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By BEN PETERS,
Inside NOVA
Prince William Board of County Supervisors Chair Deshundra Jefferson has ordered staff to study the feasibility of a program to help county employees afford homes in Prince William so they can live closer to work.
Jefferson said the move is primarily aimed at law enforcement, teachers and fire responders, all county service workers who are often not high earners. Many employees in those groups commute from out of the county, coming from Stafford or Spotsylvania counties, where they can afford to own a home, officials said.
VaNews April 12, 2024
By KATIE KING,
Virginian-Pilot
(Metered Paywall - 2 articles a month)
An amendment from Gov. Glenn Youngkin would halt a bill intended to remove real estate-related tax exemptions from several organizations with ties to the Confederacy, instead requiring the measure to undergo a study and another vote next year.
The governor’s recommendation would direct the Virginia Department of Taxation to examine the effect of removing the exemptions on state and local government revenues. It states the department will submit a report of its findings to the House and Senate finance committees by Nov. 1. The legislation would not take effect unless reenacted by the General Assembly in 2025.
VaNews April 12, 2024
By SABRINA MORENO,
Axios
Virginia has become the first state in the South to ban child marriage.
Gov. Glenn Youngkin signed a bill this week that closes a loophole in state law allowing minors to marry if they’re emancipated.
Only 11 other states in the U.S. have made it illegal for children to marry without exceptions, according to Unchained at Last, an advocacy group that helps girls get out of forced marriages.
Six of those laws, including Virginia’s, passed in the past two years.
In four states — California, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Mississippi — there is no minimum age.
VaNews April 12, 2024
By RACHEL TREISMAN,
NPR
A downtown Washington, D.C., hotel was buzzing with excited energy on Wednesday morning, as dozens of women wearing red and white polka-dotted shirts and scarves, many joined by caregivers, assembled in the lobby to greet each other and confirm the day’s plans.
A table downstairs displayed signs of Rosie the Riveter, the headscarf-clad, muscle-flexing icon who has come to represent the millions of women who worked in factories and shipyards during World War II, filling positions previously held only by men and helping power the U.S. to victory.
But the speech bubble above her head didn’t read “We Can Do It!” as it does in most reproductions of the recruitment poster. Instead, it said, “We Did It!”
VaNews April 12, 2024
By LISA ROWAN,
Cardinal News
A. Scott Fleming will lead the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia, the council announced Thursday, following a nearly yearlong search process.
SCHEV is the coordinating agency for Virginia’s public colleges and universities, tasked with ensuring implementation of state policies across institutions and collecting data on the higher education landscape.
VaNews April 12, 2024
By ERIC KOLENICH,
Richmond Times-Dispatch
(Metered Paywall - 7 articles a month)
Virginia Commonwealth University could raise tuition by as much as 4% next year. On Thursday, university administrators proposed a range of options, from keeping costs flat to raising it by 4%.
The university needs to raise a student’s cost for education by more than 2% to avoid cutting the budget, administrators said. VCU’s financial picture will not become clear until Gov. Glenn Youngkin and state lawmakers agree to a budget for the next fiscal year, which could take months.
VaNews April 12, 2024
By JIM MORRISON AND JUSTIN JOUVENAL,
Washington Post
(Metered Paywall - 3 articles a month)
Authorities said Thursday that they will look into possible efforts to obstruct the investigation into the shooting of a teacher by a 6-year-old student at Virginia’s Richneck Elementary School last year, focusing on what happened to key pieces of evidence in the case. Commonwealth’s Attorney Howard E. Gwynn, the top prosecutor in Newport News, Va., said his office will probe why one of the shooter’s discipline files disappeared and the other had material removed from it.
VaNews April 12, 2024
By JUSTIN JOUVENAL,
Washington Post
(Metered Paywall - 3 articles a month)
A special grand jury in Virginia released a long-awaited report on the security lapses that led to the shooting of a teacher by a 6-year-old student at Newport News’s Richneck Elementary School, an incident that grabbed national attention and stirred questions about how such a young child could sneak a gun onto campus and shoot first-grade teacher Abigail Zwerner. The report answered that question and provided a glut of new information.
VaNews April 12, 2024
By PETER DUJARDIN,
Virginian-Pilot
(Metered Paywall - 2 articles a month)
The former assistant principal at Richneck Elementary School made her first court appearance Thursday on a series of felony child neglect charges related to the shooting last year.
Ebony J. Parker, 39, Newport News, is accused of ignoring several clear warnings that a 6-year-old Richneck student was armed in school on Jan. 6, 2023.
VaNews April 12, 2024
By NOUR HABIB AND PETER DUJARDIN,
Virginian-Pilot
(Metered Paywall - 2 articles a month)
A special grand jury report about last year’s shooting at Richneck Elementary shows that first grade teacher Abigail Zwerner was not the only victim that fateful day, said Newport News Commonwealth’s Attorney Howard Gwynn during a news conference Thursday morning.
Gwynn said the report — which he termed “incredibly thorough and brutally honest” — shows in detail the trauma that students, parents and other staff at Richneck have experienced since the shooting.
VaNews April 12, 2024
