Opposition to Quioccasin-Tuckahoe redistricting dominates discussion at second school board town hall

At the Henrico School Board’s second town hall about proposed redistricting Sept. 30, about 60 parents – a much smaller crowd than the previous town hall, but just as passionate – gathered at Highland Springs High School to discuss the controversial proposal.

While the first town hall saw heightened security, with each school board member escorted by a uniformed officer, Tuesday’s meeting included only a few school security officers monitoring the hallways, a change that was due to the smaller attendance, said school board chair Marice Shea (Tuckahoe District). 

But many parents still had the same plea: remove the redistricting scenario that would shift more than 800 students between Quioccasin, Tuckahoe, and Pocahontas middle schools.

Many Tuckahoe Middle parents, and elementary school parents who are currently zoned for Tuckahoe, are vehemently opposed to the redistricting of 330 students from Tuckahoe to Quioccasin, with parents saying that petitions against the proposal have gathered almost 1,000 signatures.

The scenario, which would be implemented in the fall of 2027, also would move 452 students out of Quioccasin and into Tuckahoe. Paired with an already approved decision by Henrico Schools to add 105 new International Baccalaureate seats to Tuckahoe, the middle school would have 200 additional students.

“Classrooms [at Tuckahoe] are already over full. My son is in classrooms with 25, 30, 35 kids,” said Hannah Kenyon, who has children at both Tuckahoe Middle and Maybeury Elementary. “It’s not helping anything except possibly Quioccasin very marginally. It’s damaging our community.”

While current enrollment numbers will not be publicly released until an Oct. 9 school board meeting, data from the 2024-2025 school year indicates that the redistricting would put Tuckahoe at 99% capacity and reduce Quioccasin to about 71% capacity.

Staffers at Tuckahoe also already have reviewed current enrollment numbers, said Tuckahoe science teacher Christine Hopkins, which shows that the school has already added an additional 100 students since last year.

“Right now, every single classroom we have available is being used. We couldn’t fit another classroom of kids in there, nevermind another 200,” Hopkins said. “We’ll have a smaller percentage of kids that can get involved with the school and be a real part of the school. So I think, as these moms have said, it is a detriment to the Tuckahoe community.”

‘Why isn’t our voice being listened to?’

Following the first town hall, the school board removed three scenarios from the redistricting proposal, including one that would have moved 210 students from Pocahontas to Quioccasin, in response to negative feedback from parents. 

If the school board does not remove the remaining parts of the Quioccasin scenario, the Tuckahoe community would feel “betrayed,” parents said.

“This is by far the one that has gotten the most negative feedback, the most passionate feedback. Why is it still on the table?,” said Kenyon. “If those other communities, if their voices were listened to, why isn’t our voice being listened to?”

“We are screaming and pleading that this does not make sense,” said one Tuckahoe Elementary parent. “To break a feeder pattern that has such deep roots in a community, and to do so without a clear reason why, makes you wonder, what is someone’s agenda in doing all of this?"

Similar to other scenarios that seek to balance capacity and simplify feeder patterns, the Quioccasin scenario aims to use the new Quioccasin building, which will open in the fall of 2027 and include room for about 300 additional students, to allow more school communities to feed into middle and high schools together, said Shea.

“The Quioccasin proposal came out of asking the [HCPS] staff, with the opening of the new building, to kind of take a look broadly at what those feeder patterns look like for Quioccasin, which currently breaks between three high schools,” she said. “So to look at, with the opening of new buildings, with different capacities, is there a solution there?”

No scenarios are set in stone, Shea said, and amendments or removals can be made up until Nov. 23, when the school board will put together a final proposal.

One parent at the town hall, Erin Nielsen, who has children at Tuckahoe Middle and Jackson Davis Elementary, spoke up about the positives of the Quioccasin scenario, saying that the redistricting would allow many students to attend the school geographically closest to them. Despite vocal opposition, many other parents also support the proposal, she said.

“Saying that there’s no support is misleading, because there is support out there, even if they might not be here tonight,” Nielsen said. “There are kids that literally live a two-minute drive from Tuckahoe that do not attend. We end up busing students all over the place, and it’s time to say, is that the right thing to do or not?”

Eight other schools also impacted by proposal

By withholding a decision on the Quioccasin scenario, the voices of other parents and school communities are being drowned out, said Hopkins. Important discussions on overcrowded West End schools such as J.R. Tucker High and Douglas S. Freeman High, and scenarios that impact Highland Springs High and Henrico High in Eastern Henrico, are being put off, she said.

“I’m really hoping that the school board will take Tuckahoe-Quioccasin completely off the table. Because we do have a problem at Freeman, we do have a problem at Tucker,” Hopkins said. “And I think that during the next round, we need to be able to focus on Freeman and Tucker by not having Quioccasin-Tuckahoe there.”

The voices of parents who speak English as a second language – a significant population at several West End elementary schools – are also not being brought into the discussion, said Kenyon. While HCPS’ online redistricting survey and the webpage explaining the scenarios can be translated into multiple languages, many of the other secondary materials are still only available in English when navigating the HCPS website.

“We have a ton of students at our school whose parents don’t even understand what is about to happen to their children, because the materials were not made available to them in a language that they speak,” Kenyon said. “As a parent, that’s unconscionable, to not be able to even begin to understand what’s about to happen to your own child.”

Many parents in Eastern Henrico also want to more deeply discuss the issues of upcoming housing developments and how that will impact local schools, said Breanna Johnson, who has children at George F. Baker Elementary. 

“There needs to be a bigger push across the whole county to build us more schools, whether it’s the East End or the West End,” she said. “We need more schools. Sandston’s throwing up townhomes, Highland Springs has a projected neighborhood coming up. . . people are moving here. Richmond is in the spotlight.”

HCPS parent Monica Hutchinson, who leads the Henrico chapter of the NAACP, said that she and other community members want to see more information revealed about how the redistricting would impact the staff, resources, and socioeconomic demographics at each school.

“This is still very surface-level. I want to see concrete data that tells me what’s going on behind the scenes,” she said. “If you’re pulling students from a school that’s at capacity, and putting them into another school, will the teachers and resources follow? And how will the changes impact the concentration of poverty in the schools?”

Parents and community members will have another chance to discuss the proposed redistricting and speak with school board members at the final town hall meeting on Oct. 7 at the Hermitage High School Advanced Career Education (ACE) Center.

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.