Good morning, RVA! It's 72 °F, and yesterday’s much needed, soaking rain has moved on. Today you can expect highs in the mid 80s, a cloudy sky, and, I think, a dry forecast. Dryish might be more a little more correct, because I’m sure the humidity will make going outside feel like curling up in an armpit.
Water cooler
Anna Bryson at the Richmond Times-Dispatch reports that Huguenot High School “was under a ‘lock and teach’ on Monday in response to a fight between students at the school.” Richmond Public Schools’ spokesperson said school officials “conducted a safety check in the building and parking lot areas and found that all was clear.” Yesterday’s “lock and teach” follows the cancellation of this past Friday’s Huguenot football game due to a shooting threat and, of course, the fatal shooting at the school’s graduation ceremony in June. I appreciate RPS taking every threat seriously and focusing on keeping the community safe. After this summer’s violence, these disruptions of the back-to-school rhythm must be really traumatic to students, staff, and teachers.
I don’t know enough about how the Virginia ABC works to comment intelligently on whether or not the state-run monopoly is making enough money or too much money, but I enjoyed the headline from this piece by Michael Martz in the RTD: “Youngkin-driven cuts at ABC has liquor industry wondering why.”
Wyatt Gordon at the Virginia Mercury reports on two rural microtransit programs, one in the Northern Neck and one in Southwest Virginia. I’m super skeptical about the appropriateness of microtransit in urban areas like Richmond, but, in low-density, low-population places like the City of Norton? Sounds like they might work pretty well. The reason for my skepticism about urban microtransit though? Gordon addresses it in the penultimate paragraph: “nationally some public transit agencies were initially reluctant to embrace microtransit out of a fear that the success of on-demand services would lead to calls for cuts to existing fixed routes.” Exactly this, although I think I’d substitute “existence” in for “success” in that sentence. We’ve only got but so many dollars for public transportation, and I’d rather spend them on building a frequent and far-reaching regional system.
VPM and Next City have partnered up to offer a reporting fellowship for “reparations narratives.” In their words, “This fellowship is designed to bring underrepresented voices to the forefront of the conversation about cities and their future.” I love the thought of having a locally-based reporter who focuses on race and urbanism. The two are inextricably linked, and there’s a ton going on right now in Richmond that would make for some excellent reporting—public housing redevelopment, reworking the City’s charter, Casino 2.0, the attempts to build a truly regional public transportation system (and those are just the things I’ve written about in the last couple of weeks). Young reporters, apply now! Old reporters, tell all your young reporter friends! This seems like a really interesting opportunity for someone out there—maybe even someone who reads this newsletter.
This morning's longread
Everyone at West Virginia University Knew Something Was Up. I Hate That We Were Right.
This piece about the planned budget and programmatic cuts at WVU feels very much like a “it could happen here” story—especially with Virginia’s Republican governor directing budgets and boards of trustees.
This, perhaps, is the ugly truth we’re learning through WVU’s budget controversy: Gordon Gee plans to retire in 2025. I have no doubt his grandchildren will benefit from a private education similar to his own, consisting of a thorough liberal arts education with access to subjects now increasingly reserved for the elite, such as math and foreign languages. They will have their choice of careers in the arts, humanities, government, finance, security, diplomacy, business, or tech. Those who decide what is worth learning, what is worth teaching, what counts as a “structural deficit,” will never bear the brunt of their own choices. West Virginians, trapped in the clutches of economic hardship, find themselves mercilessly shackled to a state most can ill afford to abandon, left to suffer the full weight of the WVU administration’s harrowing decisions
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Picture of the Day
Facade of the News Leader / Times-Dispatch building.
