Michael Kight is certain of one thing: If he can get people into his school, he can get them to stay.

"Once you get the parents in, they're fine," said the principal of Albert Hill Middle School.

Getting them in hasn't always been an easy task in Richmond.

While Hill is in a reasonably affluent area just off Monument Avenue and features a strenuous academic program and a wide selection of electives, it draws so few students from its neighborhood that nearly half the slots in the school are filled by students from outside its zone.

To help assuage fears of the system and to show off some of the city's success stories, the Richmond school officials held three tours in the past week. The final one yesterday featured Hill, Carver Elementary School, Armstrong High School and the Capital City Program.

The four principals played tour guide to a traveling group of participants that included parents, business leaders, politicians and educators.

Kight used data to prove his point on academics, and a little humor to try to dispel some of the myths of city schools.

"There are no student-eating rats here," he said as a picture of a jumbo cartoon rat appeared on the screen in the auditorium.

At Armstrong, Principal Dimitric Roseboro said he takes an old-fashioned approach to making sure his students are ready for the day. Every morning, he meets with them in the auditorium.

"They're going to hear from me first thing in the day," he told the touring group. The goal, he said, was to "make sure they're in a good place" to learn.

At Carver, the highlights were decidedly user-friendly. Among the many highlights Principal Iris Page touted was the "Reading is Fundamental" program. It encourages students to read more and backs up the challenge with books. In the past three years, students have taken home more than 10,000 free books.

A little outside the system sits the Capital City Program. Now in its fourth year, the Gilpin Court-based school educates middle and high school students who couldn't quite fit in at their home schools.

Longtime city Principal Brad Fellows came out of retirement -- after two weeks -- four years ago to start the program, a local affiliate of the national Community Education Partners program.

It uses a strict approach to reach some of the city's toughest students.

"It's not about being a warehouse," Fellows said. "It's an instructional program."

The program, he said, helps students break their bad habits -- fighting and truancy, for example -- and gain the academic confidence to return to their home schools.

With classes segregated by level and by gender -- the students don't even cross paths during the day -- it's not a typical school. But the work it does helps more typical schools succeed.

"Our goal is to make the comprehensive schools better," Fellows said.
Contact Zachary Reid at (804) 775-8179 or zreid@timesdispatch.com.