New Henrico School Board members want to prioritize staffing and smaller class sizes, consider new cell phone policies

New school board members Madison Irving and Ryan Young have made it off the campaign trail and into their new roles, but their emphasis on getting schools fully staffed and all students equally supported hasn’t changed.

After Irving won a three-way race for the Henrico School Board’s Three Chopt District seat and Young defeated four other opponents in the Fairfield District race in November, both were sworn in to their school board positions in December and attended their first school board meeting Jan. 11.

Both Irving and Young emphasized the need to fill existing vacancies in Henrico Schools. According to state data released in late December, Henrico Schools has a teacher vacancy rate of 5.4% – higher than the state average of 3.9%. That percentage also marks an increase from Henrico’s teacher vacancy rates in 2022-2023 (4.8%) and in 2021-2022 (3.4%).

“I think being in buildings, I see that there’s just literally not enough people in the buildings,” Irving said. “Even above what we think of as a 100% staffed building, we can always use more bodies.”

Fewer college students in Virginia are pursuing the teaching pathway, making it harder for school divisions to recruit new staff.

“Bringing back” the teaching profession in Virginia means better pay, said Irving – who is a school teacher himself in Chesterfield County – but also guaranteeing a good working environment and enough resources for teachers to feel supported.

“Pay is just a small piece of it. I think instilling respect in the profession is a big thing,” he said. “I think making the profession seem attractive is extremely important because being in the classroom, if my students see people who are unhappy day in and day out, they’re like, ‘Why would I want that job?’”

More students need to see themselves in their teachers, Young said, and hiring more staff that reflects the student population is a good start for Henrico.

“We need younger teachers to come in, we need more African American male teachers, so we can see ourselves in our teachers,” he said. “I still remember my great teachers from when I was in high school, even elementary school, and we just need more of that now.”

Young, who was born and raised in Henrico, attended school at Laburnum Elementary, George H. Moody Middle, and the then-newly opened L. Douglas Wilder Middle, and Henrico High. His own children now attend Chamberlayne Elementary, Henrico High, and Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic School.

Young continues to work at his consulting job and continues to coach the JV and varsity boys basketball teams at Henrico High.

“Henrico is the only high school in my district, so just being there with the kids is amazing,” he said. “The kids love it, the staff loves it. It’s different now that I’m on the school board but it’s still enjoyable and that access that they have to me is real now.”

Irving comes from a family of public school educators and has a daughter who will attend Henrico schools when she is older. He also still works as an economics teacher at James River High in Chesterfield, which he said allows him some insight inside the classroom while he’s on the school board.

“My kids were super happy for me. I got a congratulations card from some of my class that they had hand-written,” he said. “It’s fun as well because I think it’s maybe cool to have a teacher who does stuff like that.”

Irving has already received comments and questions from people in his district, including a special request from two young students.

“I did have two fifth-graders who sent me an email and they’re very concerned about climate change, which I’m also very concerned about,” he said. “And they just wanted to make sure the county was doing what it could to reduce its carbon footprint and become as carbon neutral as it possibly could.”

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Looking forward to this year, Irving and Young already have a lot of issues stacked up on the table. New cell phone restrictions and bans have been adopted by several nearby school divisions, including Richmond Public Schools, and Henrico officials will have to decide whether they want to adopt a stricter cell phone policy.

Currently, HCPS prohibits students from using cell phones during class, unless the teacher allows it, but still allows students to bring phones to school. Considering the drawbacks of cell phones – such as mental health impacts and misbehavior – Irving said a stricter policy is something he would consider.

“I have a very strict no-cell-phone policy in my classroom,” Irving said. “I think that the phones present a lot of challenges. When you’re thinking about being on this device all the time, it’s hard to be present in the moment and focused on what you’re doing in school. There’s studies that show even if your phone is in your backpack and you’re just thinking about it, you’re less likely to do well on the assignment that you’re working on.”

Young said that while he would be hesitant to enforce a total ban on cell phones in schools, he wants Henrico to think of more creative ways to limit student cell phone use.

“I’m not sure if a total ban is appropriate, just due to the nature of safety in schools, so we have to get creative with addressing it,” he said. “I know some teachers at Henrico offer extra credit if they put their phones in the pouch when they walk in, so different creative ways to limit using the cell phone during instructional time.”

Collective bargaining will be another big issue for the board to consider this year. In November, several HCPS teachers from the Henrico Education Association, the county’s teacher union, spoke before the school board to encourage them to put forth a resolution that would allow HCPS employees to negotiate their contracts each year.

Irving and Young, who both said on the campaign trail that they would support collective bargaining, said they would still want the board to consider putting forth a resolution, although they don’t think it will happen immediately.

“I’m not going to flip-flop on my support. It’s conversations that need to happen within the board, with the stakeholders in the county,” Irving said. “It’s nothing that’s going to be rushed into and I think frankly, the HEA folks don’t want it to be rushed into either.”

“I think discussions have to be had about it,” Young said. “I don’t think it’s a clear-cut ‘yes,’ but at least we need to entertain collective bargaining.”

For Irving, another big priority is ensuring smaller class sizes in Henrico. During the past 10 years, Henrico Schools has decreased its pupil-teacher ratio from 21.4 in 2014 to 18.4 in 2023; but for many schools in the West End that have higher capacity rates, more work can be done to give students more one-on-one attention, Irving said.

“One of the biggest predictors of academic success is smaller classroom sizes,” he said. “I think everybody would support smaller classroom sizes because as parents, your child’s more likely to get one-on-one attention. As a student, you know that you're more likely to get your questions answered. As a teacher, it’s significantly easier to deal with fewer kids rather than a lot more kids.”

Young wants to focus on reading scores in his district, as well as increasing parental involvement in Fairfield’s schools.

“What I’m hearing is that reading is one of the biggest things that’s kind of hindering our district,” he said. “They want to see improvement in academics. But on the other side, I want to see improvement in parent participation in our schools.”

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When it comes to supporting disadvantaged student groups – such as English-learners, students with disabilities, and economically disadvantaged students – both Irving and Young want to focus on increasing staffing for specialized programs like exceptional education and ESL.

“A lot of things go back to staffing. I’m big on just getting the basics correct,” Irving said. “I think special programs that we can dream up that will help ‘XYZ students’ don’t work if you don’t actually have the people to carry it out.”

Irving and Young are joined by returning members Alicia Atkins (Varina District), Marcie Shea (Tuckahoe District), and Kristi Kinsella (Brookland District) on the board. On Jan. 11, board members elected Atkins as the new board chair and Shea as the new vice-chair.

Young said he wants to lean on other board members’ strengths, such as Irving being a current teacher, and embrace the board’s diversity in experience and background.

“Leaning on [Irving] for that in-classroom information, what’s going on in the classrooms. Even though it’s a different division, you still can pull from him,” Young said. “We’re so diverse on the board, and not from a racial standpoint but from an experience standpoint.”

Continuing to reach out to constituents and making sure they know they are heard will also be a big focus for Irving.

“I think most people just want to be heard and they just want to know that you’re going to be someone who will listen to them,” he said. “Because I returned one gentleman’s call and he seemed surprised. And I think that’s just doing the job of the role.”

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Liana Hardy is the Citizen’s Report for America Corps member and education reporter. Her position is dependent upon reader support; make a tax-deductible contribution to the Citizen through RFA here.