Richmond’s City of the Future initiative was established to modernize Richmond’s schools and other buildings. Mayor Wilder made a controversial move on March 5, when he took building new public schools out of his City of the Future initiative. Alternatively, Mayor Wilder proposed building two new specialty high school campuses. One campus would focus on math and science, and have a vocational-technical school. The second would focus on arts education. The two new schools, each educating approximately 1,000 students, would cost nearly $169 million to build. This proposal is particularly shocking, because previous proposals had called for renovating or building 15 new schools for nearly the same price.
This move on the Mayor’s part was in reaction to the School Boards unwillingness to close underused buildings. By making such a proposal the Mayor is inviting opposition from both the School Board and City Council.
School Board Chairman George P. Braxton II stated that he questioned the administration’s spending priorities. His skepticism of the administration’s proposal is well founded, since the original proposal was to spend $180 million on 15 schools, with an additional $18 million on specialty high schools. The Mayor’s new proposal requires spending approximately the same amount as initially proposed while building only 2 schools, instead of 15.
School Board Chairman Braxton is not only concerned with the economics of the Mayor’s proposal. He also shared concern about the Mayor’s plan to build new specialty schools when “we have so many facilities in our current system that need to have their structures addressed”.
Similar concerns were shared by Melvin Law, a former Richmond School Board chairman. He stated that “spending nearly $170 million on two schools certainly gets my attention”, the implication being that spending such an extravagant amount on only two schools is a poor use of the city’s finances.
The Mayor’s proposed plan also got the attention of City Council. Fourth District Councilwoman Kathy C. Graziano stated that, “it’s going to be very difficult to convince City Council that we’re going to invest all of the City of the Future school money into two new high schools”.
While the revised City of the Future plan does include proposals to improve the city’s public amenities, such as historic theaters, paving streets and laying sidewalks, and building new libraries and improving city parks, it greatly disadvantages the City’s school system.
Chief Financial Officer, Harry E. Black, said that the administration is “hopeful that council will not hold the entire package hostage just because of schools”. Only time will tell, but it seems clear that schools will be the determining factor.