The state NAACP held a news conference today to stress its opposition to the idea:

The group said it opposes the initiative and questions the motivation of the School Board in closing the school two years ago.

“We oppose any scheme that creates a private school in a public school setting,” said Melvin Law, a former school board chairman and a member of the Richmond branch of the NAACP.

“We now realize that the closing of Patrick Henry Elementary School was planned and deliberate to set up the process for the charter application,” the group said in a statement distributed by its executive director, King Salim Khalfani.

Here’s some more from its statement of opposition:

Let’s be honest, gentrification is here and after the change of Richmond’s charter to a Mayor-at-Large system, the white takeover is in progress. One election after the “referendum” overturned Holt v. Richmond and the Supreme Court’s decision, the Richmond School Board and City Council became majority white. This was just the opening salvo.

There is a nafarious battle being waged by a segment of the population to take back what was lost in the 1970’s. Charter Schools were conceptualized immediately after the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1955 [sic]. Since that time vouchers, charters, and other nefarious efforts have been undertaken to circumvent the laws of the United States and Virginia. In Richmond City, the effort to totally discredit RPS, its administration and School Board are similar to the effort to discredit the City Council and former Mayoral system in the effort to ”change it and take it over by the white minority soon to be majority again.”

In short, the NAACP views the creation of a public charter school that by law must be open to all as just one part of a long and involved plot by whites to seize control of city government from African-Americans.

This is wildly off base—but, given Virginia’s toxic racial past, not wholly unexpected. Massive Resistance and other racial stains continue to poison the atmosphere decades after their abandonment.

The ultimate irony may be that, by making education reform more difficult and thereby reducing educational options for minority students in the city, Virginia’s legacy of racism continues to inflict harm on Virginia’s African-American children. 

It is unbelievable to me that the NAACP would spout such misinformation about the proposed charter. Khalfani sounds like a crazed conspiracy theorist, not a respected executive director. Clearly, he HAS NOT even bothered to read the application which clearly states that Patrick Henry would be open to all city residents. How does that make it a “private school in a public school setting?”

The meeting yesterday between the School Board and the Patrick Henry Board took an unfortunate turn. Instead of asking intelligent questions about the 300+ page application, some SB members proposed the idea that the school board itself should run the school model that PHSI proposed. When it was pointed out that it was doubtful that the SB was capable of it (for obvious reasons---just look at Richmond’s current Elementary School scores--SB members got in a huff. THey were actually insulted.

What a joke.

Does the School Board really think that the members of the PHSI busted their tails for over year creating a solid plan only to hand it over to RPS to destroy? Even suggesting such a thing to the PHSI is the TRUE insult!

PHSI should be congratulated on its tenacity, flexibility and dogged determination. THey have met every demand that the Review Committee has asked of them! THe application is solid.

It is time for the School Board to stop playing politics and start doing their jobs: improving Richmond’s schools!!

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