THE CASE FOR ‘4 MORE YEARS’ OF JASON KAMRAS BY MARLAND BUCKNER

If You’re Worried about Richmond’s Public Schools, Now Might be a Good Time to Panic

Among those keeping a close watch on the Richmond Public Schools (RPS) Board, worry has quickly turned to alarm that the Board will not renew Superintendent Jason Kamras’ contract for another four years. So great is public concern that as of this writing a, “Keep Kamras” Change.org petition has garnered nearly 1000 signatures. Failure to renew Kamras’ contract in the middle of the greatest local public education crisis since Massive Resistance would almost certainly place the Board in immediate jeopardy with its two most important constituencies: the Virginia Department of Education (VDOE), and RPS parents. Worse, it will exacerbate the already untold harm Covid has inflicted on RPS students.

To better understand just how breathtakingly irresponsible failure to renew Kamras’ contract would be, recall the condition RPS was in prior to his arrival.

In early 2017, VDOE took the extraordinary step of imposing a 10 year “corrective action plan” outlined in a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between RPS and VDOE. The MOU was the result of an audit conducted by a team of 20 State experts and resulted in a 42-point list of corrective actions to be taken over a decade. The audit documented conclusively what Richmonders knew all too well: RPS was a disaster.

What did Kamras do upon arrival? Certainly not the usual.

Most officials in his situation would have immediately laid out for citizens the extent of the damage they inherited and placed blame squarely where it belonged.

Kamras and his team did no such thing.

Instead, they held over 170 community meetings to help inform development of a strategic plan. They quickly implemented a data driven decision-making process to measure progress toward 10 key goals designed to address the concerns outlined by VDOE.

They developed budgets that brought unprecedented funding increases to RPS.

They oversaw construction and renaming of three new schools.

They focused on ending the nauseating but accurately named school-to-prison pipeline by making significant investments in restorative and trauma-informed care practices utilizing dozens of new counselors, social workers, and nurses.

They expanded partnerships with families and the community through the Community Hub Model, the Brothers United and Girls for a Change mentoring programs, a new home visit program, a new website, and the REAL Richmond history course.

All this and they raised teacher salaries in each of the last three years.

Then, in the middle of making steady progress against the community informed, VDOE scrutinized strategic plan, Kamras and team had to overhaul RPS to confront Covid.

Far from shrinking from the challenge, they quickly organized to provide over 22,000 laptops and 6,000 wi-fi hot-spots for virtual instruction while implementing a system that has, to date, delivered over 2 million meals to thousands of RPS students whose families qualify since schools closed in March.

Outside of Richmond, Kamras is widely viewed as having developed and executed a national-class Covid response. His relentless communications campaign designed to inform and engage the entire Richmond community in service of RPS families has drawn praise across Richmond and beyond. Experts with deep operational expertise in the challenges of high-poverty school districts have lauded his team’s efforts. Still, in the face of these and other facts, a near majority of the Board is poised to vote against renewing Kamras’ contract for another four years.

For reasons that pass all human understanding and despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, some Members seem to believe that Kamras has been ineffective and that at best only a two-year contract extension is warranted. That is patent absurdity posing as a “middle ground” solution. No person of Kamras’ abilities would take a two-year deal. Members know it and Kamras has said as much. Clearly, the goal of Members pushing a two-year deal is to send Kamras packing for one of the many truly reform minded school districts ready to snatch him up. If they succeed, they will be inviting precisely the type chaos now on full display at the Richmond Region Housing Authority (RRHA) whose CEO turnover issues have rendered that agency virtually incapable of serving RRHA families; the very same families nearly all of whose kids attend RPS.

Ironically, if Kamras and team were operating in any other sector of our economy, almost anywhere else, they would be congratulated, promoted and appropriately compensated.

But in Richmond, their jobs are at risk. Why?

Questions of competence will absolutely be raised if the Board moves to exit Kamras and team but those questions will not be raised about Kamras, but about the RPS Board itself. Moreover, those questions will be raised not just by parents and voters, but more importantly in the short run, by the State.

Can anyone seriously believe that VDOE will sit idly by if the Board fails to renew Kamras’ contract for a full four years? Would the ouster of a demonstrably effective Superintendent and his team, with whom VDOE has been working effectively, not raise red flags with the State about the collective judgement of a Board that made such a decision? Surely other elected officials, civic and business leaders would begin to raise such questions as would any potential candidates for the job. What remotely qualified person would ever dream of taking the RPS job knowing their predecessor had been run out of town for making actual progress?

Would such a circumstance not force VDOE to at least consider an outright takeover of RPS? At a minimum, one can safely assume VDOE would exercise far greater oversight of the Board and the system under the terms of the existing MOU.

And what of the broader public reaction?

What families, striving mightily to stay in RPS, would not hasten to move to adjacent counties if they could? And those families who cannot? Will their kid’s circumstances improve?

What families considering moving to the Richmond region would take one look at RPS and not immediately rule it out?

How would businesses, institutions, and organizations, seeking to attract talent to Richmond, explain such a decision to their job candidates?

Would such a step not prompt high performing principals and teachers to fear for their jobs as well?

Finally, what of equity? Kamras has been singularly dedicated to equity centered engagement with the kids, families, and employees of RPS. Board Members who loudly proclaim their commitment to “student equity” from atop their high horses — should ask themselves what message they are sending about equity when someone is turfed for doing exactly the job they were hired to do, and doing it as well as possible under the circumstances? It hardly takes a Ph.D in, well, anything to recognize the monumental hypocrisy of such a position.

Failure to renew Kamras contract for four years would be an unmitigated disaster for RPS kids, families and Richmond at large. Should the Board choose to inflict such a blow on RPS families, not only will they invite what will fast become a withering level of parental and voter scrutiny, they could even sooner find themselves on the receiving end of VDOE oversight too difficult to withstand — and they should.

Marland Buckner is Co-Founder of MB² Solutions an impact development and policy strategy firm with offices in Richmond Virginia and Washington DC.

This post originally appeared on Marland Buckner’s Medium page on January 17, 2021.

cover photo by Dean Hoffmeyer of the RTD, edited by The Cheats Movement Staff