Two issues took center stage at the Richmond School Board’s meetings on April 7 and 8, but neither can be fully resolved without further data from the city and the state.
Mayor Danny Avula’s $3 billion fiscal 2026 budget allocated $249 million — including another $9.6 million against the additional $30.8 million RPS requested — leaving the school division $20 million short on executing its Dreams4RPS strategic plan.
The Virginia Department of Education also seeks to raise the Standards of Learning “cut scores” in order to further align with the National Assessment of Educational Progress standards.
It also updated the school rating system so that any school federally designated as “Comprehensive Support and Improvement” will automatically receive the “Needs Intensive Support” state rating, regardless of its actual status.
The school board spent Monday deliberating and Tuesday voting on what the district's next steps will be.
$20M gap shorts collective bargaining, strategic goals
The lack of schools funding compared to RPS’ original budget ask heavily impacts staff unions: The collective bargaining agreements cost $16.5 million alone in new spending. To honor those labor contracts, RPS needs at least an additional $7 million on top of the $9.6 million Avula presented.
During the Monday meeting, Superintendent Jason Kamras said the district’s first priority is maintaining staff.
Kamras proposed that RPS prepare a new budget proposal based on the mayor’s current budget, but continue to ask for the full $30.8 million.
“The goal is to be prepared if the numbers as they currently are are the final numbers, but also continue to advocate to expand the pie as much as possible,” Kamras said.
During Tuesday’s regular session, the school board recommended moving forward with issuing contracts for the 2025–26 school year to ensure employee retention.
Neither Avula nor any member of Richmond City Council was in the audience at Tuesday night’s meeting; RPS staff attended in large numbers.
Kamras said on Tuesday that the staff pay schedule honors the collective bargaining commitments.
“By voting for these salary changes, we are reaffirming our commitment to meet all of our collective bargaining commitments, and my commitment to you is to come back to you with a revised budget proposal that does so,” Kamras said, speaking directly to the audience.
The board voted unanimously to approve the pay schedule, including a 3% raise for teachers, a 6% raise for transportation personnel, a 5% raise for central office personnel and 2-3% raises for staff and other departments. All departments received a 1.17% step increase as well.
The overall fiscal 2026 budget for the city has not yet been finalized; Virginia’s fiscal year runs from July 1–June 30.
VDOE floats Standards of Learning, support level changes
VDOE’s recent change to automatically apply the state “Needs Intensive Support” label to schools with the federal “Comprehensive Support and Improvement” label caused some frustration in Monday’s meeting.
7th District Representative Cheryl Burke said the way Richmond schools are currently labeled as “Needs Intensive Support” by the state is “unacceptable.”
“Our schools are not performing as bad as people in the community may think, because of the labeling,” Burke said.
1st District Representative Matthew Percival said he was concerned about schools becoming stuck on the “Comprehensive Support and Improvement” level if the federal Department of Education is fully dismantled as President Donald Trump has ordered of US Education Secretary Linda McMahon — because there would then be no centralized entity to compile performance data for the states.
Kamras said that was “certainly possible.”
Richmond’s school board also discussed a separate statewide change recently proposed by the Virginia Board of Education that may impact how students’ proficiency levels are scored.
Kamras said Richmond should wait until more data comes in during the spring and summer before making any further decisions about RPS’ strategic goals. According to Virginia Mercury, that process is ongoing and may not take effect until at least 2026.
Board members expressed support for the change, but also had concerns that it could cause SOL scores to drop across the commonwealth, even if students are performing better on the exams.
5th District Representative Stephanie Rizzi said the move toward higher standards was “laudable,” but requiring them without community outreach and additional resources for school districts would be like asking RPS to “weave gold out of straw.”
“I haven’t seen any outreach to our kids, who are human beings and can understand this. It’s frustrating,” Rizzi said.
