In his first budget, Richmond Mayor Levar M. Stoney essentially sidelined the issue of modernizing the aging and increasingly obsolete school buildings that most city public school students attend.

The Richmond Crusade for Voters now wants to send a message to the mayor and Richmond City Council that they need to pay more attention to a problem that is not going away.

The city’s oldest and largest African-American political group voted unanimously Tuesday night to support political strategist Paul Goldman’s campaign to put a charter initiative on the November ballot to do just that.

If approved by voters and the General Assembly, the proposal that Mr. Goldman has drafted would give the mayor six months to “formally present to the City Council a fully funded plan to modernize the city’s K-12 educational infrastructure consistent with national standards or inform City Council that such a plan is not feasible.”

The mayor’s plan, according to the proposal, could not “be based on the passage of new or increased taxes.”

Mr. Goldman is known for leading the 2003 ballot initiative that led to the creation of the citywide elected mayor position.

He told the Crusade before Tuesday night’s vote that this is a chance for Richmond voters to remind their elected leaders to stand up for the famous Brown v. Board of Education decision that outlawed government enforced segregation of schools by race.

He said it is little known, but U.S. Supreme Court justices in dismantling school segregation in the noted May 1954 decision cited “the physical condition of the school plant” as one way to determine if state and local governments were engaged in discrimination.

Except for the four new buildings, most of Richmond’s 24,000 students attend schools nearly as old as the Brown decision, he said. According to the state, Richmond operates about 48 school buildings.

“Richmond has the money” to modernize, Mr. Goldman said, but city leaders are spending it on other things, including high paid administrators and multiple departments.

“We could find the money to modernize schools if that was the top priority,” he said.

“Our children deserve better” than to attend worn-out buildings, said former City Councilman E. Martin “Marty” Jewell, in praising the organization’s decision to get involved.

He said the Crusade’s embrace of the charter initiative campaign “could be the most impactful thing our organization has been involved with in the past 30 years.”

The initiative is being carried out under a section of the City Charter that allows citizens to bypass the council and seek a vote on a charter proposal — the same method used to change the charter to a citywide elected mayor.

With the Crusade endorsement in hand, Mr. Goldman now is pushing to get the campaign going. On Wednesday, he presented the proposed charter change to the Richmond Circuit Court in seeking approval of the language.

Once the language is approved, Mr. Goldman said that he, Crusade members and other supporters would need to collect the valid signatures of 10,398 registered voters, which would equal 10 percent of the total number of people who cast votes in the last presidential election. According to the Richmond Voter Registrar’s office, 103,971 Richmonders voted in the November 2016 election.

If enough signatures are collected on petitions and certified within 60 days of the November election, the court then would order the initiative to be put on the ballot this fall.

If a majority of voters support the initiative, it would go to the General Assembly, which approves all charter changes.

If the change is approved by lawmakers and signed by the governor, then it would go into effect.

Mr. Goldman said even if approved, it is not clear that it would result in any action as the mayor could also tell City Council that he could not produce such a plan.

Still, Mr. Goldman said a positive vote on the initiative would send a signal to Virginia’s congressional delegation about the importance of the issue.

“My goal is to make sure that if Congress approves an infrastructure bill, that schools are included for the first time,” he said.

He said Virginia has ignored the problem of decaying schools, leaving it to cities and counties to somehow find the money. “And we can see how well that has worked,” he said.

He said if he were a student, he would sue the state for ignoring the requirements of the Brown decision and forcing students, particularly poor, minority students, to attend outmoded and decaying schools. He said educational studies show students who attend such schools do not get a quality education in violation of the landmark ruling.

For years, Mr. Goldman has campaigned to change the federal law governing historic tax credits so that such credits could be used to help finance school construction. Currently, public schools are barred from using such tax credits as a financial tool.

U.S. Rep. A. Donald McEachin, D-Henrico, has joined other members of the Congressional Black Caucus to support a bill to change the law so public schools could benefit. The CBC recently gave a copy of the legislation to President Trump. It is the first time the proposal has reached the nation’s chief executive.

For Mr. Goldman, the charter initiative might not “solve all the problems” of education, but it would be “a start” at addressing the need to provide modern educational facilities for city children.