RECENT COMMENTS
School Board leans towards Mayor’s plan for new schools
The Richmond School Board tonight held the first of 2 informational meeting on deciding which of two competing school construction plans to support. A polling of the school board members indicated a majority in favor of the Mayor’s recent proposal which adds a new Huguenot High School but removes 2 elementary schools from the initial development.
The Current Plan
The current plan calls for the renovation/rebuilding of 5 specific schools as part of Phase 1, including MLK Middle School and George Mason Elementary Schools:
| ALLOTTED | SCHOOL |
| $ 27,700,700 | George Mason Elementary School |
| $ 29,600,000 | E.H.S. Greene Elementary School |
| $ 27,700,000 | Broad Rock Elementary School |
| $ 27,600,000 | Oak Grove Elementary School |
| $ 39,900,000 | Martin Luther King Middle School |
| $149,500,000 | TOTAL |
The Mayor’s Proposal
The Mayor’s proposal does not specify which schools should be redeveloped beyond Huguenot High School, but offers money for 2 unspecified elementary schools and an unspecified middle school:
| ALLOTTED | SCHOOL |
| $ 81,300,000 | Huguenot High School |
| $ 27,700,000 | GENERIC Elementary School |
| $ 27,700,000 | GENERIC Elementary School |
| $ 39,900,000 | GENERIC Middle School |
| $173,600,000 | TOTAL |
A polling of the school board members indicated a majority in favor of the Mayor’s proposal. The next meeting (Monday November 9 at 4PM on the 17th Floor School Board Conference Room) will be a discussion of the more specific details and schools to be a part of the Mayor’s proposal.
The board indicated that there will be several ways for the public to provide input: by commenting on their website, a hotline phone number that will be made available, and at a public comment session at the Monday, November 16 meeting.
TAGGED: schools
John, if you can, post the websites or hotline numbers.
Which elementary schools will be knocked off the list?
Did they say where they would find the extra $24,100,000 to fund the new plan? And if they don’t come up with the extra dough, that means another school gets scratched…which one?
My fear is that nothing will change in the east end. I prefer the first plan that was voted and agreed upon.
What were Don Coleman’s views at this meeting?
The details about which schools will be addressed at the next meeting. I’ll post more details on that and the feedback number when I find out more.
Don Coleman’s email address is DonColeman.RPS@gmail.com. I am sincerely sure that he would love to hear from folks on this.
Chandra Smith, the 6th District representative, can be reached at csmith12@richmond.k12.va.us. MLK Middle School is actually in the 6th District.
It looks like the Mayor’s plan is what will be implemented. The fight now is to make sure that MLK and George Mason are the middle school and one of the elementary schools included in the plan.
My take was that he was inclined towards the first plan, though I do not have a quote to attribute and did not ask him directly. It also seemed as though Chandra Smith favored the Mayor;s proposal.
Some perspective but no more information:
Fulton is very interested in an elementary school. We have so many kids here, and no school at all.
First I would like to thank John Murden for reporting on the meeting. The board is leaning towards a new High School at this point. The opportunity that creates; is for that high school to have seats available for students from all districts.
My perspective now is that George Mason and MLK were both a part of the agreed upon initial list backed by data and consensus of the public. Equity will now be the challenge. Let us be reminded that this must be approached as a continuous process. In 1998-99 4 new schools were built: Blackwell,Miles Jones,Linwood Holton elementaries and Lucille Brown Middle. Now there must be equity in the distribution of taxpayer dollars and concern for all children!
I know that there is need all over our city but as for me equity shouts that it is time for the East End to get it’s initial part in this process.
I am disheartened by the fact that somehow the reality is; it took years of neglect to get us to this point and it will take years before all of “our children” get what they deserve. It is with this stark reality that I ask you to contact other members of the School Board and let them hear the voices of the East End speaking up for our children here in the East End.
The other reality is that a number of you probably don’t have school age children will you be a voice for that child who is fatherless and possibly poor. State of the art facilities can assist in the overall quality of the education being provided. George Mason serves many young people who come from very challenging circumstances they deserve a new school. The focused efforts of many community partners are working to make MLK a model middle school;a renovated facility would go along way towards helping our most vulnerable group of young people middle schoolers.
Let the RPS School Board hear from the East End “equity in the overall process speaks that it is our time in the East End”. E-mails to individual board members could be helpful.
As John Murden has stated, a link on the RPS website should be up soon to also recieve your comments. The following is the home page for the School Board:
http://richmond.k12.va.us/schoolboardnew/index.htm
May I suggest another way of planning? Plan for where the children will be. I think the interim census data show that the growth in population of school age children is moving south of the river, into the lower Sixth, eigth and ninth districts. Maybe that’s where the construction ought to occur. Maybe the new Huguenot needs to move farther south.
The next meeting of the Board(Monday November 9 at 4PM on the 17th Floor School Board Conference Room) will be a discussion of the more specific details and schools to be a part of the Mayor’s proposal.
The public is welcome to sit in on this meeting and observe the process.
The Monday November 16th School Board meeting is when the vote will take place.
A public comment period will begin at 4:30pm and continue at 6:00pm during the public comment period of the regularly scheduled School Board meeting; both of these will be on 17th Floor of City Hall at this time.
Isaac Graves has more of the back&forth in RPS Board Vice Chair Kim Gray: ‘It’s the Mayor’s money and the Mayor’s people building his schools’ at Richmond City Hall Examiner.