Henrico School Board drops Quioccasin-Tuckahoe redistricting proposal

Henrico School Board members have officially removed almost all of the Quioccasin-Tuckahoe middle school redistricting scenario, following three contentious town hall meetings during which many parents pushed against the proposal.

At an Oct. 9 school board meeting, Henrico Schools officials released updated enrollment numbers for the 2025-2026 school year, which revealed that Tuckahoe Middle School had 104 more students than last year. The proposed redistricting would have put Tuckahoe at 104% capacity according to HCPS calculations.

At the request of board chair Marcie Shea (Tuckahoe District), the board removed two sections of the Quioccasin-Tuckahoe scenario that would have redistricted about 330 students from Tuckahoe to Quioccasin Middle and about 450 students from Quioccasin to Tuckahoe in the fall of 2027.

The third section of the proposal, which would redistrict around 40 students living in the Crossings at Short Pump from Quioccasin to Pocahontas Middle, will remain. A small part of the first section, which would redistrict about 9 students living in Patterson West from Tuckahoe to Quioccasin, also will remain because it connects to two other elementary and high school redistricting scenarios and because new development is planned in that area.

Shea said that the Quiccasin-Tuckahoe scenario was “not a viable solution” and that she “can’t support putting a school over 100% [capacity].”

When asked by HCPS Superintendent Amy Cashwell if she would want to put another redistricting scenario forward, Shea declined and instead requested the board take another look at Tuckahoe in the spring and review second semester enrollment numbers.

The four other redistricting scenarios, which would impact two elementary schools and six high schools, still are on the table for the board’s final vote on Dec. 18. Updated enrollment numbers for the schools only revealed small changes in capacity, with most of the high schools seeing a slight decline in enrollment.

The board also unanimously approved a new grandfathering rule that would allow all high-schoolers who already had started at a school to stay despite boundary changes, and also permitting students in grades 5 and 8 to have the option to stay at their school if or when redistricting is implemented.

While HCPS has traditionally not allowed 10th grade students the option to stay, HCPS calculations showed that if 50% of rezoned students in grades 10-12 chose not to move, the impact on capacity would be minor.

“To me, that is not having a significant mathematical impact on the functioning of the school for that one year. However, that’s a really significant impact to those [students] individually,” Shea said. “It still gets both Freeman and Tucker [high schools] under 100% [capacity] in year one.”

‘I need my community to know this is happening to them’

For many board members, however, the current districts for Quioccasin and Tuckahoe still need fixing. Fairfield District representative Ryan Young also said he was disappointed in how the proposed Quioccasin redistricting played out.

“I do want to apologize to the Quioccasin Middle School families that have been sort of dragged through this. If we’re being honest, they weren’t treated fairly. We don’t have good schools and bad schools in Henrico,” he said. “And I’m just going to be honest, this [current] map does not make sense when it comes to feeder patterns and what schools we go to.”

With Tuckahoe Middle now the highest capacity middle school in the county, Varina District representative Alicia Atkins encouraged the school board to take more immediate action and requested that the board receive more frequent updates on new development throughout the county.

“When I see a school on a very significant trajectory with unexplained reasons, it concerns me,” she said. “I think it deserves more than monitoring, we need solutions. . . My recommendation was to get the answers to those questions we ask for and once we get those answers, make a decision on what’s next instead of waiting till spring.”

Cashwell said that Tuckahoe’s current enrollment is “higher than expected,” but could be due to new, younger families moving into single-family homes in the area. 

Brookland District representative Kristi Kinsella said that with the Quioccasin-Tuckahoe proposal off the table, J.R. Tucker High School now will still take students from five different middle schools. The Quioccasin proposal would have reduced Tucker’s middle school feeder pattern to four middle schools.

“It seems that other folks in Henrico have the right to have community and feeder pattern and so forth, but apparently the solution for Tucker doesn’t,” she said. “I’d definitely like to go deeper into Tucker High School, because the students and staff deserve it. This has been talked about for years.”

Kinsella also expressed concerns about the lack of community feedback on the high school scenarios, especially because many families at Tucker and Hermitage High speak English as a second language and may not be fully aware of the proposed redistricting. 

“I have not heard enough from the community and I wonder, do they even know these proposals are on the table?” she said. “I need my community to know this is happening to them, because I want to know how they feel about it.”

The three high school scenarios would redistrict almost 700 students – 277 students from Tucker to Hermitage, 182 students from Hermitage to Henrico High, 133 students from Freeman to Mills E. Godwin High, 60 students from Highland Springs to Henrico, and 29 students from Tucker to Godwin.

Cashwell said that all notifications about the redistricting on HCPS’ communication app, ParentSquare, are able to be translated into families’ native languages, but that HCPS can “double down” on communication to communities that would be impacted by redistricting. 

HCPS saw a slight decline of 0.8% in student enrollment over the past year, and with only 84% of seats currently occupied by students countywide, the district has plenty of room for its student body. But schools such as Tuckahoe, Tucker, and Freeman continue to be near or over 100% capacity this school year, with other schools such as Henrico High at just over 60%. 

Solving capacity issues, however, may be more complicated than just shifting students to different schools, said Atkins. School communities have deep roots in their neighborhood populations, and despite overcrowding, families can still be hesitant to switch to a less crowded school.

“It is complicated. . . you can have a school overcapacity and survey the parents and students, and they say they never want to leave,” she said. “So you have to pay attention to culture as well. There are so many different layered reasons that we all look at.”

Liana Hardy is the Citizen’s government and education reporter. Support her work and articles like this one by making a contribution to the Citizen.