School Board Needs to Think Outside the Box

This maven gave out a little gasp when I read this in today’s Richmond Times-Dispatch: “Next schools chief to get more pay.” 1 My gasp turned to a moan when I read the sub-headline, “Richmond School Board sets minimum salary of $225,000.” Now, don’t get me wrong. As a taxpayer I am not opposed to paying people what they are worth. But, it seems that our beloved Richmond Nine are agreeing to a minimum salary that is $47,000 more than we paid our last superintendent. That is an increase of 26%. I am wondering how many home runs or what kind of low ERA would justify a 26% pay increase in the free agent market. But, what do I know of the market for urban school chiefs?

However, I am a bit disappointed that the board so easily agreed to the recommendation of their hired recruiting consultant that the new superintendent’s salary must begin with a 2. Isn’t this the school board that was so upset at the interim superintendent’s recent performance improvement plan because it wasn’t visionary and called for nothing new? Why isn’t this board willing to think outside the box when it comes to setting the compensation of its next superintendent?

A story: During my last summer in law school I worked as a legal intern for NASA. This was 1969, and I was fortunate to be with NASA during the summer of the first moon landing. But, I did do some work and I also learned some history. I learned that after the Soviets got a big first step in the space race, NASA was created with an implicit mission statement that failure was not acceptable. So, NASA rejected the traditional Department of Defense contracting model under which contractors received the same compensation regardless of how well they performed. Instead they adopted an incentive contracting model under which a contractor’s compensation depended on how well it did its job.

For example, if a contractor was hired to build a third-stage rocket to be completed by, let’s say, December 31, 1962, the contract set a base compensation for the contractor building the rocket. However, if the contractor delivered it before the target date it earned an incentive bonus. On the other hand, if it missed the target date it suffered a penalty. Likewise, if the rocket performed flawlessly the contractor earned another bonus. However, if it did not perform flawlessly the contractor suffered a penalty. Incentive contracting gave contractors a strong stake in the success of whatever NASA program they were working on.

What if, instead of simply setting the new superintendent’s salary at some figure beginning with a 2, the board insisted on a contract in which the superintendent’s compensation depended on how well s/he did the job? Why not a contract that sets a base salary but provides for bonuses if the superintendent successfully moves RPS toward greatness and penalties if the school system does not improve? I am sure that the board and a superintendent can reach agreement measures, based perhaps on the Objectives of the 2010-2015 RPS Strategic Plan. Using this kind of incentive contracting would make the next superintendent more than just an employee. He or she would be a partner in this city’s mission of creating a first rate school system for our children. 

But, you may ask, what if a candidate doesn’t want to work under a contract where compensation is based on how well he or she does the job? I reply with a question. Do we want a superintendent who is not so sure of success that she or he is willing to agree to an incentive contract?

 

Will School Board Finally Follow The Law?

This maven has written about the annual school budgeting show in the City of Richmond more times than I care to count. I have repeatedly informed the Superintendent of Schools, the School Board, the Mayor and the City Council that under state law a school district's superintendent and school board are required to submit a budget based on the needs of the school system. Yet, year after year, the superintendent prepares, and the school board approves, a budget not based on need, but based on an assumption of how much money the city council will provide to Richmond Public Schools in the budget year. This year, so far, has been no different. As reported in today’s Richmond Times Dispatch, by reporter Will Jones, “The [Superintendent's] proposed operating budget . . . assumes no change in the city’s appropriation of $124.2 million.”*

What exactly is it that the law requires? Section 22.1-92 provides:

A. It shall be the duty of each division superintendent to prepare, with the approval of the school board, and submit to the governing body or bodies appropriating funds for the school division, by the date specified in § 15.2-2503 [April 1], the estimate of the amount of money deemed to be needed during the next fiscal year for the support of the public schools of the school division. The estimate shall set up the amount of money deemed to be needed for each major classification prescribed by the Board of Education and such other headings or items as may be necessary.

Clearly, the law obliges the superintendent and the school board to submit to the governing body (in our case the Richmond City Council) a budget that specifies the amount of money “deemed to be needed . . . for the support of the public schools of the school division.” To this maven, “deemed to be needed” does not mean “what we expect you to give us.” It is the amount that the superintendent consulting with the school board believes the school system needs to provide a quality education to the children of the school district.

Last year I talked to you about the actions of the school board in Fairfax County, Virginia. A School Board That Does Its Job. I explained that the school superintendent in Fairfax had prepared a budget based on the anticipated revenues that the system would receive from both the commonwealth and the county. The school board amended the budget submitted by the superintendent, restoring many of the cuts he made and requesting $82 million more from Fairfax County. As I indicated, the chair of the school board justified its actions as follows: “Our responsibility is to provide an effective school system. We know what it takes for us to be successful.”

I do not fault Dr. Yvonne Brandon for the budget she submitted. I assume she was following instructions from the school board. However, at this point I expect the school board to do its job and amend Dr. Brandon’s budget to show the amount that Richmond Public Schools needs to run a successful school system. I am sure that a needs budget will have to request more than $124.2 million. So, School Board, will you follow the law this year?


*There is something strange in that $124.2 million. Last year the Superintendent’s budget indicated a receipt of $127.1 million from the City. If that is correct, than this year’s budget actually assumes a reduction of $3 million in the amount provided by the City of Richmond.

A School Board That Does Its Job

Something exciting is going on in Northern Virginia beside the more than a foot of snow that is expected to fall tonight. As reported in the Washington Post:

The Fairfax County School Board approved a spending plan late Thursday night that would increase its funding request from cash-strapped county officials by $24 million beyond Superintendent Jack D. Dale's request. 1

Just to make sure you understand this—the Superintendent of Schools proposed a budget based on revenues expected from both the County of Fairfax and the Commonwealth. In his budget, Superintendent Dale proposed to cut 600 positions, raise class sizes by an average of one student, pare down summer school offerings, eliminate freshman sports and an elementary foreign-language program, and close an alternative high school. He also proposed fees for athletics and AP and IB tests. Last night, the school board refused to accept the cuts proposed by the superintendent and passed a budget that will require an additional $82 million in funding from the county.

In explaining the board’s action, School Board Chair Kathy Smith said,

Our responsibility is to provide an effective school system. We know what it takes for us to be successful.

Although the board realizes that it might not get the added revenue it requested from the county, it decided that it would not be doing its job if it submitted a budget asking for less than it needed to operate the school system. It will now be up to the county Board of Supervisors to decide whether it will fund the school system at the higher lever asked for by the school board.

It is nice to compare the school board of Fairfax County with our beloved school board here in Richmond. For several years now, the Richmond School Board has been approving budgets based on a level of city funding imposed on it by the City Council. As I have said before, in submitting a budget based on anticipated revenues rather than the needs of the school system, the Richmond Board is abdicating its duties on state law. Who’s on the Side of the Kids?

State law requires school superintendents working with school boards to produce budgets based on the needs of the school system. The law requires the board to request from the governing body (City Council in the case of Richmond) the level of funding needed to operate the schools at the level it determines is proper. It is then up to the governing body, in approving the jurisdictional budget, to decide how much of the school board’s requested funding it will provide.

I am still digesting the proposed fiscal year 2011 budget submitted to the school board by Superintendent of Schools Yvonne Brandon. However, it is clear to me that in reducing Richmond Public School spending for next year, Dr. Brandon is budgeting based on the funds she has been told are available, rather than on the needs of the school system. In her proposed budget Dr. Brandon eliminates nearly 120 teachers from our classrooms. This cut will result in the student to teacher ratio in k-3 being increased by two students per teacher, and the ratio in the remaining elementary and secondary schools by one student per teacher. I can’t believe that these proposals are based on the needs of our students.

So, I compare two school boards. One carries out its responsibilities to its students under state law and prepares budgets based on the needs of the school system. The other abdicates its responsibilities and prepares budgets based on an arbitrary predetermined level of funding.

Back in 2008 I urged the School Board to go back to the drawing board and prepare a budget based on the needs of the children of Richmond. They chose not to follow my urging. This time I’m not sure that I should bother telling the members of the school board what their responsibilities are. They already know. This year it is up to the parents of Richmond to demand that the school board does its job and submits a budget based on the needs of our children.

The Dwight & Yvonne Ad Agency

Kudos to Mayor Dwight Jones and School Superintendent Yvonne Brandon on their plan to market Richmond Public Schools to parents in River City. If I were not the modest maven I am, I would be crowing that finally somebody is listening to me. For many months I have been trying to get the message across that we in Richmond must do something to win back middle class parents to our public schools. Mayor Jones made it clear that he is dedicated to making Richmond Public Schools the schools of choice for all our citizens. In Jones words, “We’re not going to sit idly by and watch as the school system enrolls only two-thirds of the children in Richmond.”

Unfortunately, the Dwight and Yvonne marketing plan is defective in several ways—

1- It is selling the wrong product. The “Choice” marketing campaign is aimed generally at increasing enrollment in “Richmond Public Schools.” However, most of the parents that opt out of RPS do so because they believe that the individual school that their child will attend cannot provide the high quality education they desire. Thus, in my neighborhood, parents choose to move or to put their kids in private school not because they have no confidence in RPS. Rather, it is Westover Hills Elementary School, the school their child is zoned for, in which they have no confidence. Just to the west of me, parents are not opting out of RPS; they are opting out of Southampton Elementary School. To the east of my neighborhood, parents say they will move if their child is not admitted to the Patrick Henry Charter School (when it opens). It is not RPS they object to. Rather they object to their children going to Blackwell or Swansboro elementary schools. Further, in many neighborhoods in the city, parents enroll their children in RPS only because they are able to use the Open Enrollment policy to get them into Mary Munford or William Fox elementary schools.

Rather than selling “Richmond Public Schools” to the parents who currently opt out, we must sell them on their neighborhood school. Our marketing campaign must be waged on a neighborhood by neighborhood basis. In each neighborhood we must market the local school, not the entity “Richmond Public Schools.” It makes as little sense to win parents over by marketing RPS as a whole as it would be to get you to buy a Chevrolet Aveo with a “Buy General Motors” campaign or to buy Dove soap by advertising Unilever Global.

2. It is targeting the wrong audience. “Choice” will be aimed, initially, at the parents in the city’s first district. The residents of the first district are presumably the city’s wealthiest and to a large extent they choose private over public schools. However, it is unlikely that any advertising campaign will change the behavior of first district parents. Their children are already zoned into what is perceived as one of the best public elementary schools in the city. So, it is unlikely that they eschew RPS because of a perceived lack of quality. I believe they send their children to private schools because that is what they do. In their socio-economic class parents generally choose private schools for the education of their children. Many of these families have sent their children to private schools for generations. They are unlikely to be swayed by any advertising campaign.

The parents that we really need to get to are those who move out of the city rather than send their children to their neighborhood school. I suggest that the fourth district, or one with similar demographics, be chosen for the marketing campaign. In the fourth district most parents opt out of RPS not because private schools are the tradition in their families, but because they have no confidence that their children will receive quality educations in Fisher, Southampton or Westover Hills elementary schools, or Thompson or Brown middle schools, or Huguenot High School. These are the parents that would much rather avoid the expense of private school or the inconvenience of moving to the counties if they could only trust their neighborhood schools. We need to target our marketing campaign at these parents.

3. The product is not uniformly good. In announcing the “Choice” campaign, Mayor Jones said that if Richmond Public Schools is “good enough” for the children of Governor Timothy Kane it should be “good enough” for everyone in the city. Mayor Jones’ statement fails to recognize that not all the schools in the city would have been good enough for the Kane children. The Kanes were fortunate to live in a school zone with a quality elementary school. Many parents in the city do not see their neighborhood school as being “good enough” for their children. Many parents in the city are already planning their children’s college careers before they start kindergarten. They need to be assured that their neighborhood school can give their children the best possible start to their education. Therefore, any marketing campaign must be combined with a neighborhood by neighborhood, school by school, crusade to make that school “good enough.” We cannot continue to tolerate a school system where not all schools are that good.

4. The campaign should not be centralized. Since it is the neighborhood school that influences parental choice, the “Choice” campaign should be moved out of City Hall and centered in each of the city’s public schools. The principal and staff of each school should have the primary responsibility of “selling” their school to the parents in the school neighborhood. They will be helped, of course, by the school PTA and Citizens Advisory Group (in schools served by Communities in Schools). They will also need guidance on the marketing campaign from RPS headquarters. However, ultimately it will be the responsibility of school principals to assure that their schools are “good enough” and that the word gets out to the neighborhood.

This kind of campaign will put us closer to my visions for RPS—

· That it will provide a first-class education to all our children regardless of ethnicity or economic situation; and

· That all Richmond parents will see their neighborhood school as the school of choice for their children.

Superintendent Selection Process Redux

After my posting yesterday, I received an e-mail from a member of the School Board stating,

Since the seating of the new board, we had 2 public meetings where we talked about the search process. Because no one from the media attended the first, we made sure to do the attached presentation at our meeting last Monday to try to shed light on the process.

The attached PowerPoint presentation contained this outline of the search process starting in May of 2008.

• May 2008
– Search committee appointed
– School board conducted public forums, sent out public surveys to determine attributes sought in next superintendent
• June 2008
– School board members presented public forum findings to search committee
– School board hired search firm through RFP process
• August/September 2008
– Search firm conducted interviews with individual school board and search firm members
– Search firm developed leadership profile and “Characteristics Desired in the Superintendent of Schools” based on 200 community, 9 school board, and 14 search committee responses
– National posting of vacancy
– School Board approved the job description
• September – December 2008
– Search firm continued to receive applicants and to actively recruit promising candidates.
• December 2008
– Search committee met with each new school board member and Mayor Jones to review the status of the process
– Search firm presented resumes of 20 candidates to search committee
– Search committee narrowed candidates to 12
– Search firm interviewed 12 and narrowed to 5
• January 2009
– Search committee interviewed 5 candidates and narrowed to 3 preferred
– Search committee presented 3 candidates to school board and provided opportunity for board to review resumes of all 5 final candidates.
– Board elected to interview the previously identified 3 candidates

The presentation also contained explanations of the rolls of the board, search committee and outside search firm in the selection process.

This maven lauds the School Board for publicizing the stages of the search process. I retract my statement that the process was “as far removed from government in the sunshine as one can imagine.” And, hopefully, I was wrong in thinking that the election had not brought change.

I must say, however, that making this presentation only days before the board revealed its choice for our new superintendent does not make up for the six months that the citizens of Richmond were kept in the dark. Had the board and its search committee been open throughout the process it is unlikely that some of my neighbors would have been suspicious of the validity of the whole search. I certainly hope that in the future the board will continue to choose open rather than closed processes (even if the laws of the Commonwealth provide an excuse to meet in closed sessions).

Government In The Dark

For those of you who thought you were voting for change in November, you need to rethink. Richmond still has both a City Council and a School Board that think they may carry out their functions in secret. Today the board appointed Dr. Yvonne Brandon as our new School Superintendent in a process that was as far removed from government in the sunshine as one can imagine. All we know is that there was a search team (whose members were subject to a confidentiality agreement) that hired a contractor to find candidates. The contractor produced the names of five candidates. The School Board reduced that to three finalists. Then they chose Dr. Brandon. We have no idea who the other candidates were. We don’t know the process the board went through to make its decision. We were simply told that they decided.

Why should we be concerned about this? During the summer when I was campaigning I met several people who told me they felt that the search for superintendent was a sham; that it was merely a cover for the appointment of Dr. Brandon, which was already a done deal. I checked with people on the search committee who told me that there was in fact a genuine search. But there are still people in Richmond who do not trust the School Board’s process, even with a new majority. The board has some work to do in convincing Richmond residents that they are to be trusted.

Then there is the City Council and the vacant 7th District seat. As you know, former delegate Dwight Jones resigned his seat in the House of Delegates when he was elected mayor. City Council 7th District member Delores McQuinn ran and was elected to the vacant House of Delegates seat. She then resigned from the City Council. Under our City Charter the council is authorized to fill the vacant seat by appointment until the next regular election. Several citizens have filed applications to be appointed to the vacancy. According to the chatter on Church Hill People’s News the selection of Ms. McQuinn’s successor will be done in the dark. According to a statement by a policy advisor for the City Council, “The interviews, as well as any further discussion and consideration of candidates will all be held in Closed Session." Only council members Chris Hilbert and Charles Samuels thought it was wrong to make this significant decision in secret.

Why should we be concerned with this? In the last few weeks there has been a great deal of talk that the selection of Ms.McQuinn’s successor is a done deal. The talk suggests that Dwight Jones approved Ms. McQuinn as his successor and that Ms. McQuinn has approved her successor who will be rubber stamped by the City Council. As in the case of the School Board, a decision by City Council to make its decision in closed session will only fuel this type of talk.

The eight people elected to the council and the nine people elected to the school board in November need to understand that they cannot govern without having the trust of the citizens of Richmond. They will not have that trust unless they do their work in the sunshine where we can watch them. The decisions to do their work in secret were bad from them and for River City.

Time To Shake Things Up 1

Recently I had an e-mail exchange with Jonathan Mallard, my fellow also-ran in the Fourth District school board race. Jonathan had asked me what I thought of his analysis of the Request for Procurement (RFP) for renovations to make Fox Elementary School compliant with the Americans With Disabilities Act. You can find Jonathan’s analysis at http://jonathanmallard.com/maintaining-the-curtain/

Here is how I replied to Jonathan:

Unfortunately, RPS has developed a corporate culture of indifference. We have had mediocrity or even incompetence for so long that it has become the standard of performance. I have seen this before in the District of Columbia government and the Department of Defense.
Things will only change when either the superintendent or the school board demand competency. The attitude must come from the top. The school leadership needs to communicate to all RPS employees that mediocrity or incompetence will no longer be tolerated. Employees should be given a period of time to improve. If they do not, they should be replaced with other employees who are competent.

Maven, how can you say such things? You are being terribly unfair to all the RPS people who work really hard and are doing a good job. Besides, didn’t you lambast Keith West for saying similar things last year?

Vigilant reader, you are right. There are many many RPS employees who are doing an exemplary job. But, I was not talking about individual performance. I was talking about an attitude. It’s like the old saying “Close enough for government work.” Clearly there are lots of government employees who take their jobs very seriously and will not settle for “close enough.” On the other hand, there are enough of the other kind of employee to have given birth to the stereotype.

As to Keith West, I remember two posts I wrote about him. Just about a year ago, I did lambast him for his decision, after losing his challenge to George Braxton to be chair of the school board, to walk away from his responsibilities to the children of Richmond. Keith, It’s All About The Kids Then I wrote another piece responding to his Style Weekly revelation that he and his wife had decided not to send their children to RPS because of their fears they could not receive a decent education. We Have Nothing to Fear but . . .

In Style Weekly, Mr. West said:

Will your children learn the value of honesty and hard work? Is cheating really tolerated in some classes? Will they show and receive proper respect and courtesy? Will they learn to love learning? In some classrooms the answer is yes. In a few schools the answer is yes. But consistently across the entire school system, the answer is no.

I replied:

I guess I must be lucky, because in the schools in which I have been I have seen the children learning the value of honesty and hard work. I have seen no example of cheating, let alone cheating being tolerated. I have seen children showing each other and their teachers respect and courtesy. I have seen so many young faces glowing with the love of learning.

Mr. West then said:

In every job category from custodian to central-office administrator you will find sterling examples of effort and ability working alongside people who aren’t doing their jobs and shouldn’t be drawing a paycheck. You will find some teachers who are imbuing a love of literature in their students, and others writing evaluations with made-up words and nonexistent grammar. You will find some principals prowling the halls gently correcting the transgressions of their little ones, and others hiding in their offices.

My response was:

Again, I have not been in the schools in which the support staff does not earn their pay, where the teachers are unqualified, and where the principals hide. In the schools that I frequent, I have seen just the opposite.

In my post I acknowledge that as a school board member Mr. West had been in a lot more schools than I have. I was just saying that I had not seen the poor performance that he had seen.

Since that time I have been educated by many Richmond parents. I have a list of “horror stories” on my computer testifying to the instances in which Richmond Public Schools or its employees have not done well by particular students.

But, again dear reader, I am talking about an attitude, not individual performance. What I was saying to Jonathan was that because nobody at the top of Richmond Public School’s administration demands excellence there is a belief that what we are doing is good enough. I will go beyond that to say that the citizens of Richmond are also not demanding excellence from RPS and its staff. During the school board campaign I asked Antione Green (President of the Crusade for Voters), at one of our morning coffee meetings (at which neither of us consumed any coffee), why the residents of Richmond tolerate a school system that is not first class. I pointed out to him that in Fairfax County, where my kids were educated, there is no way that parents and other taxpayers would put up with what we put up with in Richmond. If Fairfax County schools performed the way RPS does every member of the school board would have been driven out of town dressed in tar and feathers.

The first thing we need is a new Superintendent of Schools who has not spent a considerable part of his or her career at RPS. I had and have a great deal of respect for former Superintendent Deborah Jewell-Sherman and Interim Superintendent Yvonne Brandon. Unfortunately they both developed professionally within RPS and are too closely wedded to its corporate culture. They worked for too long side-by-side with the people they had to supervise when they became superintendent. Last summer when the School Board appointed Dr. Brandon as interim superintendent I knew that they were choosing someone who was well qualified to run our school system. But I was a little disappointed by Dr. Brandon’s announcement that she would carry on the programs and policies of Dr. Jewell-Sherman. I would have been a lot happier if she had said that she intended to make changes for the better.

I set out the talents we needed in our new superintendent last spring. The Next Superintendent Now I add the additional qualification that the person we choose should come from outside RPS. Only an outsider can bring us new ideas. Only an outsider can change the corporate culture of RPS. Only an outsider can come to the job without any “debts” owed to others in the system.

This year we have a new mayor. We have five new members of the school board. We need a new superintendent too. We need someone like Michelle L. Rhee.

Who, you may ask, is Rhee? Rhee is the Chancellor (when the school system is big enough that is what they call their superintendent) of the District of Columbia Public Schools. Depending on who you talk to, Rhee is either the great savior of D.C. Public Schools or a publicity-seeking, power-hungry, out-of-control administrator who doesn’t care who she hurts in carrying out her objectives. I think the jury is still out on whether she is either of the above or something in the middle. But, what I like most about Rhee is her attitude that the public schools in Washington are there to serve the needs of the children, not the desires of any adults or block of adults. This has made her very unpopular with the District’s teachers union. Just last week, Rhee announced her plan to remake Washington’s teacher’s corp. Ms. Rhee intends to remove a “significant share” of teachers (those who are not succeeding) and to retrain all the rest. Rhee Plans Shake-Up of Teaching Staff, Training.

I am not suggesting that we need such radical steps in Richmond. But, we need to rethink the way we train, evaluate and compensate our teachers. In one of my earliest opinions involving RPS, I said:

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.
Fix Our Schools, Now

Then, in October, in an attempt to inject some life into my school board campaign, I wrote:

I propose that we move RPS employees, including administrators and teachers, from a system in which pay increases are based on college degrees and longevity to one based on performance. Let me be clear, I do not propose that compensation be based on student SOL scores. As I have said several times here and in the questionnaire from the Richmond Education Association, there are far too many factors other than teacher performance that affect how well students do on SOLs. We need to develop a system in which we can measure how much progress students are making in a particular year (by comparing where they are in September to where they are in June). We also need to handicap that system so that teachers in schools with concentrated poverty can compete fairly with teachers in schools that are primarily middle class.
We need to start with a voluntary system for teachers already working for RPS. Teachers would be given the option of staying in a compensation system based on longevity and degrees or moving to the merit system in which pay raises are not guaranteed but can be significantly higher than on the longevity scale.
I expect that the Richmond Education Association will participate with the School Board in designing this new compensation system.
From Outside The Box

One of my campaign advisers urged me to postpone this type of suggestion until after the election. She feared it would cost me votes.

But, getting back to Chancellor Rhee, Richmond needs a superintendent who will put the needs of our children first. We need a superintendent who understands that nobody is “entitled” to be employed by RPS. We need a superintendent who is willing to really shake things up.

The Next Superintendent

Saturday, will be the second of four meetings the school board is holding to get citizen input on the search for our next Superintendent of Schools. So, I’ve been thinking about the kind of person we need to lead Richmond Public Schools. I think I know what I would like to see in a Super-superintendent. In the real world, however, we may have to settle for less.

As a prologue—

We have to think of Richmond Public Schools as a manufacturing business. At one end we take in young minds ready to learn; at the other end we produce young men and women who are prepared to deal with their life goals, whether in college, in the business world or in the military. In thinking of RPS as a business we need to look at the taxpayers of Richmond and the Commonwealth as the shareholders. These shareholders invest their tax dollars and realize their “profits” in the satisfaction that they have prepared a future generation to take up the baton. Like all businesses, the workers of RPS, from the superintendent to support staff in each school, are accountable to the shareholders for their performance. The business analogy must take into account the uniqueness of the “product” that RPS is producing. In addition to the taxpayer-shareholders our school system must also be accountable to the children, whose precious lives we have in our care.

Therefore, in no particular order—

Our next superintendent must be a leader. The superintendent needs the ability to get the myriad employees of RPS to follow her agenda. She has to be the motivator that gets everyone to work at their full potential. Leadership ability should be demonstrated by success in some leadership position either in academics, business or the military.

Our next superintendent must understand organizations. RPS is often accused of having too much bureaucracy. The superintendent needs to be able to analyze the RPS organization and eliminate those positions that are unnecessary in giving our children an excellent education.

Our next superintendent must be committed to accountability. The attitude of employees in any institution is set at the top. The superintendent must not only be honest himself, but also convey to everybody who works for RPS that their job is a public trust. He must make it clear that he will not tolerate any employee who uses taxpayer money improperly.

Our next superintendent must understand the Richmond problem. A significant number of parents in the City of Richmond have indicated their lack of confidence in RPS by leaving the city to find a better educational opportunity for their children elsewhere. The superintendent must be able to deal with this problem first by making RPS a superior school system and second by convincing parents that their children will thrive here.

Our next superintendent must understand our school population. Seventy percent of RPS students come from families with economic difficulties. The superintendent must understand the challenges that these children face in obtaining their education and must have a plan for how to help them reach their full potential.

Our next superintendent must have a vision for RPS. She must be able to articulate her vision of where she expects RPS to be going in the next two years, the next five years and the next ten years. She must be able to convince the taxpayers that their investment in RPS will pay off in class after class of productive young citizens. She must show us the route to greatness.

Our next superintendent must be a unifier. Making RPS into a world-class educational system requires the participation of teachers, parents, civic and faith groups and the business and academic communities. The superintendent must be able to unite these various stakeholders in a common purpose—the education of our children. He must also be able to work productively with the school board, the city council and our next mayor.