Revisiting Retaliation in RPS: Past and Present
We are republishing the following personal experiences confronting retaliation in RPS.
The original version of this story was published on the Richmond Educator blog in July of 2022. It chronicles two past instances of retaliation in Richmond Public Schools (RPS) for employees that spoke out. In light of the recent decision by the Kamras Administration and Richmond School Board to terminate the Richmond Education Association (REA) president, we wanted to point out the longstanding culture in RPS of retaliation for those that speak up and challenge those in power. The REA vice president, Anne Forrester, referenced her own retaliation, which was covered in our story from 2022, in her public comments at the school board meeting on June 3, 2024. We hope by republishing this story now, the Richmond community will understand the longstanding nature of retaliation in RPS.
Revisiting Retaliation in RPS: Past and Present
Part I: Retaliation Past
When Paul Fleisher saw something that concerned him at Mosby Middle School–now Martin Luther King, Jr. Middle School–in 1989, he did what rank-and-file teachers are told to do when they have an issue at their worksite: he went to his building principal. For Fleisher though, it wasn’t just the principal he needed to speak to… it was also the mayor of Richmond, since they were one and the same. Fleisher worked under then mayor, Dr. Roy A. West, who also served as principal of Mosby Middle School. Fleisher was concerned about the routine internal chaining and locking of the school doors from the inside. According to Fleisher, this was done in an attempt to keep “drug dealers” and others from entering. Anyone who has worked in a school (or in any densely populated building) would immediately recognize this as a fire hazard, making an emergency evacuation impossible. However, Fleisher’s attempts to speak with Principal West about his concerns went unanswered for weeks.
Worried about the safety of staff and students in his school building, Fleisher went to the Richmond Education Association (REA) for support. The result was a call from REA’s Executive Director at the time, Julian Ferras, to the city fire marshall. The fire marshall demanded that the chains be removed immediately. However, Fleisher then faced retaliation from his principal and mayor. For Fleisher, that retaliation came in the form of dissolving his semester-long courses only halfway through the semester. All his students were reassigned to other electives. He had no students left to teach and his role as a SPACE teacher at Mosby ended, with no notice, when he reported for work the following Monday morning. Following proper procedure, Fleisher filed a grievance. After several administrative hearings, his grievance eventually resulted in victory several months later, when the Richmond School Board heard his appeal and ruled in his favor. The Board overturned the HR and Richmond Public Schools (RPS) administration’s decision to side with Dr. West. Fleisher’s courses were reestablished and Dr. West was demoted from his principalship to a role within the Central Office. “I would never have made it through this incredibly stressful ordeal without the support of my students and their parents, and of the REA and VEA,” Fleisher says.
Looking back on it now, Fleisher remembers feeling heartbroken. “I loved my students and I loved working with them. I never even had the chance to say ‘goodbye’ to them. One of my classes was a high school credit computer programming class, but students couldn’t get their credit if they didn’t finish the semester.” Fleisher retired after 27 years of service in 2005, but he recognizes that the situation for parents, staff, and students that speak out in RPS likely hasn’t changed much today. Fleisher says, “My guess is retaliation is probably more common in some schools than others. I’m sure it still happens though.”
Unfortunately, Fleisher is right. Retaliation continues to hamper dialogue and advocacy by staff, students, and families of RPS who speak out. Currently, the teachers of the Language Instruction Education Program, or LIEP (formerly ESL), are facing department leadership that continues this pattern of retaliation by stifling outspoken teachers who are advocating for themselves, their students, and their colleagues.
Part II: Retaliation Present
Retaliation looks different in different situations. LIEP teachers have reported involuntary transfers, intimidating meetings where multiple administrators are present, unwarranted improvement plans, extra requirements and hoops to jump through to apply for positions that seem to go to those with connections to the department’s leadership, among other similar acts. But the actions that have led to retaliation in the LIEP department are the same: voicing concerns about decisions and policies that negatively impact families, students, and staff. Just as Fleisher saw in 1989, today’s LIEP teachers in RPS find themselves feeling trapped with a department leadership that quickly retaliates against those that speak up, and an HR department that never seems to find their claims credible.
Unwanted Transfers in a Retention Crisis
Robert “Lee” Smith is a 40-year veteran of RPS and a 20-year veteran of the LIEP department, making him the teacher with the most seniority in the department. For all of his time with the LIEP department, Smith has always served as an itinerant teacher, meaning he serves students in multiple schools and moves from building-to-building on a daily basis. In his 20 years with the department, he has served 20 schools and has never been hesitant to add a new school when the need arose. Smith said, “some [assigned] schools were temporary, to help the central administration with staffing or personnel issues, and one was for [filling in] while waiting for someone to be hired." Smith stepped up to support schools whenever asked, even using his own car and gas money to drive from building-to-building for 20 years. This past year though, Smith was not informed of his home school placement until the morning of the first day of school for students. After sending emails to the LIEP leadership team asking for clarity and support, he was told at an in-person meeting that he needed to watch the tone of his emails. Looking back, he sees the threat of retaliation started there. Yet he enjoyed his work as an itinerant teacher, regardless.
On May 20, 2022 Smith received an email from his supervisor, the Bilingual and EL Coordinator, stating that for the upcoming school year “[he] will be placed in a school and will no longer be an itinerant teacher." Sensing that something was amiss, Smith requested representation of the REA in meetings with the LIEP leadership team, and began communicating with fellow LIEP teachers. Soon, it became clear to Smith that he wasn’t alone in feeling retaliated against, and the reason why became clearer, too.
Smith wasn’t the only LIEP teacher to receive unexpected news on May 20 of a transfer they didn’t want. River City Middle School Lead LIEP teacher, Anne Forrester, also received a surprising email stating she had been transferred to Boushall Middle School for the upcoming year. “I didn’t request a transfer. I wanted to stay at River City, despite a really hard year and high turnover of staff at my school.” After the initial email regarding the transfer, Forrester met privately with the River City building principal, where she was informed that her transfer was due to her being “too negative” and “not a team player,” without substantiating these reasons or giving examples to Forrester regarding job performance. “I feel that the Bilingual and EL Coordinator has turned my principal against me, causing me a lot of stress,” she said. Forrester knew she had seniority at her school and that rezoning would not affect staffing levels to the point that she would be required to transfer.
The reasons given for the transfer in the private meeting do not match the official reasons being reported to HR, so Forrester feels unable to tell her side of the story via the normal RPS channels. Forrester was quick to inform friends, colleagues, and community members about the situation, recognizing early on that the transfer could be retaliation for her active and public role in the REA’s collective bargaining victory. Other colleagues also expressed concern about the circumstances surrounding Forrester’s transfer. On an REA worksite concern form submitted by Becca Elder, also a River City teacher, Elder describes how, “Ms. Forrester goes above and beyond the scope of her professional duties as teacher and LIEP lead in our building. She has handled coverage for her team the entire year, has volunteered to bring rational solutions to the table about testing schedules, has made suggestions to help alleviate logistical problems in our school, and has offered bathroom breaks to teachers across the building.” Further, Forrester’s team of eight backed her leadership. Her teammate and fellow LIEP teacher, Paige Ellwanger says, “Our LIEP team made it through one of the toughest school years yet. No one quit. Not all departments can say that.” These reports from Forrester's River City colleagues suggest that Forrester was a key part of building a positive teaching and learning community culture within the building, contradicting what her principal said of her job performance during the private meeting.
Forrester also immediately requested a meeting with the Bilingual and EL Coordinator regarding the transfer and informed her that REA representation would be present. In that May 23 meeting, when the REA representative asked about reasons for the transfer, the Bilingual and EL Coordinator answered that there were no other reasons for the transfer besides “needs of the business.” Forrester filed a formal complaint with HR regarding the transfer and subsequent meeting with the principal, but she was informed via letter on June 7 that the “complaint does not meet the threshold of a formal investigation by Employee Relations.” No witnesses Forrester listed were interviewed by HR prior to this ruling.
Both Smith and Forrester shared similar feelings about how stressful, yet nonsensical, their situations are. “Being an itinerant is an art and a science. I have 20 years of experience doing this,” Smith said. “What need is there to force me into a situation I do not want to be in?”
Forrester asks, “At a time when teacher retention is such an issue, why not leave people where they want to be, leaving teams that work well together intact?” Smith and Forrester are not alone when it comes to involuntary LIEP transfers. At least two other teachers they’ve made contact with have expressed dismay over a transfer they didn’t request, but seeing that retaliation seems to be the norm with the department’s leadership, they chose not to speak out publicly. Equally troubling, many LIEP teachers in the district have yet to receive placement notification for the coming year, which means RPS LIEP teachers were asked to sign 2022-23 contracts without knowing where they would be working. It’s important to note that prior to the arrival of the current Bilingual and EL Coordinator in 2019, LIEP teachers were hired and staffed by the building principal, like most other school based staff. Now all LIEP teachers are technically classified as itinerant, which allows the Bilingual and EL Coordinator to move and switch placement of LIEP teachers at will, and without considering teacher input or seniority.
As the group of LIEP teachers sharing their experiences grew, a larger trend began to emerge. Along with 18 fellow LIEP teachers, Forrester and Smith signed a letter to the Bilingual and EL Coordinator in September 2021, expressing their concern over Fall WIDA Access testing (a four-part test that English Learners–ELs–are required to take once a year, usually in February). But WIDA testing was optional for Virginia localities in the Fall of 2021 upon students' return to in-person learning. In the letter, the LIEP teachers expressed detailed concerns about testing so soon in the year and asked for fall testing to be called off in order to prioritize student readjustment back to in-person school and relationship building after a year of virtual learning. With their building principals included on the email, the LIEP teachers that signed all received a response from the Bilingual and EL Coordinator that acknowledged their concerns, but announced fall testing would continue because the Coordinator thought this data from testing would drive instruction.
Since signing and sending the letter about testing, Forrester said, “I feel that I have been targeted by the Bilingual and EL Coordinator whenever I ask for clarifications or assistance as LIEP lead.” The LIEP teachers who provided input for this article indicated frustration that the data from fall WIDA testing wasn’t available to staff until mid-January, when spring WIDA testing was about to begin. At least one school reported that their fall test booklets were never picked up by the LIEP leadership team, which is a serious testing irregularity. So, in no way did fall WIDA data drive instruction; rather, it stole weeks of instructional time from EL students and LEIP teachers. Fall WIDA testing coincided with the new fall Virginia Growth Assessment testing as well. At Huguenot High School, LIEP teacher Emma Clark said, “The pressure to test students to an illogical extreme has been a huge source of stress this year. RPS staff who aren’t in classrooms need to not lose sight of that human cost, and should rely on and value on-the-ground staff’s insight into how these decisions affect our kids.”
Punished for Speaking Out
Retaliation is not always so obvious as an involuntary transfer. When Cory Adkins moved to Richmond from New York City in 2014, the LIEP leadership team at that time was a single specialist managing a growing population and program on her own. Adkins says, “It was exciting to learn that the LIEP department would finally get a team to support our teachers and students. That has not been the case with the current administrative team led by the Bilingual and EL Coordinator.”
Adkins describes her previous experience teaching in New York as an experience where she was encouraged to speak up and advocate for her students and colleagues. Her experience under the current RPS LIEP leadership team is quite the opposite. “I have been discouraged from asking questions about procedures that were lacking or not being properly implemented, the rights of students and families being intentionally violated, inconsistencies in the identification of students, inconsistencies in the placement of students, inequities in caseload distribution, my ethical decision to not input false data in ASPEN [RPS database], my ethical decision to not administer a flawed test to my students, and unnecessary, excessive testing of English learners," Adkins says. Adkins cites a virtual meeting she was called into where the REA representation she requested was not permitted. She says a Central Office leadership team member even questioned why Adkins felt it was necessary to invite the union to the meeting.
The meeting was called after Adkins simply raised the issue that some LIEP teachers had caseloads far exceeding the VDOE’s ratio of one teacher for every 58 EL students, while others’ caseloads were in the single digits. Although recognizing this as an intimidation tactic, Adkins sat through the virtual meeting alone with three administrators: a Central Office leadership team member, the lead EL teacher, and the Bilingual and EL Coordinator. Not long after the meeting, LIEP teachers received an email informing them of walk-through observations, adding to her experience of intimidation.
Adkins believes her advocacy for the rights and dignity of her colleagues, families, students, as well as requesting REA representation in meetings, led the Bilingual and EL Coordinator to develop animosity towards her. Ahead of the 2021-22 school year, Adkins applied to teach for the Richmond Virtual Academy. The application process that followed suggests incompetency and cronyism at best, but Adkins and others suspect retaliation again. After applying via the LIEP virtual teacher posting on TalentEd, the district's main hiring platform, Adkins was told she completed the wrong application. Adkins knew this to be untrue and provided evidence. She persisted in attempting to apply, but faced bureaucratic delays and requests for additional documentation, such as a demo lesson and lesson-plan, requested of her, but not other applicants. “Three teachers who were hired did not have to submit a lesson plan or perform a demo-lesson for the position,” says Adkins. “But when I did not surrender to the multiple attempts at obstructing my application process, these additional tasks were added.”
Fearing Covid-19 exposure, and not wanting further stress, Adkins has been on leave for the past year. Despite being on leave, Adkins has remained deeply involved. She has worked regularly with other LIEP teachers to continue to sound the alarm about legal and ethical issues with how English Learners are being identified, tested, and serviced. The hours she has invested this year are certainly not required, but show how important education is to Adkins on a personal level. “As teachers, we have learned how to turn stumbling blocks into stepping stones for our students and each other,” Adkins said.
Similarly, Andria Impson, who was Lead LIEP teacher at Boushall Middle School for four years, spoke about her experience applying for a specialist position within the LIEP department. She says after applying, she phoned the Bilingual and EL Coordinator to follow-up on her application. In the conversation, the Bilingual and EL Coordinator claimed to not know what position Impson was referencing. During that same phone call, she was told that one of the LIEP teachers from Boushall would have to transfer to River City for the last quarter of the year to support that team. This was despite the LIEP leadership team’s communication with Anne Forrester – at the time the lead teacher at River City – that River City LIEP was fully staffed per the VDOE ratio. Although it’s possible the timing is coincidental, Impson says, “It has been said that I am not a ‘team player’ due to the fact that I always ask questions and speak at school board meetings. My job is to be an advocate for my students and their families. The actions (or lack thereof) of the LIEP department, this past year especially, was too much for me to remain silent on.” Due to past issues and inconsistencies in the LIEP department, Impson has since left the district and moved out of state to teach elsewhere.
Unsupported and Intimidated
Lila Sandage is an elementary LIEP teacher. As a new teacher in 2019, she was placed alone at a school that typically has a small EL population. Sandage struggled with the lack of support from the LIEP department leadership team and was without a mentor. Instead, she relied on the support of LIEP teachers from other schools she made contact with. The lack of support for new LIEP teachers appears to be a common complaint. Another LIEP teacher, who asked to remain anonymous, stated, “When I was hired, the Bilingual and EL Coordinator assured me I would have both a teacher coach and a new teacher mentor. I had neither. I actually had to find the lead teacher’s name online and send her an email because the summer PD [Professional Development] was about to start.” That teacher and Sandage are both leaving the district and public education entirely after only three years or less in the profession.
For Sandage, the lack of support was not the end of her struggles with the LIEP department leadership. Sandage is leaving the district to move overseas, but still applied for and signed a letter of intent to work in Richmond’s LIEP summer school this year. However, the day summer school was set to begin, she found her RPS email disabled, virtual meetings from the LIEP department canceled, and her name removed from the summer school roster at Cardinal Elementary, where she had signed her intent letter. Confused, Sandage reached out to members of the LIEP leadership team and the Bilingual and EL counselor to investigate what happened. The department told her that since she wasn’t returning to teach next school year, she was ineligible to teach summer school. When Sandage asked why she was not informed of this before signing a contract, or what policy stipulated she could not teach summer school, she couldn’t get a clear answer from the LIEP leadership or HR.
And like so many other LIEP teachers, Sandage went to the REA, who contacted the Executive Administration on her behalf. Sandage’s situation was quickly resolved; she received back pay for the week she missed, her email was reactivated, and she was assigned a summer position at another school. However, Sandage is still waiting for answers about what happened and why she was told she could not work. Sandage and other LIEP teachers questioned the timing of her removal from summer school, since it was just days after Sandage and others met with a school board member regarding retaliation concerns within their department.
Part III: A Future Without Retaliation
The underlying issues for the LIEP teachers seem to be not only the retaliation they face for speaking up, but also the stifling of their voices by mid-level management, mainly the Bilingual and EL Coordinator. This leads to less than ideal outcomes for both students and educators. Collectively, the sentiment felt by the LIEP teachers is a lack of faith in the Bilingual and EL Coordinator’s ability to lead the LIEP department, and a skepticism in her ability to repair the harm done. And harm has been done: of the six LIEP teachers who spoke on the record with the author about retaliation, only three hope to return to RPS next year. For others, the retaliation, confusion, and incompetence they faced within their deparment was enough. With a longstanding teacher retention crisis in the district (one that is almost certain to worsen next school year), these losses raise the question: what will it take for RPS to retain its staff?
Emma Clark, who is leaving education next year, put it this way: “It seems that teachers who try to offer feedback or improve the system are seen as insubordinate and problematic, rather than valuable members of a team that works together to grow and improve the program over time.” Clark was put up for non-renewal, meaning she would not be rehired next year, after taking a stand against corporate curriculum that was designed for reading intervention rather than English language instruction. After teaching it for the first semester despite reservations, she knew that it was not meeting her students’ needs. At first, she tried to ask for support to improve the program. When her pleas went unanswered, she tried to create her own plans and materials. “I tried to change course and create something that was a better fit for my kids. Rather than valuing my expertise and supporting my efforts to tailor my teaching to the needs of my students, I was recommended for non-renewal,” Clark said. It seems that rather than listening to and working with rank-and-file staff who call attention to problems with existing policies and procedures, RPS tends to cast them out, move them o
Kto a school where they are less connected, or intimidate them into silence.
Collective Bargaining and Solidarity
The LIEP teachers know that their greatest strength is their relationships with each other. Even in the absence of LIEP leadership, teachers stepped up to support one another. “I had to network on my own to find LIEP teachers who graciously helped me to get started,” said Emily Pendleton, LIEP teacher at Lucille Brown Middle School. Paige Ellwanger, who is a LIEP teacher at River City and previously taught at Elizabeth Redd Elementary said, “Many of us have worked together over the years due to transfer, summer school, professional development, and department meetings. We keep in touch socially and professionally. We have created an effective network of support.”
RPS staff will soon have a new and powerful opportunity with the potential to improve staff retention and give staff more say in their working conditions. In December 2021, Richmond became the first public school system in Virginia to reinstate collective bargaining rights for employees after a nearly 50-year ban on public sector collective bargaining. Collective bargaining will give RPS employees a literal seat at the table, during which they will negotiate the terms and conditions of their contracts through their union, the REA.
For Paul Fleisher, the LIEP teachers’ situation sounds familiar and speaks to some of the practices in RPS that, unfortunately, have not changed since his time with the district. “I think that collective bargaining could certainly address issues like these. One of the things people can bargain for are sensible HR policies that protect the rights of employees,” Fleisher said. Only time will tell how RPS adapts to solve the staffing crisis and learning needs of its students. However, what is certain is that the rank-and-file education workers of RPS will continue to speak out and stand up to defend the rights of their students and fellow workers.