“We’ve got a new engineer,” Jones said Wednesday in an hourlong conversation about education. “Let’s see what he does. Let’s see if he can get people in here who are not part of a culture of failure but who are part of a culture that wants to see success happen.”

Bedden still needs to hire his staff — most top administrative posts in the school system have turned over in the past year, and many of the positions are currently filled by interim appointees — but he has already identified the course of action he intends to follow.

The biggest decision he makes should come in drastically changing how Richmond approaches education. The city has nearly four dozen school buildings, most of which are in poor physical condition, and runs schools with some of the lowest enrollments in the area.

In recent weeks, Bedden has spoken of the need to “right-size” the school system. He’d like to jettison buildings he has said are the worst he has ever seen and create new schools-within-schools, a concept of having multiple schools share a building. That allows efficiency by having schools share things such as cafeterias, common space and administrative costs while still allowing independence in operation.