State hoops champions B8
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Richmond Free Press © 2015 Paradigm Communications, Inc. All rights reserved.
VOL. 24 NO. 12
RICHMOND, VIRGINIA
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Henrico Warriors
MARCH 19-21, 2015
Bedden pushes back Mayor Jones’ call to close schools met with resistance By Cindy Huang
Superintendent Dana T. Bedden is politely rebuffing Mayor Dwight C. Jones’ call for closing more schools and squeezing students into the remaining buildings. Instead, Dr. Bedden and his staff are telling the School Board that the only way to close existing buildings is for the city to invest tens of millions of dollars more in new buildings that could accommodate larger numbers of students. Dr. Bedden’s administration also is rejecting the mayor’s proposal to build a new elementary school on North Side, saying the real need is on South Side Dr. Bedden where the population is growing and some elementary schools already are overcrowded. That viewpoint was aired Tuesday night at a School Board work session, clearly exposing the different perspectives on Richmond school system needs. Still, as Assistant Superintendent Tommy Kranz put it, “It begins the conversation.” In his address last Friday as he presented his proposed budget to City Council, Mayor Jones pointed to the School Board’s own data showing there are 9,300 empty seats in existing schools. He noted that underused schools mean the city is spending “too much on buildings and not enough on students,” and he made it clear he wants that to end. The mayor said the only way the city could increase funding for public education is if he, City Council and the School Board can “agree on a clear plan for reducing the 9,300 empty seats in our schools,” as well as an evidencebased approach for improving academic performance. The mayor also continued to push his proposal to develop a school to replace Overby-Sheppard Elementary in Highland Park despite opposition from the School Board, which wants the money used for higher priority needs.
Sandra Sellars/Richmond Free Press
Spoken Word artists Mysia Perry, left, a sophomore at Open High School, and Leslie Reyes, a sophomore at Huguenot High School.
Power in the word
Performing spoken word helps 15-year-old Leslie Reyes deal with the gruesome death she witnessed at age 9 of a 16-year-old friend. With a steady voice, Leslie tells a packed audience of more than 100 people that she watched her best friend die from gunshot wounds in El Salvador. She tells the room of mostly strangers about the “blood-covered gauze and stitched up holes on his shoulder and leg.” She describes in urban poetry the numbness of her own flesh.
Spoken word helps young people share their thoughts, feelings and angst
“I never believed I’d see a piece of my life lying on one of the hospital beds, waiting his life away …” The Huguenot High School sophomore is one of many Richmond teenagers who uses spoken word to share the pain and frustration of life. The freestyle, emotive poetry or prose, performed nightly at venues across the city, allows young people to inject their perspectives Please turn to A4
By Cindy Huang
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School Board gives green light to charter school By Joey Matthews
Can Richmond Public Schools afford a pricey new charter school when it already claims to need tens of millions of dollars in additional spending to renovate, maintain and equip its 44 existing schools? Schools Superintendent Dana T. Bedden doesn’t think so. His leadership team recommended against approving the Metropolitan Preparatory Academy because the charter school’s supporters have not found a building to house it. Nor have they raised substantial funds to pay for a facility. The proposed new charter school would require up to $7 million a year in public support at full capacity — or at least $10,000 per student. At least six members of the
School Board disagreed with the Bedden team, evidenced by the 6-2 vote Monday to allow the Richmond Urban Collective to open the charter school for the 2016-17 school year if it meets four conditions. The conditional approval came only a week after Mayor Dwight C. Jones submitted his proposed budget to City Council that included no additional funds for Richmond Public Schools. Dr. Bedden had requested about $26 million in additional spending for fiscal year 2015-16. The board’s conditional approval is a big victory for backers of the tuition-free charter school for boys in grades six through12, with a focus on helping disadvantaged AfricanAmerican youths. “We are grateful that the
board approached this with great, creative problem solving,” said Tunya Bingham, a corporate tax expert who has worked pro bono for the past three years spearheading the charter school effort. “The next step is to get busy with the tasks that they have put before us,” she told the Free Press after the charter school vote. The board gave charter school organizers until Aug. 3 to find a building, produce plans and prove financing is in place for special education students and English language learners, as well as for transportation. They also have until Oct. 1 to present to the School Board a lease or purchase agreement for a building, and until March 1, 2016, to prove enrollment within 10 percent of capacity.
Richmond move may force Morrissey to lose House seat By Jeremy M. Lazarus
Henrico Delegate Joseph D. “Joe” Morrissey might have to give up his current seat in the General Assembly. A provision of the Virginia Constitution would force Delegate Morrissey to resign from the House of Delegates if he proceeds, as anticipated, to challenge freshman Petersburg Sen. Rosalyn R. Dance in the 16th Senate District. It would be a startling outcome after the fight he waged to remain a delegate. He gained pariah status in the legislature because of his criminal conviction for contributing to the delinquency of
a minor. The conviction left him serving in the last General Assembly session on work release from a Henrico jail. Still, Delegate Morrissey won a special election in January to keep his seat and then watched legislators, who loudly had called on him to resign, give up their efforts to expel or censure him. Delegate Morrissey has yet to announce his Senate bid or to file the required paperwork ahead of the deadline next Thursday, March 26, to run in the Democratic primary in June. So far, only Sen. Dance and another delegate, Joseph E. Please turn to A4
The charter approval could be revoked if the school supporters can’t meet any of those conditions. Voting to conditionally approve the charter school were board Chairman Donald Coleman, 7th District; Vice Chair Kristen N. Larson, 4th District; Glen H. Sturtevant, 1st District; Mamie Taylor, 5th District; Derik Jones, 8th District; and Tichi Pinkney Eppes, 9th District. Kimberly B. “Kim” Gray, 2nd District, and Jeffrey M.
Bourne, 3rd District, voted against it. Shonda Harris-Muhammed, 6th District, abstained, expressing frustration with the way the motion was presented. Ms. Pinkney-Eppes told the Free Press this week she always has supported the charter school. She said she opposed providing $1 million in the 2016 fiscal year budget without a facility. The money later was stripped from the plan in an effort led by Mr. Bourne.
“I am glad that in the end the charter was conditionally approved with definitive benchmarks that must be met,” she told the Free Press. Mr. Bourne said he opposed the charter because having no facility is “a big hurdle to get over.” He added, “I thought some of their financial models and fiscal realities that the charter school and we face made it not a prudent decision.”
Public safety on front burner in mayor’s budget plan By Jeremy M. Lazarus
Mayor Dwight C. Jones is proposing to pour millions of dollars into wage increases for city employees, most notably police officers and firefighters. He also wants to equip the police with body cameras and modernize the 911 emergency communications sysMayor tem at a cost of more $50 million. On the poverty front, he is proposing to invest $975,000 to create more affordable housing and $425,000 to launch a new program to help struggling people repair or replace broken plumbing and avoid having their utilities cut off. However, Mayor Jones left public education advocates disappointed by offering only limited support for the school system’s plans to improve academic performance and only partial support to help meet huge school maintenance needs. Those are among the highlights of Mayor Jones’ proposed $2.8 billion, two-year budget
plan presented last Friday to City Council — a plan he balanced with a 1.5 percent across-the-board spending cut for all city departments. Council will have the final say in shaping the budget, and must complete its work before May 31. The mayor’s plan calls for the city to spend $689 million on schools, police, trash collection, street pavJones ing, social services and other operations in the 2016 fiscal year that begins July 1. That’s about $3,220 for each of the estimated 214,000 men, women and children in the city. It’s also about the same level of spending as the current year. For the second year of his plan, fiscal year 2017, Mayor Jones calls for spending $700 million, or about $3,270 per person. One big takeaway from the budget plan is that the city has yet to see any dramatic spurt in Please turn to A4