Good morning, RVA! It's 46 °F, and we've got another incredibly pleasant day ahead of us. Expect highs in the mid 70s (!) and tons of sunshine. This evening, if you're not watching the sun set from a porch somewhere, you're doing it wrong.
Water cooler
Kenya Hunter and Chris Suarez at the Richmond Times-Dispatch report on the latest turn in the work to replace George Wythe High School. I'm not sure I've got my mind totally wrapped around what's happening and why, but I'll do my best to lay out the pieces.
On Monday night, the RPS School Board voted to move $2 million "earmarked for several projects, including structural repairs and new generators, fire alarm systems and roofs for at least 10 different schools" to instead pay to begin design work on a replacement for George Wythe High School. First, the replacement school the Board wants to build is smaller than either the Mayor and Superintendent would like, and, second, it's not clear to me that the Board even has the authority to move money around like that. Also on Monday night, the Mayor introduced ORD. 2021-308, which would transfer about $7.3 million from the City's Capital Improvement Program budget for "School Planning & Construction" to "School Modernization - George Wythe High School." The City would then pay out that money to the School District monthly to cover design costs for the new school.
However, before Council approves this transfer of funds, they're going to want answers to the same question the Mayor and Kamras have been asking for months: Why is the board planning to build a smaller school that could be over capacity the instant it opens? As I've been saying, the Mayor and the City Council hold all of the fiscal leverage in this situation, and now, because they hold the purse strings, the decision about how big to build a Wythe replacement moves over to Council. It's a much bigger and more public stage than School Board, and gives the public a handful of additional opportunities to get involved, too.
How will Council vote? I have no idea, but I don't think they'll appreciate the spot that School Board has put them in. The early Council vote count in the RTD is fascinating though, with 9th District Councilmember Jones saying "I’m willing to take steps to show how serious we are as a council...If that means withholding funding for a particular project or budget year, then I’m all for it." While 5th District Councilmember Lynch, where George Wythe sits, said "I have no intention of delaying the vote whatsoever. At the end of the day, they got us backed into a corner...This is not how it should be. The people deserve better than this. It’s mostly been politics. People don’t deserve that." Given the actual balance of power between School Board and City Council, I didn't expect to see a Councilperson feel backed into a corner by the School Board.
P.S. Keep the eventual outcome of this situation in mind as we start to pull together a list of candidates for the 2024 mayoral election.
Super duper related to that whole previous discussion, also on Monday night Superintendent Kamras presented a proposal for rezoning River City Middle School. This school is brand new, already at capacity, and now, unfortunately, students need to be shifted to other nearby middle schools. The process of rezoning a school is complex and personal for families, and so RPS will put together a rezoning process that involves the impacted community (see page five and six of the aforelinked PDF). If you live in the 8th or 9th Districts and would like to serve on the proposed rezoning committee you can fill out this short application. You can see why folks are nervous about building a too-small George Wythe replacement, yeah?
Tomorrow, from 8:00–9:00 PM, Stay RVA will host a virtual conversation with Damon Harris and National Teacher of the Year Rodney Robinson to talk through how affordable housing impacts teacher retention. You'd already be hard pressed to find housing that's affordable on a single teacher's salary in many of Richmond's neighborhoods—and that's only going to get worse the longer we fail to build, build, build more homes. Every time a neighborhood association opposes new apartments or dense housing because of parking or whatever dumb thing, what they're actually doing is further limiting the ability for teachers, civil servants, and other folks to live in the neighborhoods they serve.
Speaking of affordable housing, the Better Housing Coalition will host their fifth annual gingerbread competition this coming Sunday from 12:00–5:30 PM. Here's the gist: businesses, nonprofits, and people generally stoked on gingerbread build extravagant gingerbread constructions and you pay a couple of bucks to vote for your favorite—all while drinking Hardywood's Gingerbread Stout. It's kind of like the Great British Baking Show, but with less charming accents and for a good cause.
I have often wondered this, via /r/rva, "Are the deviled eggs at Lombardy Market really the best?" From the thread, here is, clearly, the best answer: "I've never had a bad deviled egg. They tend to only have a passing acquaintance with my taste buds as they slide down my gullet. The best deviled eggs are 'many'."
Logistical note! Tomorrow is Veterans Day, which is a state holiday. As per The Time-Honored Tradition, I will spend my morning sleeping in a bit longer, drinking coffee instead of tea, and reading the handful of email newsletters that have piled up in my inbox (I'm particularly excited about this moon-related newsletter I just found). They really pack the state holidays in toward the end of the year, don't they? Anyway, I'll be back in your inboxes on Friday! Until then!
This morning's longread
The American Workplace Isn’t Prepared for This Much Grief
I've been thinking a lot about how the pandemic has impacted what we accept about the American workplace and work culture. Lack of paid bereavement leave was always terrible but now seems particularly inhumane.
Access to paid-leave benefits has also grown more inequitable over the past decade—the result of an inconsistent patchwork of policies that the pandemic has laid bare. Among the lowest 10 percent of wage earners in the country, only about 19 percent say they can access paid funeral leave if needed, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. And though no one is exempt from the effects of grief—which can manifest physically and disrupt cardiovascular function, the gastrointestinal system, and concentration—low-income workers are more likely to have to work while weathering these symptoms.
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