Good morning, RVA! It's 35 °F, and this morning looks cold and rainy while this afternoon looks a whole lot drier and warmer. Cool—but dry!—weather over the weekend means plenty of opportunities to spend some time outside if you get your layers on.
Water cooler
The New York Times reports that as soon as today the CDC could “loosen its guidelines for when and where Americans should wear masks to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, allowing most people to go without them in public indoor spaces.” This, I think, is maybe a slightly misleading way to frame things? From further down in the piece: The new recommendations will “place less emphasis on case counts and give more weight to hospitalizations.” A hospitalization-based framework only results in loosened mask guidelines because hospital rates (and cases, too, btw) are way, way down across the country. If we’re hit with a new variant and hospitals start to fill up, presumably the guidance would require more masks in more places, right? I haven’t read the new guidance or read any smart-people takes on the new guidance, but I’m sure, whatever it is, some folks will be very angry about this change. I get it! It’s tough for the coronarisk-adverse, in which I include myself, to shift out of deep pandemic mode and into a more permissive, casual-hangout lifestyle. But wearing a mask in all public places for the rest of time was never the end goal here, and moving toward a future where we mask up as the COVID-context dictates (and other diseases, too!) seems good. An important addendum: Some people are at high-risk for severe and terrible outcomes from COVID-19, and while we have more tools and treatments to keep those folks safe, seeing more and more of their neighbors move through the world carefree is probably really hard.
Chris Suarez at the Richmond Times-Dispatch reports that the RPS School Board has demanded that Superintendent Kamras fire his Chief Operating Officer or they will refuse to pass a budget. This makes absolutely zero sense and feels like an extreme dereliction of duty. How does this School Board expect the Superintendent to run a district deep in disinvestment, emerging from COVID, with desperate (and increasing) facility needs without a Chief Operating Officer? Why would they put the entire RPS budget at risk (remember, the mayor needs the schools’ budget by today) over reducing capacity of the superintendent’s leadership team? This really feels like another petty, bad-faith effort by the Board’s five-member voting bloc to make the Superintendent’s job so hard and so terrible that he leaves. And who could blame him! There are probably one million School Districts out there where the School Boards are not actively working to undercut schools and students who would love to hire a Superintendent with a track record of success like Kamras.
First, You can express your displeasure first, by emailing all of the School Board members and telling them to pass a budget and to forget about firing the COO.
Second, and it makes me feel like an unhinged twitterperson to suggest it, but, in all seriousness, I think it might be time to start reading the Code of Virginia section on Removal of Public Officers from Office. From the Code: “Upon petition, a circuit court may remove from office any elected officer or officer who has been appointed to fill an elective office, residing within the jurisdiction of the court: For neglect of duty, misuse of office, or incompetence in the performance of duties when that neglect of duty, misuse of office, or incompetence in the performance of duties has a material adverse effect upon the conduct of the office...The petition must be signed by a number of registered voters who reside within the jurisdiction of the officer equal to ten percent of the total number of votes cast at the last election for the office that the officer holds.” An average of 11,898 people voted for each of the current five-member bloc of School Board in the last election. Recalling an elected official is a sad, big, serious deal, and a lot of work—finding 1,200 registered voters in a district to sign a recall petition is a BIG lift. I’m not sure it’s even possible, but I’m not sure what else to do at this point. Those five School Board members just seem so disconnected from their voters, communities, families, and students.
Tomorrow, February 26th, at 10:00 AM you can join members of the Fox Elementary community at 2300 Hanover Avenue in “a march from Fox Elementary to Monroe Park to raise awareness of the lack of state level funding for safe school buildings and to demand that the state start funding school facilities more thoroughly.” The march is specifically in support of Senator McClellan’s SB 472 which allows a locality to raise taxes to fund construction and renovation of school buildings. The House Finance Subcommittee will hear the legislation at 7:30 AM this morning, so it’s a little too late to get involved at that particular part of the process, but you can check out this advocacy toolkit from Charlottesville United and send a supportive email to Del. Roxann Robinson and Chris Runion who sit on that committee anyway.
A friend sent me this Twitter thread from a Ukrainian ex-pat, which was a wonderful, human-scale read this morning. Strong recommend.
This morning's longread
A Guide to Getting Rid of Almost Everything
This piece in the New Yorker, while sometimes overly New York-specific, is a great reminder that a lot of your own personal garbage can end up somewhere other than a landfill.
A few months ago, I decided to deaccession an assortment of my things by whatever means feasible: selling, donating, recycling, giving them away, losing them on the subway, or reserving a spot for them on the next Mars Explorer. I gathered my unwanteds and piled them in the living room. A fraction of what was in that jumble: seven antique glass cake stands that belonged to my mother; a dormitory’s worth of new sheet sets and blankets for a bed size that is not mine; a set of Lenox china that my grandmother gave to my mother, who gave it to me, and was never used; clothes galore; a Viking stove grate that arrived cracked, and which I saved because I planned to weld it into a sculpture someday, after I learned how to weld; several rolls of Trump toilet paper that I wrongly thought were amusing a few years ago.
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