Cary Elementary one of three schools proposed for closing
Michael Paul Williams says that closing John B. Cary would be tragic:
Fewer than 39 percent of the kids in the Cary zone attend the school. Increasing that percentage should be a priority. Cary’s attendance zone includes the neighborhoods of Byrd Park, the Carillon, Carytown and the Museum District. There’s no reason it shouldn’t be able to sustain a viable school.
Instead of closing undercapacity schools, school officials need to focus on filling them. Nothing transformational will happen in the city until middle-class families regain confidence in its school system, rather than a few select schools.
While I understand where he is coming from, families don’t regain confidence in a school because it has a lot of kids. AYP and being fully accredited should be the baseline for our schools, not symbols of excellence. Nostalgia is one of the most powerful factors in Richmond, sometime to the positive other times to the negative. If there are reasons Cary should be kept open, I’m all ears, but one of the most expensive school districts in the state needs to become more efficient. Keeping open school buildings because of nostalgia is not the way to accomplish that.
I went to John B. Cary in the 80′s. It was an amazing school. It offerred advanced reading classes, arts, music, tons of field trips to cultural spots in Richmond and DC, amazing, dedicated, loving teachers, Dr. Cooley!, an incredible mix of races and classes among students and teachers, it was just awesome. I credit what I learned and experienced at Cary with much of what is good about my life today. Very sorry to hear it may be closing.
for families to stay and in Richmond and send their children to RPS, they need to have alternatives. Cary happens to be a good alternative for a lot of folks. Fisher, same thing. If you close really decent RPS schools, and keep the lower performing schools in place you’re not attracting any families to stay in Richmond. They (RPS administration) need to be trying to get families to send their children to a Richmond public school. If they can increase attendance, a lot of their budget issues go away. And take a look at the 2007 city auditor report on RPS (I think that is the latest full scale audit of rps by the city auditor). They identify $20 million of opportunity – annually – and not one involves closing a good performing school – or eliminating choice that parents want. take away choice, middle class families will bolt and then where will RPS be?
It’s so easy to throw out these vague goals of increasing attendance and creating vibrant schools without any concrete suggestions as to how to accomplish them. If 61% of zoned students attend elsewhere, there are issues with the school that need to be addressed. I for one approve of the proposed redistricting plans which will join the Museum District with the Fan and send Byrd Park/the Carillon either to Munford or Fox. I don’t see how any parent could object to their child moving to a higher-achieving school. Teachers and administrators will move with the students, so the staff at Cary will still be serving our kids.
I’m not sure Michael Paul Williams really studied the 4 proposed redistricting plans before writing his lament about the “tragedy” of the possibility of Cary closing. And to anyone who hasn’t read them — Cary closes in 3 of the 4 scenarios. In the fourth, it serves K-2 and Fox serves 3-5. I’d rather my children not be segregated by age (imagine the difficulties of seeing your 1st and 3rd graders off to school in the morning), and I doubt this plan will be the winner. So in all likelihood, Cary IS closing. But that doesn’t mean that we can’t take the good from its history and hope to resurrect that in ALL of our city schools.