Good morning, RVA! It's 58 °F, and today looks beautiful. Expect highs in the 80s, plenty of sunshine, and all the reason in the world to hold hands in the park. Temperatures increase over the long weekend, so get out there and enjoy it today.
Water cooler
As of this morning, the Virginia Department of Health reports the seven-day average of new COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations, and deaths as: 145, 27, and 10, respectively. VDH reports a seven-day average of 17.9 new cases in and around Richmond (Richmond: -0.3; Henrico: 9.9, and Chesterfield: 8.3). Since this pandemic began, 1,345 people have died in the Richmond region. 45.4%, 56.7%, and 53.2% of the population in Richmond, Henrico, and Chesterfield have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine. Welp, we'll have to wait until next week to see if Richmond's miraculously negative cases sort themselves out.
OK! Virginia continues to creep closer and closer to President Biden's vaccination goal—like, really, really closer. As of this morning, 69.4% of adult Virginians have received at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine. I think, fingers crossed, by Wednesday we should have this thing in the bag. Then, I wonder, what the next fairly arbitrary goal will be? 70% of adults fully vaccinated? 70% of kids? 70% of everyone before the end of the year? Maybe something with booster shots? Like I keep saying, this next phase of vaccination work will be slower and more methodical, and, as much as they're kind of made up, these point-in-time goals do create a way to regularly measure progress (and create a thing to write about in this section of the email multiple times each week).
Chris Suarez and Kenya Hunter at the Richmond Times-Dispatch have a surprising update to ongoing George Wythe...story? saga? drama? Yesterday, Mayor Stoney announced that he will "request design proposals for a new George Wythe High School this week against the wishes of the Richmond School Board, which recently voted to wrest control of school construction projects from the city administration." Stoney said, "This is me exhausting my legal ability to do everything I can to ensure that a new school is built as quickly as possible." What happens next is anyone's guess, but School Board has a meeting on June 28th at which, I imagine, they'll at least discuss this whole situation. To me, and you may disagree, the tenor of the public narrative about building a replacement for George Wythe High School is decidedly against the School Board. The way the stories I read are framed, the Board comes off like they're unwilling to compromise, unwilling to even have a dialogue with the City, and dug in over their heads. We'll see if and for how much longer the five board members driving this process can keep their alliance intact while, at least in my eyes, public pressure against them grows.
Local coverage of Pulitzer Prize Winner Michael Paul Williams continues, and VPM's Ian Stewart has an interview with Williams about what's next (you know, now that he's won the Pulitzer Prize).
Today at 12:00 PM, RVA Rapid Transit will host another Transit Talk, this one featuring Sean O'Brien, Director of Community Health with Bon Secours, and Julie Timm, CEO of GRTC. They'll talk about Bon Secours's recent work to get 14 fancy, new bus stop shelters installed in the East End and RVA Rapid Transit's new Better Bus Stops program.
Today is the last day of school for RPS and Chesterfield Public Schools students! Congratulations! You made it through the most bizarre school year of your entire lives, and things are looking up as we head into the summer. I hope each of you finds the time to rest, relax, play Fortnite, swim in the river, ride bikes, eat pizza, and do all of the things that I wish I were doing for the next couple of months. You've earned it!
Related, and if you can handle thinking about school for just a minute more, RPS families and students can attend the Southside reopening conversation tonight at 6:00 PM. Zoom-in info here.
Because it feels very summery, single-game tickets go on sale today for the Richmond Flying Squirrels. Baseball, nachos, beers as big as your head: A classic part of a Richmond summer.
Logistical note! I will be taking tomorrow off from this email as it's a state holiday—Juneteenth (observed)—and it sounds like, as of yesterday, it will soon be a federal holiday, too. The New York Times has a nice Juneteenth explainer if you've not heard the history of the holiday before. And, finally, I've seen a handful of Juneteenth events floating around, if you're looking to celebrate locally: Juneteenth Jubilee in the Park and a Juneteenth Celebration at Dorey Park to name two. Meredith Moran at Richmond Magazine has a longer list if you want to stack your calendar.
This morning's longread
The Back to the Office Maximum
Anne Helen Peterson! She really hits on a lot of the things I've been thinking about when it comes to returning to offices and workplaces. Y'all should really subscribe to her newsletter.
The “good” news is that the pre-COVID, the in-office playing field was unlevel as shit. It favored and advanced a certain type of worker, with a certain type of working style, and a certain availability and eagerness to work in person in an office. It favored extroverts, it favored dudes, it favored neurotypical workers with no physical or psychological conditions that would prevent them from sitting in a chair for nine hours a day, five days a week. It privileged people with the desire and ability to live in proximity to their industry hubs. It implicitly or explicitly promoted those without care responsibilities and/or those most effective at masking or ignoring care responsibilities. We should stop buying the farcical argument that in-office work was some ideal opportunity scenario. It was deeply, deeply exclusionary for many — it’s just that those people aren’t the ones asked to write the thinkpieces about the benefits of returning to the office.
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