The questions below were sent to each candidate competing in the race for Richmond School Board.
Katie B. Ricard
What's your perspective on RPS200?
After the pandemic, RPS’s third-grade reading proficiency dropped to 30 percent. The school district needed to respond, and to make back gains, students needed more time in classrooms. The district lost learning time during the pandemic- students could not sit on computers for seven hours a day. RPS 200 gives our students who are still recovering the learning loss from COVID more time in the classroom. As a former teacher myself, I found time was my most valuable commodity. I could have all the tools and skills to deliver the content, but if I didn’t have enough time, my U.S. History students were never going to end their year learning about the present day, but instead end at the Cold War. RPS 200 is achieving positive results, and I believe we should continue to expand it to our other elementary schools with community buy-in and support.
What is your take on the Dreams4RPS strategic plan? What would you change and what would you keep?
I would keep the top three priorities and their focus on accreditation, graduation rates, and improving academics because they show if our students are achieving success in the classroom. However, I think you need a focus on equity and teacher retention in order to achieve those three priorities. For equity, we need to ensure that our schools are getting the proper resources to best support their student populations. Every school has a different composition. It is important that we provide the appropriate staff, such as literacy tutors, and resources, such as remediation and enrichment programs. Teacher retention is essential for achieving the top three priorities. Our students need licensed teachers in their classrooms and not substitutes. We need to attract highly qualified staff through competitive salaries, but go further by making sure that we retain them through supportive mentoring programs and nurture their development as teachers and leaders. The Dreams4RPS strategic plan creates a strong path forward for RPS and would have my support as a school board member.
How will you address the needs of students from diverse backgrounds, including English learners, students with disabilities, and economically disadvantaged students?
Our RPS students have such a wide variety of needs and this has long been the case. Not only do we have a majority of students on free lunch, and more recently, our population of students that do not speak English as their first language has also grown. We are accustomed to supporting the needs of all our students. We do this through effective management of our resources. To go further, I would:
- Financially support our teachers to get dual certified in ESL and special education so our students have access to highly qualified teachers.
- Ensure that our classroom materials reflect diverse perspectives so all our students feel seen and understood.
- Continue to provide wraparound services such as the monthly farm-to-table program and look to expand such programs.
- Support community mentoring partnerships.
- Work with the Office of Engagement to support family outreach programs on topics such as literacy, math, mental health, study skills, and more.
- Ensure that schools have proper assistive technology for our English learners and students with disabilities.
Through these strategies, RPS will create a safe, inclusive, and supportive educational environment where all our students thrive.
What is your stance on the role of standardized testing in schools? How should student success be measured?
It is our duty as a school district to measure our students' learning so that we can show growth from the beginning of the year to the end. The new accreditation standards, which raise the bar but do not provide the resources needed to achieve such standards, are not productive. Within RPS, there are five schools that just worked extremely hard to gain accreditation. If any of these schools were to lose accreditation under the new standards, it would be detrimental to administrator, teacher and student morale. It’s important for our schools to feel good about the gains they make; they have worked hard, building cultures of support and success within their schools. Student success should be measured by testing that focuses both on the growth that students make during a school year, as well as the grade-level benchmarks they achieve.
What’s your strategy to address absenteeism?
I support the strategy that RPS is implementing and seeing incredible results from. The district has moved from seeing absenteeism as a truancy issue, which demands a punitive approach, to an engagement issue. By building relationships with caregivers and seeking to understand why students are absent, RPS can then offer the support and resources that parents need to get their children to school. When I worked as a public school administrator, it was my relationships with families that improved attendance, not punishments. When I showed students that I cared if they came to school, calling them and even offering to pick them up, attendance markedly improved. Moreover, when I built trusting relationships with my families, I was able to determine the root cause of their attendance issues. Oftentimes my students were absent because they were caring for a sick family member or sibling, working, or feeling unsafe at school or had fallen behind in their work. Figuring out the reason for absenteeism on a case-by-case basis and offering compassion and assistance allowed me to make significant inroads on absenteeism, and I support RPS in applying the same strategy.
What role does the district play in addressing gun violence?
As a district, we create safe school environments through preventative measures. Within our schools, we need to make sure our emergency response plans are up to date and our physical security measures work. Our school leadership teams need continued threat assessment training so they can accurately identify and support students when threats to self or school are identified. For our students, we need to continue to strengthen our mental health supports so early intervention can happen when our students are at-risk for violence. Finally, building school climates that stress inclusion and kindness allow our students to feel like they belong and prevent feelings of alienation that can lead to violence.
Within our community, we need to promote “safe storage” programs to encourage our families to secure firearms properly. We need to work with the city and community partners to create after school programs so our students have safe places to go after school for enrichment, mentoring, and homework help. Proactive measures within schools and our community can help address the rising gun violence in Richmond.
What are your suggestions for addressing students’ mental health?
When I became an assistant principal in 2015, mental health was whispered about in the halls of my high school. During my time there, I worked to de-stigmatize mental health and create an environment where my students felt comfortable reaching out to a trusted adult when they felt unsafe. Below are methods I would support as a school board member:
- Advocating at the state level for lowering the counselor/psychologist/social worker caseloads so that we receive funding for more mental health professionals.
- Implementing a school-level suicide prevention program, such as Signs of Suicide, which is evidence-based with proven success.
- Creating monitored spaces where students can go during the school day if they are feeling overwhelmed, angry, or sad.
- Offering family workshops so parents understand what kinds of mental health changes to look for and how to support their children.
- Speaking with students about their school workload and life balance so that they create schedules that challenge but do not constantly overwhelm them.
Mariah L. White
White didn’t send responses to VPM News' School Board candidate questionnaire after multiple email requests.
