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In a surprise shift, the Henrico County School Board has delayed the school system's planned redistricting process to "an undetermined time when the public can once again be engaged," according to a letter from the board’s five members this evening.
"The Board will continue to review the committee’s work so that when public hearings are rescheduled, the Board will be ready to respond to public feedback with revisions to D4 and E4 as may be necessary, and ultimately bring the process to a vote," board members wrote. "For now, however, we recognize the community’s need to focus on the current health crisis, and we will be making no final decisions at this time."
Options D4 and E4 are the two surviving boundary concepts following the creation of more than two dozen options by the 67-member volunteer redistricting committee led by consultant Matt Cropper of Cropper GIS. The work of that committee is now considered complete, board members wrote.
The announcement comes just 11 days after four of the five board members indicated during a work session that they wanted to proceed with redistricting plans and adopt new school boundaries at the board’s May 28 meeting – the original target date for a vote – or sometime in June. Board Chair Roscoe Cooper, of the Fairfield District, was the only member who sought a delay, in light of the COVID-19 outbreak.
“Dragging this out is not in the best interest of our community,” Three Chopt District board member Micky Ogburn said at the March 26 meeting. “It has been a long haul so far, and . . . we have two maps. It’s time to let the committee just turn them over to the board and staff and let us move forward with what we’ve got.”
Brookland District member Kristi Kinsella concurred during the same meeting.
“We have had survey after survey, email after email,” she said. “I think we have all the information that we need from those two options to make the decision that we need to make as a board.”
Cooper, though, suggested holding off on the original timeline in light of the COVID-19 outbreak.
“The world has been turned upside down,” he said March 26, “and the question I raise, is now the right time to proceed? People are scared – why move forward and add to the unimaginable stress levels?”
The redistricting process initially was spurred by the need to prepare for the expanded versions of three schools – Holladay Elementary and new editions of Highland Springs and Tucker high schools – opening in the fall of 2021.
At last month’s meeting, Cooper suggested delaying the countywide effort but making small-scale shifts to accommodate those three schools for the 2021-22 school year.
With today’s announced delay, it is unclear whether the board would follow Cooper’s suggestion or whether it still could adopt new countywide boundaries in time for all of them to take effect by the start of the 2021-22 school year.
“It’s entirely dependent on when we can resume the process, and it’s unknown today when that’ll be,” Henrico Schools spokesman Andy Jenks told the Citizen this evening.
Jenks also suggested that until the state's stay-at-home order – currently in place through June 10 – is lifted, the school system can't consider setting a new schedule for the redistricting process.
The order "is relevant to when the public can be engaged again," he wrote, "which then would help the process come into clearer focus."
The School Board isn't likely to hear any redistricting updates from staff members this month or next, Jenks suggested, though officials "would be flexible if, or as, things change."
