Overview

Richmond High School for the Arts, formerly George Wythe High School, is a public high school in Richmond, part of Richmond Public Schools. The city school board voted to rename it in 2023. Its colors are red, white, and blue, and its mascot the Bulldogs.

NCES records all 1,053 free-lunch-eligible students as qualifying through direct certification, with zero students in the reduced-price category -- a pattern indicating community eligibility rather than individual applications.

Enrollment fell from 1,296 (2023-24, per Wikipedia) to 1,116 (2024-25, per NCES) -- a drop of 180 students, about 14%, in a single year. Staffing did not fall with it: NCES records 116.60 classroom teachers FTE against a Wikipedia-reported ratio of 18:1 for the prior year, versus 9.57:1 now. A student:teacher ratio nearly halving in one year is a large change, and we found no source explaining it. It may reflect the school's 2023 renaming and repositioning as an arts school, a reporting-method change, or genuine enrollment decline with retained staff. We report both figures rather than choosing.

Academics

This profile has school-specific proficiency data, which most records in this directory do not. Per Wikipedia citing U.S. News for 2022-23: mathematics proficiency 8%, reading 36%, science 18%. The graduation rate was 61%, and 11% of students had taken at least one AP test. The student body was 50.3% Hispanic and 46.1% Black, with 97.5% minority enrollment and 86% of students economically disadvantaged.

These figures predate the 2023 renaming and any programme changes that accompanied it. Check the Virginia Department of Education's school quality profiles for current results.

Set that 8% mathematics proficiency against CrimeGrade's SchoolGrade panel for Richmond, which reports schools citywide averaging B+, with 51% actual proficiency versus 41% projected, concluding that schools "greatly exceed expectations."

Both can be technically true -- a citywide average of 51% is compatible with individual schools far below it -- but the gap is wide enough to matter. A parent reading the citywide panel would form an impression this school's own figures do not support. As noted on the Philadelphia profile in this directory, SchoolGrade's "exceeds expectations" verdict measures performance against a locally-derived projection, not against an absolute standard, so a low projection makes a modest result look strong. Neither the citywide panel nor a single school's numbers should stand in for the other.

Neighborhood

The school is on Crutchfield Street in Richmond's 23225 ZIP code, in the city's Southside district. One local source describes Richmond as divided into five districts -- Downtown, East End, West End, North Side, and Southside -- and notes that most violent crime occurs in the East End, with some high-crime areas in the North Side and Southside.

DoorProfit names the city's five F-grade neighborhoods as Creighton, Whitcomb, Gilpin, Fairfield, and Eastview; none is this school's immediate area, though we found no crime figure specific to the Crutchfield Street vicinity.

Crime & safety

Richmond's citywide sources diverge in the now-familiar pattern, with one notable outlier.

Nextdoor reports an overall rate of 38.2 per 1,000 against a stated national 33.37, with violent crime well below national (3.62 vs 13.32) and property crime well above (34.58 vs 20.05). DoorProfit gives the city a D+ grade, 65% above the national average, higher crime than 91% of major US cities, with property crime 89% above average -- while also reporting that 74% of Richmond's 147 neighborhoods rate A or B. NeighborhoodScout reports 36 per 1,000, one of the highest rates in America, with 97% of Virginia communities safer. AreaVibes puts Richmond safer than only 17% of US cities, with a 1-in-297 violent-crime chance and 1-in-32 property-crime chance.

CrimeGrade is the outlier: it describes the Richmond area as "less safe than the Virginia state average and as safe as the national average" -- against four other sources placing the city well above national. It reports crime costs of $494 per resident annually, $30 above the national average.

DoorProfit's Richmond crime map does something worth crediting: it quantifies how concentrated the city's crime problem is. Five neighborhoods -- Creighton, Whitcomb, Gilpin, Fairfield, Eastview -- account for just 3.4% of the 147 neighborhoods analyzed but are described as having "an outsized impact on the city's overall D+ crime grade."

The same source pairs safety grades with median household income: Wilton at A+ with $282,631, Country Club of Virginia-Westhampton at A+ with $187,708, against a citywide median of $51,421 and a 20.9% poverty rate. It is explicit that these are correlations, and this directory draws no causal conclusion -- but a citywide grade that is largely produced by 3.4% of neighborhoods tells a reader very little about any particular address, which is precisely why we decline to attach citywide figures to individual schools.

Our calculated rating

We don't publish a single proprietary score. Enrollment moved 14% in one year without explanation, the academic figures predate the school's renaming, no neighborhood-specific safety data was located, and citywide sources disagree on whether Richmond sits at or well above the national average. See our ratings methodology.

Sources

  1. NCES Common Core of Data, Richmond High School for the Arts (510324002081), 2024-25 school year (address, enrollment, classroom teachers FTE, ratio, locale, county, lunch eligibility and direct certification, phone).
  2. Wikipedia, "Richmond High School for the Arts" (former name, 2023 renaming, founding year, principal, superintendent, 2023-24 enrollment, ratio, colors, mascot; 2022-23 proficiency, graduation rate, AP participation, and demographic figures citing U.S. News).
  3. NCES records for John Marshall High (510324002080) and Richmond Community High (510324002075) -- district context.
  4. Wikipedia, "Rappahannock High School" (Richmond County Public Schools; cited on the Virginia state page for the jurisdiction caution).
  5. Nextdoor, Richmond VA crime and safety resource page (overall, violent, and property rates against stated national averages).
  6. DoorProfit, Richmond VA crime statistics (D+ grade, national comparison, category breakdown, neighborhood grade distribution).
  7. DoorProfit, Richmond VA crime map (F-grade neighborhood concentration, A+ neighborhoods and median incomes, citywide poverty and unemployment).
  8. NeighborhoodScout, Richmond VA crime rates and statistics (rate per 1,000, victimization odds, state comparison).
  9. AreaVibes, Richmond VA crime rates (national and state percentiles, victimization odds, daily crime multiples).
  10. CrimeGrade.org, Richmond VA overall page (state and national comparison, cost of crime, SchoolGrade panel).
  11. Niche, Richmond crime and safety (resident survey responses).
  12. On The Fly Moving Guys, "Richmond, VA Crime Rate" (district-level description of where violent crime concentrates).