A contributed perspectives piece by Tamara Grant
In Harrisonburg City Public Schools, 51.73% of children automatically qualify for the Community Eligibility Provision (CEP), the free meal benefit. The Identified Student Percentage (ISP) of 51.73% is based on children already enrolled in Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP), Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) or other federally qualifying programs.
The ISP number is used in a calculation to estimate the percentage of children qualifying for free and reduced lunch if they were required to submit an application. The estimated percentage of qualifying HCPS children climbed to 85.75% in 2025. Because of the high ISP, all HCPS students qualify to receive free meals through CEP.
Information on CEP and data on schools can be found online at the Virginia Department of Education website.
HCPS has a lot of struggling families. The following support, among others, is going well.
A registered nurse in every school is enormously beneficial to student well-being in a our high need community. HCPS partners with Sentara hospital, operating a clinic at a hub of support for HCPS, the Family Resource Center. Every school has counselors, social workers and psychologists working with children in need.
Home-to-school liaisons and social workers aid families to navigate the school system and community resources, with help from interpreters or translators if necessary. HCPS offers English and Spanish Language learning classes. Blue Ridge Area Food Bank provides monthly, free fresh markets to both high schools. Middle school students enroll in band or orchestra with their choice of instrument, regardless of income.
Opportunities exist beyond traditional high school class offerings through technical training or classes for college credit. As a Title One Division that successfully applies for the Community Eligibility Provision (CEP), all city students receive free breakfast and lunch. And as stated in the HCPS Strategic Plan and recent statement from Dr Richards and HCPS School Board, diversity is valued and respected.
It is the desire of school leaders that children of any background or citizenship should feel safe and supported in their communities, homes and schools.
HCPS professionals provide education and support to future contributors, citizens and leaders. They’ve got an enormous job, and I’m worried.
Many city school kids need ongoing support to fill their basic needs especially with the rising cost of living. Many families remain confined to their homes out of fear of being targeted, regardless of their legal status. Basic needs (clothing, shoes, hygiene supplies, coats and supplemental food) distributed through schools are enormously helpful both financially and emotionally.
Families struggling to maintain reliable transportation also appreciate resources sent home from schools. As a 10+ year volunteer filling basic needs across the city, the work is harder and more demanding with a reduction in charitable funding and rising costs.
Our admirable HCPS professionals cannot identify children and families that need extra support, meet all those needs AND fulfill their primary mandate: education. The jobs our HCPS school staff applied for didn’t require experience in fundraising, supply drives and the legal expertise to manage donors or donations. It is unsustainable to saddle them, however unintentionally, with the responsibility.
Many of our local nonprofits have taken steps to address food and financial insecurity by adding services. The Arc of Harrisonburg and Rockingham, The Gus Bus and Second Home exist for purposes unrelated to food insecurity but the need is so great they’ve added services to address it. When children’s basic needs in our public schools increase, that need is a harbinger of growing distress in our community. Schools are where children spend much of their time and send out their first distress signals of any sort. Encouraging all children to succeed requires communities to do more than just support education in public schools.
Our school leaders have yet to form a task force to discuss the basic needs issues and economic challenges of the kids in our schools. A task force has been formed to replace programming from the Massanutten Technical Center. A task force has been announced to initiate a new athletic academy. These task forces will work to create opportunities for a smaller percentage of city school students than the 51.73% of students automatically qualifying for CEP, or the estimated 85.75% who would qualify for free and reduced lunch if applications were required.
Families are making hard choices every month between paying for food or rent; for medications or car repairs; shoes for their children or the utility bill. Without a task force to thoroughly assess and understand the economic reality of so many HCPS students, how can our community most impactfully support and advocate for our children? Shouldn’t all decisions, policies and leaders impacting our schools be determined with an ongoingly clear understanding of this reality?
Our current School Board and Superintendent have a responsibility to educate the public on these circumstances. If the statistics presented in the first paragraph of this article surprise you, that public education is lacking.
Our school leaders do not possess the expertise to understand complexities of nonprofit charitable work and consequently, they both underestimate the challenges school personnel face and overestimate the ability of existing support structures in our community to fill that gap.
Dr. Michael Richards and former School Board Chair Emma Phillips hold ex officio positions on the Harrisonburg Education Foundation Board (HEF). When Rocktown High School applied to HEF this fall for hygiene supply funding, the application was rejected because the idea wasn’t “innovative” and because it replicated a previous grant application from Harrisonburg High School for their hygiene closet.
Securing funds on behalf of children for hygiene supplies shouldn’t require an innovative gimmick. It shouldn’t require an application at all. The time of social workers, counselors or nurses is better spent with our students, doing the jobs only they can do given their specialized training and qualified access to those students.
The Harrisonburg Education Foundation Executive Director’s 65k compensation package (salary and benefits) and office space is paid for by the HCPS budget. If our community wants our school kids to receive more basic needs support from HEF, and by subsidy, HCPS – SPEAK UP.
The 85.75% of kids in HCPS can’t count on Superintendent Dr. Michael Richards or School Board member Emma Phillips to advocate on their behalf for their urgent, basic needs to the charitable foundation that our school division significantly subsidizes and our tax dollars pay for. It is the responsibility, as appointed and elected leaders, to inform the mission of the Harrisonburg Education Foundation. Otherwise, why are they on the Board?
Dr Richards and former Chair Emma Phillips aren’t ill-intentioned; however, they’re inadequately educated about public charity best practices and ethics. A nonprofit isn’t a club. Tax exemptions are granted with the expectation of financial transparency, accountability and healthy respect for the oversight of the community it serves. The public has a say and the right to ask questions.
Dr Richards, Emma Phillips and the HEF Board collectively determined the charitable foundation’s mission should primarily support “innovative” teacher grants, teacher appreciation and 14 student scholarships. In our Title One Division, does this mission serve the best purpose for our children, right now, in this community?
When high school kids depart for winter break without hygiene supplies or feminine care products in a Title One Division because their charitable foundation asserts in public minutes that HEF’s support of basic needs is unsustainable and “slights” them from their self-selected mission (September HEF minutes on. Nov School Board Docs),the answer is NO.
Our HCPS subsidized Harrisonburg Education Foundation, the foremost charity representing our schools, has a responsibility to accurately represent the challenges our public schools face. Raising money for innovative teacher grants is HEF’s topline fundraising priority to the point of rejecting applications for hygiene supplies?
If school leaders and HEF understood the challenges of so many HCPS families, they wouldn’t carelessly dismiss such an easy opportunity to help. Their actions confirm they don’t comprehend the economic challenges HCPS families experience nor the pressure school personnel feel to fill those needs.
The economic reality of HCPS families deserves its own task force to inform strategies of school policies, budget expenditures and navigate community support. A task force populated with nonprofits and individuals already engaged in basic needs work, and also approved by our teachers union, can ensure the participation of the most knowledgeable and passionate contributors.
That same task force can help strategize the equitable distribution of resources from our community to the students in our schools; a real attempt at fulfilling the ambition of equity as stated in the HCPS Strategic Plan. Although Dr Michael Richards is talking with the United Way about a Community Schools program, these discussions should be explored through a task force given the scale of need, the necessary widespread community collaboration and his lack of expertise in public charity work.
HCPS does a lot but it could do more. In a community where so many individuals and organizations are trained in disaster response, we know response time is critical and collaborative strategies of support must be efficient.
The efforts to aid stressed children should never depend on an arbitrarily required grant application to creatively propose a charmingly innovative solution. Only affluent ignorance has the luxury of being so discriminating. The overwhelming majority of Harrisonburg City Public School students, an estimated 85.75%, cannot wait.
Tamara Grant is a longtime Community Volunteer, Child Advocate and former Harrisonburg Education Foundation Board Director and Vice Chair.
