Charter Schools, New Buildings And Other Panaceas (Part II)

Well Mayor Jones proposed it, the School Board accepted it, the City Council approved it and the Richmond Times Dispatch gave it its blessing. The “it” I am referring to is the plan to spend $175 million of our money to build a new high school, a new middle school, and two new elementary schools in the City of Richmond. The mayor proposed the construction plan at a meeting with Richmond’s School Board on October 20. On November 16, the board voted to substitute the mayor’s plan for the construction plan it had approved last year. And, on November 23, the City Council went along and approved the new plan. All of this despite the fact that the new construction plan will cost us $25 million more than last year’s plan. The mayor said he will find the extra money. Hey, it’s only a 20% increase.

Members of the School Board and the City Council as well as the mayor are ecstatic about the new building construction. They all seem to think that building new schools will fix what ails Richmond Public Schools. And our beloved RTD agrees. In their editorial dated November 13 the RTD editors state:

Physically attractive plants can help to lure families who live in the city but whose children attend schools outside the local public system. The Jones plan offers Richmond an opportunity to rise to the occasion not only academically but artistically. 1

Gimme a break, RTD. Do you really think that parents are opting out of Richmond Public Schools because of the absence of physically attractive plants? You need to give Richmond parents more credit than that. The fact is that Richmond parents are opting out of RPS because they do not believe that their children can get an adequate education in city schools. As they should be, parents are more concerned with what goes on inside the schools than with what they look like. If RPS were educating Richmond’s children at the level they deserve, if Richmond’s students were performing at a high level rather than just passing (that’s what accreditation means, dear reader, just passing), if the bulk of our students were graduating from high school, if our graduates were all being accepted to the country’s best colleges or all getting the best jobs, I assure you that Richmond parents would not care if it was all happening in old schools.

Reader, I received a wonderful public school education in New York City. All the school buildings I attended were 20 or 30 or more years old and it didn’t affect the quality of my learning. And you know, my elementary and junior high schools, with renovations and upgrades, are still operating today when they are obviously much older. Last year, when I was vacationing in Edinburgh, Scotland, I saw students attending schools that were considerably older than any school in Richmond and they seemed to be doing quite well.

Look, I have nothing against new school facilities. If we can afford them, we should build them. But we must not think for one second that new schools will solve RPS’s problems. Sure, our new schools will make us feel better when we see our richer neighbors in the counties building new schools. But they will not give our children the superior education that we owe them. That will take a lot of fixing of what goes on inside our schools and what goes on in RPS administration.

Mr. Mayor, members of the City Council, members of the School Board, it is time to seriously tackle our public school problem. We have to stop the constant abandonment of our city by parents who believe that there children can receive a quality education only in Chesterfield, Hanover or Henrico counties. And we need to do that on a school-by-school basis. First we have to make sure that each of our public schools is, in fact, providing at least as good an education as the schools in the counties. Then we need to go into our communities and sell parents on their local neighborhood school as the best choice for educating their children. And, we need to do it now.

Richmond’s Edifice Complex

I am a product of a public elementary, junior high and high school education. My elementary school, called by the picturesque name Public School 219, had a building that was about thirty years old. It was not air conditioned and we attended school through the last week in June. I went on to Arthur S. Somers Junior High School. Its building was also about thirty years old and was not air conditioned. I then attended Stuyvesant High School. The building was more than fifty years old and ditto on air conditioning. In those three school buildings, none of them new, I received a first-rate education that prepared me for college and then law school.

Last week, I was in Edinburgh, Scotland. On the street known as the Royal Mile was located Milton House Public School. I saw a class of students at recess enjoying the rather moderate playground. They looked none the worse for attending school in a building that is at least one-hundred years old. I assume they probably don’t need much air conditioning in Edinburgh.

Here in Richmond, things are different. We have no appreciation for old school buildings. In fact, we have a mayor who withheld funding from Richmond Public Schools because the school board was not closing our older schools fast enough. In Edinburgh, a mayor who proposed closing old school buildings would probably be run out of town. In River City we have a lot of other people who think that tearing down old schools and replacing them with new ones will automatically improve the education that our children receive. Same children, same principals, same teachers, same budget, same curricula, but if we build new school buildings the quality of the public education that we give our children will miraculously jump to world class. Or, so the belief goes.

Monday I was in Carver Elementary School. It was constructed and expanded over many years and in walking through the building it is fairly easy to see the parts of the school that were built in different years. But, I don’t see any indication that the children who are located in the newest section of the school are receiving any better educations than those who attend classes in the older parts. Today, I was in my neighborhood school, Westover Hills Elementary School. There’s a plaque in the lobby that indicates that the school was built in the mid 1950s, about the same time as my house. (I find the plaque particularly fascinating because it indicates that future Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell was chairman of the Richmond School Board when the school was built.) Although Westover Hills also appears to have been built in sections at different times, there is no apparent difference in the quality of the education received by children in newer or older classrooms. I’ve been in Armstrong High School (newer) and Huguenot High School (older.) Perhaps Armstrong looks a bit better than Huguenot, but there is no evidence that Armstrong students are better educated than Huguenot students.

I must admit that I haven’t been in most of Richmond’s school buildings. There may be schools in the city that are old and poorly-maintained and that may detract from the ability of students to learn. Those school buildings need to be either repaired or replaced.

But, to close and replace school buildings merely because they are old seems a particularly American thing. In this country we don’t build anything to last. Think of our beloved City Hall right here in River City. A few months back we read all those reports of how it was falling apart and we would have to pay big bucks to repair it. The attitude of the pols and of our great metropolitan daily was “what do you expect, it’s forty years old.” Forty years old? Do we build things so poorly in Richmond that they are falling apart after only forty years?

But Maven, in Chesterfield, Hanover and Henrico, they’re constantly building new schools. Don’t our children deserve new schools too?

Trusted reader, Chesterfield, Hanover and Henrico counties are experiencing rapid increases in their school populations. They need new schools just to serve the many new children enrolling in their schools each year. In Richmond, our school population is shrinking. We don’t need additional schools to house new enrollment. Besides, you may not have noticed it, but Chesterfield, Hanover and Henrico counties have broader tax bases to pay for these new schools than we do in the city.

Maven, the new schools will be built using City of the Future money. So, why should we object to building as many new schools as we can?

Oh, gullible reader. You’ve been misled into believing that somehow City of the Future money is free. It may serve the mayor and other pols to brag about all the recreation improvements and new schools that City of the Future has or will give us. But as Robert Heinlein put it, TANSTAAFL (There Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free Lunch). The financial institutions which are providing funding for City of the Future projects are not making gifts to the city. They fully expect that their loans to the City of Richmond will be repaid with interest. So what may appear to be free school buildings or playgrounds or tennis courts are improvements that you and I, or whoever lives in Richmond in the future, will have to pay for.

Are you saying that you oppose new school buildings?

No, not at all. What I’m saying is that what goes on inside our school buildings is far more important than the buildings themselves. Our priority must be to spend money on those things that improve the quality of the education that our children receive. If there are school buildings that are so dilapidated that our children cannot possibly learn in them, we must repair those buildings or, if they are beyond repair, replace them. But we must not allow ourselves to believe that new school buildings will fix everything that ails RPS. We also need to understand that new buildings will not be free.

Maven, do children in Edinburgh really attend such an old school?

Oh, yes, dear reader. Take a look.

One more thing. I checked on the web and my elementary school, now named the Kennedy-King School, and my junior high school, now an intermediate school, are still educating children in those same buildings, now more than seventy years old. Stuyvesant High School, after educating students in the same building for nearly ninety years, has moved to a new facility.

So, Richmond, let’s show our older school buildings a little respect. And, let’s get our priorities straight. Let’s make sure that we pay our principals and teachers enough to make sure that we keep and attract the most talented people out there. Let’s make sure that our children have the technology to learn to live in the twenty-first century. Let’s make sure that all our children start school with the skills they need to succeed. Let’s all join together to make sure that Richmond Public Schools works for every child living in our city.

Best Use For Old Schools

I read with interest Olympia Meola’s lead story in the TD today, “Old School Buildings Go Unused.” I then turned to the Metro section and read Michael Paul Williams column on the fate of old school buildings. Well, it’s the dark time of the year and this maven’s mind is in hibernation mode. But it doesn’t take the fully functioning mind of a maven to figure out what to do with buildings that are no longer needed as schools.

Before I moved to River City, I lived in the far north of the Commonwealth. I even crossed the border on a regular basis into the Columbia District. I often saw old school buildings being used by school systems for other purposes. In the District, old buildings house school system administrative offices. I’ve seen the same in Fairfax County.

Now, I know that the Columbia District was the capital of Mr. Lincoln’s evil Union. I also know that Fairfax County was occupied by union troops during most of the War of Northern Aggression. So it is proper to suspect that those parts might be tinged by Yankee thinking. However, even the Yankees might have some ideas worth considering in the Old Dominion.

If my Swiss-Cheese brain serves me, I remember a time, not too long ago, when our fair city’s chief executive officer sent his minions on a guerrilla raid to cleanse City Hall of the administrative offices of Richmond Public Schools. His Excellency indicated that he had better uses for his precious City Hall than administering schools for our children. Then there was this nasty court battle and Mr. Wilder was told he had to let the schoolies stay. Now, as I said, I’m not thinking too well now, but wouldn’t it satisfy the needs of Mayor Doug and RPS to use unneeded school buildings to house the administrative offices of RPS?

Just this morning, I drove past the building that formerly housed Patrick Henry School and was used last year as shelter from the storm for students of A.V. Norell School. It is a beautiful building, and since it was used as a school as recently as last spring it has not traveled far down the road to dilapidation that Ms. Meola indicates the building and site of Whitcomb Court School have. Patrick Henry is located at the intersection of Forest Hill and Semmes avenues and is thus only about ten minutes from City Hall. It would make a fine home for those pesky RPS officials that Mayor Doug wants out of City Hall.

What would it cost to renovate Patrick Henry for office use? I don’t know, but I’m sure that city officials could find out rather quickly. If the cost is prohibitive, I’m sure that the city could enter into a sale-rent-purchase agreement with a private developer. Under such an agreement, title to the building would be transferred to the private developer. The developer would renovate the building and then lease it to RPS for a period of twenty or twenty-five years during which time the developer would recover its investment and a reasonable profit. At the end of the lease period title would revert back to the city and RPS would continue to use it.

Ms. Meola indicates in her article that city officials are considering other possible uses for vacant school buildings. However, since these building were built to serve the educational needs of our students, using them for the administrative needs of RPS makes the most sense.