Good morning, RVA! It's 59 °F, and NBC12's Andrew Freiden says we haven't seen a morning in the 50s since June 21st. Today you can expect highs in the 80s, mostly sunshine, and a strong pull to take as many meetings or calls or classes outside as possible. Enjoy, and get ready for more of the same over the next couple of days!
Water cooler
You should read RPS Superintendent Jason Kamras's email from last night. First, to see the real and horrible impact gun violence has on our city's children and families. Second, to read his thoughts on the current efforts by School Board to scrap-and-rewrite the District's curriculum. Here are three points he brings up that address a handful of concerns I've heard floating around and mentioned during various public comment periods: "1) Curricula are the floor, not the ceiling. Teachers are free to make adjustments to the curricula as necessary to meet the unique needs of their students. 2) No RPS teacher will be disciplined for making adjustments that they feel are necessary to meet the needs of their students. 3) Curricula are living things. They need to continue to evolve based on student and teacher needs. RPS is committed to that process."—emphasis his.
Pulitzer Prize Winner Michael Paul Williams write about that same gun violence and how RRHA’s new CEO, Steven Nesmith, has a hard and complicated job: "And this is part of what separates Nesmith’s job from that of other real estate developers. To be successful, he must not only replace the aging bricks and mortar of RRHA’s housing stock. He must foster a sense of security among tenants beset by gun violence and chronic economic and housing insecurity." Nesmith, who grew up in a public housing neighborhood in Philly, already seems pretty involved in the community—despite not officially starting until October.
OK! The City's legislative website has updated, and here, for your records, are the newly-introduced papers I've got my eye on:
- RES. 2022-R055: The resolution giving Council's approval to RVA Diamond Partners LLC's plan for redeveloping the Diamond District. I think this should pass pretty easily!
- ORD. 2022-261: The new Civilian Review Board ordinance, now co-patroned by Mayor Stoney and Councilmembers Jones, Lynch, Addison, and Lambert. I'd guess this new compromise version of a CRB—which I still need to read something highlighting all of the changes—will also pass.
- ORD. 2022-270: The regularly scheduled, required ordinance to keep Richmond's real estate tax rate at $1.20. Each year, because of Republicans, Council must pass an ordinance re-establishing the real estate tax rate or it automatically rolls back to $1.072 and, basically, everything crumbles into dust.
- ORD. 2022-271: Councilmembers Nye and Trammell's ordinance to lower the real estate tax rate to $1.16. Just to keep saying this outloud: I think a flat, across-the-board rate cut is shortsighted and lacks creativity. I'd say there's at least a 50/50 chance this ordinances passes.
I've dropped all of these into my legislation tracker Trello board, if you're interested.
As foretold, there are already a couple Diamond District public meetings on the books for folks—like you!—to learn more about RVA Diamond Partners LLC and their plans to redevelop the entire area around the Diamond. The first of those meetings takes place tonight at 6:00 PM at the Bon Secours Training Center (2401 W. Leigh Street). You can attend in person or join on Teams. The City also has a telephone town hall scheduled for this coming Tuesday, September 20th. Also, here’s a better project summary than the 1-pager I linked to yesterday—this one's four pages—and Jonathan Spiers at Richmond BizSense has some more details from yesterday’s press conference. Make sure you scroll down to the "Project phases detailed" section, because everything in Phase 1 sounds pretty great?
Grace Todd’s September gardening column is out in RVA Mag! These two sentences really capture my annual attempts at vegetable gardening: "I distribute sage and time-tested advice and then I completely ignore it to see what I can get away with or whether I can fine-tune something for my particular microclimate. I also frequently test the limits of benign neglect, bad scheduling, or shoddy follow-through." Tap through for a report card on Todd's 2022 Garden Season and some thoughts on how trees are just the best.
This morning's longread
School Is for Everyone
Intense and good thoughts on the purpose of public school in America.
This was an outright rejection of Mann’s ideal that Americans should be educated at public schools that serve everyone. And the mark of that rejection remains to this day. Throughout the South, white children attend private schools that began as so-called segregation academies during the civil rights era, while many Black children attend the hollowed-out public schools that white students left behind. And elsewhere the pattern is repeated — in fact, schools in the Northeast are among the most segregated in the country. The movement Friedman and Buchanan encouraged lives on. Opposition to public education, and the promotion of alternatives like vouchers and for-profit schools, has attracted Catholics long devoted to parochial schools, evangelical Christians and other religious groups, cultural conservatives, corporate capitalists and libertarians. Today they are joined by the millionaires and billionaires who see K-12 education as another sector ripe for disruption. In other words, the core constituencies of today’s Republican Party, otherwise seemingly so disparate, unite over this one issue. Their shared agenda is to privatize and defund schools.
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