‘Public distrust is at an all time high’ as frustrations boil over at Henrico School Board redistricting town hall

Heated exchanges erupted Oct. 7 at the Henrico School Board's third and final redistricting town hall about a controversial school board proposal that would redistrict 11 schools.

Similar to the past two town halls, Tuesday’s discussions at the ACE Center at Hermitage centered mainly upon opposition from Tuckahoe Middle School parents and staff to a scenario that would redistrict nearly 800 students zoned for Tuckahoe and Quioccasin Middle School, adding 200 more students to the Tuckahoe building.

Reactions to the three proposed high school scenarios were more mixed, with some parents emphasizing the need to address overcrowding and others voicing concerns about breaking apart school communities.

But unlike the previous town halls, the discussions did include some direct dialogue with the school board.

At the urging of several parents, Vice Chair Madison Irving (Three Chopt District) engaged in a back-and-forth with a classroom of parents about the redistricting scenarios. Irving told parents that at the board's Oct. 9 meeting, he intends to ask members to drop the Quioccasin-Tuckahoe proposal.

School board members previously had refrained from responding to parents during each town hall’s main discussions, when attendees are divided into separate classrooms to discuss their opinions with HCPS staff, but have visited different rooms to listen. Board members also allow a half-hour period after the main meetings for parents to speak with them individually.

But Irving said that he wanted to directly respond to parents’ questions and concerns and “bring down the temperature.”

“I’m here to serve people so I can answer questions. I think for a conversation to be productive, both sides have to be listening, and I think that ended up happening,” he said. “We can disagree, but that doesn’t mean that we both shouldn’t be able to communicate with each other.”

Although Irving said he is against the Quioccasin-Tuckahoe scenario, and is “leaning towards” supporting a grandfathering rule that would allow all high-schoolers who have already started at a school to stay there, he still stands behind the three high school scenarios that aim to balance out capacity.

“If Tuckahoe is going to be put at a capacity situation that’s untenable, that’s just not something I will be able to get behind,” he said. “But I think the high school moves make a ton of sense. We’ll balance capacity and give relief to the schools who need it, and hopefully help build a strong community at Henrico, who definitely deserves one.”

Matt Williams, a Tuckahoe Elementary School parent, said he and others were frustrated with the process.

“I think the public's distrust in the Quioccasin-Tuckahoe proposal is at an all time high,” he said.

'Right now, we have more questions than answers'

Tuesday’s town hall was the final scheduled town hall meeting about the redistricting proposal, but many parents urged the school board to hold another public discussion after current school enrollment numbers are released on Thursday. 

Each scenario includes a figure describing how many students could be impacted, but those figures currently rely upon student enrollment numbers from last school year, said HCPS spokesperson Eileen Cox. A figure for a high school scenario currently is based upon how many students in certain neighborhoods were in grades 9-12 during the 2024-2025 year.

On Thursday, figures will be updated to reflect current 2025-2026 student enrollment data, Cox said, meaning that estimates would be based off the number of students at a certain school currently – not the number of students who would be at that school in the fall of 2026, when most scenarios would go into effect.

Since the school board likely will allow some type of grandfathering (permitting upperclassmen to stay at their current schools despite redistricting), it is difficult to predict exactly how many students would be impacted by each scenario, Irving said. 

Jesse Narron, whose son is a current freshman at Douglas S. Freeman High and would be impacted by the redistricting, said that the projections of how many and which students would be moved by the proposal are “wholly inaccurate.”

The Freeman scenario currently indicates that 129 students would be moved to Mills E. Godwin High – a figure that includes current seniors and seniors from last year.

“It’s infuriating,” he said. “If you tell the public that 129 kids are moving, and that's not true, that doesn't help us believe in the process.”

Other parents also voiced concerns about the school board’s process to gather public input, saying that in comparison to redistricting processes in 2020 and 2021 – which were ultimately tabled – this time around seems “rushed” and lacking in transparency.

“This is my third time going through this exact same argument, and this is by far the least robust process out of those three times,” said Tuckahoe Middle and Maybeury Elementary parent Hannah Kenyon. “Emails that don’t get responded to. . . surveys that who knows where they go. . . [we’re] kind of speaking to each other while other people listen to us, but we never get answers.”

Board member Kristi Kinsella (Brookland District) said that perceptions that the school board is not listening to the public and not thinking through feedback are “absolutely not true.”

This past spring, the school board voted to get rid of the traditional process of school redistricting – which required the creation of planning committees of staff and community members and the hiring of an outside consultant – and instead allow the HCPS superintendent to design, and the school board to approve, a plan for public input.

The board also approved a new policy that would require school boundary changes to be considered at least once every four years.

The previous redistricting process was “completely ineffective,” said Irving, and new policy changes allow the school board to better implement necessary school boundary changes. This year’s quicker redistricting process, scheduled to conclude Dec. 18 with the school board’s final vote, ensures that students will know which school they'll attend next year before this year's winter break, he said.

“I do feel that perhaps boards in the past didn’t do what they needed to do,” Irving said. “For me I wanted this to be very targeted. . . so it will just be to fix small things. . . that’s why I primarily focused on the high schools – Henrico has an issue, Freeman has an issue [J.R.] Tucker has an issue – how do we solve those in a small way, that’s only, at most, 460 some students?”

Capacity concerns at Tuckahoe Middle School

After the main discussions, a large crowd of parents circled around board chair Marcie Shea (Tuckahoe District) to push back against the Quioccasin-Tuckahoe scenario.

Shea has said that the scenario aims to place all of Maybeury Elementary in the Quioccasin zone so the community can feed into middle school together. But some Maybeury parents have said that they do not want to be moved out of Tuckahoe, despite Quioccasin getting a brand new building in 2027.

“I think the most important thing to the Tuckahoe Middle School community is to keep that strong feeder pattern and for Maybeury to stay at Tuckahoe Middle School,” said one parent. “They would rather stay there in an older building than go to a shiny new one, because they care about the culture and the students that are in the building.”

Parents also expressed skepticism about how the proposal would impact each school’s demographics, with one parent saying the scenario would “kick the poor kids out of Quioccasin and ship them over to Tuckahoe” and “take the rich kids [from Tuckahoe] and put them in Quioccasin.”

HCPS has not released data about how the redistricting proposals would impact school demographics, but has included estimated impacts on school capacity. Under the Quioccasin-Tuckahoe scenario, Tuckahoe would be at 99% capacity while Quioccasin would be at 71%.

Bringing a school over capacity would impact more than just the students, said one parent, and could even decrease families’ home values. 

“If your kids go to a school and it’s only at 86% [capacity], that’s probably going to become a more desirable neighborhood than one [with a school] that is at 107%,” they said. “You’re impacting parents and their largest asset – their home.”

Many parents also said that with new housing developments coming in throughout Henrico County, the school redistricting process should be more holistic, accounting for future growth and not just current enrollment.

“One of the biggest issues we’re having in this county is growth,” said one parent. “The [Henrico] Planning Commission develops plans without the school board or schools really figuring out where these kids should go, which causes existing neighborhoods and long-established feeder patterns to suffer. And ultimately, kids have to suffer.”

Development cases that appear before the planning commission and ultimately the county's board of supervisors first are reviewed by county planners, who issue detailed reports that describe the impact the proposed developments would have on a variety of county services and agencies, including how many students each likely would produce, which schools they would attend and how their addition would impact those schools.

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.