Following recent concerns of infrastructure problems from teachers, the Richmond School Board is considering creating an annual maintenance plan that will display all projects capital improvement funds were used for during a school year. 

Introduced by Board member Ali Faruk (3rd District), the proposal would post the plan publicly on the Richmond Public Schools website and then update it twice each year. 

“We talk about our facilities, the need for maintenance, the constant underfunding and I know that – for myself – it’s one of the most common things I hear about from constituents,” he said.  

Faruk told members that the plan could also give the public a timeline of those projects showing where they are in the process and when they will be complete.

“Also I think this is a way for us as a board to show that we take this very seriously and want to create something that aren’t just updates we get internally but something that is publicly accessible for our RPS family.”

The administration is not in objection to the resolution, said Superintendent Jason Kamras, noting that the division was already consolidating what the annual maintenance plan might look like. 

Stephanie Rizzi (5th District), said she agreed with Faruk’s resolution, emphasizing that the public needs to know that the Board takes maintenance issues seriously. She also suggested that the resolution should broaden to include actions the Board can take to secure funding needed to conduct maintenance work. 

But she also said that the division’s facilities team already provides reports on the maintenance work they do. The facilities team already has a similar internal tracker, but it is not public facing. Bobby Hathaway, director of facilities for RPS, will be presenting updates to the Board in November.

“Ultimately what this does is give our facilities department a task or a mandate,” she said. 

But the public tracker idea was met with hesitancy from some board members, including Shonda Harris-Muhammed (6th District), who referred to past conversations from the previous Board advising members to avoid “creating resolutions or motions out of actions from the media or the public.” 

Instead, she recommended approaching the situation by identifying and reviewing the procedures that may not have been followed or communicated when addressing maintenance concerns. 

“For example, did we not complete the asbestos report and then if that didn’t happen, why not? Like, what happened with that? The resolution doesn’t speak to that,” she said, referring to the Richmond Times-Dispatch’s report on the division missing four asbestos inspections since 2001. “I would like for us to continue to be proactive and not reactive because we cannot address every negative comment that the media or the community or even our staff states on all these other group things.”

Board Chair Shavonda Fernandez (9th District) also said that there has been some miscommunication in the news regarding what has happened.

Rizzi’s point made Cheryl Burke (7th District) question whether or not the division needs the resolution, and suggested hearing more from the facilities team before moving forward with the resolution. 

“If there’s more that we need to do regarding letting the public know, fine,” she said. “I just want to be mindful of what else we’re putting on that department.”

The facilities team receives about 13,000 work order requests per year, said Patrick Herrel, the division’s new Chief Operating Officer. In the last four and half years, the division has received over 47,000 requests and has completed over 44,000 of them. About 1,000 unaddressed work orders are currently in the system that are largely from the start of the new school year. 

Fernandez said she has heard concerns about the team being understaffed and overworked, emphasizing that the resolution ultimately brings awareness to what the team may need, like more employees. 

“What systems are in place to keep those balls floating?” she asked. “If there’s not some type of system in place to ensure that things are moved along, it’s very, very easy to lose sight of work orders, and that’s nobody’s fault, but how can we best support those efforts?”

Ferandez and Emmett Jafari (8th District) suggested identifying ways the Board can support the facilities team and asking the team for their thoughts before moving it forward. 

“There’s still a lot to unpack here, but I think this is a really good start to a longer conversation,” she said. 

Contact Reporter Victoria A. Ifatusin at vifatusin@richmonder.org