With the Richmond School Board poised to vote tonight on the Patrick Henry charter school, the state NAACP again spoke out against the proposed elementary school.

At a news conference this morning, NAACP leaders said the organization was against the school because it would, the group claimed, create a private school with public money. The message was similar to one delivered in a news conference in front of the south Richmond school on Friday.

Arthur Burton, of the Richmond Council of PTAs, was also on hand to ask -- as he did on Friday -- that School Board Chairman George P. Braxton II and member Carol A.O. Wolf recuse themselves from voting tonight because of their connections to the law firm LeClair Ryan. The firm provided some free legal work for the Patrick Henry group. Both, however, have said they planned to vote.

"This fight didn't just start. It's been going on for a decade," state NAACP Executive Director King Salim Khalfani said by phone this afternoon.

"If Patrick Henry was so important, they could have brought these resources there. They could have put their children there."

He said he was particularly upset because efforts from the black community to improve schools were "always put in the background, put at the end of the priority list" while the Patrick Henry group was allowed to revise its application several times based on recommendations from a school administration review committee.

"It just stinks," he said. "All schools should be innovative."

Patrick Henry Elementary School closed after the 2006-07 school year. Its enrollment at the time was the second lowest of the city's 31 elementary schools.