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Community businesses honored by Metropolitan Business League
Winners of 34th Annual MBL Awards announced
Against the backdrop of the Altria Theater Ballroom and a crowd of more than 500 guests, local businesses got their moment in the spotlight for the impactful work they’re doing in the RVA region. The 34th Annual Metropolitan Business League Awards Dinner & Reception was held Friday, March 8. The winners were announced recently by the nonprofit membership-based business association.
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Cityscape
Slices of life and scenes in Richmond
Real estate developer Capital City Partners, LLC purchased the City’s 71-year-old former Public Safety Building at 500 N. 10th St., 9th Street entrance shown above, for $3.5 million in 2021. Capital City officials said the building would be demolished on the 3-acre property to make room for a $325 million, 500,000-square-foot tower development that will be anchored by VCU Health.
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Disparity continues in homeownership
Columnists
Nearly 90 years ago, Kelly Miller, a black sociologist and mathematician, said, “The Negro is up against the white man’s standard, without the white man’s opportunity.”
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Elegba Folklore Society offers film screening and book expo
The Elegba Folklore Society’s 3rd Saturday Documentaries will screen “James Baldwin: The Price of the Ticket” on Feb. 18 at 5 p.m. at Elegba Folklore Society’s Cultural Center, 101 E. Broad St.
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Housing authority buys Grace Place
The city’s housing authority has purchased a failing 11-story apartment building in Downtown in a bid to keep it as an income-restricted property offering lower than market rents.
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Need protection?
Replicas of Terracotta Warriors up for auction
They were life-size terracotta depictions of soldiers protecting Qin Shihuang, the first emperor of China, and buried with him in Xi’an in 210 BCE to protect him in the afterlife.
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Hope for healing
7 months after New York Times exposé, healthy equity advocates, Bon Secours report progress
Bon Secours Richmond is starting to receive positive feedback from advocates who had harshly criticized the hospital system for allegedly failing to re-invest income from a federal discount pricing program into low-income communities, most notably Richmond Community Hospital and low-income residents living nearby.
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Slavery memorial to gain in capital budget plan
The battle over the ballpark in Shockoe Bottom apparently is over. At the same time, hopes are fading for Richmond Public Schools to gain funding to develop essential new schools on South Side to relieve overcrowding.
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The cost of electricity is going up
Surging demand and a jump in the price of natural gas is about to impact electric bills in Virginia.
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11% tuition hike
NSU and U.Va. among state’s highest
Once again, the price tag to attend Virginia’s 15 state-supported colleges and universities is going up faster than inflation. In-state students can expect to pay at least 3 to 5 percent more in the fall, with a few schools going even higher. For example, Norfolk State University and the University of Virginia are posting a tuition-and-fees increase of 11 percent for incoming freshmen — among the largest tuition hikes in Virginia. U.Va. is imposing a $1,470 increase for new freshmen with the aim of raising money to reduce borrowing for students from lower-income families. The increase means new freshmen will pay $14,468 for the fall and spring semesters, not including room and board. Tuition for current students will rise only 3.9 percent from the current charge of $12,998.
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39th Annual Richmond Marathon runs on Saturday
The 39th Annual Anthem Richmond Marathon is Saturday, Nov. 12. The race could boil down to this: Benjamin Zywicki vs. the East Africans.
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VLBC outlines legislative priorities for new General Assembly session
Buoyed by two legislative sessions last year that ushered in huge reforms in voting and criminal justice, the Virginia Legislative Black Caucus is vowing to keep pressing for more change.
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DMV mobile service center to be outside City Hall on Sept. 7
The state Department of Motor Vehicles will operate its mobile customer service center outside Richmond City Hall, 900 E. Broad St. in Downtown, from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Friday, Sept. 7.
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Rep. McEachin to speak at VUU’s 40th Community Leaders Breakfast
Congressman A. Donald McEachin will be the keynote speaker at Virginia Union University’s 40th Annual Community Leaders Breakfast honoring the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
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Televangelist Rev. Frederick K.C. ‘Fred’ Price, who built the ‘FaithDome’ in L.A. dies at 89
The Rev. Frederick K.C. “Fred” Price, the televangelist who built his Los Angeles ministry into one of the nation’s first Black megachurches, has died. He was 89.
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Richmond Virtual Academy may become its own school
The Richmond Virtual Academy is to become a new elementary school that could enroll between 400 and 500 students a year in online classes, the Richmond School Board decided Monday night. Instead of phasing out the program online learning program as Superintendent Jason Kamras proposed in February, the board, after hearing pleas from academy supporters, adopted a proposal by School Board member Kenya Gibson, 3rd District, to make RVA a school of record like other elementary schools, and eligible for annual state and local funding like other schools. While that decision must be approved by the state Department of Education, the vote to keep RVA as a functioning entity came as the board finalized its budget for the 2022-23 fiscal year. The board had a deadline on Wednesday to deliver a finished budget to City Council. Overall, the approved budget authorizes a record $548 million in total spending, or an expenditure of about $25,253 for each of the 21,700 students RPS estimated as enrolled in pre-kindergarten through 12th grade. Along with grants and one-time federal funds, the RPS budget provides $356.6 million in general fund spending, which mostly includes revenue from the city and state, or about $16,400 per student. The board, which cut $6 million from Mr. Kamras’ original general fund proposal, is relying on receiving a $15 million increase from the city in the fiscal year that begins July 1. That would boost total support from the city from $185.3 million this fiscal year to a new record of $200.3 million in 2022- 23. The increase from the city is largely designed to fund the local share of a 5 percent pay increase for teachers and other staff that the state plans to institute. Staff and teachers of the Richmond Virtual Academy, currently listed as a program and funded with federal CARES Act dollars, advocated for it to remain open and funded and rallied parents to lobby for the survival of the academy that adopted the owl as its mascot and bills itself as a space “where learning is a hoot.” The board’s vote was both a reaction to the lobbying and a rebuke to the adminis- tration, which had notified the academy’s entire staff that they would be laid off as of July 1 and would need to reapply for positions within RPS. Mr. Kamras initially proposed cutting the program from 70 to just 10 instructors, who would largely teach homebound students too sick or injured to come to school or students removed from in-person learning for discipline reasons. Cindi Robinson, the academy’s princi- pal, said the board’s action is good news for parents and students. “Virtual learning is not just a Band-Aid,” Ms. Robinson said, noting that numerous school divisions have found some students “actually thrive and do better” in an online program. Among them is Sheila Barlow’s 19-year- old son, Douglas. Ms. Barlow told the board that the virtual school has been a boon for her son and other students like him with serious disabilities who can now attend class from home in a safe environment. Her son has Down syndrome and can- not talk, she said. “He has a sign language interpreter for all of his classes,” Ms. Barlow told the Free Press. “If he goes back to in-person learning, my son would not have that service.” While the board’s action appears to have saved the virtual academy, the board’s funding will provide only for a reduced operation. Richmond’s virtual operation enrolls about 768 students, including 500 elementary school students, which is fewer students than Henrico and Chesterfield’s school systems. But that would shrink further. The board’s funding would allow for only 30 total staff, including a principal, counselors and other staff and about 23 instructional staff strictly for elementary programming. Currently, the school has at least 70 staff members, including a 43-member instructional staff. As part of the transition, the School Board agreed with the administration’s plan to end enrollment for middle and high school students who can move to the state’s online program, Virtual Virginia. The revamped Richmond Virtual Acad- emy also will oversee virtual educational programming for students who are home- bound for disciplinary or health reasons. According to board members, the ad- ministration is expected to drop the cur- rent homebound program that dispatches teachers to the homes of students to provide in-person instruction two hours a day. If it becomes a school of record as anticipated, RVA would not only have a budget, but would also report state Stan- dards of Learning test results. The board’s budget, meanwhile, cuts more deeply into the central office staff than Mr. Kamras proposed and largely eliminates contracts for consultants pro- viding curriculum training. Ms. Gibson also won approval for an audit of Mr. Kamras’ original budget plan after she turned up a significant discrepancy in total employee numbers compared with the current year. The board also provided funding for the first time to enable 400 students to take math, science and other required high school classes at the Richmond Technical Center along with their career and voca- tional training programs. Under the initiative advanced by Jona- than Young, 4th District, the students will no longer have to be shuttled back to their home schools for those courses. This change is seen as a harbinger of the proposed career and technical high school that RPS plans to create in a former tobacco plant in South Side. In addition, the board also provided funds to support an increase in the number of students during the next four years at two specialty high schools, Richmond Com- munity and Franklin Military Academy, and three regional high schools, Code RVA and the Maggie L. Walker and Appomattox regional governor’s schools.
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Personality: Kimberley L. Martin
Spotlight on founder of nonprofit helping students buy textbooks
Kimberley L. Martin recalls how difficult it was for her to pay for textbooks when she attended college more than two decades ago. “I got student loans. And after I had finished paying for my room, board and tuition, I couldn’t always cover the cost of my textbooks,” says Mrs. Martin. “I had to scramble to figure out how to pay for them.” Mrs. Martin earned a bachelor’s degree in business information systems from Virginia State University in 1990 and a master’s degree in human resources from Central Michigan University in 1998.
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Richmond area toy drives and distribution
Christmas drives are underway to try to ensure that children in struggling families receive gifts.
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Black lives, dollars matter, by Julianne Malveaux
I would always smile when I saw Black Lives Matter T-shirts, until I saw one gracing the grubby back of a white man who had on both a BLM T-shirt and a MAGA — Make America Great Again — hat. I started to either take a photo or start a conversation because I knew somebody would accuse me of making the combination up.
