food scarcity, and Black maternal health. Black lives matter when everyone takes the time to listen and support issues that center Black lives. Black lives matter when we all look for opportunities to lift up Black girls so they can realize their great potential and change the trajectory of their lives, their families, and entire communities. We know that supporting women and girls greatly improves communities. Black lives matter when we allow Black girls to make mistakes, learn, grow, and heal.

In our hypervisible society, Black lives have to matter beyond social media posts about a Black life taken at the hands of the police or a march broadcasted across social media. Black lives have to matter beyond a one-and-done diversity and inclusion training; unlearning bias and racism and promoting equity are a life’s work — it gets messy, you fail, you atone, try again, and you have some wins.

Develop and use your justice muscles

So, where do you start to create change? Start by reprogramming yourself to see the value of Black lives. 

● Stop seeing Black girls as stereotypes and invest in them instead. 

● Value Black lives rather than disregarding or trying to silence them.

● Check yourself when, at the core, you’re asking for Black people to be something other than unapologetically Black. 

● Build relationships and trust with your Black colleagues, neighbors, and beyond.

● Stop having conversations and act. 

● Celebrate Blackness. 

● Support Black businesses. 

● Have tough conversations with your white friends and family. Challenge them on their bias and racism. 

The more you develop your equity muscles, the more you will create ripples of change that make waves.

Lift up Richmond’s Black led organizations 

Black women and girl organizations are crucial to our healing and to creating equality in our city and yet they don’t get the credit or support they are due. It’s time that Richmond lifts them up and supports them equitably compared to the white led organizations our city tends to support. What would our schools and communities be without organizations that care about the well-being of Black women and girls? Organizations like Girls For A Change provide safe space and conversations, we raise money for scholarships, provide in-kind donations, and social and civic services.   

Building A Movement 

Girls For A Change is not just an organization; it’s a movement. We are building an ecosystem to support and protect Black girls here in Richmond. I invite you to help cultivate that ecosystem by supporting Black girl programs, respecting Black spaces, and supporting and volunteering at our public schools.

We know that school can be a harmful experience for a Black child. It can cause severe trauma, pushing our children out instead of drawing them in; or, it can be the tool they need to grow, develop, and flourish. I encourage parents of all races to enroll their children in the schools where they live and devote their energy to building up our Richmond public schools.

Unfortunately, right now in Richmond, white children are least likely to enroll in Richmond Public Schools. In fact, a 2018 Richmond Times Dispatch article revealed that for every 100 children born to parents living in the city, just 73 enrolled in first grade that school year. Compare that to the 135/100 in Hanover County, 92/100 in Henrico, and 115/100 in Chesterfield. Our schools will never improve if neighborhoods like Northside and Westover Hills continue to become gentrified and the schools abandoned. We need engaged, empowered, and resourceful parents willing to invest in the Richmond Public Schools where they live and not private schools miles away. This is why my husband and I have decided to enroll our daughter into a Richmond Public High School so that we can pour our energy and resources into supporting the school system. 

“Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.” – Arthur Ashe

It’s easy to look at the enormous barriers to equity we call institutional racism and say, “I can’t fight an entire system.” The City of Richmond – once the capital of the Confederacy – has a long way to go before we see real equity and change. We need to overhaul some institutions and practices, change some laws, and vote out some politicians. Still, we will never see sustainable and lasting change if we don’t do the internal work to change our perspectives, shift the narratives we allow others to tell us, and speak out against racism while also lifting and supporting the Black community. I challenge you to support Black girls in the Richmond community — likely the most at-promise and undervalued leaders in our community. 

Here are a few ways Richmond can do better by supporting Black women and girls, especially organizations that show up for them daily: 

● Put resources in place that serve to cultivate Black girls — mental health, physical and nutritional, financial literacy, etc.

● Advocate for more research and funding that supports initiatives to engage Black girls in meaningful educational research that serves to explore and solve problems in their families, schools, and communities.

● Explore alternative forms of expression that showcase Black girls – like spoken word, poetry, art, drumming, storytelling, dance, theater, etc. 

● Allow your children to attend schools in the neighborhoods in which you reside. You are both a resource to making things better for all. 

● Stop policing Black girls’ bodies, ways of dress, language, hair, nails, and words.

You can also invest in a Black girl at Girls For A Change by becoming a Hiring Partner, starting a scholarship fund, or making a donation to support our programs. 

*Check out Angela’s new book: Finding Her Voice: How Black Girls in White Spaces Can Speak Up and Live Their Truth

As GFAC’s leader, Angela Patton is committed to “Preparing Black girls for the World …and the World for Black Girls.” Angela founded Camp Diva in Richmond, Va., in 2004, to honor Diva Mstadi Smith-Roan a five-year-old who died in a firearm accident earlier that year. The program grew and went national in October 2013, when Camp Diva merged with California-based Girls For A Change(GFAC). Patton, is the CEO of the merged organization. Angela’s TED talk describing a father-daughter dance for incarcerated dads and their “at-promise” girls has been viewed over 900,000 times. She has been recognized in the local Richmond, VA press as a Top 40 under 40, in 2016 by President Obama as A White House Champion of Change for After School programming for Marginalized Girls of Color and received the Nonprofit  partner of the year from the Metropolitan Business League in March 2018 . Angela is an Ambassador for who she calls “at-promise” (as opposed to “at-risk”) girls and a  serial innovator. When she isn’t inspiring change, advocating gender equality, and promoting opportunities and empowering girls, she is hanging with her family in Richmond, VA, enjoying festivals and concerts with her husband, Raymond Patton and their loving children, Imhotep and Asani.

This essay is part of the Richmond Racial Equity Essays series, exploring what racial equity looks like in Richmond, Virginia. It is reprinted here with permission. Check out the full project, the accompanying videos, and the podcast.

Between Two Litanies: Equity And Public Education

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After asking a school-district leader in Richmond Public Schools if there was a way to address the habit of white families sending their children to county and private schools, I was told the best way to change the pattern was to make public schools “better.” It was also suggested that I reframe the question to include affluent families of color since they do the same thing. That kind of accuracy is important. But most families that historically had this habit have been white families.[1] Most children in Richmond who go on to attend private and county schools today are white children. Most people who have not really supported equity in education have been white people. Many segregated private schools and county schools function as an apparatus in the continued resistance to desegregation and are, therefore, productive of race, class, and ability based apartheid.[2] I don’t mean to get lost in the weeds just yet, so let’s return to the anecdote: 

There I was, peering into a Google Meet made mostly of first-name initials, getting ready to preach in a Denzel Washington-Roman J. Israel-type voice, not at all worried about losing my job or paying my oppressive student loans. “Better?” I interrupted. “Better is what we’ve been fighting for since it was illegal for us to read, since we could not (and still cannot) legally congregate in public spaces without the specter of state surveillance or violence. 

“Better is school improvement and equalization campaigns, equal-pay lawsuits, federally authorized desegregation, and other such policies for which we have already argued and which have already been mandated by district, circuit, and supreme courts in such cases as Bradley v. School Board of the City of Richmond.”[3] I paused here for dramatic effect before citing thirty-six other court cases from memory and cueing up snippets of the New York Times podcast, “Nice White Parents.” Then I hollered, “Everybody, turn on your [expletive] cameras!” 

Beginning again with pretentious composure, I said, “Better is not a school system made to appease affluent families.” Another well-placed, dramatic pause here. “The kind of better we need is the kind of better so antithetical to the logic of white supremacy that that logic must reflexively oppose it.” 

Dennis Williams II

Though the exchange you just read was fabricated mostly, I did pose that question to a school-district leader in Richmond. Admittedly, I do not completely disagree with the answer it garnered (though I still take issue with its reframing); our public schools in Richmond need improvement, and many policies that exist, have existed, or could exist, would lead to a better, more equitable system of education. Some of those policies are listed below: 

Converting private schools into desegregated magnet schools, providing universal income to families that are in need, decolonizing state-mandated curricula and standardized tests, abolishing the incarceral system targeting BIPOC youth, increasing teacher pay, increasing the number of non-white teachers and administrators, untethering funding from property values and sales taxes, increasing teacher-retention rates, ending the overidentification of BIPOC students as children with disabilities, mitigating bias and unjust treatment by introducing mindfulness to everyone in schools, desegregating schools, maintaining a diverse array of elective classes and other non-tested subjects, and providing free/high-quality education to everyone. 

There is such a vast archive of similar examples from which I could pull that the purpose of this essay is simply to make the following points clear: Reforms, proposals, and policies such as those itemized above have been churned out year after year, decade after decade with a bit of traction at best and, at worst, a predictable and debilitating backlash.[4] This backlash can be viewed as a social mechanism as persistent as the struggle for racial equality itself. It sits stubbornly between an ever-growing litany of possible social changes and the oppressive social systems which it aims to protect. And, finally, this backlash functions in such a way that if we continue to generate educational policies while never fully addressing its magnitude and damage, we will never achieve educational equity even as we seek to make our schools “better.” 

I take this position because, for fourteen years, I’ve experienced the City of Richmond as a Black man of various, non-normative identities. I have studied the Civil Rights Movement under historian Brian J. Daugherity, a mentor of mine who specializes in school desegregation in Virginia, and have also organized within various activist groups. I have taught university students about cultures of oppression and freedom. Most importantly, I have taught in Richmond Public Schools, at various Richmond-based non-profits, and at the Richmond City Jail. This list of experiences has made me acutely aware of how oppressed/non-white groups have mobilized in pursuits of equity, and how many of those groups view equity in education as vital. 

My experience also tells me that, when oppressed or non-white groups come very close to meaningful social change, white-identified folk often prevent it. Almost reflexively and not always in their own interest, a critical level of people who call themselves white make known in sometimes seemingly innocuous and sometimes incredibly violent ways that, “we can’t have that, so we must do this.” The phrase “do this” can be replaced with the term “backlash,” which can take the form of anything between race massacres, massive resistance, white flight, benign neglect, voter suppression, terrorist insurrection (as seen on January 6, 2021), or threatening to send children to private schools. This is all to say, educational equity would look like educational reform implemented in the absence of the reflexive mechanism of white backlash which, again, has historically been racist but can be classist and ableist as well. 

This brings us to an actual proposal: folk who identify as white can figure out how to stop those who also identify as white from backlashing while the work toward equity in education and elsewhere is done. As simple as this proposal is, it begs a series of questions: 

a) Why would white folk stop protecting their privileged social position to support sweeping improvements in a school system to which they do not currently send their children and to which they have not sent them since the days of Harry Byrd? 

b) What will white folk do to turn white folk’s minds away from an ethos of supremacist and elitist logic to one that is deeply humanizing and compassionate?

I’m not sure how white people in Richmond will answer these questions or what productive solutions they will derive when they do. But, at this point, I see such answers and such solutions as the only innovative tools in our kit. Since this may be dissatisfying and nebulous for some, or unrealistic for others, I think it is best to make two additional points clear:

a) It is not my responsibility as a Black person to figure out how white folk will stop the hatred and prejudice of other white folk from getting in the way of equity, broadly conceived, or in the way of equitable education, more specifically. 

b) It is, however, my responsibility to tell the people who ought to have figured that out a long time ago to figure it out now. 

I must take this stance because throughout our nation’s history, non-white people have been at the frontline in the struggle for racial equity. We still are, and, barring some major event, we will continue in this position. We are born into new generations, which are forced to do and say mostly the same things, augmenting what could become an infinite litany just to see a backlashing people get in its way. At such a juncture, to achieve equity in public schools, those with considerable privilege can begin to figure out how they will delete from their consciousness, from the consciousness of their loved ones, and from their institutions what bell hooks calls an ethic of domination,[5] which usually revolves around Whiteness, around other cultures of supremacy, and around this last litany which follows without order: 

Anti-Black racism, anti-Semitic racism, anti-Indigenous racism, anti-Asian racism, anti-Latine racism, colorism, ableism, ageism, sexism, sanism, classism, elitism, capitalism, anti-environmentalism, heteronormativism, imperialism, individualism, eurocentrism, materialism, patriarchy and whatever other interlocked system of oppression exists or will exist which, to quote the late poet Mark Aguhar, “I didn’t describe, I couldn’t describe, will learn to describe” but that we all should know are deeply wrong.  

End Notes

[1]For examples of groups which opposed desegregation and for a summary of government assistance such as tuition grants and tax exemptions that benefited White private schools in Virginia, see Brian J. Daugherity’s Keep on Keeping on: The NAACP and the Implementation of Brown v. Board of Education in Virginia, particularly chapters 5 and 6.

[2] For an explanation of the social function of private schools in the South, see Charles T. Clotfelter’s article “Private Schools, Segregation, and the Southern States.”

[3] See Brian J. Daugherity’s chapter “The Green Light: The NAACP and School Integration in Virginia, 1968-1974” in Keep on Keeping on. 

[4] See Matthew F. Delmont’s Why Busing Failed: Race, Media, and the National Resistance to School Desegregation; See also Erwin Chemerinksy’s chapter “The Segregation and Resegregation of American Public Education: The Courts’ Role” in School Resegregation: Must the South Turn Back? and Michael J. Klarman’s article “How Brown Changed Race Relations: The Backlash Thesis.” 

[5] See bell hooks’ chapter “Love as Practice of Freedom” in Outlaw Culture.

Dennis Williams II, MA, MEd, is a teacher in Richmond Public Schools and an adjunct professor in the Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies Department at Virginia Commonwealth University. In 2019, he was awarded New Teacher of the Year at Albert Hill Middle School in the City of Richmond. Most recently, he has been on-boarded as a facilitator at Richmond’s Innerwork Center, formerly Chrysalis. As a high-school educator, his pedagogy centers on rigorous compassion and on embedding mindfulness practices into the curriculum. At the college level, he assists students in developing critical, cultural awareness through the analysis of visual culture. A writing hobbyist, he has poems forthcoming in Johns Hopkins University’s African American Review and Illinois State University’s Obsidian Literature and Art in the African Diaspora. Dennis was raised in Decatur, GA, and attended Atlanta’s Dekalb School of the Arts before moving to Richmond for art school.

This essay is part of the Richmond Racial Equity Essays series, exploring what racial equity looks like in Richmond, Virginia. It is reprinted here with permission. Check out the full project, the accompanying videos, and the podcast.

Toward A Vision Of Racial Equity In Richmond Schools

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We both bring a nuanced perspective to education. Taikein is a native of Prince Edward County. Growing up three blocks from the historic R.R. Moton High School, he learned the impacts that flawed policy and selfish adults have on students. His passion is to guarantee that all families have the opportunity to design an education that piques the interest of their children. Genevieve is a graduate of Richmond Public Schools (RPS) who benefited from her experiences as a white student in nominally desegregated schools, which would later shape her interest in researching school segregation. At the same time, she also benefited from the accommodation that RPS continues to extend to white families. 

Our vision for racial equity in Richmond schools includes real integration, enabled by stronger and more inclusive advocacy.  It is based on our collective personal and professional experiences, research and best practices from around the country. We believe these strategies will lead us toward greater racial equity in Richmond and the education all of our children deserve. 

Real integration as a goal

To advance racial equity in education, Richmond education stakeholders — all of us — need to work toward what youth activists in New York City have dubbed “real integration.” Real integration deepens our collective consciousness around dismantling racial caste in public education. It is based on what NYC student activists call the “5 Rs,” or Race & Enrollment, Resource Allocation, Real Relationships, Representative Staff and Faculty, and Restorative Justice. The students acknowledge that racial diversity in enrollment represents a first step on the path toward real integration, but then turn toward the importance of distributing educational resources equitably, fostering shared power and relationships across lines of difference, ensuring racial diversity among faculty and staff and approaching discipline restoratively rather than punitively. Real integration is a comprehensive and continuous process, one that stands to benefit individual students and our broader society. Students who learn early how to connect, think and problem-solve across social cleavages will possess fundamental skills for an increasingly diverse 21st century workforce and democracy.

Real integration in historical context

Real integration draws on elements of a too-often overlooked 1968 U.S. Supreme Court decision dealing with a Richmond area school district. The Court’s ruling in Green v. New Kent County required school districts to immediately eliminate segregation “root and branch,” laying out six factors that would determine whether a district no longer operated two systems of schooling, one for Black students and one for white students. Like the more contemporary demand for real integration from NYC students, the Green factors went beyond ensuring that students of different racial/ethnic backgrounds attended schools together to require desegregation in faculty assignment, facilities, transportation, extracurriculars and quality of education. Green v. New Kent County dealt specifically with the New Kent school division’s long delay on school desegregation, exemplified by an inadequate freedom-of-choice plan that offered too little freedom or choice to Black families bearing the burden of tackling a system of racial oppression. The decision also addressed Massive Resistance that had unfolded elsewhere in Virginia, including the wholesale closure of public schools in Prince Edward County. Its emphasis on equalizing woefully unequal school facilities also got to the heart of what Barbara Johns, an early youth leader in the movement, demanded. 

Taikein Cooper & Genevieve Siegel-Hawley

In the wake of federal retrenchment on school desegregation enforcement, Richmond moved quickly to stem white and affluent flight to surrounding suburbs. The city accommodated — and continues to accommodate through student assignment policies — white and affluent preferences for schools and classrooms imbued with the highest status and containing the most meaningful educational resources. And when the high-status schools do not have the necessary resources, unequal social and political capital ensures they are soon forthcoming. We have, as a society, continued to make policy choices that create and sustain racially segregated, high poverty schools and districts. Because we also then choose to starve those same schools and districts of much-needed resources, Richmond’s accommodation of white and affluent educational preferences too often has come at the expense of historically marginalized students. While RPS has taken steps in the right direction, students don’t receive the same education in each school. 

Harms of racially unequal education — and advocacy to address them

This is a situation that damages us all. It sanctions sharp discord between our democratic ideals and unequal reality, creating childhood confusion that closes racially and economically advantaged students off to the full humanity of their less advantaged peers. This, as Dr. Martin Luther King powerfully reminded us, “distorts the soul and damages the personality” of all involved. Ongoing accommodation to white and affluent families additionally means that as a community, we remain comfortable ill-equipping the overwhelming majority of Richmond students for participation in our economic and civic life.

Advocacy to undo these systemic injustices in Richmond has been marred by a culture of false starts and ulterior motives. Authentic community engagement gives us an opportunity to elevate the voices of those most affected by flawed policy and practice. To effectively do this, we must learn from other social movements to advocate for robust change in the city. As advocates, we should commit to the following: 

● Embracing and nurturing youth activism.

● Remaining patiently impatient. Changing systems in a meaningful way takes time. We must understand and clearly communicate that these changes won’t come overnight and some mistakes will be made along the way. Setting these expectations will be a quintessential task as we truly work to build “people power.”

● Developing cross-racial dialogues and alliances. 

● Centering needs of families of color; cultivating white allies that are willing to speak up about a system that continues to heavily cater to their interests.

● Supporting the recommendations put forward by the RPS Equity in Enrollment commission.  We know that over the years, many students in RPS have been ineligible for admission or enrollment related to a host of barriers, including lack of transportation and difficult-to-attain prerequisites. While the current administration is working to eliminate those barriers, the Commission’s work is rooted in not only making admission more equitable, but is also hyper-focused on supporting students who have been historically underrepresented at the specialty schools. Full disclosure: we are co-chairs of this commission, which also includes student and family voices, as well as the voices of RPS educators and cross-sector allies. In many ways, the commission embodies best practices outlined in this section. 

The choice and solutions before the city

Our city now confronts a choice. School segregation between Black and white students in Richmond has skyrocketed over the past several decades, even as residential segregation has slowly fallen. Roughly 70% of elementary-school-age children would need to change schools to achieve a racial distribution that reflects the overall RPS enrollment, compared to about 58% of residents. Ongoing separation in our schools is driven in part by how our school boards draw attendance zone boundaries and design choice policies that allow students to attend out-of-zone schools. It flows too from federal, state and local policies related to housing and land use and past and present discrimination in mortgage lending and real estate. Individual choices about where to live and send children to schools interact with these systems and are shaped by how much meaningful contact we have experienced with members of other racial/ethnic and socioeconomic groups. Which brings us back to the fundamental importance of real integration in public education.

Based on our personal and professional experiences, and with real integration as our guide, we offer the following ideas for individuals, advocates and policymakers to consider as we move forward.

● Make existing school segregation a trigger for rezoning processes and ensure that new processes further integration and do not exacerbate segregation. These goals should be clearly delineated as among the top 1 or 2 priorities during the rezoning process. Center students’ voices in rezoning by including student representatives on the committee and school board.

● Create diversity goals and weight current systems of choice like open enrollment and specialty schools to advantage disadvantaged students. As RPS expands secondary school choice with theme-based middle and high schools programs, ensure that civil rights guardrails like interest-based admissions, guaranteed transportation and extensive outreach define the system.

● Coordinate the housing, transportation and education sectors to enhance mobility and create more affordable housing in the zones associated with highly resourced schools.

● Transform how we fund schools in the Commonwealth of Virginia.

● Centralize and redistribute local PTA funds. 

● Nurture teacher and leadership diversity in all RPS schools through intentional faculty assignment policies. Prioritize diversity in teacher and leadership pipelines.

● Support intensive, intentional efforts within RPS schools to disrupt racially disparate academic tracking and discipline.

● Work with our regional school division partners to ameliorate a regional system of segregation. Support efforts to expand access and equity in existing regional partnerships like the Governor’s schools and draw on school choice lessons from CodeRVA, the first federally funded regional magnet school in the state.

There are many actions needed to enhance racial equity in the city of Richmond, but none are more pressing than transforming our public schools. Our current public education system is perpetuating inequities; sometimes by choice, and other times by force. RPS has made some small steps toward addressing this sobering truth, but we have not gone far enough. De facto segregation has not only limited educational opportunities available to students from economically disadvantaged backgrounds (who are disproportionately Black and Brown), it permeates throughout the fabric of this city. As we grapple with heightened awareness to racial injustice in America, it’s important for us to find viable solutions in this city as well. Embracing the aforementioned vision of real integration in Richmond Public Schools is the step in the right direction.

Taikein Cooper has a deep affection and strong commitment to local politics and helping people engage in the American political process. Born in historic Prince Edward County, one of the five counties in the landmark Brown v. Board of Education case, Cooper is a 2006 graduate from both Southside Virginia Community College and Prince Edward County High School. He has lived in Virginia his entire life, except to attend college at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Genevieve Siegel-Hawley is an associate professor of educational leadership at Virginia Commonwealth University. Her research examines school segregation and resegregation in U.S. metropolitan areas, along with strategies for promoting inclusive school communities and policy options for a truly integrated society.

This essay is part of the Richmond Racial Equity Essays series, exploring what racial equity looks like in Richmond, Virginia. It is reprinted here with permission. Check out the full project, the accompanying videos, and the podcast.

A Rich Education

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My involvement with public education represents a lifetime of experience.  I was seven when my mom ran for the Arlington school board. I attended the Arlington public schools. Then my dad enlisted as an attorney in the Norfolk 17 case to defeat Massive Resistance. A decade later, I arrived in Richmond the month that the Richmond Public Schools (RPS) were completely integrated for the first time.

It has always been about race in RPS and Richmond.  Back then, the newspapers constantly trashed RPS. They said it was because it was a bad school system.  But I knew they did it because the schools were racially integrated. Meanwhile the state helped re-segregate the schools, and middle class whites and Blacks fled the city. A narrative developed that these were “failing” schools. The question was, who was failing whom? It was the Commonwealth of Virginia that failed to provide the resources to insure equity. The only slightly veiled suggestion was that the teachers and children of Richmond weren’t trying hard enough. 

My personal and professional experience has helped me see the truth. I’m married to a former RPS teacher and we sent our four children through RPS all the way. I worked with the schools for decades. I helped to re-start Communities in Schools and establish the Micah Initiative, Armstrong Leadership Program, Armstrong Freshman Academy and the RPS Education Foundation’s high school Future Centers program. All of this time, I’ve been working with people in Richmond and RPS who are identifying what works and what is needed to help young people succeed.  We simply don’t have the resources. It has become clear that rather than face the systemic racism of policy, the state, media, and public have reverted to the centuries-old narrative — blaming failure on the underserved. Meanwhile, the pretend “equity” of repetitive testing continues to drain the life out of both students and teachers. 

Rev. Benjamin P. Campbell

The most direct route to racial equity in metropolitan Richmond is what I would call a Rich Education for all, by way of Rich Schools. The most direct route to a Rich Education for all is to double the educational wealth of African American families and children. The educational wealth provided by a Rich Education is aimed toward genuine health, wealth, literacy, interest, and human capacity. It is something no one can take from you – it serves your spirit and soul, as well as your employment and your life. 

Currently, Virginia remains committed to educational inequity. African American educational wealth is under constant threat and, in some communities, barely holding its own.  Since the end of Virginia’s Massive Resistance in the 1960’s, metropolitan Richmond’s schools have been re-segregated both by race and by income.  The result is a  Rich Education only for the affluent. Rather than changing the paradigm of the race-based educational discrimination that was developed under slavery and Jim Crow, the state has developed new practices, which reproduce, reinforce, and intensify the old inequity. 

The statistics are unforgiving. Education is generationally cumulative. The educational level of children, if not addressed with equity in mind, generally follows the educational level of their parents. Poverty follows educational level.  And it was the policy of Virginia for nearly four centuries to determine poverty by race. Therefore:

● If you wish to bring about racial equity, you must address poverty; 

● If you wish to address poverty, you must address educational equity; 

● If you wish to address educational equity, you must address educational wealth.

The schools of the segregated are subjected to the standards of the wealthy with the resources of the poor. A Rich Education for a person born into a low-income, racially disadvantaged household requires 200% of the resources which are, in contrast, already present in the home and school of an upper middle income, racially advantaged household. State policy is blind to this.  It is time to acknowledge this reality without embarrassment or disingenuousness, and to provide the resources necessary to make equity possible. The Commonwealth of Virginia must provide educational funding based on the income level of the students it serves.

We know a lot about what is needed for a Rich Education for students who have received the brunt of generational educational deprivation. Barbara Johns, Oliver Hill, and the warriors of the Civil Rights Movement in Virginia sought racial integration of schools so that they could guarantee a Rich Education regardless of race.

A Rich Education for this generation, beginning with pre-kindergarten, will help to equalize employment, increase home ownership, retard suburban sprawl, and break down the inherited artifacts of racial privilege. A Rich Education for this generation will cut metropolitan Richmond’s school-to-prison pipeline in half. Providing Rich Schools will make racial integration less necessary – and therefore, more likely.

Schools that provide a Rich Education are tuned first of all to the social and emotional needs of students – a concentration that Virginia’s State Department of Education neither encourages nor funds.  They have plenty of trained counselors; intensive support from tutors; drama and sports and music programs fully funded; extra hours for enrichment.  Reading and writing are taught from the beginning, in classrooms full of age-appropriate literature.  A rich, integrated curriculum is present, with history, geography, social studies, and science. Classes are as small as they need to be for success.  Thoughtful conversation and critical thinking abound.  Advanced classes are available to all students.  There are ample and proactive college and career counselors.  There are summer schools and camps and school buses for exploration.  There are new, spacious, encouraging facilities, with lighting on playing fields.  The narrow misery of high-stakes-testing-based curriculum will be abandoned.  This is the Rich Education that every parent wants for their child.

To provide the Rich Education that our children deserve, we must be rigorous in providing significantly higher pay — $10,000 to $30,000 or more per year – for the teachers who have the skill and culture to flourish in impoverished or racially concentrated environments. These salaries must be high enough so that skilled professionals without inherited wealth can afford to teach in public schools. These are the heroes of our time.  

Providing a Rich Education through Rich Schools is the most fundamental responsibility of the State of Virginia. The inability to have Rich Schools is not the fault of Richmond, Petersburg or Hopewell. Advocates for Rich Schools must address the Commonwealth of Virginia, the State Board of Education, the Governor, and the General Assembly directly. There is no alternative. Educational inequity is the comprehensive, systemic policy of the Commonwealth of Virginia, carried out in one form or another for centuries. The schools that need the least money are in the jurisdictions with the highest income, paid for by the local real estate tax. Their ample bank accounts are segregated against the city’s need for Rich Schools.

If we want Rich Schools and educational equity, we must change state educational strategy – to stop reducing schools to high-stakes testing mills. And we must change state funding policy – to make rich funding available where it is needed. 

There is a simple solution, and it is probably the only solution:

1. The state will fund 100% of the costs of public education.  Currently, it claims to fund 55% of its standard educational package, leaving an average of 45% to the localities. Localities with persons of lower income – and therefore higher educational need – cannot possibly afford Rich Schools to produce equitable education. They cannot find the tax money to pay for them. 

2. The state will base its funding of Rich Schools on the per capita income of student households of origin. Fifty percent of the population – the half with the highest household income — will be funded at the present, standards-of-learning level. Any extra funding will come from the discretionary income of the locality. The other 50% — on a sliding scale – will be funded up to twice as richly, ranging from a 50% increase for some to a 100% increase for the lowest income quarter of our students.

3. The funding of public schools will come from a statewide tax on real estate. Currently, the affluence of Richmond’s suburbs allows them to have a richer school system with a real estate tax levy that is as much as one-third less than the state-impoverished center city. Creating a statewide real estate tax to pay for public education will make the requisite funds available in the right places, following the basic principle that you must tax where there is money. It will also reduce one of the primary incentives that the state currently gives for suburban sprawl and school segregation. Localities will adjust their local tax rate to accommodate the new state tax.

4. The state will create a capital fund for school construction. Since the General Assembly, reacting to school integration in the 1960’s, decided to isolate center cities economically, Richmond and other center cities have been unable to keep up school maintenance and construction because their budgets would not support sufficient school bonds. The same is true of some impoverished rural areas. Richmond is, by some estimates, $600 million in arrears on school maintenance and construction, unable to issue bonds sufficient to remedy the situation. The state, which created this situation, has an obligation to provide the funding necessary for Rich Education for all.

5. Richmond advocates will focus their efforts on the Commonwealth of Virginia, which created this inequity. Part of the strategy of continued discrimination in Virginia since the end of Massive Resistance has been to deflect blame for inequity on the isolated, minority-led, center cities. Although there are, and will continue to be, issues with Richmond Public Schools as with any system, its biggest problems are dictated by the State of Virginia. The truth must be told. The state must be held accountable. 

Rich Education is the Redemption of the Confederacy, attacking the heart of structural racism. It is time to win – time to make it work – time to claim the heritage we know is there, to put our money where we know it is needed, and to stop acting as if there is nothing we can do. Education has always been the way to success and equity. The people of Richmond can devise the program, and seek the allies all over the state, for this to happen. It will be a win for all, the fulfillment of the dreams of generations, a major step toward the completion of the yet incomplete American Revolution.

The Rev. Ben Campbell is an Episcopal priest, the author of Richmond’s Unhealed History.  He is currently a Pastoral Associate at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Richmond. For 28 years, he was Pastoral Director of Richmond Hill, an ecumenical Christian community in Church Hill, where he and his family were residential members.  He was a founding member of the Armstrong Leadership Program; the Micah Association, connecting 125 faith communities to Richmond’s elementary schools; the Armstrong Freshman Academy; Communities in Schools; and the Richmond Public Schools Educational Foundation, which started the Future Centers in Richmond’s high schools.  His four children attended RPS from start to finish.  He is married to Annie Campbell, who just retired after 30 years as an educator at William Fox Elementary School. He is a member of the Richmond Slave Trail Commission, and is actively involved in plans for the Museum of the American Slave Trade in Shockoe.

This essay is part of the Richmond Racial Equity Essays series, exploring what racial equity looks like in Richmond, Virginia. It is reprinted here with permission. Check out the full project, the accompanying videos, and the podcast.

Op-Ed: Community, Not Politics, Should Drive Our Public Schools Dialogue

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In the late summer of 2015, Dyett High School in Chicago, Illinois still had its doors closed. Chicago Public Schools closed Dyett after years of low standardized test scores. With Dyett closed, students from this district in Chicago were to be bussed across town to another school, furthering the issue of overcrowding and removing students from their communities. However, parents and community members fought back. Adopting the Chicago tradition of a hunger strike, these families successfully advocated for their right to have a school in their community, and fought to decide the fate of the school itself. What they cultivated, ultimately, was an arts school reflective of the famous jazz violinist whose name still adorns the building.

“We are some of the parents that fought to save the school last year. I just want to let you know that this community has your back,” said Jitu Brown, a community activist in Southside Chicago. This community, our community. The reopening of Dyett High School was a victory not only for the students, families, and community members of southside Chicago but for local control of school systems everywhere.

Richmond, Virginia would do well to remember the power of the community in determining what is best for the city’s public schools. As we struggle to define who exactly has control over our school buildings — the school board or the mayor — we must remember the importance of local control and community power.

Richmond has a long pattern of caving to corporate demands, which are generally in favor of central control of school districts by the mayor, not the school board. Nothing makes this more obvious than the push by Tom Farrell and The Gang of 26 in 2007 to abolish the school board. This thinly veiled attempt to move power away from local communities and consolidate decision-making power in the mayor’s office did not come to fruition, but this certainly was not the end of the argument. Although the proposal did not pass, it left a lasting imprint on those concerned with Richmond Public Schools and the school board’s power to function on its own.

When Mayor Levar Stoney came into office in 2017, he recognized the need to mend the relationship between his office and the school board. He proposed an education compact that intended to  do three things: 1) establish institutionalized collaboration between the mayor and the school board, 2) define goals aimed at improving educational and economic outcomes for youth and their families, and 3) develop a shared funding strategy that would employ the use of private and public funding options. Despite the best intentions of this compact, it served to consolidate power in Stoney’s administration. The original proposal caused some concern, principally with regard to how the public would be involved in the committee process. The limit of two members from each distinct group of the compact was not in compliance with Virginia’s sunshine law, thereby not affording the public (i.e., parents, students, community members) meaningful ways of participating. Additionally, the original compact did not mandate translation into Spanish, an obvious oversight that was fortunately corrected in the amended proposal. Despite being a goodwill effort to connect the disparate parties whose job it is to assure the well-being of our schools and communities, this compact has effectively served as a way to limit the direct power of the school board.

All of this is background for the most recent attempt to bring power back into the hands of the community via the school board. School board member Kenya Gibson’s “Schools Build Schools” proposal allows for the school board to control the process of planning and building schools. This proposal, passed in a 5-4 vote back in April, returns the ability to plan and build schools back into the hands of the school board. This is important on two fronts. First, communities will have a far greater voice in the planning and implementation of new school building projects. This is of immediate concern to the families of George Wythe High School, who have waited too long for the new school they were promised in 2017 as part of the school board’s decision in phase 1A of the FY2018 Facilities Report Recommendations. Second, the school board is far more responsive to community needs and far less informed by political decisions and corporate interests. Stoney has proven on multiple occasions his willingness to either leverage or jeopardize school funding through development projects across the city for his own political gain. 

Stoney undermined the power of the board recently by issuing his own Request for Proposals (RFP) for the new George Wythe High School. In doing so, he indicated that families had waited far too long already, a fact that he could have remedied years ago when the need for a new George Wythe first became obvious. Stoney neglected to follow through on the promise of building a new school in 2018 but now seems to understand the political necessity of addressing this issue. His ability to flip this from a missed opportunity for him to something he is doing in spite of the board demonstrates a master class in political deception. This RFP and effort to work with the board represent another attempt by Stoney to “come together.” However, as school board member Stephanie Rizzi noted, “We were offered something that didn’t reflect what we asked for. That’s not a compromise.” 

Community activists have long advocated for a new George Wythe. Currently, the push from the community, influenced by the words of the mayor, is for the school board to accept the compromise from the city in order to build the school faster. However, what is being lost in this conversation is that the loss for the school board is a loss for the community. In the long run, allowing the city to intervene on local matters diminishes the voice of the community. Of special concern is the call for a 2,000 student school in a district that does not require this capacity. Will this be another attempt to consolidate old schools into one large new school? Could Richmond fall into the same problem as Dyett High School in Chicago?

The families of Dyett High School may provide a glimpse into the future for Richmond. If we wish to maintain our ability to decide for ourselves how best to run our schools, we must do as Paul Gorski indicates: fight alongside the community, not for the community. This is the only way to ensure that educational inequity is not merely mitigated, but actively eradicated. In Richmond, this will happen through our school board. The families of Dyett High School knew this to be true and they fought for their voice to be heard. Communities, not individual political interests, should decide the fate of our schools. 

The school board has announced a public meeting taking place on July 13th from 6 to 7:30 pm, to allow time for public comment and community input. Community attendance and advocacy at this and additional meetings are the kinds of engagement necessary to make meaningful change and ensure community control of our public schools. It’s unclear whether Stoney will put aside his pride and not pit the community of George Wythe against the school board elected to represent them; so far, he has done just the opposite. Regardless, the community must be heard and they must be allowed to make decisions for themselves, uninfluenced by the political woes of Richmond politics.

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

Top Photo via RVAschools.net