Community Schools RPS

The price for Richmond’s children to attend schools that aren’t falling in and oozing sludge, have dangerously high levels of mold, or failing HVAC systems will be $500-$600 million dollars and take 15 years.

In working on the school facilities task force for the past year, I’ll take an educated guess that RPS will easily spend more than $500 million on facilities within the next 15 years, with or without a plan for reform.

In the near future there will be more forced schools closings due to structural or environmental failures. Large sums of money will be spent on short-term, band-aid efforts to continue the lifespan of outdated, inefficient mechanical equipment or outdoor classrooms to address overpopulation.

The fact is if the status quo – reaction – remains, money will not be used for new assets that will accrue capital and cost savings over time. The albatross that is failing facility cost will continue to drain necessary classroom resources, thus forcing the board to make damaging cuts to classroom education, as was seen in the leveling cuts this spring.

It’s a simple concept: if you don’t plan to manage your money, your money will manage you.

The path forward

This isn’t an impossible mountain to climb. In 2000, Cincinnati Public Schools faced a similar situation, the difference being the final price tag was $1 billion. After a year-long facilities master plan, stewarded by administration and vetted by the community, the system adopted a plan for reform and used a combination of state funds and a local bond referendum to secure the necessary funding for a 10-year plan.

In talking with Darlene Kamine who helped lead the reform effort, the key element that led to community buy-in (to pass the bond referendum) was the adoption of a community school model.

Darlene Kamine (NPR Marketplace, 2012)

What are community schools?

Community schools are asset-based, meaning that local resources and attributes drive programming, not outside voices or resources. A public-private partnership is established where the private organization has a physical location on-site and is managed by a resource coordinator. Essential to this model is creating an active school by offering after-school, weekend, and summer programming. Services not only address academic concerns, but must take into account the full physical, mental and emotional health of school children and their families.

Partnerships are developed with a range of private partners from universities (Orlando and Philadelphia), business/philanthropic organizations (Chicago and Cincinnati), or healthcare providers (NYC and Tulsa). In Orlando, University of Central Florida (UCF) signs a 20-year MOU with the lead agency partnership for the school. Check out Coalition for Community Schools, a terrific resource for all community school questions.

According to Lucas Weinsten at NYC’s National Center for Community Schools (NCCS), to achieve this dynamic model the key hurdles are establishing stable leadership, sustainable funding, and mutual respect through transparency and data sharing. That shouldn’t be a problem in Richmond, right?

The Cincinnati Model

To build the community schools recommended in the Cincinnati Public Schools (CPS) 2002-2014 Facilities Master Plan, the next 2 years were spent gaining public buy-in through listening and answering questions in community forms, establishing guiding principles and MOUs for partners, and conducting an assessment of school sites.

In 2003, funding was secured with the passage of a local bond referendum with money allocated from the state to implement a decade-long plan.

To lead implementation, CPS subcontracted Darlene Kamine to lead their Community Learning Center Initiative. This involved four 2.5 year planning cycles for 10-12 schools at a time. Deliverables for each cycle included:

• Survey the existing assets and community
• Establish a school-level vision for partnerships with goals to guide programming
• Identify a school partner and develop a sustainable model for management

At the end of the cycle, CPS architects and contractors would contact Ms. Kamine to learn of the desired school vision to inform design and construction of facility improvements.

In 2014, this process completed and was received as a success! Ms. Kamine continued her work and founded the Community Learning Center Institute to further community school partnerships. Also, CPS is now in the process of making all their schools, community schools.

Evans Community School, a partnership between Children's Home Society of Florida, UCF, and Orange County Public Schools (UCF, 2012) 

RICHMOND’S BIG TAKEAWAY  

CPS took time to conduct a truly engaged planning process, which involved not just listening or presenting information, but educating and using input to influence outcomes.

This is social capacity building at its best. By developing local networks of engaged people, infrastructure dollars are furthered by private partnerships and maintained to a higher quality as a sense of ownership is developed for the people living in the community.

The School Board and City Council agreed upon a set of goals and committed to a long-term funding plan to gain community trust.

To develop trust, whether with a parent or large financial backer, expectation for deliverables is paramount. Knowing that improvements will be delivered on schedule will allow for businesses to factor cost into longer-term partnerships, and parents to understand tough decisions about school consolidation and resource allocation.

Allowing a private entity to facilitate the planning process and establish partnerships for community schools shielded this process from becoming too political.

The Children’s Defense Fund (CDF) was an original funding source for the engagement and initial planning of community schools. CDF’s role allowed school coordinators to be viewed as neutral players, thus removed from local politics. During the decade-long facilities implementation, Ms. Kamine was sub-contracted, thus never directly a CPS employee.

What needs to happen in Richmond now (and the next 14 months)!

1. The School Board and City Council adopt a comprehensive plan for facilities improvement that is vetted by the community.

An engaged community input process needs to begin so that the facilities task force report can be transparently discussed. Be on the lookout for upcoming dates, as school administration should begin meetings in the near future. [Update on proposed community meeting scheduled for September 28th meeting]

2. The School Board and City Council pass a resolution defining and supporting a commitment to community schools.

Look, here is a great example of a resolution passed by Cincinnati.

3. The Richmond community works to secure funding to implement the adopted facilities reform plan.

Do all of the following:

Contact our state legislators. Look to other states such as Minnesota, Florida, Ohio, or New York that established state grants to fund community schools or school infrastructure.

Aggressively pursue private investment in school partnerships. Use RPS historic resources to leverage private dollars for investment as detailed in Goldman, Kasper, and Rozell’s Style Weekly editorial. Contact our corporate, philanthropic, university, and healthcare partners to work out community school partnership agreements. Enter into efficiency service agreements to pay for new mechanical equipment that could leverage $4 private for every $1 public spent.

Pass a local bond referendum, allocate money in the budget and capital improvement plan, or pass a real estate tax that is directly tied to funding school infrastructure with a sunset clause. These are my favorites, but all options need to be on the table.

4. Gather partnerships and begin a system-wide community schools assessment.

Start by reading this comprehensive action guide for building community schools developed by NCCS.

Work through the RPS Office of Community-School Engagement to amass a list of partners. My initial assessment includes the following:

• District-wide networks = Micah Initiative, Communities in Schools, Richmond Education Foundation, Boys and Girls Club, United Way, Altria, VCU, Sun Trust, Federal Reserve, YMCA, Virginia Lottery, Groundwork RVA, etc.
• Neighborhood-based networks: CHAT, Peter Paul Development Center, Northside Outreach Center, YNPN, neighborhood or merchant associations, faith-based institutions, etc.

Use local planning resources (e.g. VCU’s School of Urban and Regional Planning, UR’s Bonner Center, or Storefront for Community Design) to help guide the community engagement process to conduct an inclusive system-wide assessment.

Storefront for Community Design, a gathering place for community engagement and planning (Self, 2013) 

But really, how can we fund this with Richmond’s vast needs?

When I started dating my wife, nothing would stop me from doing whatever I could to see her. Money, time, energy was not a question.

We need to apply this same ethic to our children’s safety and prosperity by examining where we FIRST spend our money (e.g. FY16 General Fund $700 million and CIP $200 million). Fix our schools, then work out the rest.

A community that stands idly by while children suffer, is not only complacent, but is a part of the problem. As MLK stated, “History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people.”

If we claim to love Richmond’s children, then what is stopping us?

Partnerships in RPS (Part 3: Technology)

Room 107, Overby-Sheppard Elementary (2014)  

If you haven't checked out Partnership #1: Neighborhoods or Part #2:Business, then be sure to do so. If you have, then you're awesome and continue to read on.

Key Partnership #3

Technology we need (and can have) in schools today.

Yes, technology in education is needed. I know someone needed to say it. 

But where much of the tech-education discussion is on big spending in eLearning (e.g. Florida’s big push on technology), I want to focus on the two areas that highly impact student achievement and can be solved with simple tech solutions:

• Increased transparency of accounting and financial records
• Data gathering and analysis of student assessments

Increasing transparency in financial records may be the very first step that we need to take in Richmond, because if we are to increase funding for schools it needs to be transparent and used effectively. Per pupil spending in the City of Richmond is already the highest in the region, $4,564 more than the closest locality, Hanover County.  

	Per Pupil (FY12)
Richmond City	$ 13,730
Hanover County	$ 9,166
Henrico County	$ 9,041
Chesterfield County	$ 8,755
Source: Superintendent's Annual Report, VDOE, Table 15

Further evidence of financial waste can be seen in reports released by the City of Richmond auditor on RPS transportation spending and procurement practices. Recommendations from these reports could save the schools much needed revenue that would be better allocated towards the classroom.

Also, by making these records more transparent, community members would be able to help oversee the system as seen just this spring when Carol Wolf identified uncollected funds for city schools from the Redskins deal.

The tech solution for this need could come from a few different sources. If a top-down government approach is your flavor, then look to Transparent Utah for an easy to use accountability site for public spending. Although this type of change to the system should happen in Virginia, it would involve action at the General Assembly and would eventually filter down to the people, which is obviously not a quick process.

In the meantime, let’s be the change we want to see.

By constructing a crowd sourced, spending accountability site, we can develop a public-private partnership and leverage community investment to bring accountability to education spending. A great example of this concept in action is can be seen in Oakland, California with Open Budget Oakland. Led by members of Code for Oakland, this website receives, disseminates, and presents data in an easily accessible way to citizens and public officials.

Open Budget Oakland (2014) 

If you haven’t heard of Code for America and their mission to crowd source solutions to our nation’s biggest problems then you need to check them out.

Locally, it just happens that Code for RVA is currently working towards a solution for improving school transportation. Sometime in the near future this group will release an app to track school busses to better inform parents and provide information to officials to increase accountability and efficiency. 

The second major need to be met with a simple tech solution is that of data gathering and analysis of student assessments. Whether you agree or not, what will be with us for the foreseeable future is standardized tests.

As a teacher, one of the most time consuming activities was student data input and tracking. So much time was spent in these tasks that quality of classroom instruction and test validity suffered at times. Paper book test scores were kept for administration, online grades for parents, scanned paper tests for the county, and online scoring for state tests. With all of these different types, it was practically impossible for any cross-platform analysis of an individual student’s achievement of the standards.

What we need is technology that allows for teachers, parents, and students to spend more time on data analysis, and less on data input. Any tech solution should aid the teacher in doing their job better and not get in the way of instruction.    

Private technology developers have already jumped into this market with technology firms developing software tracking systems for student data tracking and input, which is termed “Big Data.” Creating partnerships with companies across the research, commercial, and educational sectors to co-design the best tools possible was a recommendation from the Department of Education’s report on educational data mining and learning analysis.

The school board and RPS administration could look to partner with companies in the VA BioTech Park to develop an improved data input and analysis system. This should be a long-term partnership where continued training and support is given to teachers in applying this new technology, as the common practice with education tech purchases is to dump and run. Applied Predictive Technologies (APT) partnership with DC Prep in Washington, D.C. is an example of a partnership in action.

With the generation of data and analysis, details on how this data will be used and applied will be critical. There are high rewards and risks associated with the power of metrics as a tool for decision making. 

What can be done today?

Well, if you have awesome coding or graphic design skills, then contact Code for RVA and attend one of their Hack Nights. The current project is on the bus tracking and I know they would welcome another hand. Also, if we are going to build out an open budget website like Oakland, then more minds will be needed.

For those less tech savvy people, like myself, a good start might be to read over one of the four reports conducted by the City auditor on RPS within the past year. Know what these recommendations are and contact your school board and city council members to make sure that these findings are being implemented.
Finally, be an advocate for increased technology spending in education to aid teachers and administrators. Hopefully this will one day involve a key partnership with a technology firm that will provide long-term training and follow up.

In the short term, a great first step would be to listen to teachers by conducting a survey to determine actual technology needs. For example, a trend I experienced in education was spending on Smart Board technology. In the Ohio middle school where I taught I used one, and really did not see that great of an impact on the effectiveness of my instruction. When it came time to possibly purchase one as a high school teacher in Virginia, I recommended to my administration that I did not need one and that dollars would be better served in another capacity. By starting with the individuals who will most use the technology on a daily basis, teachers and students, we can learn how to more effectively target investment of limited resources.

In the end, what we need is more effective use of technology, not just abundance.

Continue reading for Partnership #4: Marketing!

Partnerships for RPS (Part 1: Neighborhoods)

Burlington Yoga Conference, 2014 

The need is clear. Public education in the City of Richmond is failing. The most important gaps in this current system are…

• Development of key workforce skills to fill market gaps and non-cognitive or coping skills, necessary to develop resiliency.
• Engaging students with their local community to give them a sense of place and perspective.
• Instilling a life-long love for learning and seeking out diverse experiences and opinions.

My experience as a high school teacher, community planner at the local and state level, and work in Richmond’s faith and service community, has brought me to believe that a solution can be found through key targeted public-private 
partnerships. These partnerships break down into the following categories:

1. Neighborhood Connections and Sponsorship (pre-K through 8th grade)
2. Business Connections and Sponsorship (9th through 12th grade)
3. Technology
4. Marketing

Why an emphasis on public-private partnerships?

One of the major reasons is funding structure. Due to Virginia’s moratorium on annexation and other factors that affect revenue in urban areas, a solely public funded education system in Richmond will never be able to achieve REF’s vision.

Honestly, even if Richmond Public Schools (RPS) could, it should not strive to do so. By developing partnerships with private industry, non-profits, and community groups, public education system can better engage with local residents and businesses, thus improving not only the application of services, but changing one of the most damaging current factors, perception. 

The following key partnerships detail my thoughts on current needs, solutions to be provided through community partners, and where this might already be happening. Please let me know your thoughts and feel free to chime in. My hope is that we are starting a conversation, not ending one.

Key Partnership #1

Neighborhood Connections and Sponsorship (Pre-K through 8th grade)

Neighborhoods need to be connected with local schools. This is especially important for preK-8 education where the largest need to provide services to students is required. I learned this as a substitute teacher who would walk into an elementary classroom and be handed a three-foot stack of classroom activities for the day, as compared to the high school Latin class where I was given a single sheet of questions and a DVD. Also, parent involvement during childhood is key to meeting developmental goals, which some say are direct predictors for future success (e.g. 3^rd grade reading level predicting prison population).

As for the need to connect middle school students, take a look at the following presentation from Good Ideas for Cities. The results were based upon feedback gained from a group discussion on middle school disenrollment in the city, which was moderated by Dr. Harold Fitrer, President and CEO of Communities in Schools of Richmond. One of the findings went as far to say that middle school should be abolished and just combined into K-8 schools, a recommendation that should be given serious thought.  

GOOD Ideas for Cities at Virginia Historical Society, 2012 (Richmond.com)

Solution

Individually, this starts with local residents (with economic choice) getting involved and sending their children to local schools. A terrific example of this happening is Bryce Lyle’s efforts to get more local residents to send their children to Westover Hills Elementary. By actually interacting with the system, instead of letting perception guide one’s action, boundaries are being broken and the education within that school is improving.

The counter-argument to Lyle’s efforts is that it is going to be your (and my) children’s future at stake. But, what is life without risk? I don’t mean to be cavalier about this, but so much more is to be gained. Take a look at Fox Elementary, which is loved and embraced by its surrounding community. As the morning bell is about to sound you see families walking hand-in-hand readying for the day, children running around on the front school-yard lawn, and neighbors conversing with neighbors. Fighting for a future this great should be worth the “risk” for families of economic choice because what we have seen is that this future could be closer than you think.

Bryce Lyle at Westover Hills Elementary, 2013 (Scott Elmquist, Style Weekly)

To help Richmond families local faith based institutions, non-profits, and other neighborhood groups, should “adopt” their local schools by teaming with school administration, parents, and engaged citizens (e.g. Bryce Lyle) to form local action teams.

Organizations such Dr. Fitrer’s aforementioned Communities in Schools of Richmond and the Partnership for Families Northside (Pre-K and elementary) work directly within the schools to provide students and families with programming and facilitate services. The faith-based coalition of The Micah Initiative provides another great example of how one can give of their time to be a mentor and tutor. But, these should just be the start.

My church, Area 10 Faith Community (A10), has started down this path with John B. Cary and Fox Elementary. In each of these schools, representatives from A10 have sat down with school principals and parent-teacher association leaders to provide services and plan events for school improvement (e.g. backpack drives, landscaping, coffee for teacher conferences, ect.).  Where this could, and should, go next is to develop an action team of local stakeholders to provide solutions to the school’s Strategic Action Plan.

You may be thinking, how can these actions really improve the systemic failure that is RPS?

To that I would say that change has to start somewhere. By anchoring PreK-8 education in local neighborhoods, children would better understand and interact with their environment, thus instilling a desire to give back, or one day move back, to the place that shaped them. Also, by alleviating the school’s burden on providing and paying for certain services, which many times is passed on to the teacher, educators can spend more time focusing on student achievement of academic and non-cognitive learning goals. 

Continue reading for Partnership #2: Business!