Black children overwhelmingly hurt by not modernizing schools
12/18/2015, 7 a.m.
Ten years ago, I developed a plan for then Mayor L. Douglas Wilder to modernize Richmond’s public schools. At the time, City Council President Bill Pantele got it enacted into law.
Since then, Sen. Kaine and I have worked, without the needed help from cities like Richmond, to fix a glitch in federal law making school modernization 30 percent to 50 percent more costly to localities than it should be.
Now, the administration of Mayor Dwight C. Jones is quick to take credit for all the education facility funding that Mr. Wilder and Mr. Pantele put into the budget. It’s easy taking credit for someone else’s work. While Mayor Jones and his cronies find money for their sweetheart deals and perks, they have no plan to modernize schools. They refused to fully fund emergency building repairs last year.
Experts say a child attending such dysfunctional facilities loses about a year of education compared to a similar child attending modernized facilities.
The Jones administration doesn’t consider modernizing schools a high priority because schoolchildren are a small percentage of the city’s population.
This overwhelmingly impacts African-American children from families of modest means.
Should I refuse to speak the truth because Mayor Jones is a former Democratic Party chairman and the city’s most powerful Democrat?
Not in this lifetime.
PAUL GOLDMAN
Richmond
