In an effort to fill some of its biggest staffing gaps, Richmond Public Schools is offering teachers big bucks if they commit before May 1 to work at schools facing significant teacher shortages. 

The incentive, which RPS has also offered in smaller amounts the past two years, aims to entice educators to Richmond by promising $7,500 if they agree now to come to the division next fall and stay for at least three years. 

“We have a sense that it’s going to be a tight market this hiring season, and so we expect others to do the same,” said Superintendent Jason Kamras. In prior years, he continued, “the bonuses were attractive and did bring in quite a significant number of individuals.”

Thirty bonuses will be available from a pot of $225,000 the School Board agreed on Feb. 4 to spend next year, even though neither RPS nor the city have completed their budgets for 2025-26.

Richmond officials are preparing for a tighter financial position next year as they deal with fallout from the failure this January of the city’s water treatment plant, which supplies drinking water to hundreds of thousands of people in the region. While Kamras is hoping to get at least $46 million more for RPS from the city next year, municipal budget constraints are certain to affect the schools as well. 

Committing funds to bonuses before the division knows how much it will receive from the city kindled some concern among School Board members: Wesley Hedgepeth (4th District) said the idea “gives me heart palpitations,” while Shonda Harris-Muhammed (6th District) called the decision “backwards.” 

But Kamras promised that if the board approved the $225,000 in funding, he would find places to cut non-personnel costs elsewhere if the city didn’t give the schools adequate funding to cover the bonuses. 

“I recognize that is concerning, truly I do,” he said. “But I also know that the cost of not having a fully licensed teacher, both financially and of course academically, not to mention socially and emotionally and in so many other domains, is very high. And our ability to reach our goals is tied very tightly to our having a great teacher in every classroom.” 

RPS offered $4,000 early commitment bonuses to teachers last year, and $6,000 incentives the year prior. Both required a three-year commitment, with the division able to claw some of the money back if a teacher departed early. Both were also funded using American Rescue Plan Act dollars, which have now dried up. 

Alyssa Schwenk, a spokesperson for the division, said 151 teachers received early commitment bonuses in 2023-24, and 150 received them in 2024-25. Of those, she said 18 teachers have since left, causing RPS to use the clawback provision.

Kamras told the School Board  RPS would prioritize experienced teachers in handing out the early commitment bonuses. 

“Brand-new folks, with obvious exceptions, are not the ones that would be at the top of our lists,” he said. “We’re looking for folks with experience — five, six, seven, 10 years of experience — who would be willing to come to these hard-to-staff schools.”

Not everyone on the School Board agreed the bonuses are a good idea. E.J. “Emmett Jay” Jafari (8th District) voted against them, saying there were still too many questions, as did Harris-Muhammed, who criticized them as “not equitable.” 

Noting that teachers hired during the school year to fill vacancies do not receive bonuses, Harris-Muhammed in an email said the division should “provide bonuses for all or none.” 

“Providing bonuses just to provide bonuses is not a effective practice on any level,” she wrote. “Every content area is critically important. We have not discussed or approved bonuses for [career and technical education] content areas or elective courses and they both are critical areas of need for all students in grades K-5 and our secondary academic programs.” 

While Kamras’ budget proposal for next year includes $3 million in other bonuses for hiring in schools and content areas like math and science that have larger numbers of vacancies, those incentive payments will be considered as part of broader budget discussions and were not put to a vote at the School Board’s last meeting. 

The decision about the early commitment payments, the superintendent said, was accelerated because hiring season is beginning. 

“Our biggest time for hiring is from now to May,” he said. “So the early commitment bonuses help us lock in talented individuals at the peak of the hiring season.” 

While Kamras initially proposed devoting the 30 bonuses to any teacher who agreed now to come to RPS next year, regardless of school, he later narrowed the incentive to those educators who agreed to come to hard-to-staff schools. 

The “hard-to-staff” label caused some confusion among the board, which repeatedly asked for a definition of the term.

Kamras said the word refers to schools with the highest percentage of teacher vacancies. In 2023-24, when all existing teachers and new hires at hard-to-staff schools received a bonus, the division defined the term as schools with a teacher contract vacancy rate of 20% or more. That year, bonuses were available for staff at Carver Elementary and Martin Luther King Jr., River City and Henderson middle schools. 

The Richmonder requested a list of the division’s top 10 hard-to-staff schools and their teacher vacancy rates on Feb. 4 but had not received it by the time of publication. Schwenk said because the information had also been requested by the School Board, the administration had to share it with the board before the media.

Harris-Muhammed said in an email that certain schools have been overlooked on staffing, pointing to three in the 6th District — Martin Luther King Jr. Middle, Oak Grove–Bellemeade Elementary and Overby-Sheppard Elementary — that she said have suffered from instructional shortages and calling for an external audit of the RPS Talent Office, which oversees hiring.

“When we are not placing staff where the data shows they are needed that is a problem from me,” she wrote.