Richmond Public Schools are Pretty Damn Good

Let me be the last person in the River City area to talk about the Crupi report. I thank the Greater Richmond Chamber of Commerce for laying out the big bucks to pay for Dr. Crupi’s study. I also thank the Richmond Times-Dispatch for providing a copy of the report to all its readers.

I will not mention the amazing coincidence that a report paid for by the business community came back with the observation that only the business community is able to save Metro Richmond. Some people might be suspicious about the self-serving nature of the report. Not this maven. Paraphrasing Bob Dylan, “I guess they’re just lucky.”

I will also not mention that this report deals with a nonexistent Metro Richmond. Oh, of course, it exists on census maps. But lets face it, some of us live in the City, some live in Midlothian, some live in Mechanicsville, some live in Short Pump. But none of us respond to “where do you come from?” with “I’m from Greater Richmond.”

What I will talk about is the part of Dr. Crupi’s report that deals with the Richmond Public Schools. We are all used to hearing how bad Richmond Public Schools are. The Richmond 26, in their letter to the mayor in July, indicated that the state of RPS was an “emergency.” Our leading cheerleader, Uncle Doug, is constantly telling us how our schools are failing and that the School Board and RPS administration are wasting millions of dollars. So it is not surprising that Dr. Crupi in listing Metro Richmond’s weaknesses included “Weak City Public Schools.”

However, before I can agree with all the critics of RPS, I need to look at the facts. In 2003, only 19% of Richmond’s schools were accredited under the Commonwealth’s Standards of Learning (SOL). Also in 2003, only 23% of Richmond’s schools were meeting the Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) requirements of the federal No Child Left Behind law. By 2006, however, 86% of Richmond’s schools were SOL accredited and 84% of the schools were meeting AYP requirements. That doesn’t sound like an emergency situation or a failing school system to me. Perhaps the Richmond 26 and the mayor are looking back at 2003 statistics in making their assessments. I see RPS making exceptional progress. It is clearly not a failing school system.

Let us go back to Dr. Crupi’s report. In discussing the City of Richmond and its public school system, Dr. Crupi points out these facts about the city:

•19 percent of the population lives in poverty – rates that are over twice as high as Henrico, ten times as high as Hanover and four times as high as Chesterfield.
• 25 percent of its children (0-17 years) live in households at or below 100 percent of the Federal Poverty Level [i.e. below $20,650 annually].
• More than one of every two parents in Richmond is a single parent.
• Median income is less than 60 percent of the Greater Richmond average.
• 74 percent of students receive free/reduced price lunches.
• It has the highest rate of food stamp distribution in the state.
• Foster care rate is about three times the metro area’s rate.
• 50 percent of children are dependent on Medicaid or FAMIS [child health insurance program].
• 30 percent of kindergarten children need additional reading assistance.
• 14 percent of children from 3-4 years old are in the Head Start Program.
• 19 percent of children have disabilities and receive special needs education.
• It has the highest teenage pregnancy rate in the metro area.
• 51 percent of students drop out of school according to a 2005-06 report by the VA Department of Education.
• The high school absenteeism rate is 26 percent and 14 percent in the middle schools [2005-2006].
• It is the only locality in the state in which all seven community problems involving youth are rated as “very serious.” Problems include: “violence on TV, movies, or in music.” lack of affordable and quality child care, lack of after school supervision, and alcohol and other illegal drug use by children or adolescents.
• It lacks a coordinated, proactive approach to addressing a young person’s needs

Dr. Crupi puts all these facts in the section of his report entitled “Give Richmond Schools a ‘Product’ They Can Work With.” As Dr. Crupi puts it,

“It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realize that the Richmond public schools are getting large numbers of children who are not ready for school, who grow up in single parent homes that don’t (or find it difficult to) reinforce education, require nutritional support, and live in a community environment that makes it very difficult to study and learn. The problem is exacerbated by the fact that much of the poverty is concentrated in 4000 public housing projects that are primarily located in Fairfield Court, Whitcomb Court, Gilpin Court, and Creighton Court. Were these problems in the counties, the schools would also have problems.” (Emphasis added).

Given the factors discussed by Dr. Crupi, it is really amazing that RPS is doing as well as it is. In the August article in Style Weekly, “The Real Problem With Our Schools,” Don Cowles of Initiatives of Change said that school systems with more than 50% of their students reliant on subsidized lunches “simply do not succeed.” Yet, with a subsidized lunch rate of 74%, Richmond Public Schools are clearly succeeding.

As Dr. Crupi points out, large numbers of students in Richmond start school without the skills necessary for learning. The Richmond 26 and the mayor clearly are making unfounded accusations about RPS. Imagine that the kitchen receives sour milk, moldy flour, rotten eggs and rancid shortening. These ingredients are baked into a cake. After tasting the less-than-perfect cake, would it be fair to conclude that it was made by a terrible baker?

I am not putting our students down. It is clearly not their fault that they come to the race with a ball and chain around their ankles. I see these children every week and almost all of them are eager to learn and they are making remarkable progress despite the difficulties of their lives. They have dedicated, hard-working teachers. Their schools are run by competent, demanding principals. I have seen RPS administrators at work. They are competent people dedicated to making RPS into a school system this city can be proud of. I have interacted with members of the School Board. They are committed to turning RPS into a world-class school system. They put in long hours trying to make RPS work despite real dollar budget cuts imposed by City Council.

Is RPS perfect? Clearly not. There is lots of room for improvement. But, I am really tired of all these critics with little knowledge attacking our public schools because they seem like an easy target. They need to stop complaining and do something to fix the problem. In the words of Dr. Crupi,

“Richmond’s leaders need to understand that concentrating on the output (i.e. what the school’s produce) without addressing the input (i.e. the condition of students entering the schools) is doomed to failure. It is a question of investing on the front end or paying on the back end. The time has come to design a way forward.”

Well Earned Awards

1- The Chutzpah Award for the first half of November is awarded to L. Douglas Wilder, our beloved mayor. In a TV interview last week Uncle Doug indicated that it was not his fault that he was the defendant in two law suits. He stated that he had sued nobody. He was just doing his job. It was the City Council and the School Board who sued him.

C’mon, Mr. Wilder. That’s like a bank robber who claims he is sitting in the defendant’s chair in court only because the police and the prosecutor chose to arrest and prosecute him. (It’s an analogy; I am not accusing the mayor of robbing banks). Mr. Mayor, you are a defendant in two law suits because you chose to ignore an ordinance enacted by City Council. The Richmond city charter indicates that you are to carry out the laws of the Commonwealth and the ordinances of the City. If you claim the power to ignore city ordinances, you are likely to end up in court.

2- The Neville Chamberlain Appeasement Award goes to City Council member Doug Conner for his November 10 letter to the editor in the Times-Dispatch. In his letter, Mr. Conner said,

“I offer the following to start dialogue: RPS should move from City Hall. The city should pay for the move and the rent on 3600 West Board for two years; talk of the mayor and Harry Black personally paying for the failed eviction should cease; drop the lawsuits and mediate; the mayor should lead education town halls that include the City Council and the School Board.”

I certainly agree with Mr. Conner that if the mayor gets his way in his dispute with the City Council and the School Board all will be quiet in the city again. All that is needed to bring these nasty little political disputes to an end is for the council, the board and the citizens of Richmond to concede that the mayor has all the power he wants. I am sure that if Uncle Doug is allowed dictatorial powers, we shall have “Peace in our Time.”

Undocumented Aliens and Loupassi’s Ad

A sloganeer submitted a comment to my post “Shame On You, Manoli (revisited)”. Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against sloganeers. In fact I have been known to be a sloganeer myself, and I think I am quite good at it. Sometimes, however, slogans are not the best way of addressing issues. For example, my commenter began with “What part of the phrase ‘Illegal Alien’ don’t you understand?” Now that’s a pretty good slogan, but it doesn’t begin to address the complexities of the issue. The commentator, Anonymous, goes on to say he has nothing against aliens in general. He is bothered that the first act these particular aliens did on coming to America was breaking the law.

Anonymous is right. In fact, as these undocumented aliens were in the process of stepping across the border of our country they were violating Section 1325 of Title 8 of the United States Code. For violating this statute they can be prosecuted and if convicted they may spend some time in prison or pay a fine. They may also be deported from the United States.

So, this attorney turned maven certainly understands the phrase “illegal alien.” Moreover, as an attorney I am greatly bothered by laws that are not enforced. When any laws are routinely violated without consequences the commitment of our citizenry to obeying the law is weakened. Our country learned this lesson when we tried to outlaw alcohol about eighty years ago. By making booze illegal we created an entire class of “illegal drinkers” and a vast criminal enterprise to serve their needs. Tragically, we have not yet learned this lesson with regard to outlawing drugs.

Since the Federal Government has made entering our country “other than as designated by immigration officers” illegal, the Federal Government has an obligation to enforce that law. However, since there are many millions of individuals who have violated this law, the logistics of enforcement are mind-boggling. Understanding this, President Bush proposed a reasonable way to solve the illegal alien problem. (You may want to save that sentence. It is and will probably be the only time that I praise W). However, there are far too many politicians in this country who would rather use this problem as an election issue than trying to solve it. So, this problem goes on unresolved.

What Mr. Anonymous does not realize is that I did not criticize Mr. Loupassi for his views on the illegal alien problem. I criticized him for running an ad that naturally has the effect of dehumanizing people. I criticized him for engaging in hate-based politics. I criticized him for being a divider rather than a uniter. I criticized him for scape-goating. In sum, I criticized Mr. Loupassi for having such a low opinion of the intelligence of the voters in his district that he thought such negative campaigning would work.

Shame on You, Manoli (Revisited)

Well, this maven was wrong (in part) in my posting Thursday. And as my motto indicates, I am not afraid of being wrong and admitting it. In my post, I lambasted 68th district House of Delegates candidate Manoli Loupassi for his television ad. I said that at worst the ad was a lie and at best it was a distortion. After further consideration I must conclude that the ad is a distortion not a lie.

I am getting older. Sometimes I see and hear things strangely. Thursday I said that Mr. Loupassi’s ad criticized Delegate Katherine Waddell for having voted against a bill that would make undocumented aliens ineligible for in-state tuition rates at the Commonwealth’s public colleges and universities. As I pointed out in my post, Ms. Waddell voted in favor of that legislation. Thursday night I saw the ad again. Now I see that the ad criticizes Ms. Waddell for opposing a different bill, a year earlier, that totally bars undocumented aliens from our institutions of higher learning. I went back to the General Assembly’s Legislative Information Service and discovered that in 2006 Delegate Waddell did vote against House Bill 262 that made undocumented aliens ineligible to be admitted to Virginia’s public colleges and universities. Since Mr. Loupassi’s ad does not indicate that in the next year Delegate Waddell voted in favor of withholding in-state tuition rates from undocumented aliens, I view the ad as a distortion of Ms. Waddell’s record. I apologize for calling Mr. Loupassi a liar.

Confession should make me feel better, but I don’t. I still find myself very angry with Mr. Loupassi’s ad. I feel almost as angry as I did two years ago when I saw Jerry Kill-more’s capital punishment ads against Tim Kaine.

I am sure that this statement does not apply to all Republicans, but I see many of the GOP’s candidates running campaigns that appeal to the basest of human instincts. Just two weeks ago I was up in northern Virginia and saw a mega-sign for a candidate for chairman of the Prince William County Board of Supervisors that read (I paraphrase) “He knows how to handle illegal aliens.” Now, it’s Manoli Loupassi that is trying to ride to office on the backs of undocumented aliens. I abhor this type of us-them politics. It triggers our inborn xenophobia and makes us fear and hate “the other”—those who have entered this country illegally. What is worse is that most of these illegal aliens speak Spanish. The stigma that is attached to them by this hate-based politics naturally transfers to all Spanish speakers. When we hear construction workers or the people behind us in the check-out line speaking Spanish we start wondering whether they are here legally.

Yes, illegal aliens are in this country without permission. Yes, illegal aliens have broken the law. But, they are not murderers or rapists or child predators. Their crime is that they came into this country to earn money because they are unable to do so in their home country. Things are so bad where they come from that they are willing to risk their lives in the often perilous journey across our borders. And, let’s not forget that they serve a very useful purpose in this country. They work at jobs for low pay that few other people would do. Without them in our economy the prices of much that we buy would increase drastically.

Mr. Loupassi and his fellow Republicans need to realize that these aliens are human beings. They are not vermin that need to be eliminated. Mr. Loupassi must understand that his ad creates animosity against these aliens. The words of the ad that speak of these “undesirables” taking the places of good American children in our colleges and universities can have no other purpose than to marginalize people. Marginalizing people leads to considering them less than human. This can lead eventually to such nice things as internment camps and even genocide.

Mr. Loupassi, my grandparents came to this country just before the First World War They answered the call of the Statue of Liberty to “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” I am therefore an immigrant. I assume that your ancestors came to this country at some time after the settlement of Jamestown and that you are also an immigrant. Manoli, if your ancestors were like mine they were not treated very well when they arrived here. They dressed strangely, they spoke foreign languages, they were different. They were considered undesirable by all the true Americans—those who had come here a few years earlier. Since we know what it is like to be the “other” we should be the last to cast aspersions on today’s others. In the words of Scripture, we must “love [the stranger] as yourself” (Leviticus 19:34)

Why do candidates rely on this type of extreme negative campaigning? Because they are told by the professional political salesmen that they have hired that it works. If Mr. Loupassi is elected on Tuesday, I fear that we will have more of this nasty campaigning in the future. If residents of the 68th District deplore this type of politics as much as I do they must show the political professionals that it does not work. They must vote for the reelection of Delegate Waddell.

Shall Never the Twain Meet?

On Saturday I had a delightful time at the dedication of the newly renovated media center at Westover Hills Elementary School. It was a great party. In addition to this maven and his maveness, the Superintendent of Schools, School Board members, community partners of the school, faculty, and about 200 children and their parents were in attendance. With music, arts and crafts activities, a dance contest, pizza and lemonade everybody really enjoyed themselves.

I found myself looking at the children at one of the tables. They were beautiful. Their eyes were alive with joy, their mouths were smiling or laughing, their faces were filled with the wonder of learning. As I watched them, my mind connected with the picture I saw on the front of Section B of the TD last week. It was a picture of a group of students at Tuckahoe Elementary School watching a Richmond Opera production of Gilbert and Sullivan. The children in the picture were also beautiful. Their eyes too were alive with joy, their mouths were also smiling or laughing, their faces too were filled with the wonder of learning.

Two groups of elementary school children. Each having a great time. All of them alive with the joy and wonder of learning. Sitting in elementary schools located no more than five miles apart. Two identical groups of children . . . except that all the students in the Tuckahoe photograph had light skin, while almost all the children I saw at Westover Hills had dark skin.

The children in these two groups are not aware that the others exist. And, in all likelihood these light-skinned and dark-skinned children will not interact for at least the next ten to fifteen years, if ever. They will not have the opportunity to meet each other, to get to know each other, to play with each other, to learn with each other, to appreciate each other, and, perhaps, to love each other.

Will all of these light-skinned children at Tuckahoe and these dark-skinned children at Westover Hills eventually adopt the attitude held by their great-grandparents, grandparents and parents that the color of a person’s skin is a key factor in judging them? Will their ignorance of the other lead to these children acquiring, over time, a pigmentation prejudice?

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t think children are color blind. I think they notice that some people have light skin and that others have dark skin. However, if they’re young enough, complexion just doesn’t matter. Two examples—

1- I do some tutoring at Westover Hills School. My skin is light. Most of the kids have dark skin. Do they notice the difference? I assume so. But they also notice that I am older than them, taller than them, a bit pudgy around the waist, and because I am older that I have acquired greater knowledge than they have. Do they have any notion that because of our skin colors I am better than they or they are better than me? I think not, especially my second graders.

2- My four-year old granddaughter often asks me to take her to the Westover Hills playground to play with the school children. She is the only light-skinned child there. Neither she nor the other kids seem to care. I know she recognizes complexion differences. Once in Target she asked that I buy her a “brown baby” for her doll collection. When she plays with her doll house, she has both African American and Caucasian dolls. She plays with them interchangeably, often having white dolls with black offspring and vice versa. Skin color just seems irrelevant to her.

So how do we prevent these children from catching the complexion bias that most of us adults suffer from? I suggest that we institute community building in all of our public schools. We need to schedule opportunities for our urban and suburban children to get together. Maybe, instead of a field trip to some colonial ruin, we should schedule a field trip to each other’s schools. Maybe, we can arrange for them to interact through video-conferencing. I am sure that you have an idea that might work.

If we do this, maybe we will have reached one of the dreams of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Maybe we will achieve a society in which we are all judged by the strength of our characters, not by the color of our skins.

Shame on You, Manoli

I guess this is what happens when a candidate has too much money to spend. I just saw the latest of Manoli Loupossi’s political ads, and it makes me mad. Manoli gets on at the end and says he approved of the ad, so the buck stops with him. The ad criticizes incumbent Delegate Katherine Waddell for voting against legislation that would make aliens not legally in the country ineligible for in-state tuition rates at Virginia colleges and universities. The ad stirs up animosity against Ms. Waddell with the conclusion that she wants to give away commonwealth revenue to illegal aliens.

Shame on you, Manoli, you should know better.

House Bill 2623 is described by the Legislative Information Service as follows:
In-state tuition for aliens. Provides that an alien who is unlawfully present in the United States, and therefore ineligible to establish domicile pursuant to § 23-7.4, shall not be eligible on the basis of residency within Virginia for any postsecondary educational benefit, including in-state tuition, unless citizens or nationals of the United States are eligible for such benefits in no less an amount, duration, and scope without regard to whether such citizens or nationals are Virginia residents.
The LIS indicates that this bill passed the House of Delegates on February 1, 2007, by a vote of 74 to 23. Voting in favor of the bill was Delegate Waddell.

So, Manoli, the ad, which you approved, is a distortion at best and a lie at worst. I think that running an ad like this shows that you would do anything to get elected. Although I do not live in your district, I will have to endorse the candidacy for reelection of Ms. Waddell. If your campaign represents the type of delegate you will be, I hope that the voters in the 68th district reject your candidacy.

Mayor Wilder, Repeat After Me

I just read the mayor’s Visions Newsletter for this week (http://eservices.ci.richmond.va.us/applications/newsletters/mayor/visions.asp?ArtID=10805).
The mayor is still making excuses for his disastrous decision to try to evict the RPS administration from City Hall a few weeks back. This, in connection with his treatment last week of the School Board committee and its chair, Betsy Carr, leads me to conclude that the mayor still doesn’t get it. He doesn’t understand that the citizens of this city do not approve of the way he is acting as mayor.

In the interest of saving your administration, Mayor Wilder, repeat after me:

I am sorry. . .

I was completely wrong in trying to evict the school administration from City Hall after the close of business on a Friday afternoon. . .

In the future, I will try really hard not to make mistakes like this again. . .

I need and welcome the contributions and cooperation of all citizens of the city, including the nine members of the City Council, the nine members of the School Board, the Superintendent of Schools, the City Auditor, the City Assessor, and others.

I really hope you can turn things around Mr. Mayor.

It’s Really Tragic

I take no joy from the poll results published in the TD that show that Mayor Wilder’s approval ratings have gone way down. The poll shows that if the election for mayor were held today only 35% of registered voters would vote to reelect Mr. Wilder. I cannot deny that for the past year I have been constantly berating Mr. Wilder for his performance as this city’s chief executive. But that’s not the way I wish it was.

When Mr. Wilder was elected mayor, I was kind of excited. I thought he would provide the type of leadership that any city could use. I have been greatly disappointed. That is the reason that I have felt compelled to criticize him.

Almost from the day he took the oath of office L. Douglas Wilder has been acting as if he had been anointed instead of elected. He has attempted to purge the leadership of the city to remove anyone who doesn't agree with him. He has not acted like a leader. A leader tries to bring about change by persuading other people to follow and by making compromises if necessary. Mr. Wilder tries to lead by imposing his will, by making unfounded public charges against anybody who tries to be independent. And he has never thought himself to be bound by the law.

I think it is tragic that this man, who has earned a place in history, should destroy his reputation in a few short years. Unfortunately, he will be remembered most for his attempt to evict the School Board from City Hall rather than for the things he accomplished as Governor of the Commonwealth.

Hopefully, Mr. Wilder will use the poll results as a wake-up call. He still has a year before the next election to regain the trust and support of the citizens of Richmond. I wish him well.

Entering City, Proceed At Your Own Risk

It is time to award the Maven’s “most wonderful letter of the day.” This time the letter goes to “Keep the City Out of Our Suburbs,” published in the TD on Friday.

This letter has been making me mad since I read it. I have started writing a response several times, but each time I just get too nasty. You know that I am basically a mild-mannered guy and I don’t want to publish anything that will make people feel bad. So, I will not write all the things I wanted to say to the author of that letter. Instead I will write this greeting:

Thank you for the Christo-Judeo-Islamo-Budist love that your letter shows for the unfortunate people who call this decrepit city home. Of course, if we could, we would all run to your suburban paradise. You are always welcome to visit Richmond either for business or pleasure, even though you see no need to pay for that privilege. If you are considering coming to Richmond, however, please heed this warning.

In River City you may come in contact with people who are neither white nor affluent. So, if you’re gonna come here, be sure to wear a surgical mask and bring lots of hand sanitizer. I wouldn’t want you to get contaminated.

Uncle May I?

When I was a lad, back in Brooklyn, USA, we played a little street game called “Mother May I?” The rules were simple. One kid, the mother, stood on one end of the backyard. The other kids stood on the other end at the starting line. The mother would then give instructions on how they could cross the divide between them. S/he might say, “Fred, you may take one giant step.” Fred could do nothing until he asked, “mother may I?” The kid playing mother would then either say “yes you may,” or “no, you may not.” Fred would act accordingly. Mother then would go through each of the other kids, instructing them to take giant steps, itsy-bitsy steps, umbrella steps (you had to spin as you moved), jumps, hops or whatever. Slowly the group of children would advance across the backyard toward mother. If, however, one of the players advanced without asking “mother may I,” he or she would have to go all the way back to the starting line.

According to the TD, School Board member Betsy Carr and Mayor Wilder have been playing this game (now called Uncle May I) and Ms. Carr is not winning. It seems that Ms. Carr, as chair of a School Board committee, has been working on the Board’s revised plan for new and renovated school buildings. A Thursday TD article indicated that the School Board committee was holding a meeting next Wednesday and had invited city officials and community leaders to provide their input. Ms. Carr stated that “[a]s we’re moving forward for a great city and making the schools best as possible, we need to get everybody thinking their best thoughts of how we can make it work together.”

Ms. Carr’s motive seemed pure and her position seemed reasonable but as indicated in Friday’s TD, Ms. Carr has made a fatal mistake. Before she moved, she failed to ask Mr. Wilder “Uncle May I?” It makes no difference that Ms. Carr “thought the invitation [to city officials] met Wilder’s desire for better communication between various parts of city government.” It makes no difference that this meeting would accomplish a great deal. Ms. Carr did not ask Uncle Doug for his permission and now she must return to the starting line.

It is tragic that Ms. Carr had to learn this lesson the hard way. Of course, it would be a lot easier if our regal chief executive employed a protocol officer to explain to us mortals which hoops we need to jump through to make His Excellency happy. Then Ms. Carr would have known how to proceed without offending the mayor.

As you might expect, Ms. Carr’s failure to ask “Uncle May I” has converted our benevolent Uncle Doug into the vengeful dictator that he sometimes becomes. He has listed new rules for playing the game in the future. King Doug now insists that before he will accept any further communications from the School Board on the issue of school construction or renovation, the School Board and the School Superintendent must carry out the recommendations made last winter in the City Auditor’s audit of Richmond Public Schools. His Excellency has indicated that his support for new or renovated schools will depend on actions taken by school officials to save money. “When you do this, we’ll do that. It’s a quid pro quo situation,” the mayor said.

I am sorry that this had to happen to a hard-working, independent minded public servant like Ms. Carr. Of course, she is the exactly the type of person that King Doug has been trying to drive out of city government since his coronation. If there is one thing His Excellency cannot stand it is someone who doesn’t answer to him. Ms. Carr, welcome to the long list of public officials who have drawn the mayor’s wrath for trying to do the right thing. I wish you the strength and courage to keep up the good fight.

It Ain’t Broke, It’s Just Badly Bent

I really have to object to Bob Rayner’s Op-ed in the TD entitled “If the City Charter's Broken, Let's Fix It -- Starting Now.” Mr. Rayner places the blame for the recent chaos in and around City Hall on our City Charter. Mr. Rayner says,

“One clear perception emerged from the recent chaos: The city charter is profoundly unclear about the relationship between the council and the mayor. And that's a sure recipe for endless, distracting, expensive court battles.
Perhaps it's time for the General Assembly -- which oversees local governments -- to help Richmond write a new charter for itself. The mayor's public stance has eased, at least mildly, giving the City Council an opportunity to press for the creation of a city charter that works. Local legislators should offer their services, publicy or privately.
A fight is inevitable. Better to have it settled by the people's elected reprentatives than by the courts. If the rules don't make sense, write some new ones. The mayor, the City Council, and the region's delegates and senators need to sharpen their pencils.
It's time to lead.”

I wonder whether Mr. Rayner has actually read the Charter. I have, and I don’t see why it needs any changes. The people who drafted this charter were capable lawyers and, although I might have written it better, they clearly stated the relationship between the mayor and the council.

Chapter 4 of the charter deals with the City Council. Section 4.02 says,

“All powers vested in the City shall be exercised by the Council except as otherwise provided in this Charter.”

This sounds pretty clear to me. The City Council has the authority to exercise ALL city powers except when the charter grants those powers to someone else. Now who else might the charter grant powers to? How about the mayor?

Section 5.01 of the charter says,

“The mayor shall be the chief executive officer of the city and shall be responsible for the proper administration of city government.”

Section 5.05 spells out the duties of the mayor. The mayor has the duty to:
1- Attend meetings of the council (or send a delegate authorized to answer questions);
2- Keep the council advised of the financial condition and future needs of the city, and make recommendations when necessary;
3- Oversee preparation of the annual city budget;
4- Perform such duties that the Code of Virginia assigns to chief executive officers of cities or that are assigned to the mayor “by ordinances adopted by the council.” (The mayor is given the power to veto such ordinances subject to override by the council.)
5- Issue regulations necessary to carry out the job of mayor.

I think it is clear that the charter creates a city government with two separate branches--the council and the mayor. The council is granted all powers of the city except those specifically given to the mayor (or his subordinates). The powers given to the mayor are clearly stated. Those powers are not unlimited. Clearly, the charter does not give the mayor the authority to ignore the laws of the Commonwealth or the ordinances of the City of Richmond that he does not agree with

The separation of powers in different branches has been a feature of governments in the Commonwealth since we evicted King George’s royal governor at bayonet point and emblazoned our flag with the words “Sic Semper Tyranis”. Separation of legislative and executive functions also exists in the Government of the United States and, I assume, in the governments of the other forty nine states. There are, of course, governments in the world in which legislative and executive powers are vested in the same person. We generally call those governments dictatorships.

But, argues Mr. Raynor,

“Wilder maintains -- not unreasonably -- that city voters overwhelmingly signaled that they want a strong mayor and that they want him to be that strong mayor.”

I don’t know how Mr. Wilder or Mr. Raynor determined that city voter overwhelmingly favor a “strong” mayor. All that is clear is that city voters approved the charter as written. That charter does not mention a “strong” mayor. It provides for a mayor who possesses only the powers specifically given him. All other powers are vested in the council.

There is chaos and dispute over the relationship between the mayor and the council in the City of Richmond only because the incumbent mayor asserts the authority to ignore the provisions of the charter. Mr. Wilder continues to operate under the charter that he wishes the citizens approved, one that gives him complete power. He refuses to follow the actual charter, which clearly limits the powers of the mayor.

So, Mr. Raynor, there is no need to go running to the wise General Assembly and ask it to fix the problem that we the naive citizens of Richmond have imposed on ourselves. The charter that we adopted is not broken. However, it has been bent by the actions of L. Douglas Wilder. Hopefully, in the next election we’ll choose a mayor who will obey the law.

The River’s Back and Now I Can Wash My Neck

Well, it’s official. Our beloved James River is back. I just drove down Riverside Drive between Huguenot and Pony Pasture and there is water flowing over the Zee dam. When I drove by on Monday, the river was so low that most of the dam was dry with only a trickle of water coming over the spillway.

That the river is back is vitally important to me. Since my identity is intimately tied up with the James, this week’s rain came at just the right time. After all, how would it look if I had to change my name to Dry Gulch Maven, or Rocky Rill Maven? No, I like James River Maven just fine and I’m so happy to have it flowing again.

This brings me to a song that my mother used to sing to me when I was a kid:

“It ain’t gonna rain no more no more,
It ain’t gonna rain no more.
How in the heck can I wash my neck
If it ain’t gonna rain no more?”

Well, much to my maveness’ delight, it has rained and I can start lathering my neck again.

Demand for Payment

"The conclusion then, is, that neither the representatives of a nation, nor the whole nation itself assembled, can validly engage debts beyond what they may pay in their own time." Thomas Jefferson, 1789

Dear American Taxpayer,

We regret to inform you that you that you have been the victim of a major financial scam. You have fallen for the ridiculous assertion that decreasing the federal tax rate will result in increased revenue flowing to the government. Accordingly the candidates you have elected to public office have increased the debt owed by your government to nine trillion, twenty eight billion, nine hundred fifty one million dollars ($9,028,951,000.00).

Until now, we have been willing to let your government pay off its debt in annual payments of nearly two hundred fifty billion dollars ($250,000,000,000). However, over the last six years, your government’s debt has increased at a phenomenal rate and we can no longer protect our stockholder’s interest unless we receive payment immediately.

As the Constitution of your government indicates that it is adopted by “We the People” and because you have benefited from your government’s continued deficit spending we consider it reasonable to hold you responsible for your share of the debt of the United States of America. Your personal liability for this debt is $29,785.35 for each member of your household.

We demand payment of your share of the debt by return mail. Because of the irresponsible credit practices of your government, we cannot accept credit cards in payment. We will accept only cash, money order or certified check in payment.

We regret that we have been forced to take this action. To avoid a similar occurrence in the future, we recommend that your government refrain from spending beyond its means.

Sincerely,
Creditors of United States Government

Nor Any Drop To Drink

Scene I.
I was up in northern Virginia this weekend. In Low-down County (i.e. Loudon) there were signs on almost every street reading “NO OUTDOOR WATERING!” You see, because of the drought, the Loudon Board of Supervisors has imposed mandatory water restrictions.

Scene II.
I was back in Richmond last night. (I can no longer call this place River City, ‘cause there ain’t too much river left.) Yesterday, my neighbor across the street turned on his lawn sprinkler and it ran all night. This morning there was lots of water running off his property and down the street. I read in the TD this morning that Chesterfield County’s mandatory water restrictions go into effect today. The restrictions apparently are rather modest: lawn watering only three days per week; car and patio washing two days per week.

As for other jurisdictions in the neighborhood, the TD reported:
· Colonial Heights is scheduled to consider restrictions in the coming weeks.
· Dinwiddie put mandatory restrictions in place earlier.
· Petersburg officials asked residents to begin observing restrictions. City Council may make those restrictions mandatory at an Oct. 23 meeting.
· Prince George put mandatory restrictions in place earlier.

What about the City of Richmond and Henrico County? Well, if it doesn’t rain in a few weeks, maybe there will be a need for restrictions.

[I started this piece this morning. I put it away for a while. Then I drove across the mostly-rocks James for choir practice. But as I left I noticed that a different neighbor was pouring lots of water onto his lawn. My recollection is that under voluntary restrictions, nobody can water on Mondays. Well, I guess my neighbor volunteered not to comply.]

So, comparing scenes I and II, I started wondering: what is happening in Loudon County that is not happening in Exposed-rocks City? Now I know that Loudon County is really crowded. It’s already what Chesterfield County will look like in a few years—wall to wall houses; hundreds of miles of highways, all of them constantly congested; myriad strip malls trying to serve the needs of far too many people. But is that why they need a total ban on outdoor watering? Perhaps they have had a more severe drought than we. Maybe they have lawns that drink up more water than ours. Or, it could be that their newer water mains leak more than our old ones. And, maybe, just maybe, the Potomac is not as mighty a river as the James.

But suppose there are other reasons—so secret that even the TD can’t find out about them—for there being no need for water restrictions in Richmond.

1- It may be that our gaggle of nine has received classified weather forecasts indicating that over the next twenty days ten inches of rain will fall over the city—one half inch per day. Channels 6 and 12 meteorologists, “Eat your hearts out for missing that.”
2- Maybe the mayor has hired a rain maker, using the emergency procurement provisions of the city charter (which he learned to use when he bought an “emergency” audit for the city assessor last winter). We all know that dark clouds have been hanging over this city for months. The rainmaker can seed those and voila we’ll have lots of rain.
3- On the other hand, maybe we don’t need any rain. Perhaps the city has a secret stash of water. It could be hidden under Uncle Doug’s riverside ranch. (There’s nothing like the sun setting over the James.) Millions of acre-feet of H20, on tap for a thirsty city.

So, citizens of Richmond, consider yourselves lucky that we don’t have a City Council that would panic and impose mandatory restrictions (that my neighbor could not volunteer to ignore). Count your blessings that our beloved legislators would not sacrifice our clean cars and green lawns to make sure there is enough water to drink, for personal hygiene, for cooking, for putting out fires and other nonessentials. And, I’m sure we can add to the name of our beloved river. We can call it the Hidden James.

BTW, I advise that you start hording bottled water.

I'm Sorry

I must apologize to my reader. I realize that you rely on me to educate you on what's going on in Richmond and the world. And I realize that I have written nothing in more than a week. However, it's not really my fault. It's all the fault of Uncle Doug (formerly His Excellency).

As you know, the adventures of Mr. Wilder constitute a good part of what I have been writing about. In a rather blatant attempt to deprive me of writing material, L. Douglas Wilder seems to have changed his spots (or stripes if you prefer tigers to leopards). Suddenly, he is acting reasonably. He's acting like everybody's beloved uncle. So, I have to struggle to find something to write about.

I hope that you, my loyal reader, will understand my dilemma. I will soon reward you with more wisdom.

Atta Way Doug!

I really have to stop criticizing Mayor L. Douglas Wilder. Despite his antagonizing most of the city by evicting the school administration from City Hall, it is clear that Doug knows what it takes to placate the voters. What it takes is for the city to spend four or five millions dollars to build a 73 slip marina on the James River at the site of the Intermediate Terminal. How can any one continue to criticize Mayor Doug when he comes up with plans that are so beneficial to the taxpayers of Richmond? Now you might say that you don’t have a boat and can’t imagine why your tax dollars should be used for a marina. Obviously, you are short sighted.

There are many ways that the mayor’s proposed marina will help the City of Richmond:

1- Those of you who watched the HBO series “The Wire” are fully aware how spending millions of dollars for waterfront development will turn around our public schools and cut our crime rate, just as it did in Baltimore;

2- Doug can lure the school administration out of City Hall by offering them floating headquarters;

3- The mega-yachts that will dock at Richmond will provide lucrative employment for our high school dropouts;

4- Our children can go on school field trips to the marina to see the big sail and power boats that they will never be able to afford;

5- Richmond Public Schools can provide accessible classrooms for our handicapped children since the mayor refuses to spend a cent to make school buildings accessible; and

6- When shots are fired in your neighborhood, you can invite all your neighbors to spend the night safely on your family yacht.

If none of these reasons convince you, then I recommend that you borrow fifty or one hundred thousand dollars to buy a boat. You then can be one of the 73 Richmonders who will directly benefit from the marina.

To Earn More, Ask Your Boss for a Pay Cut!

If you think the title of this post makes no sense, then you’re gonna love “Krugman Ruined a Beautiful Day,” the winner of the maven’s most wonderful letter of the day for October 2, 2007. This letter was written in response to a TD op-ed by Paul Krugman. I don’t remember Krugman’s column, but today’s letter was surely entertaining.

My favorite sentence in today’s letter is “Even students in Econ 101 understand that tax cuts increase the revenue going into the U.S. treasury. This has been proven many times.” Hey, it’s been a long time, but I did take Econ 101 and I never learned this amazing principle. I learned about supply and demand and all that cool stuff that only works in a hypothetical world. But never did my Economics professor have the nerve to suggest to me that lowering taxes increases revenues.

Now, this is becoming crystal clear to me. The more money we want to raise for the United States government, the lower our taxes should be. Over the years my brain has begun to resemble Swiss cheese. However, I still have enough gray matter to extend our letter writer’s theory to its ultimate conclusion. If lower taxes mean higher revenues, then if we eliminate taxes entirely we will maximize the revenues we collect.

How come nobody has thought of this before? Wait, now I remember. Isn’t this what George Herbert Walker Bush called “Voodoo Economics” in 1980? Isn’t this what became known back in those days as Reaganomics? Isn’t this what created huge budget deficits over the past few decades? Aren’t we in mega trillions of dollars of debt because we had presidents who thought you could cut taxes and increase spending at the same time? Despite what our letter writer claims, this inane theory has not been proven; it has been disproved two disastrous times—in 1981 and in 2001—and our great grandchildren will be still be paying off our obscene debt in sixty years.

Open Enrollment + Busses = Segregation

Two weeks ago, I sent a letter to the editor of our beloved Times-Dispatch. I criticized one of the TD’s editorials. The TD chose not to publish my letter. That is no reason why you should be deprived of my wisdom. So here is my letter:

Editor
Richmond Times-Dispatch

I strongly disagree with your September 18 editorial, “More Not Less,” in which you criticized the Richmond School Board for eliminating free transportation for students attending out-of-zone schools. The board was correct in eliminating this costly subsidy. In fact, the board should have gone further and eliminated open-enrollment entirely. Over the years, this policy has contributed to the economic segregation of Richmond Public Schools.

Whatever its original intent, history shows that the open-enrollment policy has been used by middle-class parents to cluster their children into a few Richmond elementary schools. The result has been that many neighborhood schools have been left with high concentrations of poor children. For example, south of the river, middle class parents in Forest Hill, Woodland Heights, Westover Hills, Stratford Hills, and other neighborhoods have used open-enrollment (and free transportation) to enroll their children in Fox, Mary Mumford and Fisher elementary schools. The neighborhood schools, Blackwell, Swansboro and Westover Hills, have been abandoned by these parents. The result of this subsidized movement of students is clear from the latest statistics on free or reduced-cost lunches (an accepted measurement of poverty) appearing on the Richmond Public Schools Website:

Blackwell……………………92% of children
Swansboro…………………..87% of children
Westover Hills………………81% of children

Mary Mumford……………...20% of children
Fox…………………………..22% of children
Fisher………………………..30% of children

The February 2007 audit of Richmond Public Schools indicated that “RPS could achieve a substantial estimated annual cost savings by eliminating out of zone transportation for regular education students.” Since this free transportation also contributes to the further concentration of poverty in many of our neighborhood schools, the School Board was right in eliminating it.

When you write a letter to the editor, you have to be short and sweet. You can’t say everything you want to. So, there were some factors that I did not address in that letter.

First, I know that open-enrollment and free transportation are not the only causes of our economically segregated school system. As I have been pointing out this summer, the main cause of this problem is the perception mostly by middle class parents that Richmond Public Schools cannot give their children a quality education. During the summer I said that parents react to this perception by doing one of three things: 1- enroll their children in private schools; 2- home school their children; or 3- move to the suburbs when their children reach school age. Then I was told that there was a fourth mechanism used by middle class parents. The open enrollment policy and free transportation allowed parents to abandon their local school and put their children in the city’s elite elementary schools—Fisher, Fox and Mumford.

Second, I know that it is not only middle-class parents who use open enrollment. As the articles in the TD have shown, the decision by the School Board not to fund out-of-zone transportation has created hardship for families that are not considered middle class and have taken advantage of open enrollment.

Third, I know that to induce middle class parents to use their neighborhood schools we need to make those schools the best schools in the state and we need to convince parents that in fact their children can get a first rate education in those schools.

Fourth, we’ve got troubles right here in River City. We have a very unhealthy demographic pattern that is the direct result of middle class parents rejecting Richmond Public Schools. It is clear in my neighborhood and I assume it exists in other neighborhoods in Richmond. There are many elders in my neighborhood. They are people who have lived in their homes for a long time. There are also many young couples in the neighborhood. They either have no children or have children who have not yet reached school age. In all the neighborhoods in which I have previously lived there have been a large number of families filling the slot between the old and the young. They were families with children who were attending local schools. In my neighborhood in Richmond there are very few families in this last category. We have a vast demographic abyss. I believe that this pattern bodes ill for the future of Richmond. It will lead to a city inhabited by only the very rich and the very poor.

Since the middle of the summer, almost everybody in the Richmond area has expressed his/her opinion on how to bring Richmond schools to greatness. Unfortunately, most of us have been distracted by recent events at City Hall. Now it is time to stop talking about fixing our schools. We need to take action.

New Civil War in Richmond

On Friday morning I drove up to northern Virginia to visit some relatives and to pray on Yom Kippur with my former congregation. I spent about a day, starting sundown on Friday, fasting, examining my sinful behavior during the last year and asking God to forgive me. I ended up feeling peaceful and refreshed. I drove back to Richmond today bringing that peaceful feeling with me. When I got home I checked two days of unread TD and…

Saturday’s headline “Chaos Erupts at City Hall.” Sunday’s headline “Uncertainty Pervades City Hall Amid Turmoil.” This maven was out of Richmond for only two days and war had erupted. What kind of insanity is going on in our beloved city?

I read the stories. Mr. Doug ordered the Richmond Public School administration to be evicted from City Hall. The police kept the public from attending a School Board meeting. Doug will require City Council member’s personal staff to submit to interviews to keep their jobs. The Circuit Court issued a temporary restraining order preventing the continued eviction of the RPS administration from City Hall.

I looked at the newspapers again. Was this Richmond or was it the capital city of some dictatorship? It all would have made sense if this were a military junta ousting the democratically elected government of some country in South America or Asia or Africa. But this is the City of Richmond, Commonwealth of Virginia, United States of America, in the Twenty First Century. The mayor of this City of Richmond is ousting the administration of this city’s public schools from its offices! The mayor of this city is threatening the jobs of City Council employees! The police department of this city kept the public from attending a meeting of their elected School Board! Hey, I thought we had defeated totalitarianism in the last century. But what is going on in Richmond is real despotism.

When we voted for an elected mayor in Richmond, and when we elected L. Douglas Wilder to be that mayor, we were not giving our approval to a prolonged civil war between Mr. Wilder and the City Council, School Board, School Superintendent, City Tax Assessor and even the City Auditor. In previous postings I have described the many instances in which Mr. Wilder, rather than seeking to bring unity to the City, has used his claimed power to insist on getting his way Each time His Excellency has acted I have wondered how he could possibly do any worse. And yet a few weeks pass and he does something else to crush opposition to his policies in Richmond. Mr. Wilder’s methods can best be described as “divide and defeat.” He makes outrageous accusations against other civil servants to try to crush any independent thinker in the city. Except for the lack of a dress, Mr. Wilder’s behavior is like our beloved J. Edgar Hoover, former tsar of the FBI. If you oppose Mayor Doug, you have to expect that he’ll never rest until he gets you.

So how did we in River City get into this mess? From nearly the day he was sworn in, Mayor Doug has been thumbing his nose at the city’s leadership and at us its citizens. He has engaged in activities of questionable legality. He has been sued by the School Board and by the City Council for trying to usurp their authority. He has threatened the jobs of city employees. He has used his “Vision Newsletter” to attack people in Richmond who are only trying to do their jobs. And during the entire time that Mr. Wilder has been waging his campaign to become the King of Richmond, hardly anybody has spoken out.

But this time, the mayor has extended his attack to the students in our public schools. He has demonstrated that he simply does not care who gets hurt as long as he can have his way. The question now is how long will the parents in this city put up with a man who is willing to risk the future of their children in his continued attempt to be the King of Richmond?

To both my Jewish and non-Jewish neighbors in Richmond I wish a healthy and prosperous year. To the City of Richmond I wish a restoration of peace and tranquility.

Where Have All The Glaciers Gone?

Just one day after instituting the maven’s “most wonderful letter of the day,” I must announce that I am not making the award today. After carefully reading all the letters in the TD this morning, I have concluded that none of them are good enough to merit this high honor. There is one letter that I do need to mention, however.

The letter “Just How Much Global Warning Are We Causing” accuses Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and others of lying when they say that climate change has caused the glaciers in Glacier National Park to melt. The letter indicates that when the author and his wife toured the park in 1998, “[t]he park ranger conducting the tour told us that there have never been any glaciers in Glacier National Park.”

Well this is surely revealing. If there were never any glaciers in the park then it surely is ludicrous to suggest that global warming has melted them.

In the words of the letter’s author, I decided to “set the record straight.” I went to the website of Glacier National Park. I clicked on a short video (http://mms.nps.gov/ram/imr/vglegzbg.mov), which indicated that when the park was formed in 1910 there were about 150 glaciers. When the video was made there were only 27 glaciers left and most of them were shrinking rapidly. The video showed before and after photographs, which even to my aging eyes revealed that where there were once sheets of ice there are now bare rocks or pools of water.

I am glad to report to you that Robert Kennedy, Jr., did not lie to the author of the letter. Despite what a park ranger once told the author there were in fact glaciers in Glacier National Park. Now most of them are gone.

What This City Needs is More Gunfights

My nephew called me this evening and wanted to know whether I had stopped writing. I went on line and saw that, in deed, I hadn’t posted anything in nearly three weeks. To those of you who have been eagerly awaiting some wisdom from me, I apologize. For those of you who couldn’t care less, I assume that you aren’t reading this and to you I have nothing to say.

You people in River City are aware that every day the Times-Dispatch chooses one of its letter writers as “correspondent of the day.” I suppose the award is given to the letter that is best written or deals with the most important issues. Well, to force myself to write more, I am hereby introducing the maven’s “most wonderful letter of the day.” I will choose a letter from the TD that is of the greatest importance and discuss it. Today’s award goes to the letter “Store Manager Made the World Safer.”

Nearly two weeks ago, the Baskins-Robins ice cream store on Forest Hill Avenue was robbed by a man who seemed to be holding a semi-automatic weapon. The store manager, not wanting to be viewed as an easy mark, drew out his own weapon and started firing at the unfortunate robber. Eight shots later, the robber had been hit in the back and in the hand. He fled from the store and was found dying nearby. The weapon the robber used in the robbery turned out to be a BB gun.

Some people suggested that perhaps the store manager had used excess force. Not our winning letter. It states that “[t]he store manager has saved the taxpayers the cost of further prosecution and incarceration. . . If more idiot sociopaths who prey on decent citizens were to be shot in the act of committing crimes—by their intended victims—then perhaps others of their kind would realize that we aren’t going to be intimidated.” The letter then uses the Wild West as a model for our city. “The American frontier was cleaned up, not by courts that were more concerned with the safety and rights of criminals, but by tough-minded lawmen and citizens defending themselves.”

Now you know why I chose this letter as the most wonderful of the day. Its writer has come up with the obvious solution to Richmond’s crime problem—arm everybody. And none of this hidden weapon business. If we’re really serious about dealing with crime the way they did in Dodge or Tombstone, every person in Richmond must be required to carry a hand gun in a holster strapped to their side. There must be no room for doubt that everybody is packing.

This is a great idea for several reasons. First we can save tons of money that we now waste on our criminal justice system. We won’t need the Commonwealth Attorney’s office any more. We also can cut in half the number of judges. Police officers will no longer have to fill out those pesky crime reports. We won’t need trials any more; our criminal justice system will be self-enforcing. When the store clerk sees a teenager shoplifting at the 7 Eleven he can enforce the law with his Glock.

Second, arming everybody will put a quick end to aggressive drivers and road rage. Now, when some idiot cuts you off on I-64 and you bang your head on the sun visor because you have to slam on your brakes, there is no reason to repress that anger. Just take out your Colt and blow the sucker’s head off. You’d be doing the public a favor. A driver like that would surely cause a bad accident and kill some innocents.

Third, packing a powerful weapon would add some excitement to our boring lives. Now if some doofus insults you at the bar at O’Tooles, you can call him out to settle things on Forest Hill Avenue with your Smith & Wesson.

Most important, all these guns will give us a whole new generation of heroes for our kids. We can produce our own Jesse James, Billy the Kid, Ike Clanton and others. Or lawmen like Wyatt Earp, Bat Masterson and Matt Dillon. Our children need to have gun-toting idols to look up to.

So, writer of our first “most wonderful letter of the day” I salute you. When your suggestion is implemented, Richmond will undoubtedly become the safest city in America.

They're Back!

The Richmond 26 are back in the news. Since their first call for replacing Richmond’s elected school board with an appointed one met with such overwhelming approval by. . . well, I guess by Mayor Wilder, they repeated it again in a 17 page paper delivered to the City Council and the mayor. Of course, our School Board, charged by law with supervising the schools in Richmond did not receive a copy of the missive. Nor, for that matter, did this maven. Thus, on this matter, just like Will Rogers, I only know what I read in the papers.

Since nobody in Richmond took seriously their proposal to bypass the people in doing away with our elected school board, Richmond’s finest indicated that they were willing to wait for a public referendum on the issue. Of course, by making this concession, the 26 risked that the public might vote to keep the elected board. But, hell, that is the risk of democracy.

As in their first letter, our business elite opined that getting rid of the elected school board is all it would take to fix Richmond Public Schools. The division of authority between the City Council and the School Board guarantees that Richmond schools will fail, assert the 26, although they fail to explain why this same division is working fine in most other school districts in the Commonwealth. As stated in the paper, “This mishmash of accountability violates every tenet of managerial structural efficiency and accountability—and is doomed to failure.”

Of course, I am not a business mogul. I am a mere maven. But, I’m not sure what the mishmash problem is. Our School Board gets funds from federal, state and city sources. It uses this money to operate our public schools. If the board does a bad job managing the money, we, the citizens of Richmond, will hold them accountable at the next election.

Perhaps, the 26 really object to the Constitution of Virginia, which requires that school systems be run by school boards rather than by the legislative authority in each district. The “managerial structural efficiency” they desire would be best served by eliminating school boards entirely and simply having the schools run by city councils or county boards of supervisors. After all, we don’t have police department run by police boards, fire departments run by fire boards, or sanitation departments run by garbage boards. In requiring school boards, our constitution recognizes that education is the most important service provided by government and that a separate body, charged only with running the schools, is necessary. It’s sloppy, perhaps even a mishmash, but that’s the way it works throughout the Commonwealth and the country.

In their epistle, the Richmond 26 set forth ten goals for Richmond Public Schools, which, presumably, an appointed school board will be able to achieve. According to the TD, the goals are

1- a graduation rate of 77 percent by 2012;
2- a rate of 50 percent of entering ninth graders attending two or four year colleges four years from now;
3- increasing average SAT scores, and increasing participation to 60 percent by 2012;
4- improving SOL scores in reading and math, especially in middle school;
5- make Adequate Yearly Progress this year, under the No Child Left Behind law;
6- cut truancy in half by next year;
7- reduce by half the number of weapons-related incidents by 2010;
8- put 50 percent of technology resources into classrooms by 2010;
9- initiate the facilities plan portion of the mayor’s City of the Future plan; and
10- reduce noninstructional per-pupil spending by 2012.

Although these suggested goals are helpful, they don’t tell us how to get closer to fixing our school problems. Not all of them, as written, contain adequate measures of compliance. Further, the 26 have no suggestions on how these goals might be met.

As you know, this maven set forth a five step plan for fixing our schools two weeks ago. And, just this week, Paul Goldman, the man that gave us Doug Wilder, set forth a ten step proposal for improving our schools. See his blog on Channel 12’s Campaign 2008 website.
http://www.decisionvirginia.com/component/option,com_myblog/show,School-Board-Improvements-10-Point-Action-Plan.html/Itemid,130/

Hopefully, more citizens will come forward with their suggestions for fixing our schools. Again, my thanks to the Richmond 26 for bringing the issue of Richmond Public Schools to public debate.

For She’s a Jolly Good County

Years, perhaps decades, ago, while I was sojourning in northern Virginia, the District of Columbia had a sex problem. Well, it wasn’t exactly a sex problem; it really was a problem with too many women selling sex a few short blocks from the White House. (I am not implying that being close to the White House created a good market for these women. I assume it was merely a coincidence.) Anyhow, the newspapers wrote a story about it and the Chief of Police decided that these working women could no longer be tolerated along 14th Street. So, on one glorious night, hundreds of police officers took time off from protecting the city from serious crime and dedicated their efforts to freeing the city from vice. Countless women of the night were arrested and carted off. The next day the police put all the offending women in trucks, drove them across the 14th Street Bridge and released them in Arlington. And for one brief shining moment the District of Columbia had no prostitution problem.

This story popped into my head this morning while I was reading the news on page one of the Times-Dispatch. It wasn’t the story about LandAmerica cutting eleven hundred jobs, which is pretty bad news. It wasn’t the story about speed bumps and traffic circles, which isn’t news at all. It was the headline that read “Hanover boasts lowest poverty rate for its size.” The story was contained in the first paragraph, one sentence long: “New census figures released yesterday listed Hanover County with the lowest poverty rate in the nation among counties of its population.”

At first I was giddy with joy. Our neighbor, only a few miles away, had apparently fixed its poverty problem. This was great news indeed, especially after last week’s depressing cover story in Style Weekly, which suggested that Richmond Public Schools can never succeed because of the city’s high concentration of poverty. Hey, if Hanover County has such a low poverty rate they must be doing something that we can copy in Richmond. So what is it they are doing?

I read the article again. There wasn’t any clear explanation for how Hanover had achieved this great feat. The director of the county’s Department of Social Services was surprised by the low poverty rate. She had expected it to be twice as high. But she did make it clear that this low poverty rate didn’t mean that her job was unneeded. There are “many other residents who can’t make their mortgage, car, and day-care payments without [our] assistance.”

Hey, that’s it! The director of Social Services has been making so many assistance payments to residents of Hanover County that they no longer qualify as poor. Now they are merely strapped for cash. Hanover’s solution is easy. Give money to poor people and they will no longer be poor. Why hadn’t we in Richmond thought of it? How simple! We can eliminate our poverty problem by simply giving out more money.

But, wait! The next paragraph suggests that maybe Hanover didn’t do the obvious. It says that development in Hanover County has concentrated on single-family housing, which attracts married families. As everybody knows poverty is lowest among married families and highest among households headed by single women. (And you thought that the marriage amendment was stupid!) The article quoted a demographer (if you know your classical languages, you may understand what such a person does) as suggesting that Hanover had a lower rate of poverty because it was “family concentrated.”

So now things are making more sense. Hanover has less poverty because it has become unfriendly to the poor. It simply provides them with no affordable housing. They can’t live in Hanover if there is no place for them to live.

But would Hanover County be so Machiavellian? Would it deliberately control its zoning and development processes to exclude affordable housing for the less-affluent? Would government officials act this way in the 21st Century?

Wait! Isn’t this the same Hanover County that has Robert Setliff as the Chair of its county Board of Supervisors? Isn’t Setliff the person who was quoted in last week’s Style as saying that the problems of Richmond’s public schools is “none of [Hanover County’s] business,” and sees no value in regional cooperation? Is it so far-fetched that the leaders of such a county would avoid the problems that come with poverty by making sure that poor people stay in Richmond where they belong? Are they any different than the D.C. police who dealt with prostitution by trying to make it Arlington’s problem?

So, the next time you’re driving north and see a “Welcome to Hanover County” sign be sure to read the fine print that says “unless you’re poor.” Then read the engraving on Hanover’s statue of liberty:

Send us your wealthy and your white,
Your middle class we urge from you to flee,
Your wretched refuse we don’t want,
Keep your homeless and your weak,
Across the Chickahominy they can’t cross.

Choosing the Next Prez: Part II

I was really hoping that this process of picking the best candidate in each party was going to be a dialogue or a trialogue or even a multilogue. However, none of you responded to my first “Choosing the Next Prez” post. So I guess this is going to be a lecture.

Of course, according to the media, both broadcast and print, this is a meaningless exercise. The media have already decided, based almost entirely on how much campaign money has been raised, that only three Democratic candidates—Senators Clinton and Obama, and former Senator Edwards—have any chance of winning their party’s nomination. Among Republicans, the media have decided that only two—former New York City mayor Guiliani and former Massachusetts governor Romney—can win the nomination. (Of course, the media may add an additional Republican if a certain actor who is a former Senator decides to run).

Despite the decision by the media, and despite the fact that I, along with millions of other voters, will never have any say in who our party nominates for president, I will go forward with this analysis.

You and I are hiring the next President of the United States. We have to review the resumes of all the prospective candidates to see who is most qualified. But before we do that we have to consider the job description for the president.

The president is the leader of our country. S/he is also the leader of the Free World (whatever that means). S/he is the Commander in Chief of the military of the United States. Further, the president is the chief executive officer of the Executive Branch of our government. S/he is also our country’s top diplomat. The president also appoints (with the consent of the Senate) all federal judges and the top leadership of all of the departments and agencies of the Executive Branch.

So what kind of experience should we look for in our next president? In what kind of a job would a person demonstrate the kind of talents he or she will need to do the job? The resumes of the candidates show they have filled such jobs as United States Senator, United States Representative, state governor, city mayor, federal cabinet secretary, attorney, college professor, actor, state legislator, state cabinet secretary, minister, business executive, author and military officer. Does any of this experience demonstrate that a particular candidate has the skills and talent to be President of the United States?

The three leading candidates among Democrats are incumbent or former United States Senators. Does being a senator (or representative or state legislator) prepare someone to be president? As we have described the job, almost all of the president’s functions are executive, managerial or diplomatic. Yet, the job of a legislator requires no executive or managerial skills. A legislator drafts legislation, builds coalitions to get that legislation enacted, sits on committees and debates either in committee or on the floor of the legislature. Although serving several years in the Senate or House of Representatives may allow a legislator to develop a great deal of expertise in one or more areas of public policy, it provides that legislator with no executive or managerial experience. Even committee chairs develop only a minimum of leadership skills.

But haven’t senators always been the leading candidates for president. Actually, since the Constitution was amended to provide for popular election of senators, rather than their appointment by state legislatures, only two United States Senators have been elected president. The first, Warren Harding, elected in 1920, will never be considered in the top 50% of presidential quality. He accomplished very little as president and his administration is mostly known for corruption. The second was John Kennedy, elected in 1960. Although Kennedy was a great orator and able to inspire great numbers of Americans, an assassin’s bullet prevents us from judging how good a president he may have been. Based on his less than three years in office, I can say that he was not effective in getting most of his legislative program enacted. He approved the Bay of Pigs invasion then decided to withdraw support when things started going badly. He started the escalation of American presence in Viet Nam. He successfully avoided nuclear war with the Soviet Union during the Cuban Missile Crisis. I loved John F. Kennedy; he triggered my life-long fascination with politics. However, I don’t think that being a United States Senator adequately prepared him for being president.

Since Kennedy’s election in 1960, four United States Senators—Goldwater, McGovern, Dole and Kerry—have run for president. All of them have lost. If we look at the men elected for the first time as president since 1960, four have been incumbent or former state governors and two have been incumbent or former Vice Presidents. It seems clear to me that the American electorate favors candidates with executive experience.

So, if we look at all those resumes, which candidates have had executive or managerial experience?

Dennis Kucinich, Democrat………… Mayor, Cleveland, Ohio, 1977-79

Bill Richardson, Democrat……………Governor, New Mexico, 2003-present
Secretary, U.S. Department of Energy, 1998-2001

Rudy Giuliani, Republican…………….Mayor, City of New York, 1994-2001

Mike Huckabee, Republican………..Business executive, 1983-1996

Mitt Romney, Republican…………….Governor, Massachusetts, 2003-2007
Business executive, 1978-84

Sam Brownback……………………………Secretary, Kansas Dept. of Agr., 1986-93

None of the following candidates have listed any executive experience:

Joe Biden, Democrat
Hillary Rodham Clinton, Democrat
Chris Dodd, Democrat
John Edwards, Democrat
Mike Gravel, Democrat
Barack Obama, Democrat
Duncan Hunter, Republican
John McCain, Republican
Ron Paul, Republican
Tom Tancredo, Republican

If I were the H.R. director for any corporation looking for a Chief Executive Officer, I would have to reject the applications of Democrats Biden, Clinton, Dodd, Edwards, Gravel and Obama, and Republicans Hunter, McCain, Paul and Tancredo (and the actor if he gets into the race). None of them have the executive experience we are looking for.

(Of course, experience isn’t everything. One man, who was a lawyer and whose only public service was a term in the Illinois legislature and a term in the House of Representatives, was elected our sixteenth president. He did a pretty decent job I am told).

(Part III to follow soon).

Richmond’s Invisibles

I am writing this from Emerald Isle, N.C. The weather is beautiful and the ocean is warm. We left Richmond this morning after sleeping at the Holiday Inn on North Boulevard. We had to stay there because our power was still out from Thursday night’s storms. Some day I will find out how it is that our house and the one directly across the alley are the only ones that lose power when the lightening strikes and the strong winds blow. So while most of my neighbors were enjoying a normal Thursday night and Friday, we had to throw out the spoiling food in our refrigerator and find a cool spot to spend Friday night.

Before we checked out of the hotel this morning, I had to drive back home to pick up a few things we had forgotten to pack for our beach trip. As I drove south on Boulevard there were scores of people, mostly women, running. As I passed the Greyhound depot, I noticed a person sleeping on the ground, his head leaning against a light pole. As I started up the bridge over the railroad tracks, there was another person, of undeterminable gender, also sleeping on the sidewalk. I was struck by the contrast between these two homeless people and the many runners going both north and south on Boulevard.

When I returned from my brief trip to south of the James, there were even more people running along Boulevard. I noticed, that as they neared the spots where the homeless people were located, they continued their run as if the two were not even there. I got the feeling that to the runners these two human beings were merely part of the scenery, not people.

It is sad that two of our fellow citizens have reached such a low point in their lives that they have to live out on the street. It is shameful that we can go on with our lives all around them without even noticing that they exist.

Fix Our Schools, Now

The 26 business leaders who wrote to the Mayor and City Council last week asserted that the condition of Richmond Public Schools is “an emergency situation that must be dealt with immediately and with bold action.” The Richmond 26 looked at three statistics in reaching their conclusion. They did not mention several things that provide a more accurate portrayal of the condition of RPS. As I indicated in a previous post, School Board Chair George Braxton has stated this with respect to this year’s RPS graduating class:

“Class of 2007 Statistics (As of June 30, 2007)
Continuing Education Plans
Four Year College - 48.7%
Two Year College - 24.5%
Military - 1.3%
Work Force - 19.6%
Apprenticeship - 1.8%
Voc./Technical Training - 3.8%
TOTAL 99.7%

Students in the Class of 2007 have been accepted into 127 colleges & universities. The states represented in the acceptances are Alabama, New York, Massachusetts, North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida, Maryland, Pennsylvania, California, Georgia, Indiana, Tennessee, Texas, Ohio, Washington, D.C. and of course, Virginia. To date over 860 acceptances have been recorded.”

Moreover, Mr. Braxton’s State of the Schools address this past winter indicated that in the past five years RPS has gone from five accredited schools to forty five, an increase of 800%. Further, the number of schools that meet the federal “Annual Yearly Progress” requirements has gone from twelve to forty, an increase of over 300%.

The condition of Richmond Public Schools is, in my opinion, closer to Superintendent Jewell-Sherman’s “Moving from good to great,” than the “emergency” the Richmond 26 have alluded to. However, the City of Richmond needs a world-class school system, not a good one. And we need it now. Planning for improvements to arrive over the next five to ten years will have no benefit on the thousands of children entering or returning to school next month. Therefore, we need to deal with Richmond Public Schools as if there were an emergency.

In my last post, I explained why I didn’t think that switching from an elected to an appointed school board is the solution to Richmond Public School’s problems. Nor do I think that the Superintendent’s so-called 2015 plan will be sufficient or soon enough to be the answer. We need to take action now.

We need the following:

1- Attitude: Everybody in the City, starting with the mayor, members of the City Council, members of the School Board, the Superintendent of Schools, the Richmond Public Schools administration, school principals, teachers, custodians, cafeteria workers, and citizens must deal with the schools as if each action or decision they make affects the future of their own children or grandchildren. I don’t know how many members of the City Council, School Board or RPS administrators at headquarters or in the schools have children or grandchildren in the schools. However, if we are going to make the changes we need to make, everybody must abandon their personal agendas and concentrate only on what is best for our (not somebody else’s) children.

2- Demand Excellence: The Virginia 26 suggests that some of our children “begin their education destined to fail.” Other people, including members of the School Board, have stated that many children in RPS cannot handle a more rigorous curriculum. I say that we must abandon this attitude. We must set standards for all our students that push them to achieve the maximum of which they are capable. We must not be satisfied with SOL accreditation or passing federal yearly progress requirements. These are only based on students “passing.” We must demand, not that our students pass, but that they excel. At the beginning of every school year we must expect that every student in our school system will achieve A’s, not just C’s.

We must engage in best-practices studies to see what is working in other school systems. We must adopt those educational theories that have produced outstanding student achievement in other school systems.

3- Teachers: We must hold all teachers accountable for their students’ achievements. We must have a performance appraisal system that measures how effectively our teachers teach. We must do a regular evaluation of each teacher’s students to see how many are truly excelling. We must not accept as an explanation that “I used the same lessons last year and it worked with those students.” Although ultimately it is the student that learns, we must expect our teachers to prepare lessons that will enable each of their students to perform at their maximum capacity.

We must retrain all our teachers in new teaching methods. There have been many improvements in teaching methodology in recent years and we must make these developments available to all our teachers. We should not settle merely for teachers to be recertified periodically. We must insist that they constantly improve. Since many of our students are at risk because of their background, we must make sure that all our teachers know how to help these children.

4- Budgeting: I was disappointed this year that the School Board did not prepare a budget from scratch. Instead it took last year’s budget and tweaked it a bit. As taxpayers, who already pay much more in real estate taxes than our neighbors in the counties, we must demand that all unnecessary spending be removed from Richmond Public School’s budget. To do this I suggest that we adopt some form of zero-based budgeting. Under this concept, each office or program in Richmond Public Schools would have to come forward periodically and justify its continued existence. At least once every two years each department head must prepare budget justifications explaining in detail how the funds it received last year were spent and how this benefited the students in our schools. At the same time they would have to justify continued funding for that program in the next budget year. Based on these justifications, we would expect the School Board to allocate funding in the budget only to those departments or programs that are working. We would also expect the School Board to reduce staffing in those areas which currently are overstaffed.

5- Accountability: We are entrusting many people with the safety and future of our children. We must hold these people strictly accountable for their performance. If members of the City Council are irresponsible in their oversight and funding of the schools, we as citizens should vote them out at the next election. If members of the School Board are not demanding excellence from students, teachers and administrators, or if they are not adequately controlling the school budget, we citizens should vote them out at the next election. If the Superintendent of Schools is not effectively and rapidly steering Richmond Public Schools toward greatness, we should insist that the School Board replace her. If teachers are not teaching their students, we should demand that their performance improve or that they be replaced. Every person who has authority to spend school funds must be held strictly accountable for the money they spend.

The children of Richmond deserve a world-class education. We taxpayers deserve great schools for the money we pay. We and our children can settle for no less. We must demand that our elected and appointed public servants fix Richmond Public Schools now!

Appointed School Board: Should We Go Back?

The highest nabobs of the Richmond area’s high nabobs have written to the mayor and council suggesting that we go back to an appointed school board. They call the state of Richmond Public Schools an “emergency” and say that only by eliminating our elected school board can the schools be saved. Richmond Times-Dispatch reporter Michael Martz described the letter from our best and brightest as having landed at City Hall “like a bomb.” As I might have expected, His Excellency hailed the letter (might he have been an unrevealed co-author?) Eliminating our elected school board would eliminate all those pesky members who have the audacity to think for themselves. City Council Prez Bill Pantele thought it was a good idea to revisit the issue of elected school boards. School Board Chair George Braxton said that the people must decide.

The letter, signed by 26 of the Richmond Metro Area business leaders, asserts that everything in the City of Richmond is great, with the exception of the public schools. It is the state of our public schools that is keeping Richmond from becoming a world-class place to work and live. The letter repeats the mayor’s assertion that Richmond’s schools are the most expensive and least effective of any in the Commonwealth. The Richmond 26 go on to list the problems of Richmond Public Schools: Richmond spends more per student than do other school districts and a smaller percentage of it goes to instruction; Richmond has the lowest graduation rate of any local school district except Petersburg; Richmond schools have a higher number of “serious incidences” of student behavior than the other jurisdictions.

So far, I have no problem with the letter. I too believe that Richmond can never be a great city unless it has a great school system. Although RPS has made significant progress in recent years, we still do not have the quality of schools that we need. Richmond Public Schools must be so good that residents of the surrounding counties move into the City to get a better education for their children.

Where I have problems with the Richmond 26 is their conclusion that all of the problems of Richmond Public Schools are the fault of the city having an elected school board. Our 26 elite conclude that the wonderful teachers of this city “will not succeed under the management and administration of the current Richmond School Board.” Richmond’s best and brightest provide no support for this assertion. They apparently think it self-evident that the elected school board is the cause of all of RPS’s problems.

In the Commonwealth, our local schools are run by school boards. Further, in every county and city in Virginia it is the city council or board of supervisors, not the school board, that has taxing authority. So, in every jurisdiction in Virginia there is a separation of the taxing authority from the authority to supervise the schools. In every jurisdiction, not only in Richmond, school boards propose budgets but have no control over raising revenue. In every jurisdiction, not only in Richmond, the local legislative body has authority to levy taxes for schools but has no direct control over operation of the schools.

In 1992 the General Assembly granted to the voters in Commonwealth school districts the right to opt for elected, rather than appointed, school boards. The citizens of the City of Richmond chose to elect their school board members. So did the citizens of most other jurisdictions in Virginia, including the seven school districts that the Richmond 26 has chosen to compare with Richmond. According to the letter these other jurisdictions have successful school systems. So, apparently, in other school districts the elected school board has worked fine. However, our 26 leaders have assigned the sole responsibility for the condition of Richmond Public Schools to the elected school board.

So, is it the school board that creates the three problems set forth in the letter? It is true that Richmond Public Schools spends more per student than other jurisdictions. I assume that it is also true that RPS spends a smaller percentage of its budget on instruction than do other jurisdictions. But, is this the fault of the elected school board? No. RPS has these budgetary realities because it has a much higher percentage of at-risk students than do other school districts in Virginia. Many Richmond students have special needs that require RPS to provide services, not directly related to instruction, that many other school jurisdictions do not have to provide. Any school board, whether elected or appointed, will have to budget for these services. Further, we need keep in mind that many of these services are mandated by the federal government and are paid for with federal funding.

If the graduation rate is defined as the percentage of students entering the ninth grade that graduate from high school four years later, Richmond has a lower graduation rate than do the other jurisdictions. Is this caused by our elected school board? No. School Board Chair Braxton has indicated that there are many reasons why Richmond students do not graduate in four years. Some must drop out to find jobs to help support their families; some opt to get a GED rather than continue in school; some take longer than four years to graduate; some are incarcerated during their high school years; some have to drop out or delay their graduation because they are pregnant. All of these causes for a student’s inability to graduate in four years are beyond the control of any school board.

What about violence in schools? Before comparing jurisdictions, we must be sure that each jurisdiction has the same definition of “serious incidents.” We also need to know whether each jurisdiction places the same emphasis on reporting these incidents. I can envision some schools where faculty and staff are not encouraged to report many of these incidents because it makes the school look bad. But even if the statistics from the various jurisdictions are comparable, can we assign the responsibility for school violence on the school board? Our children spend a greater proportion of their lives out of school than they do in school. Many come from economically disadvantaged backgrounds and live in neighborhoods where an aggressive attitude is necessary for survival. As the letter recognizes, we must provide social services and public health services, in addition to a quality education to “significantly improve the lives of students who now begin their education destined to failure.”

Of course there is room for improvement, but the Richmond 26 have given no reason that an appointed school board is better equipped than our elected one to make the needed changes. By concentrating on eliminating our elected school board and replacing it with a school board of elites chosen by elites, the business leaders ignore a major cause for what they see as an “emergency” in Richmond Public Schools. From the time that Richmond elected its new mayor, the School Board has had to devote far too much of its time and energy defending itself from a hostile City Hall. It is very hard to do much to fix the problems with the schools if you constantly have to deal with withheld money, lawsuits, threats of eviction from city offices, and other hardships that the school board has had to deal with. Perhaps it is our elected mayor that should bear some of the responsibility for our schools not improving quickly enough.

In Richmond, we have the right to vote for President of the United States; we can vote for United States Senator and Representative; we elect the Governor of the Commonwealth; we vote for Virginia Senator and Delegate; we elect the members of our City Council; and, only three years ago we decided that we wanted to have an elected mayor. Now, the Richmond 26 wants to take away from us the right to elect the members of our school board. And, they want to do it not by the method set forth in law (petition and voting by Richmond residents) but by a request to the General Assembly that it amend Richmond’s charter. For some reason, these business leaders don’t think that we residents of Richmond are smart enough to elect school board representatives. They don’t even think we are smart enough to decide whether we should keep our elected school board. They just want to take that right away from us by legislative fiat. Residents of Richmond must reject their proposal.

I welcome the interest in Richmond Public Schools demonstrated by these 26 leaders. Considering that many of them have chosen not to live in the City of Richmond, are therefore not Richmond taxpayers, and probably don’t have any children or grandchildren attending Richmond Public Schools, or planning to attend in the future, I think they should be commended for their offer of assistance to the mayor and city council in fixing our schools. They say they are “eager and willing” to work in “a positive, productive, and candid partnership” with school leadership to “bring the Richmond Public Schools and the City of Richmond to the world-class level of which it is capable.” I hope that they and the organizations that they lead will enter into working partnerships with Richmond Public Schools. We residents are entitled to the best schools in the country.