School Board chairman Ken Pritchett and Dr. Tamara Sterling – Credit: Progress-Index
by James C. Sherlock
Petersburg City Public Schools (PCPS) has hired Dr. Tamara Sterling as its new superintendent.
She signed her contract in a September 28 ceremony and will start Dec. 1. Progress-Index reporting brings us the story.
The School Board voted 6-0 to hire her with Virginia Department of Education support because Dr. Sterling:
turn(ed) Franklin from being under a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the Virginia Department of Education due to its failing schools, to having its schools exit the MOU within a year’s time.
VDOE agreed to her selection because she met the conditions of that MOU, and other than that, VDOE has no control.
Unfortunately, the accreditation of Franklin schools now appears in jeopardy based on recently announced 2021-22 SOL results and an utter collapse in school attendance in the same year. That information did not appear in the Progress-Index story.
I also suspect, because of the late release of those data, that they may not have appeared in the interview packages provided to the school board members.
We all hope that Dr. Sterling will lead PCPS to finally give the children of Petersburg a chance to learn.
In 2004, the Virginia Board of Education (Board) established criteria for identification of low-performing school divisions to undergo a division-level academic review. Petersburg was among the first to fail that review. It has never passed one.
Accreditation and the Petersburg MOU. VDOE offers a one-page version of the Commonwealth’s Accreditation Ratings System.
Those are the standards that Petersburg’s six public schools have been trying to meet for 18 years. The failures to meet them have resulted in:
- repeated division-level reviews by VDOE; and
- resulting school board-VDOE MOUs that have offered plans for improvement with state oversight and funding toward those improvements.
None have achieved the aims.
The current MOU, signed April 18, 2016, contains the provision:
In the event a vacancy occurs in the position of the Division Superintendent, the School Board will work collaboratively with the State Superintendent of Public Instruction and the State Board President in selecting … a new Superintendent.
The credentials of applicants should include experience in leading successful school and division turnaround efforts.
By the agreement, the Superintendent and Board President were to be notified at least five business days in advance before making an offer to the preferred candidate. The coordination resulted in the unanimous vote by the school board to hire Dr. Sterling.
VDOE approval tripped the Petersburg Executive Leadership Recruitment Incentives provision in the MOU. The state agreed to provide funds to help pay her and her new hires.
In this case, $350,000 is being sent.
VDOE Oversight. VDOE has what is now called an Office of School Quality (OSQ, formerly the Office of School Improvement — OSI).
The director of that office and his/her staff have seven very specific and demanding responsibilities under the MOU. It has had those responsibilities since 2004.
OSQ is the answer to the question: “What has the state been doing to improve Virginia’s worst schools and divisions?”
While the record shows that OSQ has worked hard, they can assess, assist and, with their ratings, embarrass poor-performing school divisions, but VDOE cannot direct them. There have been some successes, as in Franklin, but not nearly enough.
Unfortunately, Franklin itself took a huge step backward in the 2021-22 school year in metrics available too late for the March reviews.
It slipped relative to state levels in SOLs and utterly collapsed in attendance, with 48.1% chronic absenteeism. Those issues were on the record, but late, when Dr. Sterling was hired from Franklin by Petersburg. She met the MOU criteria, so I don’t think VDOE had a choice but to concur.
During the 2021-2022 school year, five divisions were under the guidance of a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU):
- Danville;
- Greensville County;
- Petersburg;
- Prince Edward County; and
- Richmond City.
Dr. Aurelia Ortiz, Director of School Quality, in March of 2022 updated the Board on the progress of all five. That was before the 2021-22 Spring SOL results, which were bad, and the chronic absenteeism rates, which were worse. As a note, during COVID, accreditation was suspended and no school was permitted to be labeled unaccredited.
Those March 2022 MOU reviews were very thorough.
I offer below only bare bones information from the reviews. I have added editor updates with data not available at that time for 2021-22 chronic absenteeism and SOL results from the School Quality Profiles:
- Danville – 11 schools; 2 accredited; 9 accredited with conditions. DCPS in 2018-2022 received $810,465 in federal School Improvement Grant (SIG) funds. (Editor’s update: in 2021-22 chronic absenteeism jumped from 22.5% to 28.7% and SOL assessments in math fell even further behind state levels);
- Greensville County – 8 schools; none accredited; 8 accredited with conditions. GCPS received a total of $553,343 in 2018-2022 SIG funds. (Editor’s update: in 2021-22 chronic absenteeism soared to from 18.1% to 28.3% and SOL assessments in reading and math did not improve relative to state levels).
- Petersburg – 6 schools; 1 accredited; five accredited with conditions. PCPS received a total of $5,009,262 in 2018-2022 SIG funds. (Editor’s update: in 2021-22 chronic absenteeism jumped from 32.7% to 38.8% and the SOL assessments in reading and math, unsurprisingly, were the worst in the state, falling even further behind state averages).
- Prince Edward County – 3 schools; 0 accredited; 3 accredited with conditions. PECPS received a total of $464,314 in 2018-2022 SIG funds. (Editor’s update: in 2021-22 chronic absenteeism declined slightly to a still unacceptable 34.8% and SOL assessments in reading and math, while still below state averages, improved significantly in that comparison. Think what those teachers could do if the division got truancy under control.)
- Richmond City – RPS was noted to have not updated its Corrective Action Plan since September 21, 2018 – 43 schools; 20 accredited; 23 accredited with conditions. RPS received a total of $3,916,670 in 2018-22 SIG funds. (Editor’s update: in 2021-22 chronic absenteeism soared from 15.5% reported in 2020-21 to 27.7% in 2021-22. SOL assessments in reading and math declined even further from state levels.
Petersburg schools had the worst SOL results in the state in reading, writing and math this past spring. That proved a boon to RPS, which just edged out Petersburg and otherwise would have been dead last in those assessments.
I expect VDOE and its OSQ have already trained their attention on RPS, whose headquarters is but a seven-minute walk.
But it will require a constitutional amendment for Virginia to take over failing school divisions. Petersburg and Richmond School Boards, to name just two, have continued to run their schools regardless of decades of well-documented failures.
The fact that they can continue to do so forever in Virginia without improvement is a testament to the need for that constitutional amendment to save future generations of children.
And a change to the charter school law.
