Good morning, RVA! It's 29 °F, and today looks a lot like yesterday but with more sunshine. You should expect clear skies, highs right around 50 °F, and the potential for a really productive day—whatever that means to you!
Water cooler
Some how I missed this earlier in the month, but Anna Bryson at the Richmond Times-Dispatch reports on how Richmond Public Schools has dramatically decreased its chronic absenteeism rates. In fact, Bryson puts it like this: “Across Virginia public schools, the chronic absenteeism rate...has nearly doubled since before the COVID-19 pandemic. One division leading the nation in addressing chronic absenteeism by redefining it though an engagement lens is Richmond Public Schools.” This stat is wild: Through their work on getting kids consistently into the school buildings, RPS has gained an additional 27,114 class hours this year! So what’s the one weird trick to reducing chronic absenteeism rates? Turns out, hard work: “Key to getting children to school is building relationships with the families.” Bryson talks to Fairfield Court Elementary’s principal, and I just want to quote the entire conversation, but here are just a few examples of what it means to build those relationships with families and community members: “Some of the common barriers to attendance at Fairfield Court Elementary are students not having clean clothing or clothes that fit, not having their hair done, or not having parents who are available to get them to school in the mornings. The school is now working to buy another washing machine so that students’ clothes can be washed there. And the school now has a barber who comes once a month and gives students haircuts...The school also receives clothing donations, so school leaders can give new clothes to students whose clothes do not fit anymore.” You really need to tap through and read the whole thing to get a sense for the enormous number of gaps that public schools fill in our communities—really incredible stuff.
City Council’s Urban Design Committee meets today and will discuss the annual report they’ll send back to Council. This is a neat document that sort of captures the year that was for UDC, and you can flip to page 15 for a list of projects the Committee weighed in on—which is something that I now wish we got from full Council. I think denying the Fire Department Training Facility back in March probably marks the most stressful paper that UDC considered (which Council eventually approved over both the UDC and Planning Commission’s recommendations only to have the Mayor ultimately pull the project after effective advocacy by community members). As for papers with the largest potential impact? Maybe the ones finalizing the new community centers. P.S. If you’re feeling spicy, flip back to page three for a public attendance sheet for all committee members.
The RTD’s Luca Powell has some details on the Richmond City Jail’s new state-required, two-year improvement plan. None of anything in the article sounds good, especially how the Sheriff is “short-staffed 191 deputies.” I’d like to know what percentage that is of her entire workforce, because 191 is a huge number. Honestly, I don’t know anything about jails or deputies, but it certainly sounds like something over there is broken and needs to be addressed systemically and at a level above the Sheriff.
Tom Lappas in the Henrico Citizen reports that VDOT has received about $600,000 to “to collaboratively develop a statewide plan to identify roads with the highest risk of large mammal collisions in the state...[and] create several models and GIS layers to allow for better identification of wildlife crossing sites and provide site-specific recommendations.” Creating infrastructure specifically so animals can avoid humanity’s mess of dangerous car-based infrastructure is, first, something that’s so clearly in my wheelhouse, but also, second, something that I wish they’d do more for people, too. Big missed opportunity not to call these Animal Crossings, though.
This morning's longread
How To Build a Car That Kills People: Cybertruck Edition
I guess Cybertrucks exist out in the world now? I saw a bunch of pictures of them in real-life situations, like, parked at the grocery store, and they look surprisingly chintzy—like a toy model that’s just slightly off from the picture on the box. Anyway, this piece in Streetsblog describes how the Cybertruck’s “cool looks” are basically optimized to hurt pedestrians. At some point soon, we’re gonna need a new Ralph Nader to force the federal government into regulating the design of vehicles like this, because it’s gone way, way off the rails.
Unfortunately, pretty much everything else about the vehicle seems to be maximized for pedestrian extinction if that technology fails or makes a dangerous judgment call, which Teslas often do. Colossal height? Check. In promotional photographs, the hood of the Cybertruck sits squarely at the level of the thoracic organs of a 6-foot Musk, and the marketing copy promises an "Adaptive Air Suspension" system which will lift the car a stunning 17.4 inches. Deadly hood design? Check. The cyber truck comes equipped with a blunt, flat front end that's essentially guaranteed to toss a walker or a cyclist under the car's wheels rather than on top of the hood, where they statically sustain less serious injuries. Putting a steel battering ram on the front of a truck is doubly unnecessary because there isn't even an engine under the hood. And that's to say nothing of the rest of the car's steel "exoskeleton," which the company brags can can withstand a blow from a sledgehammer and has edges so sharp that European automotive authorities have questioned where it will actually be street-legal.
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Picture of the Day
Bring back the hot fish sandwich.
