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Segregation skyrocketed among Virginia’s Latino students in past 30 years
Richmond Public Schools had the highest levels of school segregation between white and Latino students in Virginia in 2022, according to a Stanford University analysis of federal data. The combination of ethnicity, poverty and language create a “triple segregation” among Latino students that’s been overlooked for decades and “left to fester,” said Gary Orfield, co-director of the UCLA Civil Rights Project. Latino students’ federal right to desegregation didn’t happen until nearly 20 years after the Brown v. Board ruling with the 1973 Supreme Court case Keyes v. School District No. 1, Denver.
Black waterman villages in Suffolk among Virginia’s most endangered historic places
For years, Mary Hill has watched her Suffolk community of Hobson slowly disappear. Hill is a seventh-generation descendant of Black freedmen who helped build the community centuries ago. They established a self-sufficient oyster industry that thrived along the Nansemond River until pollution devastated it starting around the 1960s. Since then, historical buildings once crucial to tight-knit community culture have been torn down, Hill said. Many who were alive in the village’s heyday have died, and some other descendants moved away and sold property passed down for generations. In their place, developers are building modern, more expensive homes that edge out historic ones. “You have a slow death” of the area, said Hill, who is in her early 60s. She now hopes a new designation will bring attention and funding to the area.
Search warrants claim ‘pattern of money laundering’ at some Va. cannabis-related stores
Newly unsealed search warrants in Washington County allege that some of the cannabis-related stores that were targeted in a region-wide raid last fall were involved in money laundering. Dozens of stores across Southwest Virginia were raided in September. While the ownership structure of many of the shops is unclear, the search warrants show that the homes and banking records of two people who owned multiple locations also were searched. Among the items that were seized were a number of guns — pistols, rifles and shotguns — as well as ammunition, computers, cellphones and vehicles, including two Rolls-Royces.
Hanover County School Board members discuss possible policy change on student cell phone usage
Hanover County Public School leaders are grappling with what to do when it comes to cell phones usage at schools across the district. At a meeting on Tuesday, May 14, board members had to weigh in on whether to change the district’s current policy to further limit students’ use of the devices in school buildings. The discussion at the May 14 meeting centered around whether to change the policy at elementary and middle schools in the county. The decision to revisit the policy comes as several surrounding districts have recently made changes to their cell phone policies that limit student usage.
A Democratic congressional candidate represented Kessler in the court case to allow Unite the Right
In Virginia’s first congressional district, Democratic candidate Leslie Mehta is facing criticism for representing Jason Kessler during his effort to hold the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville. The events that unfolded that day resulted in the death of Heather Heyer after a white supremacist drove his car into a crowd of people who were counter-protesting the rally. Two state police officers also died after their helicopter crashed while monitoring the events. Mehta says that while Kessler and his group represent everything she stands against, the First Amendment rights of Americans should always be defended when they are being used peacefully, as the organizers said would happen in court documents.
Schapiro: A Wilder ride for Rao and Youngkin
Doug Wilder always says the loud part louder. In a little-noticed speech this past weekend, the former governor and ex-Richmond mayor artfully laid into the president of Virginia Commonwealth University, Michael Rao, and Gov. Glenn Youngkin, who appoints the overseers of VCU and more than a dozen other taxpayer-financed colleges and universities. Wilder has attacked both men before. His speech wasn’t necessarily more of the same, though, because Wilder had a different audience. He spoke to newly minted, politically focused university graduates who, he implied, should not follow Rao’s and Youngkin’s examples.
3 Virginia cities in top 10 for highest rates of gun thefts from vehicles, report finds
A new report by the anti-gun violence nonprofit Everytown details the sharp spike in guns being stolen from vehicles across the United States over the last decade and found that three Virginia cities were in the top 10 for guns being stolen from vehicles in 2022. Using FBI data from 337 cities across 44 states, Everytown found that gun thefts from vehicles rose from an estimated 21 thefts per 100,000 people to 63.1 per 100,000 in 2022, the most recent year included in the data. . . . Richmond was fourth in the nation with 218.3 thefts per 100,000 people. Portsmouth was in sixth place with 196.1 thefts per 100,000 people; Norfolk was in ninth with 181.9 thefts per 100,000 people.
UVa president says he’s willing to accept consequences for breaking up campus protest
“If all of you decide I’m not the right leader, that’s your choice,” said University of Virginia President Jim Ryan. “That’s how I feel.” Though no university officials have publicly called for Ryan to resign, Ryan's tone and demeanor were marked by a resignation of their own at the university's Faculty Senate meeting last Friday. Ryan, alongside Provost Ian Baucom, university Chief Operating Officer J.J. Davis and UVa Police Chief Tim Longo, spent an hour answering questions during Friday's meeting of the Faculty Senate, a governing body of roughly 90 faculty representatives from across the university’s 12 schools charged with advising UVa’s leaders on “matters affecting the welfare of the University."
Virginia changes educational benefit for veterans’ families
Veterans and their family members who planned to use an educational benefit from the state are calling recent changes to the program “the largest rollback of veteran benefits in Virginia history.” The Friends of VMSDEP, which stands for Virginia Military Survivors and Dependents Education Program, are referring to state budget bills signed by Gov. Glenn Youngkin this week. The new legislation changes the nature of the benefit and shifts control from the Department of Veterans Services to the State Council of Higher Education Virginia, or SCHEV.
Loudoun considers delayed-start days to give teachers training time
Loudoun County schools is considering delaying the start of classes by two hours on some days in the next academic year to help free up time to offer training for new teaching standards required by the state. The 16 delayed start days would be spread out throughout the year. Dismissal would occur at the same time, district leaders said, meaning students could lose about 32 hours of classroom instruction over the year.