American Sign Language interpreters in Richmond schools were promised a continuing contract at Tuesday’s school board meeting. This has been a top point of discussion during the last two public comment periods, where VPM News has been present.
During nearly an hour of public comment, ASL interpreters and current and former RPS students advocated on behalf of continuing contracts.
Melody Winters, an ASL interpreter at Huguenot High School, said for the 2024-25 school year, ASL interpreters were given notices of appointment, which do not carry any legal obligations, rather than contracts.
She asked the division to reinstate last year’s contracts, which guaranteed the right to tenure and due process, outlined the grievance process headed by the school board and protected teachers from wrongful termination.
“We may be fired for any reason without cause,” Winters said, “That is not due process. The contract and notice of appointment are not the same.”
Ida Conner-Davis, a second grader at J.B. Fisher Elementary, attended the meeting with her parents, one of whom is an RPS teacher.
“Please keep my interpreters. I love them so much. They sign when I can’t hear something or my class is really loud,” she said. “Please let them keep their jobs. I don’t want them to leave.”
ASL contracts were not listed as an agenda item, but Kamras did ask the board to discuss.
“The decision to not provide continuing contracts was based [on] legal advice that we received about what was proper and what was not proper,” Kamras said.
Despite said legal advice, Kamras said the board wanted to move forward with continuing contracts and promised to issue them Wednesday morning. A motion to issue continuing contracts passed unanimously.
“I recognize the concern and anxiety that the notices of appointment created,” Kamras said. “At no time — never — was there any intention to remove any ASL instructors from RPS [or] to change any of the protections that they had under their contracts.”
Board members called for a more permanent solution to ensure that contracts continue past this year.
Shonda Harris-Muhammed, 6th District representative, proposed a timeline for this with a first read in November and second read in December. Kamras said the timeline sounded reasonable.
“I wasn’t joking. The contracts will literally go out tomorrow morning,” Kamras said. “I can assure you that nobody wants to go through this again next year.“
Kamras also introduced a second draft of Dreams4RPS, the district’s five-year strategic plan.
Two contentious issues — expanding the school year to 200 days at all elementary schools and merit pay for teachers — included in the draft released earlier this month have been removed. The timeline to implement the plan has also been extended.
Extending learning time is now a “big bet” to meet the district’s “exciting and rigorous teaching and learning” priorities.
RPS200 is included in the “extending learning time” bet, but the program is based on student outcome data. The strategic plan draft now calls for a multi-year research study of RPS200 to better understand its impact and determine improvements.
During the school board meeting, Kamras did not offer insights into changes made in the draft.
VPM News reached out to the school division to pinpoint the reasons for the changes and ask when community feedback would be made public; RPS officials did not respond by publication time.
Cheryl Burke, the 7th District representative, brought forth concerns regarding the lack of specific goals for various initiatives at this stage of the plan.
“I'm just looking for more opportunities for solid data in making decisions as we move forward, to make the best opportunities for our children, our students,” Burke said.
Kamras explained they are waiting to have consensus on goals before bringing in metrics.
“Once the board has agreed to the set of metrics, then we'll go back and lay out over the next five years what is the expected increase that we would like to see in each of the 10 goals that we've laid out,” Kamras said.
Harris-Muhammed echoed Burke’s comments, saying she would like to see goals outlined in the plan with more detail and specific achievement timelines.
Burke and Harris-Muhammed want RPS to hold an in-person or virtual meeting to gather community feedback. Kamras said this is possible. A date has not been set forth at this point.
A third draft of the plan will be introduced during the school board’s Sept. 9 meeting; community members who want to offer feedback before that can email [email protected].
