Re “Poor conditions at George Mason Elementary fire up School Board,” Free Press July 20-22 edition:

For the last half century, the Richmond School Board has always been headed by an educator with a Ph.D. Seemingly, each of these leaders has had the same approach to Richmond’s school problem: Throw some more money at the problem and it will go away.

Richmond Public Schools now spends almost twice the state average per student with the same failing results. Sixty-one percent of our schools are not fully state accredited.

If you always do what you always did, you’ll always get what you always got!

Perhaps it’s time to hire a person with business experience and a master’s in business administration to have a completely different approach than the failed ideas of the past.

For years, we have blamed poor educational results on teachers. Our teachers come from the same pool as suburban teachers. Maybe the problem here is that the students don’t want to be labeled “school boy” and shunned by their peers.

Perhaps we need to consider preschool starting at age 3 to teach children the unwritten rules of behavior and instill a love of learning.

Our solutions of the past have proven to be a failure. It’s time to look at new, out-of-the-box solutions to make our children successful today and in the future. Let’s agree to make Richmond a turnaround educational model for all inner cities.

ERIC W. JOHNSON

Richmond