Only recently has Maggie L. Walker Governor’s School (MLWGS) implemented changes to improve the longstanding diversity and equity issues that have existed at our institution for years; the achievement test was removed for admissions last year, and this year the school has promised continuous staff development and cultural competency training to teachers in order to improve the learning environment. With these changes, the school is finally acknowledging the issues students from majorly underrepresented groups, such as Black students and Latino students, face in the community. However, the advancements our school finally sees today as a result of more recent pushes for change represent a much greater legacy of years of hard work that educators have been investing into Maggie Walker even prior to the current administration and board’s acknowledgment of diversity issues. It is because of the tireless efforts of individuals who have been fighting this battle against racism and inequity at Maggie Walker for years now that we are finally seeing discussions about diversity issues from our school board and administration and can strive for the changes we know our students deserve.  

“The diversity issue at Maggie Walker has been a problem for many years, and even worse, it's been brought to the attention of the school and previous school administrations for many years,” Paul Fleisher stated. An author today, Fleisher used to be a teacher of gifted students in the Richmond Public Schools (RPS) system. Even prior to that, he was involved in the Civil Rights Movement since high school. He reminisced, “The first activity I can remember was when I was in my early teens, picketing a segregated movie theater in my hometown.” This passion for fighting for racial equity continued onto his career when he became a teacher in the RPS system that saw firsthand how his students were denied entry into Maggie Walker because of the school’s failure to adequately represent the general population with the admissions test and Algebra I requirement. “One of the experiences that brought me to the [diversity] issue was that a number of my students over the years were very highly qualified, as qualified as anybody.” When these students, mostly Black and Latino, did not get into Maggie Walker despite their hard work and qualifications, Fleisher understood, “There was a systemic problem.” 

Working with Dr. Genevieve Siegel-Hawley, one of his former students and a MLWGS alumna, Fleisher drafted multiple recommendations to the Maggie Walker school board after repeatedly seeing his students missing the opportunity to come to the school. The board at the time, however, did not listen to these recommendations. “That was the reason that Genevieve and I decided that we needed to file the Office of Civil Rights Complaint because we tried everything else. I think it was the board that showed most of the resistance.” After the publication of the 2009 UVA study analyzing Maggie Walker’s diversity issues was published– itself a direct result of research and lobbying by Siegel-Hawley, Fleisher, and other supportive parents and alumni– the board failed to implement any major changes despite their having committed to funding the UVA study. The study included specific recommendations including removing the Algebra I requirement, altering the admissions test, and hiring a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Coordinator at the school. “They made a couple of changes. But it didn't seem to make much difference in the admissions of Black and Latino students.” Fleisher, along with then-doctoral student Siegel-Hawley, even advised the school board to implement these recommendations in their collaborative opinion piece titled “Maggie Walker’s Diversity Complex” for Style Weekly, published on August 12, 2009. In this piece, the two reflected on the findings of the then-recently published UVA study, which included reexamining the entrance exam and hiring a more diverse faculty, and they also criticized the school for the disproportionate representation of students and for overlooking privilege in the admissions system. In the article, the two affirmed, “The consistent underrepresentation of Black students at the school raises questions of both power and privilege. Maggie Walker serves as a beacon of educational excellence but for too long has sidestepped one of our government's founding principles: equality.”  

With the complaint Siegel-Hawley and Fleisher filed in 2013 along with a group of concerned parents and Walker alumni, they affirmed that the admissions test system the governor’s school held at the time showed “clear evidence of persistent bias against Black and... Latino students." This was in response to the school board’s failure to act on the many recommendations that were offered. “We gave them [the school board] a dozen different possible ways that they could make changes to try to see if that would make a difference and make Maggie Walker's population look more like the region's population.” 

After the civil rights complaint, Siegel-Hawley and Fleisher continued to monitor yearly admissions statistics and offer recommendations to the school, understanding that the weight of the issue called for relentless work at bettering a systemic problem of racism in gifted programs. Fleisher went to republish his Style Weekly piece along with Siegel-Hawley in his 2017 collection of essays and stories, A Friend in Need is a Man’s Best Dog. In his book, he noted afterward, “Unfortunately, there's been very little change in the school's admissions process, and the inequitable results it continues to produce since Genevieve started working on this project…Black and Latino students are still underrepresented in the student population.” 

 Not only did Fleisher continue his work lobbying the MLWGS school board, Siegel-Hawley, who took the lead in developing the complaint against the governor’s school in 2013, would go on to become a Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) professor who studies segregation in modern-day education. She holds numerous accolades for her projects tackling neo-segregation in Richmond and implicit racism in Virginia school curricula. Her most recent book is A Single Garment: Creating Intentionally Diverse Schools That Benefit All Children, which explores practices that support contemporary school integration and discusses diversity issues in detail after reflecting on her own findings as an educator.

Siegel-Hawley also calls for changes to Maggie Walker’s current system of admissions. “There's this opportunity with Maggie Walker to address segregation because it's a school that draws students from multiple school systems…Because of the way that the admissions processes of Maggie Walker have historically been structured, admissions criteria too often reinforce and reflect the unequal opportunities to learn that kids have had in our areas or divisions.” Siegel-Hawley emphasized the possibility of conducting a weighted lottery system, for example. Once students meet certain minimum criteria, the school could think about employing the lottery with weights that recognize kids “who have overcome more barriers to opportunity than others.” For Siegel-Hawley, she believes, “There's lots of different ways to think about it, even in difficult legal contexts if we have the will to do so.”

Today, the most consistent change individuals like Fleisher and Siegel-Hawley are fighting for when it comes to the admission of applicants to Maggie Walker is the removal of the Algebra I requirement; for Fleisher, even after the governor’s school's recent removal of achievement testing, he believes the way to mitigate diversity issues at Maggie Walker is not simply admissions test changes but rather the abandonment of the Algebra I requirement. In a school board public comment period, Fleisher also described how the use of a composite score by the school in order to determine the top applicants from feeder districts “has not been considered a best educational practice for thirty years,” and tells very little about a student. Later, Fleisher re-emphasized this in an interview with Richmond Times-Dispatch reporter Kenya Hunter, stating, “What do you know about the kid if you have a single number? It tells you very little.” 

Fleisher believes the removal of the Algebra I requirement would increase equity because students’ decisions to take Algebra I in middle school are often made as early as fifth grade. “The problem with the algebra requirement is that kids are tracked coming into middle school.” As a teacher, he recalls experiences of attempting to accelerate a student up to Algebra I once he realized the child was far too advanced for a regular math course. But because the decision had to be made in elementary school, “By then, it [transferring to Algebra I] was very hard to do.” In essence, Fleisher believes having the Algebra I class as a requirement for even applying to the governor’s school is far too restrictive, discouraging to families who may not even know this is something that could change the course of their child’s career. “Most parents don't even realize the effect of that in that fifth grade— that you have to be thinking about high school. Many parents are not thinking about that. They're thinking about putting food on the table. That makes that requirement problematic.” As reported by the 2009 UVA Study, the removal of the Algebra I requirement would cause an exponential amount of change to Maggie Walker’s class diversity and would significantly increase the number of African-American and Latino students, only motivating Fleisher and like-minded individuals to continue to push for this change.

In response to concerns about student standards decreasing at Maggie Walker if these admissions changes were to be implemented, Fleisher simply stated, “It's not true. And I think it's actually insulting and possibly racist to argue that point.” Siegel-Hawley similarly commented on the necessity of these admissions changes to not only provide greater opportunities to underrepresented students who rightfully deserve a spot in the school but also to create a more comprehensive education system for students attending the school. “All kids at Maggie Walker will benefit from a more diverse learning environment. We have lots of data and research to suggest that it sharpens your critical thinking skills, better prepares you to be a citizen, or to work in government and international studies if you deeply understand the world from multiple perspectives.” 

For educators like Paul Fleisher and Dr. Genevieve Siegel-Hawley, who have witnessed first-hand fully-qualified students being denied a space at Maggie Walker because of the school’s failure to address inequity head on, the diversity issues at Maggie Walker are both concerning and jarring. “It’s about equal opportunity,” Paul Fleisher simply states. The murder of George Floyd in 2020 and the growth of the Black Lives Matter movement caused many to reflect on their implicit biases and actions, including Maggie Walker’s school board and administration. The board is finally addressing the buried history of our school and the diversity issues our school faces today, and changes are happening– albeit slowly. Regardless, Fleisher and Siegel-Hawley continue to emphasize the necessity for a positive change at Maggie Walker, their work consistent. “Maggie Walker is the site of a formerly segregated African-American high school, and so to be operating in that space in that context and so persistently over decades serve a student body that doesn't reflect the racial and ethnic diversity of the city or the surrounding metropolitan area. That's a travesty,” Siegel-Hawley stated. Fleisher echoed a similar sentiment of necessary change, stating, “I think a lot of the recommendations in our article still hold true. I think the board needs to make an explicit commitment to building a student body and faculty that represents the population of central Virginia.” The work of Fleisher, Siegel-Hawley, and others who care about the governor’s school created a strong foundation for us to finally tackle Maggie Walker’s history of inequity. Although our institution’s journey to substantial change has only recently begun, the long-time work of Fleisher and Siegel-Hawley makes our school’s future hopeful and shows that the equitable institution these two individuals have been fighting for is certainly possible.

Project 1937 is The Jabberwock’s continuing investigation…