Good morning, RVA! It's 69 °F, and today you can expect highs in the mid 80s with a chance for a bit of rain here or there this morning and later in the evening. The coming week looks a bit warmer than the last—but still not oppressively hot. I’m looking forward to it!
Water cooler
WTVR’s Tyler Lane reports that the RPS School Board will “hold an emergency meeting to discuss a ‘devastating decrease to student achievement’ and potential division leadership changes.” It’s been clear for a while now that School Board’s five-member voting bloc wants to get rid of the Superintendent, and maybe this week they’ll use a drop in SOL scores due to a generational pandemic that disrupted the entire world to do so. Does it matter to the Board that scores everywhere are still below pre-pandemic levels? Even in can-do-no-wrong Henrico where just 61% of students passed their math SOL? Does it matter that Black and Economically Disadvantaged students in Richmond saw a smaller drop in scores than they did statewide? To quote Thad Williamson from the aforelinked piece, “But this observation also shows that systemwide decline in test scores, understood in context, is not clear and compelling evidence of systemic educational failure in RPS. Rather, the decline in test scores speaks to the earthquake that shook the entire educational landscape, an earthquake that will take years of focused effort to recover from.“ No, probably none of this critical context matters to the five-member voting bloc. It’d be a horrible mistake for the Board to fire the Superintendent, of course—they’ve already forced out much of his leadership team, leaving, I think, literally no one to take the reins heading into the school year (which starts a week from today). And after the Board’s open displays of hostility to the superintendent, blatant lack of trust in their own staff, and frequent gaslighting of the public, I don’t have a lot of hope for finding a high-quality replacement candidate.
Also from Tyler Lane, a quick check-in on the City’s gun buyback program, which hosted its first event this past weekend. The event ended early due to “overwhelming response,” which seems good. I’m excited to see some chartsandgraphs around what kind of guns folks brought in.
Just when you thought I was done writing about the Three Zoning Changes, I’m back with a public engagement survey for you to fill out! Honestly, this is a challenging survey since it’s entirely short-answer and kind of requires respondents to know a bit about each proposed change—I’m not even sure what to write in some of these boxes and I’ve read most of the PDFs! It reminds me a lot of an article from StrongTowns—Most Public Engagement Is Worse Than Worthless—which says, “We should only consult with residents when they are the ones that can best answer the question at hand. But in those moments, they should be treated as the experts they are.” I don’t know about you, but I don’t really have any expertise or answers for how to “ensure compliance and enforcement of STRs in the city.” That said, here’s my extremely quick and lazy guide to filling out this survey: The residency requirement for short-term rentals (aka STRs aka Airbnbs) is important to preserve housing stock as, you know, housing; parking minimums are bad for a whole host of reasons but they make doing business in the city more expensive; and accessory dwelling units are great and we should make it as easy as possible for folks to build them.
Today’s fun distraction: This Twitter thread of fun data visualizations about changes in the top-grossing movies over the last 40-some years. If you feel like, lately, the biggest blockbusters are just an endless stream of comic-book movie sequels, you’re not wrong! “In 1981, just 16% of the Top-25 movies were sequels, spinoffs, or remakes. In 2019, 80% were.”
This morning's longread
Rez Life
I haven’t started season two of Reservation Dogs yet, but I absolutely loved the first season. This piece, which gets deep into media depiction of Indian culture, is worth reading between seasons (light spoilers throughout)!
There’s a spirit like that in Reservation Dogs, a sly giddiness. Stifled by the ways of their elders and the limited opportunities of rez life, the four kids dream of escaping to a freer, more exciting future. They navigate standard-issue teen drama—a driver’s test, a turf battle with a rival neighborhood crew—but they also face the very specific challenges of being young Indians who must decide what their own commitment to community will be. Over time, they are repeatedly pulled apart and thrust back together, and their goal of leaving the reservation becomes more complicated as they discover that their connection to home is deeper than they’d thought. Watching Reservation Dogs, I realized that this was a show like I’d never seen before: a show that was about me and my life, that was somehow made for me. And by me, I mean us. And by us, I mean Indians.
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