RICHMOND, Va. -- As Richmond Public Schools embarks on a mission to improve academic performance and fill teacher vacancies, some educators are speaking out about feeling ignored in their roles, while others packed a school board meeting Monday night to vocalize support for the way they've been allowed to lead their classrooms.
“It just feels like the district doesn’t trust us to make decisions for our classrooms," said Stephen Straus, an English teacher at River City Middle School.
Straus has been teaching in RPS since 2019 and said he was here when a new curriculum was adopted in 2020. But he described challenges in implementing the provided resources, calling them "cumbersome" and "not student-friendly."
"RPS is a district that's more focused on equity, and so, equity is the idea that curriculum might look different from class to class because no class and no student are the same," he said. “Teachers are the ones who are having to figure out how to support the students in their classroom with this one-size-fits-all curriculum.”
A new presentation by RPS central office to the city's school board showed the district utilizes several different programs and resources that vary by subject and grade level.
However, Straus said the curriculum is strict, scripted, and should be used as a starting point.
“The curriculum should be like, 'Look, here's a resource you can use. If you want to use it, great, but if you're a veteran teacher, if you're an expert teacher, if you feel like you can do something better, then do it.' And that's not been the messaging," he said.
He believes giving teachers more flexibility with their lesson plans would lead to increased student success and retention of seasoned educators.
That's why he supported a motion brought forward during an emergency school board meeting in late August by Vice Chair Kenya Gibson.
Though it failed, the motion aimed to allow RPS teachers to develop their own curriculum and phase out the old one over the course of the school year. The proposal also would've prohibited the district from disciplining teachers for veering from the current curriculum.
However, Superintendent Jason Kamras and some members of the board criticized the motion as a drastic change ahead of the start of a new school year and said the public and RPS community should be given more time to weigh in on the proposal before making a decision.
"I think that that motion was aligned with what teachers want," Straus said, adding that teachers would've still used some elements of the old curriculum. "We can pull those resources offline. We can still use them for next year, and then slowly develop something that's more aligned with what RPS teachers want. It doesn't mean that we're throwing everything out immediately."
“If we're hearing from the teachers that they are feeling limited and that they don't feel like they're being set up for success, we're going to see teachers leave," Gibson said ahead of Monday's school board meeting. "And I can tell you that our students do not benefit when teachers are leaving.”
Gibson said she's heard from teachers who faced consequences for steering away from the current curriculum and cited it as a reason for quitting their job.
"This is a huge investment for the district. If we're not seeing a return, it's time to cut our losses and make a change," she said. “We're spending millions of dollars, we're making the teachers miserable, and we're not providing our students with the ability to thrive. We've got to go back to the drawing board.”
She said she's also heard from teachers who complained about the curriculum not being aligned with state standards, an issue RPS addressed in its recent analysis of its educational programs.
The 41-page presentation highlighted support of the curriculum, citing several reasons including:
- It's high quality, cohesive, and rigorous
- It's proven by research to benefit and serve disadvantaged students
- It gives teachers more time to prepare for instruction
"Teaching is incredibly demanding work, and high-quality curriculum provides a plan to prepare challenging, engaging instruction. It means a teacher doesn’t need to reinvent the wheel. Instead, they have a coherent, comprehensive, and research-based set of resources to guide their work. This frees time to focus on adapting – rather than designing – resources for their particular students," the report said.
The presentation also acknowledged the current curriculum as a tool for improving the Standard of Learning scores. Results from the past year revealed about two-thirds of students failed multiple subjects.
It said, "Our SOL data tell us that a majority of our students are not proficient in literacy, math and science. While a high-quality curriculum is not sufficient on its own to address this, it is most definitely necessary to support student learning."
Superintendent Jason Kamras, a former math teacher himself, also released new messaging to teachers that clarifies teachers are free to make necessary adjustments to the curriculum to meet the needs of their students, they won't be disciplined for doing so, and that RPS is committed to allowing curricula to evolve.
“Let’s let the teachers build a system that works," Gibson said. "If we don't trust teachers to be able to determine how they can meet the needs of their students, then I don't know why we're here."
"We need high-quality teachers, and high-quality teachers have been in our community. They've been teaching for a really long time, and the reality is that those teachers are being pushed out. Those teachers are leaving because they don't feel like their voices are being heard. I think if we change the way that we construct curriculum, we'd have more teachers that would want to stay in RFPs," Straus said.
He added his message to the Richmond School Board is, "Trust teachers. Listen to teachers."
However, Monday evening during a school board meeting, many teachers and principals expressed strong disapproval of any potential changes to the current curriculum, saying it'd be a "rash" decision that would add "chaos" to schools.
One first grade teacher at Westover Hills Elementary said having a strong curriculum allows teachers more time for planning and flexibility to adapt it.
"It holds teachers and students to high expectations while allowing school leaders to effectively coach teachers to be even stronger," she said.
Some educators also described feeling empowered by their school leadership to make adjustments to their lessons.
A fifth grade teacher at Swansboro Elementary, who acknowledged all instructors experienced the rollout of the curriculum differently said, "We as teachers and parents and students have all worked hard to learn these curricula and these systems, and to throw them away without really thinking about how teachers want to use them and how they're effecting students would just create chaos."
A Binford Middle teacher said, under the current curriculum, she saw significant growth among her students when they returned from virtual learning, particularly in students who started the academic year with the lowest proficiency rates.
She said, "The growth was astounding especially for our special education students. I look forward to seeing how our students excel in the coming year because of the foundation the curriculum has given them this past year."
Principal of Woodville Elementary Rickeita Jones also asked the school board not to make any changes to the curriculum, citing significant gains in reading at her school last year.
"We know these curricula are tools for our teachers to instruct our students, and we also realize they are not the end all be all, but they do provide structural elements, best practices, authentic experiences, and more for our students," Jones said.
Meanwhile, another teacher said she had concerns about consistent and equal autonomy, trust, and respect for all instructors across the district but said she did not support scrapping the curriculum.
She said, "I think the question we need to ask ourselves is, 'Why is that not every teacher's experience in RPS? Why are some teachers feeling they are loved and cared for and trusted as professionals and some aren't?'"
