Race in Richmond: Schools aim for social diversity

Tim and Amy Holtz of Ginter Park represent the type of family that Richmond school-system officials would like to see in greater numbers.

The Holtzes, white and middle class, enrolled their son Stephen at Thomas H. Henderson Middle School. In doing so, they defied the norm in a school district that is more than 90 percent minority and has a 75 percent poverty rate. One in three of the nearly 35,000 school-age children in the city do not attend Richmond's public schools.

With the region's poverty largely concentrated in Richmond — and city-suburban school consolidation off the table — city school officials must find a way to diversify a district that resegregated by race and class immediately after court-ordered desegregation.

Perhaps a low point in this effort occurred when white students were grouped together in classrooms at predominantly black Bellevue and Ginter Park elementary schools for "social and emotional reasons." "Clustering" shined an embarrassing national spotlight on Richmond before it was ended in 1993.

Integrating the schools — not just racially, but economically — is viewed as crucial to the future of public education in Richmond.

According to a range of studies cited by Genevieve Siegel-Hawley of the Civil Rights Project at the University of California at Los Angeles, schools isolated by poverty and race are associated with lower graduation rates, high rates of teacher turnover, inadequate facilities and resources, and significantly lower academic achievement.

Conversely, racially and socioeconomically diverse schools are associated with higher academic achievement, higher college-going rates, higher levels of critical thinking, more prestigious jobs and an ability to adopt multiple perspectives, said Siegel-Hawley, a Richmond native who graduated in 1998 from the Governor's School for Government and International Studies, then housed at Thomas Jefferson High.

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Other locales have taken dramatic approaches to address economic segregation in education.

For a decade, Raleigh-Wake County, N.C., had an income-based integration plan in which school officials capped each school's poverty level at 40 percent. The plan was hailed for improving the academic achievement of low-income students, but it was scuttled last spring by a new school board majority elected on a neighborhood schools platform.

In Montgomery County, Md., children from public housing who attended the county's affluent elementary schools performed substantially higher in math and reading than public-housing peers in schools with higher poverty rates. Those children also halved the initial achievement gap between them and their more affluent schoolmates, according to a report by The Century Foundation, a progressive think tank.

Meanwhile, economic diversity in Richmond's schools is viewed as either a long-term project or a pipe dream. Richmond, almost by default, is focused on beating the odds.

"Poverty is not an excuse for lack of student achievement … and student achievement is not hampered by poverty because of what we do in the schools," said Richmond Superintendent Yvonne W. Brandon.

But Rob Corcoran, founder of the Richmond-based Hope in the Cities, a catalyst for racial dialogue, says the efforts of educators and a bevy of volunteers, however valiant, won't be enough without a change in the region's fragmented approach to public education.

"It seems to me a lot of the work that goes on is remedial," he said. Moving beyond that "can only happen if there's some sort of groundswell in the community that says we care about the education of every child and we're prepared to support changes."

For now, the battle to improve student performance in Richmond is being waged school by school, with victories that fail to inspire the confidence of a wider, skeptical audience.

"The best solution for all children is the kind of solution Raleigh-Wake worked out," said the Rev. Benjamin Campbell, the pastor of Richmond Hill ecumenical retreat center who is heavily involved in the school district's volunteer efforts.

But barring that, he said, the issue in Richmond is "how to be as successful as we can with kids who come from disadvantaged backgrounds who are concentrated with each other."

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School officials, meanwhile, have launched a door-to-door marketing effort and other measures to boost middle-class enrollment.

The school district's poverty rate — at 75 percent it's more than double the 36 percent of impoverished youths in Richmond — is skewed by the lack of middle-class students. "If we could increase the population using Richmond public schools, we would increase diversity," said School Board Chairwoman Kimberly M. Bridges.

On a chilly weeknight at Southampton Elementary School, about three dozen parents attended a meet and greet featuring City Council President Kathy Graziano, School Board member Adria Graham Scott, and faculty and principals from South Richmond schools.

Graziano frequently hears parents say they will leave the city when their children reach school age.

"The city must have a middle class to survive," she said. "And to accommodate young middle-class families, we need to have an investment in the schools."

Jennifer and Hurst Kelley, who are white, worked on the school decision like a difficult math equation, with the prime factor being the well-being of their 4½-year-old daughter, Lorelei.

Jennifer had been following the debate over Richmond's first charter school, a situation that left her wondering how committed school officials are to change. Damning auditor reports of computers languishing in a warehouse gave her further pause. But she wanted to check out the system firsthand.

"And we've already paid for this education, so if we can use it, great," Hurst said.

The city's schools need broad-based support, Jennifer said. "If you want your community to succeed, you have to invest in it yourself. You can't just sit back and complain."

That was the idealist working out that equation. The realist kicked in.

"It's one thing if you do it for yourself," she said. "But this is my child."

Last year, Dr. Mike Murchie and his wife, Missy, who are white, faced the decision that is now before the Kelleys. Impressed with Southampton Elementary School, they enrolled their daughter Camille in kindergarten.

They live within walking distance of the school, located in a quiet suburban neighborhood off Chippenham Parkway. But they learned they were among the few neighborhood families to send their child there.

"We've had a great experience here," Murchie said during the meet and greet. "We came because we wanted to see other parents who were interested and put in a good word."

Still, the Murchies are taking a wait-and-see approach to middle school.

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Though the peeling off of middle-class families begins before children reach school age, another drop-off occurs at the middle school level.

Educators point to the social and emotional changes students undergo in middle school, as well as its larger enrollment from a wider — and often more troubled — assortment of communities. They say parents feel less control and more anxiety over the middle school environment.

The Holtzes and other North Side parents had good experiences at Linwood Holton Elementary, a racially and economically diverse school by Richmond standards. Holton is tucked on the edge of the idyllic Hermitage Road Historic District. Henderson, named for a former Virginia Union University president, is 10 minutes but a world away.

"Unfortunately, the reputation for Henderson was negative in a lot of ways," Tim Holtz recalled.

Tim and Amy Holtz were among a racially diverse group of two dozen North Side parents who attended an open house in spring 2009 to air their concerns about Henderson. At issue was Henderson's academic rigor, its safety, its lack of diversity and the impact of transfer students from Chandler Middle, a poor-performing school that was about to shut down.

But after the open house Q&A and his own research, "We really didn't find anything there. … It had reached a point where we were comfortable with Henderson as an option."

At the same time, the Holtzes enrolled Stephen at Henderson, a black couple and an interracial couple from the Holton group also opted for the school. But the other families pursued other options, public and private, in Richmond and the suburbs.

Several people interviewed for this story said the school district must earn the trust of skeptical parents.

School Board member Kimberly B. Gray said race and class issues in Richmond "run hand in hand," but rejected the idea that families opt out of the school district because of race. "They're leaving because they're seeking a level of academic rigor. They're obligated to make sure their children are being prepared to compete."

Oliver W. Hill Jr., chairman of the psychology department at Virginia State University, said more economic diversity in the schools is "necessary, but not sufficient." The emphasis on testing and memorization is outdated and is hurting education nationally, he said. The testing emphasis is exacerbated by race and economics. "The poorer school districts are always in panic mode trying to keep those test scores up so they don't have those sanctions from the state and federal government."

Hill — the son of the civil-rights lawyer who helped outlaw school segregation — said school systems must clean house of poor teachers and provide more money, prestige and autonomy to attract the best and brightest to the profession. As for enrollment demographics, "If you have a critical mass of middle-class parents in schools, they're going to raise enough hell to make sure things are working in their school."

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Of the three students who entered Henderson Middle School with Stephen Holtz, one left for Binford Middle School and the other transferred to a Henrico County school for athletic reasons.

Stephen, toward the end of his sixth-grade year at Henderson, actually placed favorably in the school system's open-enrollment lottery. He could have transferred to Albert H. Hill, the middle school of choice in Richmond. But the Holtzes were satisfied that their son was being challenged academically and was comfortable socially. Why switch schools?

"I live in the city for a reason. I live in a diverse neighborhood for a reason," his father said. "It's important for my children that they're raised in and provided an opportunity to grow up in a diverse setting."

Stephen, 12, is taking such high school classes as biology and algebra. He says he has former schoolmates from Holton in his classes and lots of friends at Henderson.

When Stephen encounters people who harbor negative opinions about Henderson, "I try to convince them, tell them reasons why it's a good school." Henderson gets a bad rap because of its location — "what people refer to as a bad neighborhood" — and because its students are misunderstood, he said. "They're not really bad kids at all."

He has adapted to being one of the few white students at Henderson and says he's having a great time there. "I couldn't ask for a better school."

But his school, for now, falls far short of diverse. Despite its proximity to the middle-class neighborhoods of Ginter Park and Bellevue, Henderson is 2 percent white with a 90 percent poverty rate.

Holtz and school officials are planning another open house in January.

mwilliams@timesdispatch.com

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