Greater Richmond: First Create It, Then Save It

You may not have noticed it, but at the end of November, David Ress of the TD wrote an article entitled “Business leaders eager for input from public.” In the article Mr. Ress indicated that the very same business leaders who paid Dr. James A. Crupi to write his report, “Putting the Future Together,” have decided to implement Dr. Crupi’s recommendation that the business community take the lead in developing a plan for rescuing “Greater Richmond.” I guess this makes sense. If you’re going to lay out big bucks to hire a consultant to recommend that you become “Greater Richmond’s” superhero, you better be ready to don the mask and cape.

At first I was a bit upset. Where did these business leaders get the gall to appoint themselves our saviors? Is there some provision in the Constitution or laws of the Commonwealth of Virginia that says that when you’re not happy with the way things are going you can appoint yourself to fix them? Do we not have in the Commonwealth a General Assembly and a Governor that we elected to make and implement policy? Do we not have in the local jurisdictions boards of supervisors or city councils, not to mention Uncle Doug, that we elected to do exactly what the business community has appointed itself to do? What ever happened to the republic we fought so hard for only 230 or so years ago?

But then I started thinking. Who was I to complain about the business community? Aren’t I, as a maven, self appointed? Oh yes, I studied long and hard and struggled through six decades of life to qualify to be a maven. But I have to admit that nobody elected to me to this position. So, if I can self appoint myself maven, I have to concede that our business leaders can self appoint themselves regional saviors.

Which brings me, finally, to the point of this posting. Is there such a thing as “Greater Richmond?” I have studied my map of the Commonwealth long and hard and cannot find anything called “Greater Richmond.” I see the City of Richmond. I see various counties surrounding the city. But there is no “Greater Richmond.”

How can this be? If there is no “Greater Richmond,” how can there be such a thing as the Greater Richmond Chamber of Commerce? I went to the chamber’s website to find out about this “Greater Richmond.” On the page “About Us,” under “The Facts,” it says that the chamber is,

“Located in Richmond, Virginia and serving the City of Richmond, and the counties of Chesterfield, Hanover and Henrico."

I guess that means that “Greater Richmond” means the city plus Chesterfield, Henrico and Hanover counties. That makes sense to me. The city and the counties do make a nice little compact area, except for Hanover, which is on the wrong side of the Chickahominy. But… in Dr. Crupi’s report he talks as if “Greater Richmond” also included Charles City, Goochland, New Kent, and Powhatan counties. He also sometimes uses the term “Metro Richmond.” Does Metro mean the same thing as Greater?

But, you may say, this is all semantics. I agree. The definition of “Greater” or “Metro” Richmond is not the major issue. In his report, Dr. Crupi sets out as one of the reasons there is little regional cooperation in the Richmond area, “[t]he inability or unwillingness of metro leaders or citizens to think of themselves as a region.” I think that what Dr. Crupi is saying is that there is no feeling of community in the area.

The Merriam-Webster online dictionary has the following definitions for “community:”
1- a unified body of individuals;
2- the people with common interests living in an area;
3- an interacting of various kinds of individuals in a common location; or
4- a group of people with a common characteristic or interest living together within a larger society.
These definitions use word like unified or common or interacting or together. Unfortunately, none of these words currently apply to the people living in Greater or Metro Richmond.

Rather than being a single community, Greater Richmond is an amalgam of hundreds of small local communities. Aside from those places with historic names like Midlothian, Short Pump, Glen Allen, Bon Air, Mechanicsville, Highland Springs or Varina, there are all those named neighborhoods in Richmond City and the tons of developments built in the suburbs over the years. The unfortunate fact is that the vast majority of the people living in the counties surrounding Richmond do not consider themselves connected to the residents of the city.

Take a ride out Broad Street. Take a ride out Hull Street Road west of route 288. Take a ride out the many other suburban boulevards. What you see is mile after mile of commercial development. Our suburbs have been developed in a way that the residents have all their needs satisfied right near their homes. Need food, go to the local strip mall. Need gasoline, go to the local strip mall. Need medicine, go to the local strip mall. In addition, look at all the jobs that are located out on those suburban boulevards. The fact is that because of the way the suburbs have developed a majority of the people living there have no need to ever enter the City of Richmond. There is no feeling of unity or interdependence or togetherness or connectedness between the residents of the suburbs and the residents of the city.

(An aside: My daughter is a high school teacher in Henrico County. She told me that in one of her classes more that half the students stated they had NEVER been in the City of Richmond.)

Before our business leaders can became saviors of Greater Richmond, they need to create a community. They need to find a way for residents of the city to care about the problems of people living in the suburbs. They need to find a way for residents of the counties to care about the problems of people in the city. On page 28 of his report, Dr. Crupi listed the dismal statistics of poor people living in the city: 19% of the residents of the city live in poverty; 25% of the city’s children live in households with annual incomes of $20,650 or less; 74% of the students in Richmond Public Schools receive subsidized lunches; etc. The business leaders have to get the residents of the counties to care about the poverty in the city. Our business leaders need to find a way to deal with the attitude shown in a letter to the TD back in October:

“Does anyone really believe that suburban citizens will experience any improvement in their lives if such a [regional] government is adopted? Do the surrounding county residents want to see their current quality of life decline to the point that mediocrity and complacency are benchmarks? Should the county citizens be penalized for Richmond's failures?”

Or in this response to TD reporter Michael Paul Williams’ article last week about the inferior quality of school buildings in the city as compared with the counties:

"If the students and teachers can't take care of what they have, what makes it mandatory to give them more. The majority of suburban students, teachers and parents take pride and care in their educations and schools ... Problem is that the people that stay in Richmond don't care about the schools their kids go to."

I am sure there are equally negative attitudes held by city residents toward our suburban cousins.

So, our business saviors, the first thing you must do is convince us all that we live in a community all the time, not just when we suffer from a hurricane or a drying up of our beloved James. You must show us that what happens to one of us happens to all of us. You must convince us that we will sink or swim together.

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.”