HCPS panel discusses path to equity for students

A Henrico County Public Schools panel Tuesday night that included Del. Lamont Bagby (D-Henrico) and School Board member Alicia Atkins (Varina District) offered a range of potential ways to support students and work toward resource equity in the county.

The virtual panel, titled “Community Conversations: It Takes a Village” was part of the HCPS Family Learning Series; Adrienne Cole Johnson, director of the school division’s Department of Family and Community Engagement, moderated.

Atkins answered Cole’s question about the histories of the eastern and western sides of Henrico with an analogy: the East End is like a classic car, she said, while the West End is like a brand new car. The West End attracts attention, and thus resources, because it is new; the Varina District, however, dates to about 1610 and came from John Rolfe’s plantation.

“If you don’t understand the history, you won’t recognize the quality and the depth that it brings,” which makes fighting for change difficult, Atkins said. The East End needs enough attention to get investment for the maintenance the area needs, she said, invoking the classic car analogy, and sharing the district’s history can help attract that attention.

Housing and mentorship can help effect change, panelists said.

“Henrico County is the model for white flight and redlining,” the effects of which are visible today, said Bagby, who represented the Fairfield District on the Henrico School Board before his election to the Virginia House of Delegates.

Schools have taken the blame for a lack of resources, especially housing.

“It’s never been about really the [school] facilities,” he said. “It’s been about the resources, and the poverty and the saturation thereof.”

One of the best things to do is to be an example, Atkins said.

“I believe ‘each one teach one,’ then you’ll finally reach everyone,” she said, “but being an example of what you want to see is free.”

Comfortable with equity discomfort?
Panelists drew from their experiences when discussing how people can work for change without acting purely as saviors.

David Ross is part of the Henrico Area Mental Health and Developmental Services’ Prevention Services team.

“Our approach is to hold individuals accountable, that we don’t just do for them, we teach. . . we don’t assume the role that ‘we’re going to always do this for you,’” he said.

Community member Erika Carson, who is Puerto Rican and Black, said she felt that schools had had low expectations for marginalized students. As a teacher, she once failed all the students in an eighth-grade science class, she said, and by the end of the year, their parents realized that she was holding students accountable to what they could be, not what was okay to get by.

Having an adult who believes in a child helps with their resiliency, said Kathy Nussbaum, a member of the Henrico Area Mental Health and Developmental Services’ Youth and Family team.

People grow comfortable with equity discomfort, Atkins said, a term she later explained using a time she was pulled over by a rude police officer whose behavior she accepted.

“When you tolerate something over time, subconsciously, you accept it,” she said.

“Sometimes empowerment is hard to give within an individual when you felt beat down, when you have been disconnected from your history, because history brings pride. History brings honor,” Atkins said. Community support is necessary to remind people that they are unique and can change their lives and those of others, she said.

Opportunities for all
Parents talk about how they can support their own children, Bagby said, but need to think about every student.

“What we need to do as a school district, as a county, as a Commonwealth, is make sure every student has the same opportunities, from pre-K to higher ed,” he said.

Panelists had varying answers to an audience question about what West End parents could do to advocate for inclusion and diversity.

West End communities should push for affordable housing in their neighborhoods, Bagby said.

Parents need to embrace difference so that their children will be welcoming to people from diverse cultures, Carson said.

An exchange program between West End and East End students could help, Ross said, to remove fear, doubt and false narratives on both sides. Nussbaum said she had hoped for the same but in a girls’ group.

While such a program isn’t a bad idea, students are already together in Henrico high schools with specialty centers, Bagby said, but then go home to different circumstances and communities.

Ross said that he saw children go home to environments in which they were focused on surviving rather than planning for the future, and that the strategy should be to bring equity, especially in economic terms, into a community.

Understanding history – especially Black history – helps, Atkins said.

She introduced a “One Henrico” committee idea to the School Board earlier this year, she said, as a way to take stock of resources countywide.

“[T]he whole purpose of One Henrico was to take individuals from the ground in each district, put them together, and look at the resources that surround the schools, and let’s have a living methodology, a living way to assess resources that surround schools so that if we got into a natural disaster — unfortunately now we’re in a pandemic — we would already have this living resource…” that would be familiar with daycares, grocery stores, and the other resources near schools, she said.

She encouraged audience members to contact their School Board representatives to encourage them to take a vote on the plan.

Atkins will continue to push for the committee to strive for equity on resources, she said, but for now she has built a team called Varina’s Village that is looking at resources like childcare, tutoring, virtual learning coaches and others for families that live and work in the district. The team will build a website and distribute a mass mailing, hopefully before the school year begins, she said.

Atkins said she had heard common themes from students and parents: the challenge of limited resources, and their desire to be heard and to see change. Students pushing for change are compelling because they need change now for their futures, she said.

“That common theme is, ‘We want to be heard. We’ve been saying the same thing for a while now, and we’re ready for change,’” Atkins said.