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3 dead in 3 days
City inmate deaths raise questions about medical care
City inmate deaths raise questions about medical care
Final stanza
Larry Bland, director of The Volunteer Choir, is calling it quits as group reaches 50th anniversary
A local gospel music group that has been generating sounds of joy and inspiration for 50 years could soon be no more. Larry Bland & The Volunteer Choir is scheduled to make three appearances this year to mark its golden anniversary milestone, and then Mr. Bland said he will retire as the group’s director and chief organizer.
New housing honcho
RRHA’s leader Damon Duncan outlines priorities that will impact city’s 10,000 public housing residents
The new chief executive officer of the Richmond Redevelopment and Housing Authority is vowing that the agency will move “expeditiously” to redevelop the city’s decaying public housing.
Broken promises end legacy at 17th Street Farmers’ Market
They have been fixtures at the 17th Street Farmers’ Market in Shockoe Bottom for decades, just like their parents and grandparents before them. Now, sisters Evelyn Luceal Allen, 84, and Rosa L. Fleming, 80, have closed their stand beside the market from which they daily sold greens, tomatoes, watermelons, potatoes and other produce grown on their land in Hanover County.
New law addresses temporary detention orders during mental health crises
‘A law like this was needed’ says woman who faced hospital stay
A new state law might have prevented Jamisha L. Seward’s ordeal nearly a year ago when she was handcuffed and shackled by her leg to a hospital bed for more than 80 hours while a rotating shift of Henrico County police officers kept an eye on her.
Elkhardt’s closing signals harsh reality for mayor, City Council
Elkhardt Middle School is a fresh reminder of the increasingly shabby and dilapidated condition of most of Richmond’s school buildings — a condition that the mayor’s office and City Council have yet to seriously address despite repeated reports and warnings in recent years. Set to be shut down this Thursday night, with students, teachers and staff moving 10 miles north across the James River into the vacant Clark Springs Elementary building, Elkhardt on South Side reflects the stark reality the city is facing — the need to provide big money to keep Richmond’s school buildings usable, a reality that no longer can be papered over with rosy talk about bike races, baseball stadiums and football training camps.
Gov. Northam releases progressive 2020-22 budget plan
Smokers might have to shell out an extra 30 cents in tax for a pack of cigarettes to help offset the cost of tobacco-related illnesses that the state must pick up through Medicaid and other health care programs.
RPS attendance officers’ jobs on chopping block despite crucial need, service
With little public attention, the Richmond delegation to the General Assembly joined most Democrats and Republicans last year in voting to dismantle most of the 20-year-old requirements imposed on Virginia public schools to prevent truancy.
Aird defeats Morrissey
Winning 13th Senate District, November’s general election likely a shoo-in
Call it a special birthday present. Just two days before turning 37, Lashrecse D. Aird celebrated in advance Tuesday by putting an election whipping on maverick Democratic state Sen. Joseph D. Morrissey in their head-to-head contest.
‘I was handed a death sentence’
Advocates help NAACP stalwart Ora Lomax receive life-saving dialysis after a Henrico center moves to terminate her treatment
Getting kicked out of a dialysis clinic is the worst thing that can happen to a patient with failing kidneys. But that is what 86-year-old Ora M. Lomax has been facing.
One woman's crusade brings attention to long-forgotten black cemetery
A long closed mechanic’s shop sits on a hilltop at 5th and Hospital streets north of Downtown — just a stone’s thrown from the handsome, historic and well-tended private Hebrew and public Shockoe Hill cemeteries.
From hatred to hope
The 131-year old, 12-ton bronze symbol of white supremacy honoring Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee on Monument Avenue is taken down as scores watch in person and online
An empty pedestal covered with colorful anti-racist slogans. That’s all that remains of the state’s greatest symbol of white supremacy – the statue of the traitorous Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee riding his horse, Traveller.
Power to vote
Gov. McAuliffe boldly restores voting rights of 206,000 Virginians, including disenfranchised African-Americans
David Mosby no longer feels like a second-class citizen. After years of being barred from the ballot box because of his criminal record, the 46-year-old home improvement contractor is finally able to vote and fully take part in the life of his community.
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.
School day care?
Empty public school buildings may be central to city task force plan to help parents with day care as they return to work
Sharonda Robinson hoped against hope that Richmond Public Schools would reopen this fall so her sons, ages 6 and 8, could be in school taking classes while she went to work.
RPS school construction costs, process criticized
Richmond School Board members Kenya Gibson, 3rd District, and Jonathan Young, 4th District, used Monday’s School Board meeting to express concern that the bidding process Mayor Levar M. Stoney’s administration used to choose contractors to build three new district schools has added tens of millions of dollars to the cost.
New laws tax cigarettes in city, raise smoking age statewide
Smoke ’em if you got ’em, because the cost of cigarettes and vaping is about to go up in more ways than one.
Grassroots effort mounts to keep Bedden
Richmond Public Schools Superintendent Dana T. Bedden interviewed Wednesday for the superintendent’s job in snow-covered Boston and prepared to meet Thursday with Boston Mayor Marty Walsh. The Boston School Committee is expected to name its top choice for the job early next week, according to reports. Meanwhile, a growing number of Dr. Bedden’s supporters in Richmond are continuing their efforts to convince him to stay and lead the aggressive RPS turnaround effort he began after becoming the struggling school district’s superintendent in January 2014.
Pastor gets the boot
Parson departs amid Richmond Christian Center’s move to survive
More than a year after filing for bankruptcy, the Richmond Christian Center is gaining a fresh shot at survival after seizing financial power from founding pastor Stephen A. Parson Sr. The pastor, who launched RCC in his living room more than 31 years ago, is no longer a member of the church’s ruling Board of Trustees and has been stripped of control of the church’s bank account.
Plans to use city schools for day care program break down
Talks between City Hall and Richmond Public Schools over using five school buildings as day care sites have broken down.
