Community forum tonight at Armstrong

I have a deeper concern with the school system. If you were to do a poll with all of the teachers, principals and students, they will tell you that the Central Administration personal never visits the schools to see what is going on. I have been involved in the school system and never once heard of the superintendent or members of the cabinet coming into the schools and seeing what is going on. I have even been on the board and we invited the superintendent and she never responded to our request. On the other side, city council, mayors are always saying what the schools needs and they are never in the schools. I know we are always on the teachers and principals, but what are our leaders that run things doing to assist our schools.

How did this issue go from 168 comments to only 2? Wasn’t the turnout overwhelming? What issues were brought up? What was the resolution? What got glossed over? Were any administrators held accountable? C’mon citizen media.

Did the Superintendent attend this forum? Which SB members were present? By definition the Superintendent is responsible for everything that occurs in the public schools citywide. Check out the duties of SB members, post #4 /2008/10/21/a-last-round-of-politicking/ .

What would be the first specific action to take to stop the violence and gang activity and make it where those scared students wanting to learn can return?

I was really disappointed with the principle’s statement. He claimed there are no gangs, which is absolutely untrue.

We have to clean up the neighborhood. This Saturday at my son’s football game at Oakwood, the game was broken up by a shooting. These warring gangs of teens of destroying our neighborhood. Nothing can change until we acknowledge that there are there, they do exist, and we need to stop any more children from following that path.

The game was between Chimborazo (Church Hill) and Powahatan (Fulton). The rivalry between the gangs in these two neighborhoods is well-known. Ask the police. The kids that were involved were 15 – 19 years old.

You know I am outraged. I have 2 brothers attending Armstrong. They unfortunately left the county and returned to Richmond due to economic status. I teach in the county but I am very familiar with Richmond. I taught briefly in Richmond and Henrico.

We need to put the pressure on the school board to assist administrators in cleaning up the situation. Some students just need to “go” until alternative programs can be developed. The school board needs to stop sitting back allowing the troublemakers to wreak havoc in the schools. Someone needs to take a stand. I am fed up. As a result, I have made the decision to remove my brothers from the school before next school year and send them to the county where I now teach because I have tremendous support!