All School Board Members Can Learn ...

“In the first place God made idiots.  
This was for practice. Then he made school boards."

                                                                    ~ Mark Twain

Based on recent developments, even the late, great Mark Twain might have to admit that a majority of the members of the City of Richmond Public School (RPS) Board are showing definite signs of wising up and are getting serious about fixing a school system that is, by just about any measure you use, horribly broken.  

The members of this school board, elected in 2012 by a citizenry fed up with past board failures to deliver any consistent academic progress and precious little financial accountability, have worked overtime for the past 18 months to address the system's biggest challenges -- academic performance and financial accountability.  

And after months of stubborn determination and little sleep for most School Board members, it is understatement to say that school board members aren’t exactly wild about a recently introduced City Council resolution. 

It isn’t that the School Board doesn’t want to be held accountable.  They do.  It is just that the resolution calls for yet another layer of bureaucracy to provide oversight to the RPS School Board.  “Basically, it means more sitting around talking about what needs to happen instead of doing what needs to happen,” according to one RPS source inside City Hall who asked to remain anonymous. 

The resolution, introduced by Richmond City Council vice-president and Council member Ellen Robertson, 6^th-District, calls for a joint committee with City Council, School Board and representatives of Mayor Dwight C. Jones to craft an improvement plan for city schools and establish budget needs. 

Robertson and her colleagues should not be surprised to learn that a majority of board members, parents and teachers in our community find the idea not only unnecessary and intrusive, but rude and redundant.  As one parent put it:  "City Council needs to back-off and give the School Board and new superintendent a chance to show us what they can (or cannot) do."  

Or, as another parent put it, “Give this board and this superintendent a chance to fly or fail on their own.” 

Indeed, Robertson and her colleagues would be well advised to heed those words. To be fair, Robertson recently noted that she is "simply trying to help." 

She flat-out denied that the idea for this proposed committee arose from any concern on her part – or the Mayor’s -- that the necessary school board votes just might not be there for a school that she and the Jones’ administration want to build near the current Overby-Sheppard Elementary School in Southern Barton Heights.

School Board members have openly questioned the wisdom of spending millions of dollars to tear down a school that is in decent shape only to turn around and build another in the same general area.  This is a vexing issue considering the school board doesn't have near enough money to fix schools in far worse shape than Overby-Sheppard. 

Faced with the lowest Standards of Learning (SOL) scores in the state in reading and fourth from the lowest in math, this board forced out former Supt. Yvonne W. Brandon and hired Dana T. Bedden as superintendent.  Bedden has been on the job for barely three months and is already doing some serious spring-cleaning. 

And just as the School Board has been working overtime to send a message to the community that they are serious about reforming this school system, so has Bedden.  In addition to nearly non-stop meetings with school personnel, parent groups, community members and business leaders, he recently named his own central administrative team with a focus on delivering sustainable academic progress.  

And were this not enough, Bedden recently asked the board to hire Ralph Westbay as its full-time permanent Chief Financial Officer

With little fanfare, Bedden and Westbay recently embraced a School Board initiative to post the school system's check registers online and to adopt a zero-based approach to next year's budget.  This is huge.  Really huge.

To understand just how huge, you need to know that this board began pushing for both posting the check registers and for zero-based budgeting soon after they were sworn-in in January 2013, only to be repeatedly rebuffed in their efforts by an administration that was practiced at the art of obfuscation and outright denial of facts in the face of accountability.

Now, with a little administrative cooperation, Richmond becomes one of fewer than six of 132 school districts in Virginia to have voluntarily opted to put its check registers online.  Asked when he expects to have the registers online and accessible by the public, Westbay said that the district has already begin laying the groundwork and hopes to have them available in July 2014, "in time for the new fiscal year."

He added that Supt. Bedden has made it clear to staff and board members that, "we need to be about the business of building trust in our community where there has been none before.  Consequently, this is a great way for us to show that we are open under new management." 

Sturtevant and other school board members stress that since the very beginning of their terms in 2013, academic and fiscal accountability has been "a priority, not just a campaign promise. This school board has been focused on creating an effective, fiscally responsible school system."

This board appears to have realized "personal politics” should have no place in fixing Richmond Public Schools and fulfilling the promise of providing Richmond's students the opportunity to receive a high-quality education that will prepare them to have successful lives.

 The school board needs, Sturtevant said, to be "united in working to ensure that the school system is a good steward of public money by identifying efficiencies that yield savings, savings that are to be directed into the classroom."

Jeff Bourne, 3rd-District, former school board chairman and Kristen Larson, current vice-chair and 4th-District member, each emphasized that the current school board needs to stay focused on delivering quality educations to Richmond's students.  


"We've got this," said Bourne.  He said he sees RPS as being in a similar place to that which Virginia Commonwealth University's basketball team was before they went to the Sweet 16 NCAA playoffs. "I really believe we have what it will take to bring real change."
  

Larson echoed this and noted:  "It is imperative that we bring reform to all schools, not just to any one member's district, but to all."

Even the indefatigable Kimberly B. Gray, 2nd-District, who was repeatedly stymied in her efforts to bring a reform agenda into reality during her first term from 2008-2012, has praise for her current colleagues, for Supt. Bedden and for the team effort to bring academic and fiscal accountability to RPS. "This board remains united in knowing that we need to be about the business of taking care of the children and not for the care and protection of adults who fail to do their jobs."

Consequently, I suggest that if Robertson and her colleagues on City Council really want to help, they ought to fully fund the school budget and get Mayor Dwight C. Jones and his staff to start posting the city’s check registers online and go to a zero-based budget for city finances. 

Now, wouldn’t that really be something to talk about?