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

Amy Wentz | January 27, 2021

Topics: Dreams4RPS, Great Minds, jason kamras, Navy Hill Redevelopment project, richmond public schools, Richmond School Board, Richmond schools, Teach For America

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

Willie Hilliard | January 21, 2021

Topics: Dreams4RPS, Great Minds, jason kamras, Navy Hill Redevelopment project, richmond public schools, Richmond School Board, Richmond schools, Teach For America

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.

Dancing to Self-Love and Teamwork

Paige Holloman | February 19, 2020

Topics: after school programs, art, ballet, ballet company, ballet programs, dance, dance team, Jordan Glunt, local art, minds in motion, new york city ballet, richmond, Richmond Ballet, Richmond schools, richmond va, RVA, school activities, Stoner Winslett, Theatre, things to do richmond va

Richmond Ballet’s Minds in Motion program gives city school students a different type of extra-curricular activity credit: ballet. 

While thousands of Virginia students walked across stages to collect their diplomas last year, several hundred marked the end of the school year in a different way — with the grand finale of Minds in Motion, a program by the Richmond Ballet that sends dance teachers into the public schools. Virginia requires fourth graders to study math, language arts, science, and history, but about two dozen districts have added another subject to the curriculum. Once a week they gather to study ballet.

Stoner Winslett, the organization’s artistic director, always had a passion to give back to the Richmond community. Minds in Motion was directly inspired by a National Dance Institute program, founded by former New York City Ballet principal dancer Jacques d’Amboise. 

“The goal was to allow the children of inner city schools to experience what it’s like to be an artist — to seek excellence in an art form,” said d’Amboise. “It’s not to make them dancers, painters or musicians. Using the finest professionals, we introduce them to an activity that demands excellence in themselves. There’s no winner or loser, as in sports. It’s a motivational program for children that works.”

PHOTO: Richmond Ballet, Minds in Motion

Now in its 25th year, Minds In Motion has successfully expanded from two to 27 schools, serving students in Richmond, Chesterfield, Henrico, Hopewell, Charlottesville, Chesapeake, and Woodbridge. In addition, the program has an international component working with Israeli and Arab children in the Middle East. Acclaimed by teachers, parents and students, Minds In Motion has grown to become a major focus of Richmond Ballet’s education and outreach mission.

“It allows us to introduce movement when we first enter the classroom,” said Jordan Glunt, acting director of Minds In Motion. “Everyone has to participate.”

Language is instrumental to their approach in supporting learning. The use of language, integrated with the movements students are taught, helps each dancer learn their steps. Working together as a group, emphasizing teamwork rather than competition, also helps make the students comfortable enough to learn well.

“Students will pick up choreography, the connection of steps, easier and faster if we give them words to say,” Glunt explained. “As they progress, they’re building on steps, linking on steps which leads to greater choreography — and they’re dancing before they realize they are truly dancing.” 

Students also gain important life skills: not only the discipline necessary to master the routines, but the permission to be creative and follow their muse in a less rigid fashion.

PHOTO: Richmond Ballet, Minds in Motion

“It does take discipline, and it is hard work, but it also can be very freeing,” Glunt said. “We really support creativity. They get this sense of play, in a way. We can have fun, but there is a structure to it that is getting them to learn and move, and they really start to work together as a class.” 

Even the boys who initially shun ballet, thinking of the dance form as intrinsically feminine, often find it has its merits. 

“Professional football players are taking ballet classes to help with being more agile and quick on their feet, and able to move quickly,” said Glunt. “Virginia students understand that because they’re dancing, they’re working really hard; they break a sweat. And by the end of the Minds in Motion class, they’ll think, ‘Oh!’ Some of my favorite experiences are boys saying, ‘I’m not doing ballet!’ And by the end of the year, they’re the ones in the front row saying, “Yes!”’

Both teachers and students report that ballet has boosted their self-confidence, offering another way to succeed at school away from the rigid segmentation of letter grades. Glunt says it’s an experience that stays with them long after the curtain comes down. Minds In Motion even has an after-school scholarship class, designed for students with an aptitude for dance, called Team Excel.

“Those kids invited to audition get that ‘audition experience,’ and then they find out if they made it into Team Excel or not,” says Glunt. 

Team Excel, now in its second year, takes place on the ground level of Richmond Ballet. About 40 children have the experience of touring and dancing in the actual company. They also get to experience other forms of dance besides ballet, like tap, jazz, musical theatre, and modern dance. They’re viewing classes along with their families, who find joy in watching their children dance.

PHOTO: Richmond Ballet, Minds in Motion

All this practice culminates in their spring performance at the Dominion Energy Theatre, where all the fourth grade classes and schools come together for a professional production. 

“It is truly done by the fourth graders. All of us teaching artists and musicians get to step away and sit in the audience and cry tears of joy in watching the students put on this amazing performance,” says Glunt, who grew teary-eyed with happiness. 

“I’ve run into students I taught 10 years ago in the grocery store, and they’ll say, ‘I remember my finale dance,’” says Glunt. “They’ll dance in the grocery store aisle, the entire finale.” 

To learn more about Minds In Motion and their programs, check out their website here and catch up with them through the Richmond Ballet on social media. 

Adding Fuel To The Fire

Noelle Abrahams | September 20, 2019

Topics: Clark Springs Elementary, Dawn Page, de facto segregation, Ghazala Hashmi, Glen Sturtevant, John B. Cary Elementary, Liz Doerr, Mary Munford Elementary, richmond public schools, Richmond School Board, Richmond schools, school integration, William Fox Elementary

A polarizing petition circulated on the first day of school by state Senator Glen Sturtevant has local school and government officials outraged.

Tuesday, September 3 was the first day of school for Richmond Public Schools, a day that is generally fun and memorable for students and their families. But at Mary Munford and William Fox Elementary Schools, back-to-school excitement was overshadowed by a campaign tactic used by Republican Virginia state Senator Glen Sturtevant, who is up for re-election in November.

That morning, Sturtevant campaign workers met arriving students and parents at Munford and Fox with petitions they were encouraging the parents to sign. Entitled “Save Our Neighborhood Schools,” the petition had been drafted by Sturtevant himself, and stated that “State Senator Glen Sturtevant strongly opposes the rezoning of Mary Munford Elementary and Fox Elementary.”

The petition referred to “pairing” proposals currently being considered by the Richmond School Board, some of which would combine the student bodies of William Fox Elementary, which is 60 percent white, and John B. Cary Elementary, which is 83 percent black. This combined student body would then attend Fox for kindergarten through 2nd grade, and attend Cary for 3rd through 5th grades. Another pairing proposal would combine Munford’s student body, which is 72 percent white, with that of Cary.

In a recent Richmond Times-Dispatch column, Michael Paul Williams pointed out that the title of Sturtevant’s petition carries heavy historical implications. Williams writes that “S.O.N.S.” was an acronym commonly seen on bumper stickers used in local opposition to the crosstown bussing proposals of the 1970’s, which sought to end de facto segregation that had persisted for more than a decade after Brown v. Board of Education.

Richmond School Board Chair Dawn Page and School Board member Scott Barlow told VPM that they feel the Senator’s actions are unwelcome and intrusive. School Board Vice Chair Liz Doerr expressed her distaste and concern for the actions in a public FaceBook post that evening, calling it an “election year stunt,” and Mayor Levar Stoney echoed this sentiment, according to the Richmond Times-Dispatch.

Sturtevant’s petition says that the rezoning proposals are “wrong for our schools.” However, his petition only mentions Munford and Fox. “Developing a petition specifically for Mary Munford and Fox, the whitest and most affluent schools in the city, was race baiting and political posturing,” said Doerr. “I would like to remind the Senator and his campaign team that he represents many other schools in Richmond that will be impacted by this plan other than just Fox and Munford.”

Mary Munford Elementary School, via RVAschools.net

Along with the announcement of his petition on Tuesday, Sturtevant’s office sent out a press release detailing legislation he planned to propose in the General Assembly. The legislation Sturtevant proposed in his petition would require a voter referendum before a school rezoning plan can be enacted — despite the fact that rezoning is already one of the main tasks that school board officials are elected and expected to do.

The Senator will not, however, be able to propose new legislation until January of 2020 when the next General Assembly session begins — and his ability to propose legislation depends on his first winning re-election in November. Meanwhile, Richmond’s school board plans to vote on rezoning by the end of this year.

Richmond’s School Board has worked to include the community throughout the rezoning process, holding community meetings several times a month all across the city since August and utilizing an online feedback form for taking public comments.

With Richmond Public Schools enrollment expected to increase 6.6 percent within a decade, the plan to rezone is an effort to alleviate overcrowding at schools. It is also meant to remedy educational and fiscal disparities between city school districts due to the breakdown of racial diversity. RPS employed consulting company Cropper GIS to craft the rezoning proposals, and the first two of the four options were announced in July. Almost all of the proposals involve some pairing of local elementary schools.

The negative responses from parents in Fox Elementary’s district in particular led Richmond City Schools Superintendent Jason Kamras to characterize some of the backlash as “Massive Resistance 2.0” in a Twitter post. However, more recent responses on the RPS feedback form have seen an increase in support. Still, the issue remains divisive in Richmond — and with his petition, Sturtevant has taken a definitive stance on one side of the divide.

Some see the petition’s rhetoric as ironic, since Sturtevant’s own stint on the Richmond School Board, which lasted from 2012 until 2016, is associated with the controversial 2013 rezoning plan that resulted in the closure of Clark Springs Elementary, which had the effect of increasing de facto segregation within Richmond’s school system.

After the closing, former Clark Springs students were rezoned for Cary, making that school less than 25 percent white. Students from the Museum district, predominantly an affluent, white community, had formerly attended Cary Elementary prior to the new zoning, but in the 2013 plan, those students were rezoned for Fox. This raised white enrollment at Fox from 65 percent to over 75 of the student body, according to data from a 2016 University of Richmond study.

The Richmond School Board in 2013. Sturtevant is in the middle of the back row. Photo via Glen Sturtevant/Facebook

The UR study found that white-black segregation in Richmond elementary schools rose from a rate of 65 percent to 70 percent under the new zones created in 2013; it called the plan “a rapid, politically charged and resegregative school closure and elementary school rezoning process.” And a 2013 Style Weekly article reported that Sturtevant, along with another school board member, Kim Gray, privately asked Matthew Cropper of Cropper GIS to draft a third rezoning proposal over one weekend in May, right before the board was due to vote. This was the plan that was ultimately adopted — the plan that increased de facto segregation in Richmond City Public Schools.

Sturtevant was sued in 2013 by Kimberly Johnson Jones, a parent in the district that accused him and other school board members of conducting private dealings that resulted in an unfair protection of white enrollment. The case was eventually dismissed when Jones moved out of the district, but significant evidence had been presented. Court documents indicate that Sturtevant sent private emails disclosing details of his plan to his allies on the board, leaving four other members in the dark. Evidence was also entered indicating that Sturtevant and Gray had private phone calls with Cropper leading up to the creation of the final proposal.

Ghazala Hashmi, who is running against Sturtevant in the upcoming state Senatorial election this November, is quick to point out this history. She asserted that the petition is simply a stunt that Sturtevant is using to divert attention from his complicated past as a school board member, as well as his Republican-aligned voting record in the Senate, which she claims has undermined funding for public education. “He’s trying to hamstring local school board members from doing their jobs,” said Hashmi. “As a Richmond-area educator of 25 years and a mom who sent both of her daughters to public school here, this issue is deeply personal to me. I am committed to ensuring that all of our schools have robust and equitable funding so that every child is afforded the same opportunities, regardless of their zip code.”

With many public officials on record expressing distaste for Sturtevant’s petition, the rezoning discussion is clearly going to remain a pertinent talking point leading up to the Senatorial election on November 5. Hashmi has strong words for the incumbent. “If he wants to do the job of a school board member, he should go back to running for school board. As a Senator I will do what Sturtevant has not: stand up for teachers, students, and Central Virginia families by prioritizing and expanding funding for public schools.”

Top Photo via Mary Munford Elementary School/Facebook

Not In My Schoolyard

Abigail Buchholz | July 29, 2019

Topics: crosstown busing, jason kamras, John B. Cary Elementary, Massive Resistance, richmond public schools, Richmond School Board, Richmond schools, school integration, William Fox Elementary

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.

Richmond Students Take Part In Worldwide Walkout Demanding Action On Climate Change

Madelyne Ashworth | March 21, 2019

Topics: Climate change, Green New Deal, Richmond schools, worldwide walkout, youth protest, Youth Strike 4 Climate

Last Friday afternoon, students from several Richmond schools marched down Broad St to Capitol Square, as part of the Youth Strike 4 Climate worldwide protest.

An estimated 1.4 million students in 123 countries played hooky this past Friday, demanding public action for global warming, which included about 50 kids from local Richmond schools.

At 12:30 p.m., students both from Richmond middle and high schools marched from Abner Clay Park down Broad Street to the Bell Tower in Capitol Square, joining a worldwide coordinated school walkout called Youth Strike 4 Climate.

“I want to address the issue that climate change is a real thing,” said Lola Brozna, 14, an eighth grade student at Albert Hill Middle School. “We need to take charge, because it’s our future. We’re getting all this education, but we might not even be able to use it.”

Students chanted phrases such as, “People not power,” and, “Don’t use oil, keep it in the soil.” Other adult members of the community marched to show their support as well, including local teachers and environmental advocates.

Many grade school students in the movement believe older generations have failed to properly address climate change, nor have they taken any appropriate measures to advocate for clean energy and global environmental policy plans. Students like Brozna fear the projected lifespan of humans moving forward, and worry it may cause a massive loss of life.

“The planet is dying, and there is this overwhelming scientific consensus that if we don’t really swiftly transition to renewable energy, we’re going to die,” said Barry O’Keefe, a VCU Arts teacher who helped organize the Richmond strike. “It’s not only figuratively but literally true that children are our future. Kids are going to inherit the world in no time. I’m personally really inspired by the youth taking political power into their own hands, because if they successfully do it, I think we’re going to be okay.”

The movement was first inspired by 16-year-old Swedish activist Greta Thunberg’s weekly protests in her hometown of Stockholm. She has since gone on to deliver a TED Talk, an address to the United Nations, and spoke at the World Economic Forum at Davos.

“You say you love your children above all else,” Thunberg said in her address to the United Nations last December. “And yet you are stealing their future in front of their very eyes.”

The United States named their own version of this movement the Youth Climate Strike; the movement is run entirely by middle and high school students ranging from ages 12 to 17. They cite demands including a “Green New Deal,” halting fossil fuel infrastructure projects, and better education in schools on global climate change.

“By 2050, the world will look super different,” said 16-year-old Amaya Matthews, a student at Douglas Freeman High School, referring to projected ocean levels rising. “I just want the world to look better, not worse.”

The next global walkout is scheduled for May 3.

Photos by John Donegan

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