A contributed perspectives piece by Deb Fitzgerald
Tamara Grant in a Feb. 8 Citizen Community Perspective article argues that widespread poverty among Harrisonburg City Public School students is being inadequately addressed by HCPS because school leaders and the Harrisonburg Educational Foundation prioritize innovation over urgently meeting students’ basic needs.
While the first part of her perspective piece accurately outlines demographic facts and economic descriptions of the HCPS population, she goes on to criticize school officials for not creating a task force to address issues outside the purview and expertise of the school system.
Grant notes that 51.73% of HCPS students automatically qualify for the Community Eligibility Provision (CEP), the free meal benefit; and the Index of Student Poverty, the Virginia Department of Education (ISP) gauge of students facing economic hardship, climbed to 85.75% in 2025.
Grant acknowledges that HCPS student support “…is going well,” including provision of home school liaisons, free breakfast and lunch for every student, nurses in every school, partnerships with organizations like the Blue Ridge Area Food Bank, and more. Basic needs, clothing, shoes, hygiene supplies, coats and supplemental food, are distributed through schools.
As in every community, she notes that needs outweigh available resources to meet them, especially today. She outlines with approval how local nonprofits like Second Home, The Arc, The Gus Bus and others have added services to address the need.
But then she writes: “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.” She questions the creation of two new task forces: one to develop alternative Career and Technical Education programming needed after the HCPS withdrawal from the Massanutten Technical Center, and one to explore the initiation of a new Athletic Academy.
She asserts that “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.”
The question of whether to form a new task force should be based on two factors. One is whether it is an educational issue that falls within the purview of HCPS. The second is whether the task force is addressing an issue that HCPS would be able and qualified to solve. Career and technical education and athletics in the schools are two issues that are clearly within the purview of the school system and within the ability of the School Board and administration to address and possibly solve. Societal poverty is not something that the school system can solve on its own.
Grant strongly disagrees with HEF rejecting a grant application from Rocktown High School for what Grant calls “urgent, basic needs” and blames Superintendent Dr. Michael Richards and School Board member Emma Phillips for the grant’s rejection.
She writes “The 85.75% of kids in HCPS can’t count on [Richards and 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. “
Grant writes that “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.” She says HEF “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?”
Richards and Phillips are ex-officio members of the Foundation board, and as such have no vote on any revision of the HEF mission, its fundraising activities, nor any subsequent use of its funds.
Richards and the entire HCPS Board are well aware of community needs and have a track record to prove it. Barely mentioned by Grant, though, is the work HCPS is doing with the United Way to establish a formal Community Schools program within the division. These programs aim to transform schools into neighborhood hubs that provide integrated student supports, health and social services, and community engagement.
Grant writes that “…efforts to aid stressed children should never depend on an arbitrarily required grant application to creatively propose a charmingly innovative solution.” I suspect that HEF does not view its detailed application and selection process as arbitrary, and teachers who go through the process in order to be awarded funds would not describe their efforts to test experimental classroom pedagogy as “charming.”
Getting turned down for a grant that is outside the mission of a non-profit is not an uncommon outcome. And it may be the case that the current mission of HEF could be changed, altered, or expanded to meet the needs of the times. But appeals to the HEF Board should be the first stop in that endeavor, not personal criticism of its non-voting members.
Deb Fitzgerald is a former HCPS School Board member and a former ex-officio member of the HEF board.