Near West End

As a recipient of the Mary Munford PTA emails, I received this message from our school board rep, Kim Bridges. Sounds like she’s taking things in the right direction. What do you think?

Message From Kim Bridges, 1st District Representative to the RPS School Board
Dear 1st District community and other RPS stakeholders,

As you know, the long-awaited results of the city auditor’s review of RPS Purchasing and Accounts Payable came out last week. As you also know, it wasn’t pretty. After a preliminary review, it’s been my weekend study, and with the turn of nearly every page my heart sank. Now, the only bright side of this audit is that the school board and superintendent had requested this audit last April and began the revamping of Finance & Operations six months ago. Lots of change has taken place since then and I highlighted some of that in my last update. For the audit, we knew that the findings would be very similar to the audit of the city’s procurement services, so the superintendent and interim chief of Finance and Operations started work on many recommendations well before the audit was done. As a result, 21 of the 102 recommendations have already been addressed and a plan is in place for over half of the recommendations to be implemented by summer.

If you’ve read any of my previous updates, you know I am a huge supporter of public education and of RPS in particular. I have two children in the school system because I truly believe that they can get a wonderful education here and have opportunities equal to or greater than their peers in surrounding systems or private schools. I know many other families like my own who have chosen to be a part of this school system for the same reason.

Over the past fifteen months, I have found and worked for progress in RPS. I believed (and still do) that this system is at the tipping point of a much brighter future. Yet, being proud of this system is a difficult prospect when the community’s predominant mental picture is one of corruption, incompetence, fraud, or waste.

I don’t often use the first person in school board meetings because every decision we make must be a collaborative one. Taking personal credit doesn’t do too much to advance our work, but taking personal responsibility does. I want you to know that I am responsible as a leader of an environment where corruption, incompetence, fraud or waste can pervade such a major function of the system. I am responsible for having the internal controls in place to catch errors before they become regular practice. And to the thousands of kids, parents, mentors, teachers, principals, and support staff who show up everyday to do their best to build something worthy of pride, I am sorry.

I assure you that I will work hard, with my colleagues, to fix this mess. In the near term:

Today at 1:30, the newly-formed Internal Audit committee, to which I was appointed chair, will identify what we need to do to have a “systematic, disciplined approach to evaluate and improve the effectiveness of the system’s risk management, control, and governance processes” (decription from the Institute of Internal Auditors.)

Tonight (Monday) at 6:00 p.m., the board will produce its audit response plan.

Thursday at 2:30 p.m., the administration will update the board and public about its improvement steps at a special meeting of the Facilities and Operations committee.

Many more changes are ahead for RPS. I vow to do my best to ensure that change means progress—not just change for appearance sake—and that the stability and confidence our staff and students need will accompany the necessary improvements.

I value your feedback; your suggestions and assistance are more crucial than ever to help replace negative images with positive reality–Kim Bridges, 1st District School Board representative

Community and Thomas Jefferson high schools will receive grants to increase enrollement and offerings in Advance Placement math, science, and English classes.

Gov. Timothy M. Kaine announced the grants today to Community and Thomas Jefferson high schools in Richmond, Deep Run and Varina high schools in Henrico County, and Amelia County High School. The schools were among 14 state high schools selected to participate in the first phase of the five-year project to get more students into AP classes and improve test scores.

“AP classes have a history of showing results,” Kaine said, “and increasing enrollment and scores is a primary goal.”

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The folks over at North Richmond News have reminded us that preschool registration is quickly approaching for next year. Make sure that you get your paperwork together now, so that registration is easy. Also, new this year, is in the Near West End, due to high demand an additional preschool classroom will be opened at Community High School at Libbie and Patterson.

Richmond Public Schools will hold citywide preschool registration beginning March 20 for its 2008-2009 preschool programs. Beginning March 20, preschool registration will be held every Thursday at all Richmond City elementary schools (except George Mason and Fairfield Court). Registration will continue at the schools until June 12.

Beginning April 1, preschool registration will be held every Tuesday from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the following community locations:

East End District Initiative Building, 701 North 25th Street
Parent Resource Center, Richmond Technical Center, North Building, Rm. 205
Humphrey Calder Community Center, 414 North Thompson Street
Beginning April 2, preschool registration will be held every Wednesday from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the Southside Community Service Center, 4100 Hull Street.

Parents must bring proof of residency at the time of registration. Parents must also bring their children’s birth certificate, Social Security card, a physical exam completed within the last 12 months and an up-to-date immunization record.

Parents who want to register their children for Head Start must also bring proof of income, health insurance cards and a copy of their child’s dental exam.

Children must be four years old by Sept. 30 to attend Virginia Preschool Initiative classes. Head Start serves students who will be three or four years old by Sept. 30.

For more information, call 254-6181 (English) or 254-6180 (Spanish).

You are cordially invited to the Richmond Public School’s State of the Schools address this Saturday, March 8th at 11 a.m. at Thomas Jefferson High School (4100 West Grace Street). Call 780-7100 for more information.

My daughter came home from school last week with a paper that sounded like Richmond Public Schools was going to try something new — plan its curriculum around its students and balance the SOL (Standards of Learning) testing with a other needs of the students. It sounded remarkably fresh. And surprisingly, it sounded like it might actually happen.

The letter wasn’t signed, which seemed sort of strange to me. And actually, the timing seemed sort of strange too. I was sort of waiting to see if Mayor Doug Wilder was going to come and veto it and say to the superintendent and the school board, “You can’t do that!” But so far, it seems no one is really talking much about The New Direction letter.

“Developing the whole person” or student sounds good to me. I’ve hated the SOL tests for a long time because they take so much freedom away from teachers and actually can suck the life out of good ones. Now that I’ve seen them work their magic (like at G.W. Carver, where my husband teaches) I’m not totally opposed to them, but certainly feel like there needs to be more balance. We don’t want all the kids walking around like zombies spouting information but not truly grasping it. We want well rounded kids who also just happen to love learning. And, I’m hoping that is what the New Direction can bring.

I’m sure like any program, there will be drawbacks, but it seems like RPS genuinely wants what is best for the kids. And, amazingly enough it looks like the school system is agile enough to change the way they’ve done things if it will make the schools better and help the kids. Currently, they are looking for input from parents.

The last public forum, looking for input from parents is this Thursday night, Nov. 28th at George Wythe High School from 6 to 8 p.m.

RPS is showing that it has moved into the 21st century. Folks who can’t attend the meeting, can do a Survey Monkey survey online at their convenience.

It looks like they are going in the right direction, emphasizing community partnerships and technology, but still, I worry that this will add yet more work on the teachers and that they won’t properly support and fund the program so the teachers and the students can be successful. Having an individualized education program for EACH student will be alot of work. I hope that they are planning on hiring lots of folks to help or make class sizes smaller so that they don’t just expect all of the already taxed teachers to do more.