RPS Agenda Preview: Jan 17, 2023
Happy Sunday, Board Watchers! The agenda is up for Tuesday’s School Board Meeting. Let’s have a look!
Draft Budget Overview
Legislative Priorities
Chairwoman Rizzi’s First Agenda
New here? This is a very chose-your-own-adventure blog series. Each section is it’s own essay. Skip around as you please!
“Estimate of Needs” - A Draft Budget
I couldn’t bring myself to look over the full budget book - my brain is still fried from all the number-crunching I put into the Chronic Absenteeism deep-dive. Luckily, I don’t have to, because the admin put together a handy overview of their draft budget proposal.
If you’ve never followed a budget cycle before, this is a great intro.
Here’s a few things that stand out:
To make room in the budget for Board priorities, the superintendent is proposing a $1.3 Million dollar cut to central office. “These cuts will bring our central office reductions since FY18 to 119 positions.” So, next time someone tells you how bloated central office is, go ahead and (hold on, gotta consult my book of Fran-isms) stir their drink with your booger finger.
This draft budget sets money aside for a deputy clerk, which Gibson insists is necessary so the division can process FOIA requests faster. I don’t doubt that the current clerk is overwhelmed, but I feel really yucky that the Board is beefing up their staff while the administration - who serve our students - are cutting theirs. (That argument didn’t go over well in the last Board meeting, though.)
I’m particularly concerned about the 4-person cut to the academic department. They’re already down a department head (Chief Academic Officer) and a Director of Curriculum & Instruction, and I’m hearing everything from “the Executive Director of Teaching and Learning is on FMLA” to she’s actually disappeared (should we like.. print up some flyers?). Now they risk burning out Principal Directors Leslie Wiggins and Solomon Jefferson, who are currently sharing the burden of leadership vacancies. In any case, it’s hard to make sense of RIF-ing academic staff at the same time the Board is pushing in-house curriculum amendments.
The Budget includes tuition for Governor’s schools: 10 seats at Appomattox, 10 seats at Maggie Walker, and 3 seats at the Code RVA lab school. This is a $300,000 head-scratcher, because Code RVA cannot accept more students due to space limitations, and there’s no indication that Maggie Walker or Appomattox can, either.
The Superintendent proposes a $9.5M investment into school facilities (CIP). This is super exciting, and a significant increase over last year’s $2.4M proposal. If we keep this up, we’ll be able to knock out our $2B facilities deficit in about 210 years.
This increase is largely because the Governor signed a budget allotting more than a billion dollars in funding for school construction and maintenance grants. This is “totally unprecedented in the state of Virginia.” We’ve got fellow RPS parent and all-around badass Jennifer McCellan to thank for this. As Chairwoman of the School Construction and Modernization committee, she was a tireless advocate for this investment. (Just imagine what she’ll do in the US Congress!)
Obviously - this is a drop in the CIP bucket. If we want to do more, our schools are going to need more tools to pay for this work. Write-your-legislator types, put this bill on your radar. It would make school buildings 50+ years old eligible for historic tax credits. Ok - back to our regularly scheduled programming…
The budget includes a $1.9M investment in Student Mental Health, and $6.8M to move a bunch of full time employees off the covid-funding payroll and into the long-term operations budget. (That’s good because covid funding is running out!) This includes bus drivers to get kids to school, and counselors, psychologists, and social workers to serve students when they get there.
“Though we are largely beyond the immediate danger posed by COVID-19, we are still grappling with its long-term effects. In addition to academic achievement, our students’ mental and physical health is of particular concern. Students, families, staff, and Board Members have all expressed a desire for additional investments in this area.”
This expenditure graph leaves me underwhelmed, to be honest. I know the additional educator compensation investments (which are already promised via collective bargaining) wouldn’t have to be this high if Virginia had made a point of investing in them over the course of my entire lifetime, but it sure makes the $1.9M investment in much-needed mental health services seem really dinky by comparison.
I had to grab my glasses with the spring-loaded googly eyes for the $1.38M jump in Dominion Energy costs, by the way. Has anyone considered asking Tom Farrell’s ghost to cover those costs? Because that’s $180K more than we’re investing in additional ESL programming and that just makes me sick and/or sad. (More on that below.)
One last gripe then we can move on: The budget sets aside $100,000 to rename schools. There is NO way this is sufficient to “pay for new signage, uniforms, etc.” The real expense is something in the ballpark of $30-40K per Elementary School renaming, and $275-300k for Middle & High Schools. I’m crossing my fingers and toes to hear that the RPS Foundation has pledged to cover the rest of these funds, and $100K is just the taxpayer contribution, because we don’t need a fight over which schools to cut from the renaming list (Binford MS, George Wythe HS, Ginter Park ES, and John B. Cary ES) to topple our Board’s newfound harmony.
Legislative Priorities
Ok, so I just finished a blog series about how student absences affect school funding. But it’s time to introduce the next big chunk of the school funding formula: the “local ability to pay.”
“Per pupil funding” is the amount of money the state pays districts per enrolled student. This dollar amount, though, shifts up or down depending on how much money the state THINKS they should have to pay, based on how wealthy their community is.
Unfortunately, when the state looks at Richmond, they see surging home prices in the North Side, Near West End, and the Fan and think “hmm, seems pretty wealthy to me! The City of Richmond should have more than enough tax money to pay for the bulk of RPS expenses.” (This, despite the fact that the city’s wealthiest communities have the lowest participation rates in RPS, and so have a limited interest in putting their taxpayer dollars there.)
I am certain that the 2021 Census’s definition of Persons in Poverty and VDOE’s definition of Economically Disadvantaged (“eligible for free or reduced lunch or other public benefits”) do not perfectly align. My intention is to best illustrate the contradiction of the State’s LCI formula with information that is publicly available.
This formula is commonly known as the “local ability to pay” - or the LCI - and Matthew Stanley, RPS’ Director of Advocacy and Outreach, advises the Board that it is going to rob RPS students of $10M this year.
His dream of dreams, it seems, is to reform this funding formula. (Me, too!) But I really don’t know that our Governor is friendly to such a suggestion - nor are many democratic state officials whose suburbs disproportionately benefit from the LCI. If you ask me, everyone defending this funding formula can (back to the book of Fran-isms) “slowly chew on a hemorrhoid.” (Past REA president, Charlotte Hayer, recently made a far more eloquent pitch for this reform.)
The other eggs in Mr. Stanley’s advocacy basket are largely repeats of the budget conversation above - like more funding for teachers + support staff, and more funding in the school construction grant. The only one we haven’t dug into yet is the funding for English Learners:
The superintendent’s budget proposes $1.2M to fund additional “teachers, coaches, and training to support… students who speak English as their second or even third language.”
This, honestly, feels like a token investment into RPS’ “fastest growing population.”
Per the VDOE, we have 3,739 English Learners enrolled in RPS this year. At $65K/year salary, the $1.2M increase only allows for 19 more full time employees (FTEs). That’s less than half an additional staff member per school.
This must be why Mr. Stanley is appealing for State intervention. He cites VPM’s Megan Pauly, who reported last month that:
“Virginia public school districts serving the highest number of English language learners receive 48% less state revenue per student than those districts serving the fewest ELL students.”
He proposes cutting the state’s current teacher-to-ELL student ratio (1:50) in half, with the EL students who need the most support receiving a dedicated instructor for every 25 students.
As an aside: It’s a real shame that the LULAC [English Learner] Committee got delayed by the Board’s curriculum shenanigans in August/Sept. I really wish they’d had a chance to brief the Board on their findings, and weigh in on any funding priorities they’ve identified.
Our Governor hasn’t bussed Virginia’s migrants to the Vice President’s house (yet) - but this kind of investment goes against current GOP values. I am leaving some space for surprise though - since his administration firmly rejected one VA Beach school board member’s statement that “continuing to educate South Americans is not sustainable.” Youngkin&Co. reaffirm a commitment to educating all Virginians. Time will tell if they’ll put taxpayer money where their mouth is - but your advocacy can help:
Here’s the info to Join the Jan 16 “strong schools, strong communities” advocacy day, plus ways to advocate from home!
For more on how schools are funded (yes, there’s more) - check out the FAQ I wrote for Kids First RPS.
Chairwoman Rizzi’s First Agenda
We’ve discussed the agenda process before: the Chair, Vice-Chair, and Superintendent typically meet on the Wednesday before a School Board Meeting to discuss their agenda priorities. The agenda they came up with this time has 17 discussion items. That doesn’t break the record, but it is still really long; especially because the bulk of the time ought to be spent reviewing, responding to, and offering revisions to the FY24 draft budget.
This is not entirely her fault. Several of these discussion items rolled over from the last meeting’s (and last Chairwoman’s) packed agenda.
Since she’s indicated that it’s important to her (and her constituents) to stick to the Board’s 10PM cutoff time, I’m going to elaborate a bit on the suggestions the Board Attorney offered at the last meeting:
Chairwoman Rizzi can churn through this agenda efficiently; but, she’s going to need to be more assertive than her predecessor.
Set a time expectation. “We’ve set aside 10 minutes for this Q&A..”
Recognize when comments/questions have gotten repetitive, or her colleagues are off-topic or grandstanding - and then…
Cap comments. “We’ve got time for 2 more questions…” She did this well last meeting, keep it up!
Going forward, though, the Board needs long-term reforms like...
Using the consent agenda. Rubber-stamp the agenda items the superintendent needs for the sake of keeping the lights on and the school system running. (Is it really necessary to debate what software the division uses to log student info?) This reserves more time to discuss/debate agenda items that affect how the school system runs and how well it aligns with community values.
Limit recurrence of agenda items. If they can’t agree on a course of action after 2 meetings, table the discussion and move on. There are other matters that need Board attention.
The Board is in an endless pattern of can-kicking, delaying decision-making with constant requests for more and more information. This has turned Board meetings into a broken record - revisiting the same topics over and over again. (See the Cell Phone/Digital Access conversation, which is a repeat of this conversation in October.) Board members need to hold themselves accountable for a more efficient style of governance.
Review admin presentations ahead of Board meetings. Then,
Submit questions and follow-up information requests ahead of time, so the admin has a chance to collect and deliver this information at the meeting.
Anything else is a bad-faith delay that promises to hold future agendas - and the school district’s progress - hostage.
I’m super excited for other discussion items, too - like the Safety & Security Protocols. I’m guessing that is a proxy for bringing (a vocal minority of) the Holton Community’s battle to fire their principal, Dr. Hurt, to the Board stage. (So far, the Superintendent is having none of that.) Other topics, like the cell phone/Youtube ban conversation and the legal services update, are Board mainstays. You can refresh your memory or get caught up by following those links.
I hope to see you at Tuesday’s Board meeting, MLK Middle School (1000 Mosby Street) at 6PM. Otherwise, tune in to Emily’s live tweets, and/or stream the meeting live. I’ll be back here later in the week with another RPS RECAP. Subscribe below to get an email when that’s posted!