Open High School students march toward City Hall Monday after a walkout in which they called for more money for city schools.
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For our children, our future
It became dismal listening to the plaintive pleas Monday night of people speaking before the Richmond City Council. One by one, dozens of children, parents and teachers took the microphone to ask for more money for Richmond Public Schools. Anyone tuning in during the middle of the three-hour session broadcast on public television would have thought they were watching a late-night commercial seeking money for Third World school projects for UNICEF or Save the Children. The descriptions were shocking and heart-wrenching, telling of broken-down buildings with tiles falling from the ceilings, supplies for classrooms provided largely from the beneficence of dedicated, but underpaid teachers struggling to maintain their own households, who clean their own classrooms because the building’s sole janitor already has too much to do, and sometimes fending off bad behavior and violence from children seriously in need of services.
