Richmond Just Named a School After Obama and Look What They Found Inside It

Richmond Public Schools renamed their school after Barack Obama in 2018 – and promptly let it rot.

Now children in that same building are staring down a first day of school that keeps getting pushed back because the place is crawling with mold and rodents.

Here's what Richmond's Democrat leadership didn't want parents to find out until two weeks before school started.

The Building They Renamed But Never Fixed

Superintendent Jason Kamras told families an HVAC outage had filled the basement with mold and fouled the building's air before a single child walked through the door this fall.

The first air quality test came back positive.

The second one did too.

Crews eventually traced it to a moist pipe hidden in a supply closet above the ceiling tiles – leaking in the dark, untouched, while the school board was busy giving speeches about Barack Obama's legacy.

Rodents were found in several rooms.

Seven industrial dehumidifiers are now running in a building named after the 44th president.

Parents are being told to wait by the same system that created this mess.

This Is Not a Plumbing Problem – This Is a Pattern

Richmond Public Schools has been playing what their own leadership called "Whac-A-Mole" with infrastructure failures for years.

A 2024 investigation found widespread mold and moisture problems across at least half of all RPS facilities.

The district received just $2.5 million in capital improvement funding in a recent budget year – to maintain five million square feet of buildings.

Board member Shonda Harris-Muhammed asked the obvious question at a board meeting: "How are we maintaining 5 million square feet with only $2.5 million dollars?"

Nobody had a good answer.

The oldest building in the system is over 100 years old.

The majority of Richmond's school buildings are over 40 years old.

At least half of city schools lacked modern fire suppression systems as recently as 2023.

Woodville Elementary – 72 years old, serving children in one of Richmond's poorest neighborhoods – spent years on the district's own condition report list with documented mold, classroom temperatures topping 80 degrees into September, and structural failures inspectors had been flagging for years.

Richmond Public Schools has struggled to get a handful of new schools built in the same timeframe Chesterfield County opened nine new elementary schools.

Richmond Has Been Run by Democrats for Decades

This is the part the local media won't say out loud.

Richmond hasn't had meaningful Republican leadership in decades.

The city council is controlled by Democrats.

The mayor is a Democrat.

The school board is a Democrat institution.

And after generations of one-party control, children are going to school in buildings with 100-year-old infrastructure, mold in the walls, and rodents in the classrooms.

They renamed the school after Barack Obama in 2018 as a statement – spending $26,000 on the rebrand alone.

They raised more than $40,000 on t-shirts celebrating the name change.

They did not fix the plumbing.

They did not replace the HVAC.

They did not get the rodents out.

The Washington Examiner documented this exact pattern across American cities: when Democratic governance goes unchallenged for long enough, the people who have the least end up paying the steepest price.

Not the politicians.

Not the school board members.

The kids who showed up Monday morning and couldn't get inside because the building was too dangerous.

That's what happens when you spend two decades naming things after Democrats instead of fixing them.

Here's the question Richmond parents should be asking right now: why are their kids trapped in this building at all?

Trump's education agenda exists precisely for families like these – the ones who can't afford private school, can't afford to move somewhere the schools actually work, and have no leverage over a school board that answers to nobody but itself.

School choice doesn't just give parents options.

It gives them the one thing Democrat-run school systems have spent decades making sure they never had: a way out.

Sources:

• Jessie Nguyen, "Second test shows elevated mold levels at Barack Obama Elementary School," WRIC ABC 8News, August 23, 2026.
• "Mold source found at Barack Obama Elementary; school could open to students Tuesday if air quality tests clear," WTVR CBS 6, August 23, 2026.
• "Nearly every Richmond school had visible signs of mold growth, reports show," WTVR CBS 6, March 2024.
• "Virginia has history of underfunding school construction," VPM News, May 2024.
• "Richmond advances 1% school funding tax question to local ballots," VPM News, July 2026.
• "Blue-city blues: Democratic mismanagement is not limited to the biggest urban centers," Washington Examiner, October 2025.