Nearly 800 pack Henrico redistricting meeting at Godwin HS

An estimated 800 people filled the Godwin High School auditorium Wednesday night – some to listen, many to ensure they were heard – as Henrico school system officials and a consultant discussed draft options of a countywide school redistricting plan.

Many of those in attendance came from nearby neighborhoods, including Raintree, Canterbury, Edam Forest and Kingsley – neighborhoods that could be moved out of the Godwin zone to Freeman or Tucker. Dozens marched to the meeting on foot as a way to show how close they live to the school and how foolish they believe it would be to send their students elsewhere.

The meeting was the second of two this month at which school system officials and representatives from Cropper GIS, a consulting firm that is leading the redistricting process, displayed draft options of potential new boundaries for the county’s elementary, middle and high schools. A committee of 67 citizen volunteers – at least one from every school zone in Henrico – has been working on the plans for about two months and has pared their options down to two for the elementary level and two for the middle and high school levels. (The Citizen analyzed what the proposed options would mean for every elementary school, middle school and high school in the county.)

But Henrico Superintendent Amy Cashwell and Cropper GIS President Matthew Cropper told the crowd that the two options at each level are merely drafts and that the process is not nearly complete.

“This is a committee-driven effort, and we still have a long way to go,” Cashwell said. “Redistricting is never easy. I have heard and I have felt your concerns.”

Cropper, whose company also assisted Henrico during its last countywide redistricting effort in 2009, was interrupted several times during his remarks by members of the Godwin community who implored him and others to keep their homes zoned for the school. Their presence and frustration, he said, were not unexpected.

“This is all normal, we expected to see a good number of people tonight,” Cropper said. “We’re at a really early phase of the maps. We’ve covered a lot of ground, but there’s a lot of work to be done.”

Process has three main goals
The redistricting process is designed to achieve three primary goals:

• distribute student populations evenly countywide, in order to reduce overcrowding at eight schools and address borderline crowding at 12 others;

• plan for the opening of new, larger versions of Tucker and Highland Springs high schools and an expanded version of Holladay Elementary School (which will double in size) in September 2021;

• reduce the concentration of poverty at affected schools while retaining the sense of community at each.

The 46-member elementary school subcommittee and 21-member secondary school subcommittee each devised six initial maps and then pared those down to two options – Options A and B for elementary schools; Option A and B for middle schools; and Option A and B for high schools. Those maps were and associated statistics were on display at Wednesday’s meeting and a similar one held Nov. 7 at Wilder Middle School.

The most prominently-voiced concerns from citizens so far come from several school communities:

• Current Godwin High School communities Raintree and what school officials have designated as "Raintree East" and "Raintree North" (though residents insist those delineations do not exist), much of which would be moved from Godwin to Tucker High by the two proposed options; and Kingsley, Canterbury and Edam Forest, all of which would be moved from Godwin to Freeman High. The Raintree subdivision borders Godwin, while the others are nearby as well.

• Glen Allen neighborhoods in the Hungary Creek Middle and Glen Allen High zones east of Woodman Road, which would be moved to Brookland Middle and Hermitage High as part of both options. Residents have been vocal about wanting to remain in their existing zones. HHHunt’s planned 1,000-home River Mill development also sits within this zone and would be moved to Brookland and Hermitage as part of either proposed plan.

• The Ridge Elementary School community, which would lose two pockets of students in either plan – one to Tuckahoe Elementary and another to Jackson Davis Elementary – in moves that would worsen the school’s already high level of student poverty, parents have said. Ninety-two percent of the students at Ridge already qualify for free or reduced lunches.

• Nine neighborhoods in the Pemberton Road corridor, which have created an online petition (www.stayatfreeman.com) to urge officials to keep their neighborhoods at Freeman High School instead of shifting most of them to the new Tucker High School. Many neighborhoods in that corridor were redistricted from Godwin to Freeman during Henrico’s last countywide rezoning, in 2009 – a move that they fought loudly at the time.

• Neighborhoods south of West Broad Street in the Nuckols Farm Elementary School zone, which are resisting a move from Deep Run High School to Godwin High, as both options would mandate.

• Neighborhoods in the far reaches of Sandston along the Portguee Road corridor, which would be shifted from Elko Middle School – which is just three miles from some of them – to Rolfe Middle in Varina, which is as far as 17 miles away for some.

New ES and MS expansion will be considered
The current options do not take into consideration plans for a new elementary school in the River Mill area and the expansion of a middle school (likely to be Hungary Creek) – two projects that school planning officials recommended for immediate inclusion in the school system’s five-year Capital Improvement Program last month. Neither project has appeared in the document previously, but planners believe both need to be added – and completed in time for the 2022-23 school year.

A draft version of the Fiscal Year 2020-21 CIP that School Board members will discuss during a work session Thursday earmarks $11.3 million for the middle school expansion and $33.9 million for the elementary school construction; neither project has a funding source, however, and School Board members last month said publicly that a bond referendum likely would be necessary to fund them. County voters passed a $419.8-million bond referendum in 2016; that amount included $272.6 million for eight schools projects.

Cropper told the audience last night that committee members will revise their focus to include both projects moving forward, now that they have direction to do so. Another new elementary school in the Far West End – also planned as an addition to the CIP – will not be included as part of this redistricting process, Cropper said, because a timeline for its opening is unclear. (The draft version of the CIP shows funding in the amount of $37.8 million beginning in Fiscal Year 2022-23, which could indicate that that school would open as early as September 2024, if all goes according to plan.)

The redistricting committee next will meet Dec. 4 and 9 and at those meetings, members will receive more detailed information about current school enrollment numbers and student poverty levels, Cropper said. The committee’s initial draft options have focused less on those levels and more on establishing initial zones based on school feeder patterns and using major roads as dividing lines.

Officials have received thousands of comments from the public so far, and Cropper encouraged citizens to continue commenting. The school system is asking citizens to complete an online survey by Nov. 24 to provide feedback about the current options. A general feedback form about the process also is available online.

The committee intends to present its final recommendation to the School Board April 23, and the board expects to adopt a redistricting plan at its May 28 meeting.

When the School Board last approved a countywide redistricting plan in 2009 – largely to prepare for the opening of Holman Middle School and Glen Allen High School in September 2010 – its redistricting committee pared six months of work into two final options. But then school system officials created a third hybrid option from those two in one week, and the School Board ultimately adopted a revised version of that option shortly thereafter.