School Board Shakeups

RICH: Welcome to RVA’s Got Issues, a podcast about politics and public affairs in and around Richmond, Virginia. I’m your host, Rich Meagher. On this episode, RVA’s Got Issues with school board elections. Students in Richmond Public Schools have struggled in the aftermath of the pandemic. That, and infighting on the school board, has made education a top issue in this fall’s elections. Today, we’ll talk to two RPS parents who have a plan to end the dysfunction on the current Richmond school board, and think this could be the election that changes everything. This week, RVA’s got questions. About how we vote in RVA, what’s unique about our local elections, and will we be changing it anytime soon? And for our community spotlight, we’ll talk with Chris Piper, the Executive Director of what political folks in Richmond call VPAP, or the Virginia Public [00:01:00] Access Project. He’s got a new civics education program that he hopes will get kids caring more about politics. All that coming up on RVA’s Got Issues.

 

Delores Murray: I came down here tonight not to criticize you. Only to remind each one of you as to why you were elected to run the school system in Richmond.

RICH: On this episode, RVA’s got issues with school board elections. It’s an election year not just for the country but for the city of Richmond. For and every seat on the nine person Richmond School Board is up for grabs. But the board has had a controversial few years, with dysfunction and infighting taking attention away from what many say should be the real focus, the students. Today we’re talking with members of a new group that want to make sure that new board members have the skills and temperament to take on this challenge. The group is called Richmonders for Effective Governance of Schools, or REGS for short. But before we get into what that group is about and their plans for this year’s election, we need to really get a sense of what’s so frustrating about Richmond’s current education system, which is where Lakeisha Williams comes in. Lakeisha is a longtime pre K teacher and soon to be middle school administrator for Richmond Public Schools who’s been working with REGS. She’s also an RPS parent with five kids at various school stages, including a 2017 Richmond Community High School graduate. Welcome, LaKeisha.

LAKEISHA: Good afternoon, everyone.

RICH: So, Lakeisha, let’s start with a low point. A school board meeting from last fall. And we have some audio from that that will play.

LAKEISHA: Oh, no. Oh, no.  

Mrs. Gibson: This is what we’re doing. Madam Chair, we are protecting the adult in central office and ignoring the children. Madam Chair, sanction her. Madam Chair, that’s right. Sanction, sanction, sanction her. That is enough. Sanction her. Enough is enough. Sanction me. I’m a parent. Thank you. I am a parent. And this is real.

So is everybody else. You’re going to sanction me? Yep. You’re sanctioning every parent. Madam. We are all parents. Thank

School Board Members: you. Madam. Thank you. We need some help.

RICH: So, LaKeisha, you attend most of these meetings. You might have even been there for this exchange. Is this normal? Why is this so frustrating? How, how bad is this?  

LAKEISHA: it take a deep sigh when witnessing some of these things. There have been times I’ve sat in school board meetings till almost two o’clock in the morning and they’ll still have a shouting match. It’s still going back and forth and not really getting anywhere because they wind up deferring a lot of items on the agenda off to the next meeting. So, you don’t really be getting anywhere with a lot of the rhetoric. Because if we keep in mind, a school board member is in place to implement and build policy. And when we start having discussions, based off of our feelings, based off our sentiment, this is the area it goes down. Bad governance.

RICH: And so it’s clear from that audio, it’s clear if you attend a board meeting that people are passionate, the board members are passionate, the board members seem to care about. Whatever they’re doing, whatever it is they think they’re doing, but what do you think the focus should be on?

LAKEISHA: The focus should be on our students. We need to be still talking about scores, SOL scores. We need to still be talking about strategic planning. Like, the superintendent has a strategic plan. And we have failed to adhere to some of the things he has brought forth. I don’t even think that we are currently operating off of what he initially proposed. And we’ve had so many new adoptions, new curriculums, you know, new plans put in place, new resolutions, We’re just like just trying to stay afloat at this moment and  we need to put our children back at the forefront.

RICH: Right. So you’ve been working for RPS for 17 years?

LAKEISHA: I’m going into my 20th year for the 2024 2025 school year.

RICH: You’ve been around the system a bit. From your perspective, how is this, like lack of attention, how is that working on the morale of the people that you work with? Like, fellow staff

LAKEISHA: like a revolving door because you have some people who come in because like you’ll see advertisement now say you can get up to 7,000 coming into the district. We was told to turn in our experience. And then it was presented to the board in a whole different manner than it came out to staff members. That’s a gaslighting error. Um, when you

RICH: So you basically like, tell us how much your experience is. You’re going to get this amount of money, but then turns out,

LAKEISHA: it in, that was it, that was not sold. That was not the case. Or you didn’t get, you know, what was promised on the paper and you was told it was because of this sliding scale, that sliding scale or other. 

RICH: And so we have an election coming up. You told our producers that you went back and looked at what the current board members had promised in their campaign literature.

LAKEISHA: I did. A lot of them.

RICH: f you had to give them a grade for how well they’ve done, what do you think the grade would be? It had

LAKEISHA: A lot of them right now to be at a D minus. Because nobody put in their campaign literature that we were gonna be diminishing each other not prioritizing things. So that’s where I’m at with it.

RICH: Yeah. And so that kind of answers my next question a little bit like what you’re looking for in the new board.

LAKEISHA: I don’t want to see my school board fighting. I don’t want to wake up the next morning dressing my children to go to this school district that has gone across the news and it shows the full school board just pretty much arguing and the public don’t even know what it’s about. Let’s prioritize our children, put them back at the forefront. Um, you know, if we prioritize our children, everything else will fall into place. We will have good teachers teaching children who have been prioritized. We will have good governance. We will have a operable school district. Children should be at the forefront. Politics should be on the rear end.

RICH: LaKeisha Williams is a former teacher, now administrator, and long time parent in Richmond Public Schools. We’ll hear more about the new group, Richmonders for Effective Governance of Schools, and their plans to help usher in a new era for RPS schools when we come back on RVA’s Got Issues.

[ PROMO BREAK]

RICH: This is RVA’s Got Issues. We’re talking about elections for Richmond City School Board. We’re joined now by Shannon Hetty, an RPS parent who’s working with the group, Richmonders for Effective Governance of Schools, to try to change how the school board operates. Welcome, Shannon.

SHANNON: Thanks so much. Glad to be here.

RICH: Now we should note right, the school board has accomplished some things. Like a chronic absenteeism was a huge problem after the pandemic, but that seems to have come down quite a bit,

SHANNON: Yes, yes,

RICH: And then, uh, the school accreditation does seem like the schools are moving in a good direction on that, right? So there are some things that maybe we can give some credit to the school board for.

SHANNON: I think sometimes the school board has supported those initiatives. Sometimes they happen in spite of the school board. I would make the argument that they have been driven by staff and teachers and administration. 

RICH: So then what are we missing out on? Like, what do you see as some of the big ticket things that we really as a school system, as a city and that the school board particularly should be focusing

Delores Murray: Folks, it is your responsibility to take care of the problems. You have got to be together, whatever the differences are, personality, different opinions, whatever. You must come together and make decisions for this system.

SHANNON: I mean, frankly, to me, it feels like we’re kind of mirroring locally what’s happening nationally, like people are not getting to work, they’re just arguing with each other and it’s like we do not have time. We got to hit the ground.

RICH: So you and Lakeisha are backing a plan that you say could help fix some of this. So whose plan is this? What is REGS?

SHANNON: Well, I wouldn’t say necessarily it’s a plan. I think it’s like our missions. So what I love about regs is it’s folks from all over Richmond and there are all kinds of people involved. So we have retirees whose kids were in RPS 20 years ago. We have people literally that are like, bring their babies to the meeting who aren’t even RPS parents. And then you have people like Lakeisha and myself that have current kids that are in RPS that just want to make a change. And our mission is simple. A lot of us have been on the scene for a long time, some of us more than others, but seeing the dysfunction and really want to focus on the governance of the school board, because we feel like if the school board comes correct and they are organized and governance minded, then We have a chance to let the administration and the staff work. And so if they are leading and developing best practices, the schools will be more successful.

RICH: So this isn’t a partisan effort, this isn’t like a particular political ideology, it really is just focused on governance. Right,

SHANNON: Well, and I’m clarity and accountability, government and management, data driven decision making. And so that’s what we’re using as our model to kind of take some of the drama that Lakeisha eloquently talked about out of it and put it into these are the best practices that our school board should hold themselves to accountable. And this is a national model. This is not like. Shannon Hedy or anybody else making it up. This is coming from best practices from a national organization.

RICH: And so the question then is, how do you take this model and actually apply it to make it useful? I mean For this election, you folks have implemented this survey. You ask candidates questions based on these competencies you’ve talked about. So what kinds of questions?

SHANNON: me? Okay. So for an example, obviously, equity minded governance is something. So one of the questions we ask, um, in our interview is, please share an example of a time when you’ve act, um, advocated for an equitable policy in the community or a work setting.

RICH: could say something like, uh, I, at a previous workplace, I tried to push for more diversity in hiring

SHANNON: Mm hmm.

RICH: um, and, and probably a lot of people would have good answers to that, but I guess what you’re trying to do is weed out folks who, who aren’t able to answer that question, right? They don’t know what equity is. They’re not thinking about it. Is that the

SHANNON: right. Correct. One of the one of my favorite questions that we asked is what are the top three things that RPS is doing well right now? And it’s really interesting for people that are running for office. Have they done their homework? I mean, because RPS is doing some things well, but you know, are they able to talk about it? You know, because I think they’re coming in for all the things they want to fix But I think one of the things that I really appreciate about the regs folks is it’s really easy to criticize and critique We also need to be positive and move forward and be bridge builders.

RICH: What I’m really interested in is that one governance, not management. What does that mean exactly? Can you unpack that?

SHANNON: Yeah, well, I think there are several examples, but I think it’s really easy for any board member, whether you’re talking about a school board member or someone that sits on a fortune 500 company, right? It’s easy to get in the weeds and start to get into the operation side but you are not there to. Mentor staff, you are not there to talk to teachers about how they should improve. You are there to set policy and govern, not to micromanage the superintendent. And key staff, which has happened significantly.

RICH: You’re asking folks questions. You’re having these interviews. What, how does the mechanics of this work and then what are you doing with the results, the data that you’re getting back from these

SHANNON: Yeah, well, we sent actually a hard copy survey to everyone who announced they were running for school board. And then we asked folks to give them back and gave, uh, Everyone the opportunity to be interviewed and then we engaged members of regs Some of them are from the district some of them are not but there are always at least two district members in every interview For the candidates and so we’re asking them questions around these core competencies That I’ve talked a little bit about and then after we finish the interview then the committee is We’re going to be coming together and talking about, you know, how they feel about candidates and kind of ranking, you know, whether they want to endorse them or not.

RICH: So you’ve announced these endorsements, you’ve done these interviews, you’ve kind of assessed who you think might be able to live up to these ideals, at least, uh, better than others.

SHANNON: I think we’ve just done our best in interviews and using the newest research, but yeah, we are kind of, you know, building the ship as we’re sailing it. Right. But I think we will be holding folks accountable and communicating to them directly when we feel like they’re not practicing good governance. And if they choose not to engage or change behavior, then we will recruit folks to run against them. I think that is certainly something that will happen in the future. Yeah.

RICH: that will happen in the future, yeah? a challenge, let’s say, we’re lucky this is a presidential year here, coinciding with elections in Richmond, but even then, some voters might come out to vote for a president and not know that the board’s on the ballot, especially if they’re not a [00:15:00] parent of an RPS kid. So can you make the case for a skeptical listener? why is the school board election so important?

SHANNON: I always use the quote my mom says, which is hilarious because she’s 87. These are the people that are going to take care of me when I’m old, right? Which is so true. But also to have a healthy community, you’ve got to have a well functioning, um, school board. I used to actually work in economic development and I can tell you companies that are coming to look at the area, one of the first questions they would say to me before they located, whether it was retail or industry, is what are your schools like? We could have the next presidential candidate in RPS, and we want to nourish them, or somebody that’s going to solve cancer. So we got to give them the best education so they can solve these big world problems. Shannon Heddy is member of Richmonders for Effective Governance of Schools.

SHANNON: Yep. Thanks so much.

 

RICH: On each episode of RVA’s Got Issues, we’ll answer a question from listeners like you. Something you want or need to know about your government or community. On this episode, RVA’s Got Questions about elections in RVA. And our producer, Amber Coles, is here to help us answer it. Hi, Amber.

Amber: Hi, Rich.

RICH: Amber, you got our listener question?

Amber: I do, and this week we have a question from Joseph B. And Joseph wants to know, What are the voting mechanics? for RVA’s local elections and is ranked choice voting a possibility? Now, I’ve heard of ranked choice voting before, but first we want to say it’s a local election question,

RICH: Yes, I know. I know. Let’s go find Joseph B. and marry him or

Amber: We have to.

RICH: be friends. Now, let’s start with the voting mechanics. Part of it first, right? And voting in R. V. A. Is not too complicated. If you voted in any election before Richmond and the surrounding counties are all split into districts. You vote for a council member, a supervisor. Or a school board member for your

Amber: it’s the same as like voting for Congress or voting for house of representatives.

RICH: Exactly right. And the people you vote for, your council, your supervisors, make up the mini Congress for your city or county.

Amber: Right. Which we’ve answered in a previous episode.

RICH: right.

Amber: Um, but that’s not the whole thing. Cause when you get to, uh, Like, the mayor. It gets weird.

RICH: the city of Richmond, the mayor election is very much unique. Um, it’s not that you have to win a majority of voters in Richmond to be the mayor of Richmond. You actually have to win like a mini electoral college election. You have to win five of nine districts. and so not the overall amount. So the result is, That you get people elected who haven’t even won a majority of the city’s votes. So LeVar Stoney was elected twice without ever even getting close to a majority. You get less than 40 percent each time.

Amber: time. And so this like strategy for you to run from a, of just what districts can I win to get me into the office? Um, but that seems a bit like

RICH: Yeah.

Amber: And you did mention that we’re kind of like unique in the city. Why are we unique?

RICH: Yeah, it does. It seems unnecessarily complicated. Right. But it’s part of the city’s equally complicated racial history. Right. And then back in the 1970s, the federal government actually shut down city elections for five whole years because they were worried that the city leaders were too racist. To hold them, uh, and before that, the city would elect city council members like citywide. So a white majority can ensure that all the council members basically were white. So this whole district system was set up to ensure fair black representation, right? Make it a little bit harder for a white majority to prevent there ever being a black man.

Amber: Okay, so that’s good. So now we get to the second part of this question, which is about rank choice voting, which I’ve heard a lot about.

RICH: Yeah, it’s a kind of the new rage in voting. And the idea is that you can list your preferences. So say there’s three candidates running for city council. You like one the best. You don’t like the second one quite as much. And you hate the third one. Well, you can vote for the first two. And if your first person doesn’t get chosen, your vote gets counted. Uh, basically the state has allowed this now for all local governments if they want to make it happen. And Richmond City Council actually considered it last year, but it was only for council members. They thought it was going to be pretty confusing to have it just for one office. Then you have the school board not having rank choice. You have this weird electoral college thing for the mayor. They thought it was too confusing, so so far they scrapped

Amber: Yeah, so it seems like we’re gonna have to work out some more details, figure out like where the rank choice voting is going to be used, So we’ll just, we’ll wait on that.

RICH: yeah, we’ll have to wait. Now, the counties might be able to move a little bit faster on this. And it seems just overall in the country, there’s a willingness to try new voting methods. So this might be a good question to ask your city council candidates this fall and maybe your supervisor candidates in future years. Now, Amber, what if our listeners have a question about elections or anything else?

Amber: you are like Joseph and have a question about local government or anything else, go to our website rvasgotissues. vpm. org and click on the ask a question

RICH: That wonderful button. Thank you, Amber.

Amber: Thanks, Rich.

 

RICH: Finally, our Community Spotlight. Many people think that as a society, we’re not doing a good job with civic education, teaching people about our political system and why it’s important to participate. One of Virginia’s most important civic groups has a new program they hope will help.

It’s called Civics Navigator. It’s from the Virginia Public Access Project, or VPAP, and here to tell us about it is VPAP’s Executive Director, Chris Piper. Welcome, Chris.

CHRIS: Thanks. Thanks for having me.

RICH: Thanks for having me. Sure. Chris, your organization, VPAP, is beloved among politicos in the state, right? You send out a morning newsletter with all the important news about state and local politics.

Thanks. I read it religiously. mentioned, and our team, Virginia State and

CHRIS: So it’s the Virginia Public Access Project and our goal is to provide information, uh, about Virginia state and local politics and government, uh, in a nonpartisan way. And essentially what that means is that we provide information without any sort of political slant. Uh, we don’t add anything much more than the basic context to any situation that we provide.because we want the person who’s viewing the information to be able to make up their own mind and, and gather this information and see how it aligns with their own values.

RICH: But it’s kind of more for professionals like me, right? who know their way to navigate to the news, who can use your tools, and things like that. So, how does Civics Navigator take a different approach? 

CHRIS: we’ve been doing campaign finance data since our inception in 1997. So right there, we’ve got a bevy of information and a bevy of data that we can turn to. The other thing that VPAP has been doing for a number of years, Is creating what we call visuals. And this takes all of this complex data that we get through the campaign finance system, but all parts of government, and boils them down into really quick, easy eye catching charts, right. And so we thought. Hey, if we can put this in a way, uh, to, to students, to teachers, to make it easier for them to convey, uh, what they’re learning or what they’re teaching in their civics education classrooms, uh, maybe we can make it more engaging and we can actually understand the consequences of the theory that they’re being taught in there.

RICH: So, if you could give me an example of this. Let’s say I’m a high school civics teacher, right? Or I’m teaching a government class. What can I use? Like, what are you providing for me that helps me teach my students?

CHRIS: at the basic level, we can provide, uh, these visuals and news articles so that you can, uh, relate them to the lessons that you’re teaching. But we looked forward to the general assembly session. For example, uh, we envision a world where a teacher provides 10 bills that we help curate. maybe they’re just about pets, you know, like, uh, last year there was the The cat declawing bill. And you know, this is something that’s engaging and interesting for students. And this is an opportunity for the kids in class to debate that issue. Maybe some fall on cat decline, maybe they’re anti cat decline. and then they can have an opportunity to actually watch the legislators as they debate.

CHRIS: the second part is really important and I don’t want to gloss over it too much. It’s an opportunity for students to debate, to talk about real world issues, in a safe environment. and maybe they can take those home. they can talk with others, their family members, et cetera. Hopefully, these skills will translate to actual real dialogue instead of just people behind a computer screen talking back and forth to each

RICH: Now, just to be clear about this, right, there’s nothing that would stop a teacher from doing any of this stuff on their own, except for the fact that teachers are incredibly overworked already and don’t have the time to put all this stuff together, right? So that’s the idea is that if you folks package it up for them, it just makes it so much easier for that civics teacher, that government teacher to be able to make this stuff happen.

CHRIS: That’s right. we talked to a lot of teachers, and they were very clear that they weren’t looking for new lesson plans to teach the same old stuff the same old way. What they were looking for was this sort of supplementary information that will help bring their lessons into the real world. And, uh, one thing we heard over and over again. Is I would love to be able to track bills through the general assembly. I would love to be able to understand election results and be able to track the impact of certain regions of Virginia and, and what it means to the students. and these were areas that we already have readily available and can just package them up and show teachers how to teach with this material.

RICH: What do you think is the end result of this? Like, what are you trying to produce as a kind of outcome of the Civics Navigator program?

CHRIS: Well, the idealist in me, you know, wants to see a harmonizing society that’s walking around holding hands. More importantly, what I want to make sure is that I feel very strongly, and I think the team at VPAP feels and the board feels very strongly, that a more informed electorate is a stronger America and if we can harness that through our tools that we have to make it easier to become informed, that, at the end of the day, is what we’re hoping for.

RICH: a corollary, too, right, because VPAP is a Virginia organization, right, this is near and dear to my heart, like, focusing on the state level and the local level, right, so it’s not just thinking about national politics, which is, of course, important, but also getting in on the state and local level where so much other important decisions are made.

CHRIS: Yeah, 100%. And the simple fact of the matter is people are putting outweighed attention. on national politics and forgetting what it is that brings us together, which is the community. More importantly, state politics, state government, and your local government have far more impact on your day to day life than anything that’s happening at the national level. if you’re upset about that pothole in front of your house that you keep running into, Kamala Harris, Donald Trump, they don’t have anything to do with that pothole. Uh, so if you’re engaged with your local government, you, you would be able to understand how to get that pothole, corrected and fixed.

RICH: So I don’t think our listeners can see me making the heart emoji with my hands here, but that’s  definitely how I feel about that, that kind of message. So what can listeners do to take advantage? Let’s say I’m a K 12 teacher. What should I do to help connect with the civics navigator?

CHRIS: you go to vpap. org and sign up for updates by signing up for the updates, you’re able to receive information about the program. very soon we should have up on the website the ability to sign up as a teacher to receive our regular communications providing very important news articles, as well as the visuals and the ways in which we recommend teaching and how maybe they might

CHRIS: meet the standards set by the Department of Education if you’re in public schools. But more importantly, getting that update and being able to use that data and communicate with us so that we can continually improve, because we’re always looking to continually improve.

RICH: to continually improve. Chris Piper is Executive Director of the Virginia Public Access Project. Thanks, Chris.

 

RICH: That’s our show. Thanks to our guests, Keisha Williams, Shannon Heddy, and Chris Piper. RVA’s got issues, but we need you to tell us what those issues are. Submit a question or tell us about something exciting going on in your community at our website, rvasgotissues.vpm. org. RVA’s Got Issues is produced by Max Wasserman and Amber Coles and edited by Steve Lack. Our theme music was composed by Alexander Hitchens. Meg Lindholm is our executive producer. Steve Humble is VPM’s chief content officer. I’m your host, Rich Meagher. Thanks for listening.