Grabbing or yanking a child while disciplining them. Leaving a napping child inside and unattended during a fire drill. Yelling at a student.

These were the violations that left the Monticello Area Community Action Agency (MACAA) on the brink of losing its grants for its Early Head Start and Head Start — a free early child care program funded by the federal government. In less than two years, the agency got hit with three deficiency conditions — the strongest citation a Head Start agency can receive from the federal government. This left the organization with two options: either give up the grants or risk termination.

The organization chose the former.

In a lengthy email detailing the violations and other issues at the Head Start centers, MACAA’s Board Chair Sarah Shalf said that no children were harmed at any MACAA facilities. But there were problems. She didn’t explain why, but three former MACAA employees told Charlottesville Tomorrow that mistakes were made because the agency was chronically understaffed — from teachers all the way up to important leadership positions.

MACAA had nine Head Start centers across central Virginia, and was one of the only free daycares in the region. It served nearly 200 students at no cost.

The federal Office of Head Start (OHS), which oversees all Head Starts, told MACAA in December 2023 that it would lose funding if it could not correct its deficiencies, giving the nonprofit organization a month to make a decision about what to do, Shalf said. In January, the agency decided to surrender the grants in the hopes of resolving its issues in the next couple of years.

“Based on our interactions with OHS, we concluded that, although we had made significant progress in a short period of time, it was unlikely we could prove by the deadline that each of the deficiencies had been fully corrected,” Shalf said in an email. “Failure to prove we had corrected the problem would likely lead OHS to terminate our grant.”

Charlottesville Tomorrow reached out multiple times to OHS to confirm what deficiency conditions MACAA received, but did not receive a response.

MACAA officially surrendered its grants to OHS the day before it alerted staff it would close in late January of this year, and more than a month before it told parents and guardians in early March. Afterward, OHS contracted with a national nonprofit, the Community Development Institute (CDI), to manage MACAA’s nine Head Start locations in Charlottesville and Albemarle, Nelson, Louisa and Fluvanna counties.

Head Start and Early Head Start operate during the school year, which begins at different times in August for the various school districts it operates out of.

Charlottesville Tomorrow reached out to the media contact for CDI — which is listed on its website as the Department of Health and Human Services — for an update on classroom openings. The agency did not respond. However, the person who answered CDI’s enrollment number said that CDI will open five of its nine centers: Park Street along with Tye River, Rockfish, Agnor-Hurt and Crozet elementary school locations.

It’s unclear when — or if — CDI will open the others, showing that it has run into similar difficulties as MACAA with staffing.

Three former MACAA employees who spoke with Charlottesville Tomorrow said that it’s not surprising.

They were also not surprised when the MACAA relinquished its grants. Some even jumped ship before MACAA announced its closure to employees.

There was no room to actually improve, said Brittney Rekrut, MACAA’s former family and community engagement manager.  She was among the more than 40 MACAA workers the agency laid off after relinquishing the grants.

“That work was not happening,” said Rekrut. “There was not enough people to support that work. Support comes from a strong leadership team, and the members of the leadership team were so incredibly stretched thin because of the holes that we were just trying to fill. We were just doing the best job that we possibly could.”

Shalf and the rest of the MACAA board decided to relinquish their Head Start grants to avoid termination. Once an agency has two or more deficiencies, OHS opens the grants to the public, meaning another organization can apply for them and take over Head Start for that area.

MACAA had three deficiencies.

“OHS gave MACAA until early January 2024 to show it had corrected the root causes of these incidents,” Shalf wrote in her email, “failure to do so — as to any one of the deficiencies — would result in the termination of our grant.”

And if the agency was terminated from its Head Start grants, OHS would prohibit them from reapplying for five years, Shalf said. By giving up the funding, though, the agency could reapply as soon as next year. 

MACAA tried to avoid potential termination by working closely with OHS for six months in 2023, and hired outside consultants to look at  why it got the deficiencies and how it could improve, Shalf said in an email to Charlottesville Tomorrow. 

In a statement in March, Shalf said they failed to address the deficiencies because they didn’t have enough funding.

In light of changes in the education sector we have seen since the pandemic, we determined that the current grant’s funding does not allow us to serve the number of children we are obligated to serve, in a manner that is likely to be successful.

MACAA’S MARCH 31 STATEMENT

Head Start grantees have to report certain incidents to OHS, and depending on the severity of the issue, it could lead to the provider receiving a deficiency condition.

Since September 2022, MACAA self-reported four separate incidents to OHS, and three of those incidents led to deficiency conditions, according to Shalf.

There were three incidents in which a teacher inappropriately disciplined a student that led to deficiency conditions.

The first happened in November 2022. A teacher used “inappropriate discipline,” Shalf said. They yanked or grabbed a child. Rekrut and Karla Gentry, a former lead teacher, both remember that one. Neither saw the incident, but both recall that OHS issued a deficiency condition as a result.

Five months later, in April 2023, a teacher lifted a student by the wrists when trying to discipline them, according to Shalf. 

“Because these incidents involve children in an educational setting, by law, I can’t give you more specific details,” Shalf wrote. “But I can tell you that the children involved were not physically harmed.”

The former teachers who spoke with Charlottesville Tomorrow said they knew little about the incidents.

“I don’t know specifics,” said Gentry. “It wasn’t like somebody got hit or anything. But it was definitely a violation.”

Head Start’s guidelines clearly define what is appropriate and inappropriate physical contact with a child, she said.

“So, if I’m holding your hand, and you pull away from me, and I don’t let go or I pull back —‚ that’s not acceptable,” she said. “You have to let the child go. If you get frustrated and you pick a child up off the floor because they’re throwing a temper tantrum, and you sit them in a chair. That’s unacceptable.”

OHS issued a third deficiency condition after a non-Head Start affiliated teacher who worked at the public school where MACAA was operating yelled at a Head Start child, Shalf said. It was then that OHS said MACAA had a “systemic problem” with its safety practices, according to Shalf.

In another incident, two substitute teachers at a MACAA classroom did not properly sweep the room during a fire drill. They ushered students out of the building and left a sleeping child in the room, Gentry said. It is protocol for at least one teacher to scan the room, bathroom, floor and other parts of the room, and another to do a headcount before going outside. Once out of the building, the teachers are required to do a second headcount. But that didn’t happen in this case, said Gentry. 

Shalf said that MACAA received an “area of noncompliance” (ANC) — a demerit that’s below a deficiency condition — for the poor fire drill. Grantees that get an ANC have to correct their processes to comply with federal requirements to avoid getting a deficiency condition.

While board members at MACAA went back and forth on how they could avoid termination, MACAA employees were doing what they could to keep up with students.

Former MACAA employees, and some parents who spoke with Charlottesville Tomorrow, said MACAA experienced continuous staffing problems. Positions would fall vacant and it would take months before MACAA filled them — oftentimes key leadership positions. Some were never filled at all.

The empty positions forced workers on all levels to do more than what was expected of them, and at times, cut corners, Rekrut said.

Those corners were sometimes obtaining the proper training and certifications for staff. Rekrut said MACAA leaders instructed staff members who were not cleared to work around children to run classrooms.

Some staffers did not have required certifications, like out-of-state background checks, or government-mandated trainings in order to work, according to violations issued to MACAA by the Virginia Department of Social Services (DSS). State-issued violations are separate and not related to the deficiency conditions given by OHS, but federal officials routinely check state violations to make sure Head Start grantees are operating appropriately.

MACAA’s state violations were posted on the Virginia DSS website in early May, but have since been removed.

Rekrut said that MACAA employed uncertified staff to avoid closures.

“Sometimes the decision was made to open a classroom with people who weren’t trained,” Rekrut said. “Although it may have been difficult on the parents to have the classroom closed for that week, I’m sure it would have been better than having somebody who is not trained and doesn’t know the procedures or the protocols of how to do things.”

“Sometimes the decision was made to open a classroom with people who weren’t trained. Although it may have been difficult on the parents to have the classroom closed for that week, I’m sure it would have been better than having somebody who is not trained and doesn’t know the procedures or the protocols of how to do things.”

Brittney Rekrut, MACAA’s former family and community engagement manager

For instance, employees were scrambling when MACAA lost its health and wellness manager — who is responsible for keeping track of children’s food and medical records — in June 2023, according to Rekrut. She and an assistant director did their best “to fill any gaps,” she said. Rekrut, who was the family and community engagement manager, recalled overseeing student’s individual education plans, or IEPs, and other health-related accommodations for students.

But they missed things at times. 

In October, the Louisa County MACAA location received a state DSS violation for not including all the required information for three reported student injuries. Another violation stated that the Louisa location failed to provide medical authorization forms for a student. That same month, the Louisa location also got dinged for not having a child’s physical examination document on file by time of enrollment. Similarly, the Park Street location in Charlottesville received a violation for not having a child’s immunization records prior to enrollment in October.

Charlottesville Tomorrow viewed each of the violations before they were removed from the state website.

DSS no longer oversees Head Start programs, that is now the responsibility of the Virginia Department of Education (DOE). Charlottesville Tomorrow reached out to the DOE, but did not receive a response in time for publication.

By the time MACAA gave up its federal funding, six months after it lost its health and wellness manager, the agency had yet to hire a replacement, according to Rekrut.

This wasn’t the only leadership role that went unfilled for extended periods of time. The agency was also frequently short an executive director of Head Start (a separate role from the executive director for MACAA) and behavior intervention specialists, Rekrut said.

The last Head Start executive director began in August 2022 and left by February 2023, Rekrut said. The job wasn’t posted until December 2023 and remained unfilled when MACAA closed down on March 31, 2024.

It wasn’t clear to the workers why those roles would take so long to be filled, said Rekrut. And it made the facility difficult to run.

“If you have somebody leave, you hire for the position. Maybe it gets delayed a week or two, but certainly not three quarters of the year,” said Rekrut. “That certainly trickled into the program. The teachers didn’t get the support that they needed so we were incredibly stretched.”

The lack of leadership and other key positions also made it difficult for employees like Rekrut to help students in need, especially those who required behavioral intervention services or disability assistance.

MACAA also didn’t have enough teachers, Rekrut said. Since August, the agency struggled to staff enough teachers to simply open its centers every day. Jacquana Mason, whose daughter attended MACAA’s Park Street location, recalled near weekly closures, sometimes with just an hour’s warning.

This issue is not surprising, Rekrut said. And it is not unique to MACAA. Childcare centers across the country are facing a devastating shortage of teachers. There have been several reports on this topic. In Virginia, a 2022 study of early education conducted by the University of Virginia and other state agencies found that 94% of childcare centers in the state that are funded by public money reported that they were struggling to maintain a full staff.

The lack of staff at MACAA created lots of smaller problems that didn’t rise to federal deficiency conditions or state violations, former teachers said. 

Former MACAA teacher Penny Crawley, resigned months before MACAA closed its doors. Crawley worked at MACAA for three years, most recently at the Hollymead location.

What that location needed was a third worker, Crawley said. Since she started it was staffed with only her and another employee. Some of the children she taught had behavioral issues or were severely underdeveloped. For instance, Crawley said she worked with 4-year-olds who were not potty trained or who still used pacifiers.

She and her coworkers at the Hollymead location were always under-resourced, she said. MACAA would promise her team materials — such as art supplies, books, printers and bookshelves —  and would rarely follow through. At times, Crawley and another coworker purchased the items with their own money.

The lack of workers and resources meant the children at the Hollymead location missed out on activities such as art projects and field trips, said Crawley. 

“It wasn’t fair to the children,” she said.

The ongoing issues at MACAA created a rift between employees that lasted until its closure in March, both Rekrut and Gentry said. That rift grew wider when MACAA gave up its grants. Workers were divided on how the agency should handle the closure.

MACAA’s Board voted to surrender its grants to Head Start in January. They did not tell families of the children until early March, less than a month before it shut down.

Sarah Hanks, the executive director of MACCA who resigned July 20, told staff to wait to tell families and guardians about the closure. Some workers, like Gentry, saw the logic. Hanks wanted to delay telling families so they could “have as much clarity as possible” and avoid “putting anyone in a frenzy,” Gentry said.

There were a lot of moving parts and the administration said they wanted everything they told families was definite, Gentry said.

But other workers, like Rekrut, did not agree.

The agency waited too long to inform families, she said. And even when it did, the language it used was misleading. It was clear to Rekrut that the Head Start centers would be closed for some period of time, but the statement MACAA put out did not say that.

“As we anticipated when making the decision to relinquish, the Office of Head Start (OHS) has contracted with an experienced national nonprofit, CDI, to run the Head Start program in this area from April 1, 2024, until it can hand off the program to a permanent grantee,” MACAA’s March 31 statement read.

Rekrut pushed the agency, and later CDI, to include more “realistic language” about the situation. She wanted both organizations to be clear that it was unlikely all their classrooms would be reopened, and give families advice on what they should do in the meantime.

“Families need to know that in the end, there is a strong likelihood that there will be either a break in classrooms or that they won’t have them,” she said. “The language was very flowery.”

But MACAA didn’t budge. After releasing the statement about its closure, workers and families were left with questions, Rekrut said. MACAA wouldn’t answer them. In the March statement, MACAA told anyone with questions to reach out to the email or toll-free number for CDI, which was included in the March statement.

Take Action

Families who are interested in enrolling their students into Head Start must reach out to Community Action Agency’s enrollment line at 434-216-4276. There is no online application or email.

Rekrut and other family support coordinators crafted their own letter and emailed it to their parents and families shortly after MACAA sent its notification to families. In the letter, Rekrut and her colleagues emphasized that some of the classrooms will most likely not reopen. 

Rekrut tried to correspond with MACAA and CDI before sending the letter out, and asked for additional information. But both entities reiterated that families with questions should call the number on the previous statement, or head to CDI’s website. 

“I don’t see how having any of that information helps our parents find available and affordable child care for their children,” Rekrut said. “Every day they have advanced notice will help them at least a little bit.”

The continuous staffing problem at MACAA only intensified once employees were informed of their severance in January, said Gentry. Employees were given a week of severance pay and any unused paid time off, which “a lot of people” took advantage of, and called off in March, Gentry said.

CDI offered MACAA employees their same positions, but at salaries well below what they made at MACAA. CDI proposed a $13.50 an hour salary to Rekrut, who previously made $20 an hour. Same went for Gentry. CDI offered her $14.36 an hour, despite making $21.06 with MACAA. 

Gentry said 15 of the 46 workers stayed with CDI.

“I didn’t think that as many people were going to lose their jobs as they did,” said Rekrut.

Neither Rekrut nor Gentry chose to work with CDI. Gentry only worked at MACAA for five months before it closed, but she doesn’t regret her time there one bit, she said. Fortunately, she landed another childcare job, she said.

“I miss it. I miss it every day,” said Gentry. “It was a great community to be in for five months.”

Despite not currently operating Head Start, MACAA’s board is working to come back stronger, said Shalf. MACAA applied for a separate Head Start grant — the Head Start Expansion, Early Head Start Expansion, and Early Head Start-Child Care Partnership Grants. The new grant would allow MACAA to launch an entirely new Head Start program at a single, undetermined location separate from the ones it previously ran. That location would serve a much smaller population of students.

Shalf said MACAA applied for the grant so it could do better. MACAA asked for “twice as much per child” to assist in hiring additional staff, she said.

“Although MACAA has been through tremendous upheaval and we know our families have suffered as a result, the community has stepped in to help while we rebuild, and we are grateful for that,” said Shalf in the email. “We see an opportunity to reboot MACAA, build a stronger foundation, and rethink the best way to deliver quality early childhood education with a focus on the whole family.”

The post Major federal ‘deficiency’ violations forced MACAA to shut down its free Head Start childcare centers appeared first on Charlottesville Tomorrow.

When Alexis Ratliff became pregnant with her daughter at the end of 2022, she knew that wherever she chose to deliver, she’d be driving a long way. 

There’s no hospital in Rocky Mount, the small Virginia town where she lives. She works in Martinsville, a slightly larger city about 40 minutes away, but the hospital there closed its labor and delivery unit months before.

Ratliff, 29, eventually found a doctor at a hospital in Salem more than an hour away. For each prenatal appointment, she had to take half a day off work, and she quickly used up all her paid time off. 

Due to preeclampsia — a life-threatening condition — Ratliff had been induced during her first pregnancy. She wanted a natural birth for her second child, but she eventually decided on an induction, this time in part due to logistics. 

“I didn’t want to be induced, but I was OK that we did because I was like, what if I went into labor? I’m an hour and 14 minutes away,” Ratliff said.

Without paid maternity leave and out of PTO, Ratliff saved as much money as she could to take six weeks off work after the birth.

Pregnant women are facing similar tough choices across rural Virginia. 

Since 2018, five rural labor and delivery rooms have closed across Virginia, and today only eight of the state’s 28 rural hospitals offer obstetrics services. 

Hospitals close maternity wards for a mix of factors: declining births, insufficient Medicaid reimbursement and difficulty recruiting full-time OB/GYNs. 

These maternity care deserts disproportionately affect people of color. Black mothers already face higher infant and maternal mortality rates, so the closure of local delivery rooms has sparked concern among health leaders.

“We’re not going to solve the maternity mortality crisis without a real investment. And that investment means that we need to be looking at new models of care that are going to allow people to get the care they need,” said Dr. Makunda Abdul-Mbacke, an OB/GYN who runs a private practice offering gynecology care in rural Southside Virginia. 

A legislative task force is investigating the causes of the labor and delivery deserts, work that could inform legislation at the 2025 General Assembly. And as Medicaid reimbursement practices contribute to the closures, both state and federal efforts are underway to expand Medicaid coverage. 

U.S. Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., proposed legislation this year to provide an adjusted Medicaid rate for low birth volume facilities, as well as an overall increase to the Medicaid payment rates for labor and delivery services in rural and high-need urban areas.

The legislation includes a “stand-by” payment that would be offered to rural facilities with low-volume labor and delivery units to help cover costs of staffing.

Del. Mark Sickles, D-Fairfax County, said that the General Assembly has funded some new OB/GYN residencies in rural places in recent years, but the recruitment challenges are substantial. 

“We try to keep the Medicaid rates as high as possible. We realize we have to be competitive,” Sickles said. “If the governor put it in the budget I’m almost certain it would be approved. Maybe the General Assembly will look at it more closely now that it’s getting so much attention.”

Meanwhile, local grassroots organizations are filling the gaps. One is Birth in Color, a nonprofit organization that provides doula services and works on advocacy and policy for reproductive justice. 

Birth in Color’s advocacy helped Virginia to become the fourth state in the country to bring doula services under Medicaid in April 2022, making the services more accessible to low-income families. And the ripple effects continue: During this year’s General Assembly session, lawmakers mandated that private insurers evaluate adding doula services to the list of essential benefits. Supporters hope that the expansion could happen during the 2025 legislative session.  

New models of care

Tamika Tali has been helping women deliver babies for years. She’s helped her family members and her own children through their pregnancies, she’s had five babies of her own, and since 2021, she’s been a certified doula with Birth in Color.  

“I’ve seen it all. I’m so normalized to it, you know. I just tell them, send me a picture and they’ve got their phone down there taking pictures,” Tali said, laughing. 

As a doula, Tali offers physical, emotional and informational support before, during and after childbirth. She lives in Yanceyville, North Carolina, but takes clients from all around the Southside region of Virginia. And when her clients go into labor, she travels to the hospital to be with them. 

Last year, she had a client laboring in Salem and drove the two hours to support her during the birth. Tali stayed for all three days her client was in the hospital. 

The mothers in Tali’s care, like Ratliff, have access to her almost all the time. She takes phone calls and answers texts.

The training she received when she joined Birth in Color means she’s able to answer most of the day-to-day questions that expectant mothers have. 

She can advise them to drink more water to address headaches or encourage them to go to the doctor when it’s needed. In the doctor’s office, she’s a fierce advocate for them.

But some physicians caution against seeing the expansion of doulas as a long-term solution to the maternal health crisis. 

“They’re a part of the solution. They’re a piece of the puzzle, but midwives and doulas don’t do C-sections,” Abdul-Mbacke said. “People feel like there’s all this medicalization of labor, and, you know, we could all just have these natural births and everything would be fine. But we’d be going back to levels of maternal morbidity and mortality of the 1800s.” 

Even so, birthing doulas have emerged as a solution for the maternal health crisis by providing personalized support to mothers, especially in underserved communities. 

In 2020, Virginia passed legislation to create a state certification for doulas and commissioned a work study on the best practices for bringing doula services under Medicaid. In April 2022, the doula benefit began. 

Their presence has been associated with improved birth outcomes, lower rates of cesarean sections and reduced need for pain relief, according to a study published in the National Library of Medicine. Doulas also play a critical role in advocating for mothers and ensuring that their voices are heard and birth preferences respected, which is particularly important for Black and other minority women who face disproportionately high maternal mortality rates. 

While Virginia’s infant mortality rates have started trending down, infant mortality for babies born to Black families was 10.4 per 1,000 live births, nearly two times the state rate, according to data from the March of Dimes 2023 report card. 

“As Black women, we are looked at as being more tolerant to pain, that we can take more pain than any other race. Doctors sometimes think like this as well as the nurses and staff,” Tali said. “A lot of times our women are given the epidural and stadol [a pain reliever] and left for hours unattended, no matter how many times they ring that call bell. Our voices aren’t heard as loud as those of other minorities.”

One of Tali’s clients, Rachetta Hightower, leaned on her doula when she was misdiagnosed with placenta previa, a condition when the placenta attaches low in the uterus. 

The nurse who administered the diagnosis told Hightower that the only way she could safely deliver would be via C-section. 

Tali later questioned the diagnosis and encouraged Hightower to talk to her obstetrician at her next appointment. The doctor told her the diagnosis was a mistake. Hightower successfully delivered vaginally, but the anxiety stayed with her through her labor. 

“I still had thoughts of am I going to bleed out,” Hightower said. “I already had high blood pressure.”

The high infant and maternal mortality rates among Black families is what spurred Kenda Sutton-el into advocacy, creating Birth in Color to both expand doula services for Black and brown women and to push for policy changes that would improve birthing outcomes for minority mothers. 

Bringing doulas under Medicaid has made services more accessible, but the reimbursement rates fall short of the cost of care. 

“It absolutely does not reflect a living wage,” Sutton-el said, nor does it provide additional funds for travel.  

Doula services billed to Virginia Medicaid can be reimbursed up to $859 for eight prenatal or postpartum visits, plus labor and delivery, according to the Center for Health Care Strategies. Another incentive payment is released if the mother attends her first postpartum visit.

Typically, it costs Birth in Color about $800 for just two prenatal visits with a client, Sutton-el said.

Sutton-el intends to return to the Virginia General Assembly in the coming years to ask for greater reimbursement for the care her doulas provide. 

“It was a test project to see if we can get doulas enrolled. Let’s see what the outcomes will look like. … We have a great collaboration with the Medicaid department and so I definitely know that they’re on board to make it better,” Sutton-el said. 

Some independent doulas have opted not to accept Medicaid due to the reimbursement rate. 

Roshay Richardson provides doula services across Southside Virginia. She also works for the Virginia Rural Health Association as its breastfeeding coordinator. 

“Most community doulas who take the Medicaid reimbursement have to work another job on top of being a doula. … You need to make sure your work has an understanding that you need to leave when a client calls,” Richardson said.

Private insurance does not cover doula services, but state legislation passed earlier this year requires the Health Insurance Reform Commission to consider covering doula care services as it reviews essential benefits. 

Though the reimbursement is low, Medicaid has significantly increased the accessibility of doulas. Now, about 90% of Sutton-el’s clients use their Medicaid coverage to access doula services.

Reimbursement practices can lead to closures

Rural obstetrics units across the U.S. have been jettisoned for financial reasons. The closures have primarily hit low-income, rural communities where births have declined.

When Sovah Health closed its labor and delivery unit in Martinsville in 2022, hospital executives cited declining birth rates in the region. Deliveries at the hospital had declined by 60% in the previous seven years, health officials said. 

The number of deliveries is one predictor of the sustainability of a labor and delivery unit, according to Steve Heatherly, market president of Sovah Health. With more births, hospitals can spread fixed costs, such as salaries and equipment, over a larger number of patients, making the unit more cost effective. 

Since the Martinsville closure, Sovah Health’s Danville hospital is the only one delivering babies for at least five Southside counties. 

In 2023, the Danville hospital had 771 deliveries, a 20% increase from 2021, Heatherly said. Of those, 625 were Medicaid births, 131 were covered by private insurance, two were paid by Medicare and 21 were self-pay.

Another common indicator of a labor unit’s success, according to some providers, is the mix between patients with private insurance and those with Medicaid. 

Medicaid reimburses hospitals at a fixed rate for obstetric care. The rates are intended to cover the cost of care, but frequently they fall short of what hospitals say are the actual costs.

States set Medicaid rates, so they vary widely, but are typically much lower than those of private insurance. In low-income communities where many of the residents are on Medicaid, the cost of providing care to pregnant people usually outweighs the revenue generated, meaning childbirth simply isn’t profitable at smaller hospitals. 

The highest possible reimbursement rate in Virginia for the pregnancy, birth and the first postpartum visit comes to about $2,300, said Dr. Laura Peyton Ellis, an obstetrician who spoke to Virginia legislators during a July rural health committee meeting. This rate covers hospital fees and resources. 

Private insurance reimburses at a level that’s about 150% to 166% of the rate that's paid by Medicaid, she said.

Cardinal News requested more specific Medicaid and private insurance reimbursement data from the Department of Medical Assistance Services and the Virginia Association of Health Plans. A DMAS representative said each birth is situationally dependent and there are too many factors at play to provide accurate reimbursement rate data. The Virginia Association of Health Plans said it could not provide information due to antitrust concerns. 

Hospitals with a mix of payers, both private and Medicaid, are better able to balance the losses. 

Medicaid finances about 42% of all births in the United States, but in Southside Virginia, many more women rely on the public health insurance.

In Martinsville, for example, 76% of births in 2022 were financed through Medicaid, according to data from the Virginia Department of Health’s Maternal and Child Health dashboard, a new tool designed to track health outcomes. In Danville, the nearest city to Martinsville with maternity care, nearly 85% of births in 2022 were Medicaid births. 

“In the 17 years or so since I’ve been down here, the community has gotten poorer and that's going to reflect in the reimbursements paid to the hospital,” said Abdul-Mbacke. 

Abdul-Mbacke provided obstetrics care at Sovah Health Martinsville until it closed its delivery room in 2022. She now runs a private practice in rural Southside Virginia offering gynecology care. 

“When I came here there were seven to eight OB/GYNs all active, all doing surgeries. It’s a shame, and the health of the community is definitely decreasing,” Abdul-Mbacke said. 

Without OB/GYNs in the area, ability to access prenatal care and the number of prenatal visits has decreased over the past two years, she said.

Taylor Platt, a health policy manager with the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology, said that rural hospitals face numerous challenges when it comes to the payment systems for obstetrics services.  

 “There’s a lot of problems with how we pay for obstetrical services that can really impact these smaller rural hospitals,” Platt said.

All obstetrics care — from the first visit to confirm the pregnancy to the initial postpartum period — is bundled for Medicaid reimbursement purposes. It’s not until after the first postpartum visit that a provider can bill for services, encompassing nearly a year's worth of care, Platt said. 

There are exceptions when multiple doctors provide care at different stages of the pregnancy, according to a 2022 Virginia physician practitioner manual. For example, if a patient sees one provider for prenatal care but delivers with a different doctor, each one can submit a claim. However, both providers must wait until after the first postpartum visit to do so.

In Virginia, Medicaid reimburses at a rate that aligns with the recommendations of ACOG, though that doesn’t mean that the rates cover the complete cost of care. 

Some states have voted to increase the Medicaid reimbursement beyond the recommended rate, Platt said. Yet it’s still unclear if the change has helped to keep rural hospital OB units open.

Trying to fill the void

When the hospital in Martinsville closed its obstetrics unit, other organizations in Southside Virginia scrambled to help. 

Danville-based Piedmont Access to Health Services, or PATHS, took on as many patients as it could, but the transition was stressful, said Tammy Osborne, operations manager at PATHS.

“We were struggling to get everybody in to be seen at their correct timing,” Osborne said.

In the third trimester of pregnancy, patients with typical pregnancies come in for appointments about every other week. People with complex or high risk pregnancies may need to be seen twice a week. 

PATHS introduced OB/GYN care at its Danville office in 2019 with three physicians. Since then, the team has expanded to include 12 OB/GYN doctors across its network.

PATHS now has clinics in Danville, Martinsville, Chatham and South Boston, which opened this past March after that town lost its obstetrics unit.

“As a nonprofit, we feel like it is our responsibility to try to meet the needs of the people that live in this area and as long as we are able, we will do OB/GYN. It’s costly, though,” said Marsha Mendenhall, CEO of PATHS.

Its designation as a federally qualified health center gives PATHS some financial cushion, but federal dollars cover only 12% of the organization’s budget, Mendenhall said. Its pharmacy program brings in revenue to help cover the losses in OB/GYN. 

For a medical practice to have an obstetrics unit, at least one provider must be on call at all times. For a labor and delivery unit, the department needs to be fully staffed at all hours of the day and night. 

Once a maternity unit closes, it’s unlikely that it will ever reopen due to the cost of building up a workforce, Mendenhall said. 

Having an advocate

When Ratliff had her first baby, paying nearly $2,000 for a doula wasn’t feasible. For her second child, she was able to work with Tali at no personal cost with Medicaid.

“I really did want somebody else to just help advocate, especially since with women of color the mortality rates are higher, so I was like, anything could happen,” Ratliff said. “My family members never had good experiences up here at these doctors' offices. Even just for regular appointments.”

Tali arranged to meet with Ratliff during her lunch breaks to avoid taking any more time off work.

“I was like, here’s someone that is down to earth. Here’s someone that is actually talking to me and explaining a lot of things. Because when you’re with your doctor, I mean, I think it was like five or seven minutes with each patient,” Ratliff said. 

Tali brought essential oils and candles to the birth to help create a calming environment and hunted down the doctors and nurses when Ratliff was left alone for hours on end during labor. 

Ratliff had been there for her sister and her best friend when they had their babies, and looking back she now realizes that they would have benefited from a doula, too. The experience meant so much to her that Ratliff has enrolled in the doula training with Birth in Color. 

“Before, I just assumed, gosh, this is how [birth] is, you know. And then to have an experience be so, like, no, that is not how it’s supposed to be. This is what it’s supposed to be. It just made me want to advocate for other women around here that are in poverty or lower income,” Ratliff said. 

“I want to help those women how I was helped.”

Jenny Stratton with CatchLight contributed to this report. This story is part of a collaborative reporting effort led by the Institute for Nonprofit News' Rural News Network. Support from the Walton Family Foundation made the project possible.

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For Lynn, June was a nightmare.

Her family had been coming to Lake Anna for eight years, so it wasn’t unusual for them to spend Sunday of the Memorial Day weekend there on their boat with their friends.

The weather was great, and the water was warm.

But then, within days, both of her young kids were hospitalized with severe E. coli infections.

They were in horrible pain. They would go to the bathroom and “just sit on the toilet sobbing in tears because they hurt so badly,” said Lynn, who lives in Harrisonburg. She chose to be identified by her middle name to protect the privacy of her children.

Within days, her son’s kidneys started to fail and he developed Hemolytic Uremic Syndrome (HUS), a rare and serious disease that affects the kidneys and blood clotting system. He was put on dialysis and blood transfusions.

He wasn’t the only one.

At least 25 people were infected with E. coli at Lake Anna during the Memorial Day weekend. According to the Virginia Department of Health, most of the cases were children under 18. Seven, like Lynn’s son, developed HUS as a result of the infection. Fortunately, no one has died.

“If there is anything we can do to prevent this from happening to other kids, that’s what we want to do,” said Lynn.

That might not be so easy.

State health officials say they will never know how the E. coli made it to the lake that weekend. 

“No matter how many times we test it now, we are never going to get that same moment that was happening in the water on Memorial Day weekend,” Brookie Crawford, Risk Communications Manager at the Virginia Department of Health, told Charlottesville Tomorrow.

Escherichia coli or E. coli, normally lives in the intestines of humans and animals and it can contaminate water when wild or domestic animals defecate in or near the water. It can also leak out of faulty septic tanks or carelessly tossed diapers, spread from a sick swimmer or a dog splashing in the water.

The Lake Anna outbreak could have been a freak accident.

But, considering that there are dozens of beaches closed nationwide this summer due to high E. coli concentration in the water, there are reasons to be more cautious and thoughtful before entering the natural waters.

It might get worse, too. Experts have been warning for years that climate change will boost the rate of waterborne diseases like E. coli. The warming weather will create an environment that enables bacteria to thrive in bodies of water. That could mean more severe outbreaks like Lake Anna’s in the future.

“All lakes are getting warmer. And ergo, warmer water tends to be a better environment for things like E. coli,” said Michael Pace, a professor with the University of Virginia’s Department of Environmental Sciences.

E. coli is not meant to live in open water. If the bacteria makes it into the water, it doesn’t survive long — a few days, maybe a week, he said. 

“But if it’s warmer, they can survive longer,” Pace said. “So obviously, climate change would facilitate that.”

While Lake Anna’s outbreak stands out because there was no warning and people got sick, it is far from the only recreational body of water that has been exposed to high levels of E. coli this summer. Just in the past few weeks, there were several cases of unsafe levels of the bacteria in lakes and rivers nationwide: Lake Kohlmier in Owatonna, Minnesota, was closed because it tested high for E. coli. Michigan closed more than a dozen beaches for the same reason. Lake Mansfield in Massachusetts was also closed, suspecting geese droppings as a source of E. coli, and 12 beaches in Iowa were not recommended for swimming. 

Across the ocean, Belgium’s Olympic team skipped Monday’s triathlon competition because one of their teammates got an E. coli infection after swimming in the Seine River in Paris. The river has been a subject of  the French push to improve the water quality leading to the Olympics, but fell short in the end due to heavy rains.

These are just a few examples.

While it’s unclear whether this number of E. coli flare ups is unusual just yet, there are plenty of studies saying that the future will be hotter and will have more unpredictable heavy rains, both of which can contribute to more outbreaks.

All lakes are getting warmer. And ergo, warmer water tends to be a better environment for things like E. coli.

—Michael Pace, a professor with the University of Virginia’s Department of Environmental Sciences

According to a federal government’s national climate assessment report that came out last year, climate change is going to increase temperatures year-round in Virginia. Summers will become hotter and more humid.

It will increase heat stress on livestock, which in turn could drive more domestic and wild animals to cool off in the water. 

At the same time, the predicted increase in strong rains and floods can create more runoff, bringing more animal feces into the water — which can mean more E. coli.

“Every time it rains, E. coli concentrations go up,” said Pace.

This all means that government agencies and lakeside communities face an uphill battle in confronting future outbreaks. But, they’re not completely defenseless. There are things that can reduce the risk.

Keep the cattle out of the water

Lake Anna shares shores with farms and wild animals, populated suburbs and popular recreational spots like the sandbar, where most of the people diagnosed with E. coli spent some time on the Memorial Day weekend. It also rained right before that holiday.

The E. coli could have come from any of those areas. But one of the sources that the Lake Anna Civic Association has their attention on is the farms.

“A lot of times you drive by these cows in the water, and they’re just sitting there with their head down. They’re just cooling down,” said Harry Looney, Water Quality Committee co-chair at volunteer-run Lake Anna Civic Association (LACA) and a citizen representative at the Lake Anna Advisory Committee, a joint administrative organization. Both organizations focus on the safety and quality of Lake Anna’s water.

While there is no evidence that cattle caused this E. coli outbreak, it’s clear they can. Thus, keeping cattle out of the water is one of the more obvious ways that future outbreaks could be minimized if not prevented, climate and health experts told Charlottesville Tomorrow.

A lot of times you drive by these cows in the water, and they’re just sitting there with their head down. They’re just cooling down.

—Harry Looney, Water Quality Committee co-chair at volunteer-run Lake Anna Civic Association

“E. Coli in particular is one of those things we can do a good job controlling by reducing inputs and the risks of a really nasty outbreak,” said UVA’s Pace.

Right now, there are efforts underway to do just that — though the folks involved disagree on how effective those efforts are. Fencing cattle from the waterways is not a legal requirement in Virginia, and many farms allow their animals free access.

“It’s hard to convince a farmer, that’s probably a third or fourth or fifth generation farmer on the property, that he or she should fence their cows,” said Looney. “The cows have been in the water since farmers have been there. And the farm has been there for a hundred years.”

But that’s not the case everywhere.

In recent years, the government has been offering incentives for farmers to start fencing their cattle out of the water as a part of the national push for better water sanitation.

For the 2025 fiscal year, Virginia has increased its allocated budget for soil and water conservation to nearly $207 million — an $82.1 million increase since 2024’s previous record of $124.6 million. This means there is more money farmers can tap into to build fences separating their cattle from natural water and create alternatives — like digging a well.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture also has funding to invest in farm conservation practices. There are private and non-profit organizations helping farmers as well.

According to James Martin, director of the Division of Soil and Water Conservation at Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation, many farmers in the state took advantage of the cost-sharing program in the past years. 

“There are a lot of producers that have participated in the program, either state or federal, in the past. And over the last year we’ve made huge strides in excluding livestock from waters. But there are still some holdouts,” said Martin.

The division does not have great data on the percentage of all Virginia’s streams that are fully-excluded from livestock, Martin said. But he believes that many farmers realize that the best-practices the department is helping to fund don’t just benefit the public waterways — but farmers themselves. Cattle can also get sick from contaminated water, driving up their veterinarian bills.

Take Action

The 2025 Virginia Agricultural Best Management Practices Cost-Share Program (VACS) program sign-up and applications started on July 1 and are available for farmers who want to take advantage of the cost-sharing programs.

Charlottesville Tomorrow tried calling and emailing local farmers around Lake Anna to ask them about their practices with letting cattle in the water, but got no response.

Test the water, and then test it again

While these efforts could reduce the risk of E. coli outbreaks, there’s no way to prevent them entirely. There is always going to be fecal matter in the water and it’s usually not a problem, as long as it stays under the level of concern, the experts who spoke with Charlottesville Tomorrow say. That’s where the second preventative measure comes in: Testing.

Across the country, agencies and private organizations are investing in regular water quality testing, in an effort to warn would-be lake goers about possible dangerous water before they go.

Lake Anna already has an impressive system of monitoring water quality, run with help of civilian volunteers from LACA, like Harry Looney. 

“The notable thing about Lake Anna is that it has a very committed civic association. They’re well organized, and they’re trying to tackle this problem head on,” said Paul Bukaveckas, professor at Virginia Commonwealth University who has been studying the increasing water temperature of Lake Anna. 

The presence of this civic groups means Lake Anna is better monitored than many, he added. Many other lakes might not have a lake association at all or it might not be as active as LACA, he explained, which means that complaining about the quality of water never goes anywhere. 

“Whereas with Lake Anna, you have people like Harry, a volunteer who devoted a tremendous amount of time to monitoring water quality in the lake,” Bukaveckas said.

LACA has about 70 volunteers involved in routine water sampling, which is either shared with outside laboratories like the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality or analyzed in Looney’s home laboratory, which he built himself and equipped especially for this. They share the results of their testing with VDEQ and the public.

But while routine testing can catch spikes — it’s also limited.

“You could test every day and get different results,” said Crawford, with the Virginia Department of Health. “Because if I test today, and it rains tomorrow, and then people go swimming the next day, they’re going to not see the same water that I tested on today.”

In their April sampling, the results showed a slightly higher level of E. coli at the upper lake stations, which is typical for spring. According to Looney, this occurs because the spring rains wash livestock manure that accumulated in the fields over the winter into the lake. Even then, the results stayed at 10 or below 10 colony-forming units per 100 milliliters of water, which is far below the standard of concern established by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), for which the results need to show more than 235 cfu per 100 ml.

The water samples collected by the Department of Environmental Quality on June 11, June 17 and June 25 — the three samples the agency took to test after the Memorial Day outbreak — showed fecal bacteria concentrations associated with E. coli but their levels were also significantly below public health concern.

The possible issue, according to UVA’s Michael Pace, is that the current testing doesn’t analyze the kind of E. coli strains in the water — only its total concentration.

“They use these thresholds as a way of protecting against exposure to E. coli when it’s at a level that would make you sick. They’re good guidelines, tried and tested,” said Pace. “But sometimes, if there is a really bad [strain in the water], then you can get sick from a smaller dose.”

That’s what appeared to have happened with the Memorial Day outbreak, Pace said. Though, he can’t be sure.

Whatever the cause for the outbreak was, for Lynn, whose kids ended up hospitalized for days, all the trust in Lake Anna was lost. 

Her daughter was released on June 8. Her son was finally out on June 13. He lost a lot of weight because he had no appetite and he is still traumatized by the experience. 

“He’s very scared,” said Lynn. “He won’t poop in the bathroom by himself. He has to have me or my husband in the bathroom because he’s scared to go.” 

He finally started to get some of his energy back, said Lynn. It’s too early to know if he will develop any long term side effects. He still has to have blood tests once every two weeks.

Once a healthy child, he now takes blood pressure medicine. 

“We sold our boat and we will never be back in that lake again,” Lynn said. “No child should ever have to go through what my two kids went through.”

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Cole Hocker has qualified for the men’s 1,500-meter final in the Summer Olympics in Paris.

The newly minted Blacksburg resident placed third in the first semifinal of the event at Stade de Paris on Sunday, easily earning one of the 12 spots in Tuesday’s Olympic final.

Hocker, an Indiana native and former NCAA champion at the University of Oregon who now trains in Blacksburg under Virginia Tech track and field coach Ben Thomas, crossed the line in 3 minutes, 32.54 seconds.

Hocker finished behind 2021 Olympic champion Jakob Ingebrigtsen of Norway, who won the semifinal in 3:32.38 and Great Britain’s Josh Kerr, who was second in 3:32.46.

Other qualifiers from the first semifinal were Kenya’s Brian Komen, Stefan Nillessen of the Netherlands and Italy’s Pietro Arese.

All three Americans qualified for Tuesday’s final.

Yared Nuguse of Louisville won the second semifinal with the day’s fastest time, 3:31.72, just ahead of Hobbs Kessler of Ann Arbor, Michigan, who placed second in 3:31.97.

The other qualifiers from the second semifinal were Great Britain’s Neal Gourley, Niels Laros of the Netherlands, Kenya’s Timothy Cheruiyot and Norway’s Narve Gilje Nordas. Gourley, 29, is a former runner for Virginia Tech.

The men’s 1,500 final is set for 2:50 p.m. EDT Tuesday.

Hocker set a U.S. Olympic Trials record of 3:30.59 on June 24 to become the first American to win the event in back-to-back U.S. trials since Jim Ryun in 1972.

For more on Hocker, see our previous story.

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Campbell County Republicans don’t like the party’s 2024 platform. They feel the national party, at Donald Trump’s behest, softened the language against abortion and same-sex marriage, in particular.

Politically, the new language makes sense if Trump wants to cut into Democratic margins among suburban voters — something that’s probably not top of mind for Republicans in Campbell County, a place where Trump took 71% of the vote four years ago. Morally, you can make your own judgments.

Cardinal’s Markus Schmidt wrote about Campbell County Republicans’ concerns last week.

This raises several questions: What does the rest of the Republican platform actually say? Or the Democrats’ draft platform, for that matter? And, perhaps, more importantly, does any of it matter?

Historically speaking, the answer to that last question is “not very much.” A party platform offers useful insight into a party’s philosophy, but there’s no guarantee that any of it will become law. From 1972 to 2016, the Republican Party platform explicitly called for statehood for Puerto Rico, but no Republican president actually did much to make that happen. Given how our two parties are realigning, now might be a good time for Republicans to push for Puerto Rican statehood as a way to add some electoral votes — the island currently sends a Republican to Washington as its resident commissioner — but I digress.

What matters more is the presidential candidate’s platform, or the views of the advisers around that candidate, which is why Democrats have talked so much about the “Project 2025” document that the Heritage Foundation has put together. Still, the Republican platform is very reflective of Trump’s worldview, so I was curious to take a closer look at both that and its Democratic counterpart to glean any insights about what a Trump 2.0 administration — or a Kamala Harris administration — would mean for Southwest and Southside. There aren’t many insights to be found. 

That’s not a criticism, just a factual observation. In 2016, the Republican platform was 66 pages long. This year, it’s 28 pages but is really just 12 pages once you account for all the pictures. (Of course, four years ago there was no platform at all.) Four years ago, Democrats had a 92-page platform, and their draft platform this year is 80 pages. Republicans may or may not succeed in reducing the size of government but they have definitely reduced the size of party platforms. (Fun fact: In Great Britain, party platforms are called “manifestos.”)

The Republican platform this year is a slimmed-down statement of principles, not a recitation of policy initiatives. Democrats are more inclined to get into specifics, just not some of the ones I wanted to see. What would another Trump administration mean for extending Amtrak service to Bristol? What about a Harris presidency? We don’t know. Even the more detailed Democratic platform isn’t that granular. Both platforms are also larded with lots of political hyperbole, which is entertaining to read but not particularly elucidating. Trying to find policy insights amid all the rhetoric is like sifting for gold and, frankly, there’s not a lot of gold in either of them thar hills.

Let’s see, though, what we can find. Let’s also use this as the opportunity to offer up some facts relevant to each parties’ platforms.

Energy: Republicans like fossil fuels, Democrats don’t

Ok, that’s not exactly news. This is also a place where the rhetoric doesn’t always match the reality.

The Republican platform declares: “Under President Trump, the U.S. became the Number One Producer of Oil and Natural Gas in the World — and we will soon be again by lifting restrictions on American Energy Production and terminating the Socialist Green New Deal.” That implies the United States was number one under Trump but is no longer. 

However, the U.S. Energy Information Administration says that U.S. oil production is higher today than it was when Trump left office, hitting a record of 12.9 million barrels per day in 2023. 

Natural gas production rose sharply under Trump, but has kept rising under Biden:

Trump may want even more oil and gas production, but the reality is that Biden has presided over the nation’s highest oil and production ever — that’s just not something he dares talk about, given the sensibilities of the Democratic electorate. To bring this home to us, remember that it was Biden’s energy secretary who advocated for completion of the Mountain Valley Pipeline, which now pumps natural gas from West Virginia to Chatham. Biden, though, comes from a more traditional school of thought within the Democratic Party. A new generation of Democrats seems likely to be less inclined to support natural gas.

Interestingly, there’s only one fleeting reference to coal in the Republican platform, and that’s when they vow to end “end market-distorting restrictions on Oil, Natural Gas, and Coal.” In 2016, Trump famously campaigned in Southwest Virginia and proclaimed “We’re going to bring back King Coal.” He didn’t. U.S. coal production declined slightly each of four years in office, and then has declined further under Biden (with a slight uptick in 2022, but that may have been skewed by the pandemic years). Perhaps even Trump now understands that it’s market forces that are driving coal down. A few years ago, a utility executive with Appalachian Power explained it this way: Utilities have to make investments with a 40-year time horizon, not a four-year one. They’re not inclined to invest in a technology based on today’s shifting political climate. About 92% of U.S. coal consumption is by utilities, so the declining amount of coal going to those utilities is a good measure of the coal industry:

The Republican platform does make a specific mention of nuclear: “Republicans will unleash Energy Production from all sources, including nuclear, to immediately slash Inflation and power American homes, cars, and factories with reliable, abundant, and affordable Energy.” Republicans have always been more pro-nuclear than Democrats, but nuclear power is slow to build, so no nuclear power will be unleashed “immediately.” Democrats historically have been more divided on nuclear, although the Biden administration has been a strong proponent. However, the Democrats’ draft platform makes no mention of nuclear power at all, and Harris’ only comments have been to express concern about transporting nuclear waste to Nevada.

For what it’s worth, here’s how U.S. energy production has changed. You can see the sharp rise in natural gas, which started at the very end of the George W. Bush administration and has continued almost straight upwards since then, while coal has declined as a result.

The key question for us is unanswered in either party platform: How much will the next administration encourage the development of small nuclear reactors, the so-called “small modular reactors,” or SMRs? Gov. Glen Youngkin once pushed for an SMR in Southwest Virginia but has since pulled back on that. Ultimately, though, it’s utilities, not politicians, who decide where energy production facilities go. Dominion Energy recently announced it has accepted proposals for an SMR at its North Anna nuclear complex in Louisa County, which I’ve long thought made more sense than building one in Southwest Virginia: Dominion already has the infrastructure in place in Louisa. (Disclosure: Dominion is one of our donors but donors have no say in news decisions; see our policies.)

The question is whether we’ll see the next administration encourage even more SMR development — Republicans because they like “all of the above” energy, Democrats because they grudgingly see nuclear as a way to create a decarbonized power grid. If so, we could see utilities looking at other places for SMRs. (A Department of Energy study suggested the Clover coal plant in Halifax County, co-owned by Dominion Energy and the Old Dominion Electric Cooperative, would be a good location.)

Finally, both party platforms say they want the U.S. to be “energy independent.” The Republican platform says: “We will DRILL, BABY, DRILL and we will become Energy
Independent . . .” The draft Democratic platform praises Biden’s emphasis on renewables: “He is positioning America to lead the future — energy independent, resilient, innovative, and strong.”

Now, here’s the reality: We already are energy independent. The U.S. Energy Information Administrations says U.S. energy production exceeded consumption toward the end of the Trump administration, and there’s now a bigger gap between the two under Biden:

We still import some forces of energy (oil) and export others (natural gas and coal) so we may not be energy independent in every sector, but overall, we now are. Feel free to debate whether this has happened because of Trump’s pro-drilling policies or Biden’s pro-renewables policies (or perhaps a combination of the two), but we now produce more energy than we consume.

Both parties want to reshore manufacturing jobs, but how?

Can you guess which party said which?

“We will bring our critical Supply Chains back home.”

“Bring home critical supply chains.”

Answer at the end of this section.

Beyond those bromides, the details vary, such as they are. Trump is, as we know, very focused on what the platform calls “unfair” trade deals but, given the spareness of the Republican document, offers no specifics beyond support for tariffs. The theory behind tariffs is that they raise the price of foreign-made goods and thereby encourage or protect domestic manufacturing, which preserves or creates American jobs. However, if manufacturers don’t take advantage of that economic advantage, then tariffs simply raise the price of goods. Democrats talk at length about technology — promoting domestic manufacture of computer chips, encouraging the growth of green technologies that involve manufacturing and taking credit for providing funding for more than 30 technology hubs around the country. (One of those is Richmond-Petersburg.) That may someday prove to be a transformative policy but the economic reality is that those hubs will take years to build out.

Rather than get bogged down in the back-and-forth of which party is better for manufacturing, let’s look at some facts. 

Manufacturing jobs peaked in April 1979 and declined until they bottomed out in February and March 2010. Many things have driven that: Some jobs have gone overseas to cheaper workforces. Some jobs have been eliminated altogether by technology. Since hitting that bottom, manufacturing jobs have been slowly increasing (with the exception of the pandemic). We now have slightly more manufacturing jobs in the country under Biden than we did under Trump. 

The same trend is true in Virginia (although this chart shows a different time frame). If we don’t count the pandemic, Virginia’s manufacturing base hit bottom in February 2011 and has only increased slightly since, regardless of which party is in power.

That raises a question we don’t often see addressed: Both parties say they want more domestic manufacturing, but what’s realistic? Republicans do the better job of talking about manufacturing: “Revive our industrial base,” they declare. However, we are not going to rebuild the economy of the 1950s. The fundamentals of the economy have changed. 

On a percentage basis, the percentage of American workers in manufacturing peaked in 1953 at 32.1%. By 2022, it was 9.92%. That sounds low. However, keep in mind, global employment in manufacturing is 12.8% — so the U.S. is below the global average, but not that far below.

The U.S. average is on par with many other Western countries — Canada is at 8.93%, Great Britain is at 9.14%. The nation with the biggest share of the workforce in manufacturing is China, where 28.7% are in manufacturing. Chinese workers, though, don’t get paid much, by our standards. That’s one of the conundrums both parties face: How can they encourage more good-paying manufacturing jobs when Americans like to buy cheap stuff? A lot of our manufacturing jobs went overseas for simple economic reasons: Labor costs were lower. Raise the labor costs, and those costs will get passed on to consumers. Neither party likes to talk about that.  

Perhaps the Western country that both parties ought to look to for guidance is Germany: 19.93% of the workers there are in manufacturing. 

As for the question at the top of this section, the first line is from the Republican platform, the second from the Democratic one.

Democrats vow “moral obligation” to coal country

Republicans don’t mention climate at all. Democrats devote seven pages to it. In those, they declare: “Democrats also know we have a moral obligation to make sure that fenceline communities benefit from the clean energy revolution.” The phrase “fenceline communities” is new lingo; I’ve never heard anyone in Southwest Virginia use that phrase, but it refers to communities next door to energy production facilities. This speaks to one of the political problems of clean energy. There really is a clean energy boom taking place. The transition to clean energy really is creating jobs, but it’s not necessarily creating them in the same places where the fossil fuel jobs were. Democrats have tried to address that in the Inflation Reduction Act, aka “the climate bill,” by designating enterprise zones in those “fenceline communities” where clean energy companies will qualify for tax breaks if they locate there. I wrote about these tax break zones in a previous column.

This seems a great idea, but I haven’t seen any action yet, either. Maybe it’s too soon. However, until something does happen, this feels like a meaningless promise. We’ve had enterprise zones of various sorts over the years, sometimes pushed by Republicans, sometimes by Democrats, but their track record is very mixed. Why do Democrats think this will be any different? Actually, I could make the case that it doesn’t matter what Democrats think — what matters is whether there’s any economic action on the ground from the private sector. As the famous Wendy’s ad from the 1980s put it: Where’s the beef?

Republicans vow “largest deportation program in American history”

The Republican platform says: “The Republican Party is committed to sending Illegal Aliens back home and removing those who have violated our Laws.” What it doesn’t say is how many people would be deported, but the phrase “the largest deportation program in American history” at least gives us a benchmark. The largest deportation program to date was under Dwight Eisenhower, when more than 1 million Mexican immigrants were removed in 1954.

What the platform doesn’t get into is the economic consequences of a large-scale deportation. Whether we call them “illegal aliens” as Republicans do or “undocumented workers” as Democrats prefer, this is not a population that exists outside the U.S. workforce. They are part of the workforce, so any deportation will have economic consequences. I wrote in more depth about what this would mean for Virginia in a previous column. The short version: Depending on the scale of the operation, Trump’s proposed deportations might cause Virginia to lose population for the first time since the 1830s. 

The biggest impact of that would be in the construction trades. A port by the Migration Policy Institute (which a report by the Virginia Department of Social Service later referenced) says that 31% of the unauthorized population who are employed and are age 16 and older — about 50,000 people — work in construction. The Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis says there are 214,400 construction jobs in Virginia as of January 2024. If that earlier 50,000 figure hasn’t changed (and realistically, it’s probably gone up, right?), then we’re talking 23.3% of construction jobs in Virginia becoming vacant.

Another 16% of the employed unauthorized population works in accommodation and food services — 26,000 people, the report says. Now, here’s the figure that might surprise some. Another 16% — another 26,000 — are in professional, scientific, management and administrative jobs.

Immigration has become an emotional topic, but we might want to have a conversation about what the economic impact of deportations would be.

What’s not addressed

Well, lots. Both platforms also chose to include some curious details. Republicans vow to send astronauts “onward to Mars.” Democrats vow to create an Advanced Research Projects Agency for Climate, “modeled on the defense research agency that’s behind breakthrough technologies like the internet and GPS.” Republicans say they will “promote beauty in public architecture.”  Democrats vow more research toward “ending cancer as we know it.” Republicans say they will “defend the right to mine bitcoin.” Democrats say they will “work to get farmers the right to repair their own equipment, without having to pay big equipment makers for diagnostic tools and repairs.”

There are obviously more profound differences between the two parties than how they feel about public architecture, and we won’t be able to look at all of those today. In the end, I doubt most of these details matter to voters — many of whom had their minds made up long before the campaign began. Elections generally don’t turn on party platforms, they turn on emotions and how voters feel about particular candidates or particular parties. 

What we have here is the classic contrast in visions of what kind of country we are and want to become. The Republican platform warns that “we are a nation in serious decline.” The Democratic platform more cautiously says we’re having a “great American comeback” from the pandemic fueled by “a clean energy boom.” 

We’ll find out in November what Americans think of where we are, and where they want us to go. For better or worse, voters feel they have a good sense of what Democrats want to do, since they’ve been in office almost four years now. It’s always the party out of power we’re most curious about. In this case, though, don’t look to the party platform to learn many details. 

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At his first solo campaign rally outside his home state of Ohio since becoming former President Donald Trump’s running mate, Sen. JD Vance on Monday fired up a crowd of about 1,000 supporters at Radford University.

In his 30-minute speech, interrupted several times by chants of “JD, JD,” Vance touted his humble working-class upbringing in a dysfunctional family while attempting to tie Vice President Kamala Harris, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, to the record of President Joe Biden, who announced Sunday that he would withdraw from his campaign for a second term.

“Hello, Virginia, it is great to be in Radford. Wow!” Vance said from behind the lectern, with dozens of Trump supporters in campaign swag crowding behind him. “I grew up in a place a lot like this one — Middletown, Ohio. That’s where I learned the values of loyalty, family, duty and honor.”

Vance arrived in Radford — only his second solo campaign stop as his party’s vice presidential nominee — after a rally in his hometown earlier on Monday. He told the audience in Radford that he was spending time with his children on Sunday when his wife told him that Biden wasn’t seeking reelection.

“You guys are excited about that, but I was looking forward to debating Kamala Harris, actually,” he said.

When the president formally endorsed Harris later that day, the Trump campaign immediately began a full-fledged assault against the vice president, prepping a wave of anti-Harris ads and mapping out lines of attack against her.

“History will remember Joe Biden not just as a quitter and one of the worst presidents of the United States of America. But my friends, Kamala Harris is a million times worse, and everybody knows it,” Vance said.

Harris “signed up for every single one of Joe Biden’s failures” and she lied about his mental capacity to serve as president, he continued. “Our country has been settled for three and a half years with a president who cannot do the job, and that is all because Kamala Harris and the rest of the Democrats lied about his ability to be our president.”

Vance, who has served in the U.S. Senate since early 2023, proved himself a gifted orator before the friendly Radford audience, offering clues to why Trump chose him as his running mate at the onset of the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee one week ago.

Once a bitter critic — in 2016 he called the then-Republican presidential candidate an “idiot” and “reprehensible,” privately comparing him to Adolf Hitler — Vance has since become one of Trump’s biggest advocates. And during his short time in the Senate, Vance has promoted strongly conservative policies on social issues, opposing abortion, same-sex marriage and gun control.

During his childhood in Middletown, Vance grew up surrounded by poverty and abuse. His mother struggled with drug addiction, and he and his sister were raised by their maternal grandparents.

“I grew up in a working-class family. I grew up where other kids said, ‘That kid is never going to turn out to be anything.’ I remember when I didn’t have any hope for my future and for my community. I thought that chaos and instability was going to be the narrative of my life, that there was no future,” Vance said.

“Look at you now, baby,” a woman in the audience called loudly after Vance reflected on his childhood. The shout got a smile from the candidate and a cheer from the crowd.

“And now I am running as Donald J. Trump’s vice president. I think it turned out pretty well for me,” he said.

After graduating from high school, Vance enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps and was deployed to Iraq. Upon returning home, he attended Ohio State University, where he graduated with a bachelor’s degree in political science and philosophy. He then went to Yale Law School and graduated in 2013.

In 2016, Vance joined entrepreneur Peter Thiel’s San Francisco-based firm Mithril Capital as a principal. That same year, he published his book “Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis,” about the Appalachian values of his upbringing and the social and socioeconomic problems of his hometown in Ohio.

Vance’s stories about his Appalachian roots have drawn widespread criticism among people from Appalachia over the years, including some New River Valley Democrats, who took offense at the region’s portrayal in the book.

“There’s more to Appalachia than JD Vance’s version. When outsiders like him exploit our region, we pick up the pieces,” Lily Franklin, the former Democratic nominee in the 41st House of Delegates District who lost to Montgomery County prosecutor Chris Obenshain in November, said on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter.

“Appalachia is rich in resilience, strength, and community. We pull together and rebuild repeatedly, but we deserve advocates who truly understand and uplift us,” Franklin said.

Liam Watson, a member of the Radford City Council, also weighed in on X.

“Look, I say this with all the love in my heart,” Watson wrote. “If JD Vance is going to waste his time in the New River Valley by spewing his tired, hateful rhetoric that paints Appalachians as lazy and ignorant … then he can get the hell out of my holler.”

And Susan Swecker, the chairwoman of the Democratic Party of Virginia and a Highland County native, implied in a statement that Vance was faking his background as an Appalachian.

“I know two things about JD Vance. He forgot where he came from and he doesn’t care about working-class people. Those of us who grew up in rural counties can forgive a lot of things like it says in the Good Book, but we can’t forget a sellout,” Swecker said.

“We know he is nothing but a fraud and con artist who supports Donald Trump’s extreme Project 2025 agenda to ban abortion, slash social security and Medicare, and raise prices for working families while giving tax cuts to billionaires.”

In Radford, Vance lashed out repeatedly against Harris, whom he called “even more extreme than Biden, even though that is hard to believe.”

Harris, he said, wants to “totally decriminalize” illegal immigration. “If you stop making it a crime to come into this country illegally, you’re just going to invite more and more illegal aliens, and we know that communities like Radford and Middletown, we’re the ones who suffer the consequences.”

Vance likely was referring to a moment during a Democratic primary debate in June 2019 when Harris — then a U.S. senator from California seeking the Democratic presidential nomination — was one of eight Democrats on stage who raised their hand when asked if they supported decriminalizing border crossings.

During an appearance on the daytime talk show “The View,” Harris later clarified that crossing the border illegally “should be a civil enforcement issue, but not a criminal enforcement issue.”

But Vance on Monday linked Harris to policies enabling an increase of migrant encounters on the U.S.-Mexico border, which reached a record high at the end of last year.

“Kamala Harris is America’s border czar, and how is our border doing?” Vance said.

“This is crazy. We’ve got to kick Kamala Harris out of the Oval Office. Don’t give her a chance to run away from the Biden record.”

Though the night’s previous speakers — including Rep. Morgan Griffith, R-Salem, in a red MAGA hat; Attorney General Jason Miyares; and Hung Cao, the Republican nominee for U.S. Senate — received modest applause and cheers, each ended with a vibrant response from the audience, prompted in part by promises to make America great again and secure the southern border.

In a brief interview before Vance took the stage, Miyares called it “a great crowd, a lot of patriotism, a lot of love of country.”

“I think what you have here is the sense that so many Virginians have that something’s off in our country. And I think they’re here in the best sense of what democracy is — they’re showing up to make sure their voices are heard.”

Miyares said he had a chance to speak with Vance before the event and said he could tell the candidate had “already done his homework about Virginia,” and asking specific questions about how to win in the commonwealth.

“Having a young running mate that’s able to connect with the next generation, I think, is critically important,” Miyares said. “We’re excited to see what he does and what he’s bringing to the ticket already.”

Earlier in the day, long before hundreds of GOP supporters lined up outside the Dedmon Center, Jack Garwood of Christiansburg was one of the first half-dozen to gather, hoping to get a glimpse of the Republican vice presidential nominee.

Garwood said that he’d worked his remote job on Sunday so he could take off Monday and get in line early for the event. He hadn’t brought any snacks or water for the wait, for fear of needing to use a portable toilet outside the arena. But the 28-year old from England — who cannot vote in the U.S. — was in good spirits in the humid, 80-degree weather.

“I’ve made quite a few friends, the company is very good, a lot of like-minded people, everyone’s very friendly,” Garwood said.

He said he hoped Vance would address Biden’s departure from the race and Republicans’ path forward. “Biden’s deficiencies were kind of obvious by the end,” Garwood said. “I’m interested in seeing what the plan is, how to deal with a potential President Harris.”

Garwood also wanted Vance to talk about issues facing rural America, he said. “A lot of that gets missed in national campaigns. Areas like this, like Christiansburg, areas like Southwest Virginia, they kind of get ignored” in favor of swing states and big cities, he said. “I think that’s one of the benefits of having Vance on the ticket. He has a background in this type of area. I’m hoping he can speak to that background a bit more.”

When the doors opened to start letting in the crowd at 3 p.m., Garwood found himself a spot in the center of the front row, directly in front of the podium. He had picked up a sign that said “Vote early” and “Swamp the vote.”

Siblings Juliana and James Paine came from Pulaski with their friend Colin Hall.

The three said they were curious to hear how Vance would talk about the opioid crisis, and about supporting the American middle class.

Juliana Paine, 21, said that while she doesn’t agree with some of the Republican ticket’s policies or rhetoric, “I believe that it’s necessary and my duty as a citizen to hear what someone has to say.”

Hall, who’s 17 and will vote for president for the first time this fall, said, “I’m not going to vote red, but I do want to inform myself and know who our competitors are.”

James Paine, 18, said that since Vance is likely to become a new figurehead for the Republican Party, “I think it’s good, especially in my early political life, to become familiar with that.

“I want to see how he addresses things about maybe something I can relate to, maybe I could really resonate with. Or maybe not.”

James Paine wore a shirt with an image of Trump raising his fist while surrounded by Secret Service agents during the assassination attempt on July 13. He said someone in their group handed it to him to wear.

“I didn’t know if this shirt looked good with my outfit,” he said, holding up a green checkered button-up shirt. “Even if I’m not gung-ho about Trump, it’s whatever. It’s one day. It’s a cool shirt to wear.” When he found a seat later, he had put his green shirt back on.

During the Republican National Convention last week, Juliana Paine said she heard a message to younger voters saying that if they wanted to go “against the grain,” they should fight for marriage and for having children.

“I think you’re missing the mark completely,” she said. “If you want to go for younger voters, you go for issues that younger voters are voting for. I don’t think age is necessarily a factor if you want my vote.”

If anything, Vance got the Republican message across at his second rally as a presidential nominee — a message that always circled back to the leader of the Republican Party.

“President Trump and I made a simple pledge that we will pull out every last drop of sweat, we will work our tails off and we will make America great again, and we are going to do it together,” Vance said, earning “USA, USA” chants from the crowd.

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In the spring of 2023, the theater departments at Lynchburg’s two public high schools joined together to produce the popular, but often controversial, musical “The Prom,” which is loosely based on the true story of a gay couple banned from attending their high school prom.

Lynchburg City Council member Marty Misjuns blasted the choice: “It’s absolutely appalling to me that the publicly funded Lynchburg City Schools would put on a production with children that openly mocks the vast Judeo-Christian majority in our city … Lynchburg City Schools should immediately cancel the rest of these productions out of respect for those that believe in, prescribe to, and practice the Christian faith.”

The show went on — and became the best-attended show at Heritage High School in the post-COVID era. 

There may be several lessons from that episode, but one of them is surely this: Schools have become battlegrounds for conflicting cultural values, and anything dealing with LGBTQ+ issues is especially controversial. It’s probably no accident that many of the books that get pulled from school library shelves have LGBTQ+ themes or characters. Throw in a dash of religion — as “The Prom” did — and the mix becomes even more explosive.

One detail that was often overlooked at the time: It was students, not teachers, who picked the show. Some seniors had been pushing for it since they were freshmen, but the performance rights weren’t available then. The fact did nothing to lessen the objections to the show from those who found it offensive, but it does help illustrate the complexities of our diverse society: Even in a conservative Southern city best-known for its high-profile religious university, there are teenagers who identify with the characters in “The Prom” and adults who support them. And I’m sure in more liberal communities, there is a minority of conservatives who feel out of step with the prevailing culture around them.

This is why governing our society is so hard.

The latest example of this came early this month in Augusta County, where the school board went into an emergency closed session on a Saturday night to discuss what to do about a student’s piece of artwork that was set to be displayed the next afternoon at a high school art show.

The board wound up not doing anything, at least not right now. When it came out of closed session, board chair David Shifflett said the school system may look into creating new rules for student art shows in the future.

The student whose artwork set all this in motion is Abby Driscoll, a 17-year-old senior at Fort Defiance High School. She’s gay. She’s also a talented artist who hopes someday to own her own photography business. For the spring art show, she chose a series of works to exhibit. 

There was one piece she wondered whether to include, because it included Bible verses. Specifically, it showed a pair of hands, clasped in prayer and holding rosary beads, with Bible verses in the background and these words in the foreground: “God Loves You But Not Enough To Save You.” In a statement on the art website Artsonia, Abby says: “This piece is representative of the idea that growing up queer meant you couldn’t be saved by God. I grew up in a religious background and that influenced this project. The idea of the glowing red cross is to represent evil in the eyes of God and the bleeding rainbow represents devotion vs identity. Overall the piece gets across the message I want it to, even if it is a little in your face. I wish I had made the rosary more detailed but I’m glad I spent most of my time in the hands and drips. I think this was a successful piece and states what I want it to.”

She asked friends whether they thought the piece was too strong to include in the art show. They told her there might be some complaints but not to worry.

They were wrong.

The artwork went up after school on a Friday afternoon.

“By nighttime I had heard people disagreeing with it,” Abby told me. “A lot of things were going up on social media. It was mostly students Friday night.”

From the comments she saw, “there was a lot of backlash from students, a lot of students saying it was disrespectful and shouldn’t be allowed in school — but also a lot of support. … It wasn’t until Saturday night that I made it to Facebook and I saw adults commenting on it.”

On that Saturday afternoon at 4:28 p.m., one Augusta County School Board member, Timothy Simmons, posted this on Facebook:

Several people have reached out to me regarding the art show on Sunday at Fort Defiance High School and a specific piece of art that is slated to be in the show. This particular piece of art is seen as offensive to some, including myself. The School Board has called a special meeting tonight at 9:00 pm to discuss. The meeting will be held in closed session, however any vote on the matter will take place publicly. 

This is a sensitive topic with various dynamics at play and I will do my best to handle it as such. 

The School Board is working with our legal counsel and I am currently reviewing the Supreme Court rulings relevant to this situation. 

I will also be asking for a review on the process for approving pieces that are included in the art shows. Is there a process in place and, if so, how do we honor students’ free speech while also creating a culture of respect within our schools.

It’s since generated 572 comments, from all sides. Here’s a sampling:

• This art doesn’t belong in a high school.
• As someone who believes in God, I see nothing offensive or wrong about this artwork. The message is sincere, raw, and authentic. It’s powerful and this kid has every right to share it. Christians need to stop bullying everyone that doesn’t agree with them. Respect the youth and their right to use their voice! 
• Would you say the same thing if a student created an art piece attacking gays? This piece is hate speech as it attacks Christianity. Can’t have it both ways. 
• She’s just a kid expressing her trauma. Her trauma brought by adults. And this board is just perpetuating the trauma. 
• This artwork is an attack on Christianity, it is hate speech. 
• It seems to me that instead of trying to remove the student’s art you ask yourself what pain led them to create this instead of clutching your pearls claiming religious persecution. 

“There was a lot going up on social media,” Abby said. “It was discussed on Snapchat, Instagram, I saw it on pretty much all social media platforms.” 

The school board never contacted her or her family. The board meeting was held in closed session and resulted in no action. That Saturday at 11:11 p.m. Simmons, the school board member, posted on Facebook:

The Board met and agreed to work on a policy that will address issues like this going forward. As I mentioned previously, it is important that our students have freedom of speech but also that we maintain a culture of respect within our schools. This is a delicate balancing act but the Board is committed to finding a solution. For now, the art work in question will be removed by the time students arrive back at school on Monday as the art show ends on Sunday.

That post has since generated 503 comments, mostly in the vein of the comments above. 

The next day, the art show went on as planned, although “we had a few cops show up, they were just standing around making sure nobody was going to cause anything,” Abby said.

There were no problems. 

By day’s end, the art show was down, as planned, but then came a round of media attention. Abby said she was inundated with messages of support as the stories circulated. “Oh geez, directly probably like 30. I had a lot of people reach out to me.” The Wisconsin-based Freedom From Religion Foundation contacted Abby and invited her to apply for a $1,500 scholarship. “There’s a lot more community supporting me than I thought,” Abby said. “The hate is lot more loud but there’s a lot more support than you think.”

Neither the Augusta school board chair nor the member who posted about the artwork responded to my inquiries, so I don’t know how they feel about all this now. I also contacted some of the larger school systems in the western part of Virginia to see if they’ve ever had an art show controversy. They have not.

Nationally, though, controversies arising out of student art shows are not unheard of. At the same time that Augusta County was dealing with artwork that some considered offensive to Christianity (and others, plainly, did not), a school system in New York was dealing with a piece of student artwork that was deemed racist for the way it depicted basketball star LeBron James with a comparison to a monkey. In that case, the superintendent issued a statement — “Superintendent addresses racist artwork at art show,” the school system’s website says — and said there was an investigation.

Just a few weeks earlier, two students in Phoenix said a school had banned their entries in a school art show because they depicted or suggested nudity. Both students were girls. “I think it also sends a message that women should be ashamed of their bodies,” one of them told a Phoenix TV station. “That is a horrible message to send to young girls.”

Last year, Inside Higher Education devoted an article to the challenges that colleges face when displaying art. Among the examples it cited: In 2019, what was then Mary Baldwin College (now Mary Baldwin University) removed artwork that depicted Confederate figures because some students found it offensive — “thinly veiled microaggressions,” one student called it. Others said it “verged on hate speech.” The irony is that the Richmond-based artists said they intended their work as a way to reimagine the spaces in Richmond where Confederate monuments had been removed. But that’s not how some viewers took it.

You’ll notice in these examples that some involve those on the right, other times those on the left. Here some said the art in question was offensive to Christians; at Hamline University in Minnesota some Muslim students said that artwork displayed in an art history class was offensive to their faith (and the instructor’s contract wasn’t renewed). Art is sometimes an equal-opportunity offender.

Through the centuries, artwork has often been controversial — even the great Michaelangelo ran afoul of church authorities because he included nude figures in one of his frescoes in the Sistine Chapel. (After his death, the offending parts were painted over.) The artist known as Balthus — his full name was Balthasar Klossowski de Rola — has some works that are so disturbing that one particularly controversial piece hasn’t been shown in public since 1977.

Perhaps, then, we shouldn’t be surprised that some student artwork also becomes controversial, and that what is offensive to some is artistic to others. Abby told me she’s gotten lots of requests for prints of her piece, and even one person who offered to buy the original. She’s not sure she wants to part with the original, but prints are available through Artsonia, a site of student artwork where 20% of the sales goes to the art program at each student’s school. The piece “But Not Enough To Save You” has generated 138 comments — all since the controversy first became public, and all in her favor.

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Franklin County has long been known as the moonshine capital of the world. Neighboring Patrick and Floyd counties are now collaborating with Franklin County to celebrate Virginia’s moonshine heritage with the creation of the Mountain Spirit Trail. 

Visitors will be able to learn about the history of corn whiskey and its impact on the region, visit sites of destroyed stills and enjoy tastings of legally produced moonshine from local distilleries along Virginia’s newest tourism trail. 

The Mountain Spirit Trail brand was revealed at a public event last week. The trail is still under development, but visitors can expect to see complete trail information this fall.

“Moonshine heritage is more than just history; it’s a living testament to our Appalachian roots and the craftsmanship that defines us. Inspired by this rich legacy, the [Mountain Spirit Trail] beckons adventurers to immerse themselves in our storied tradition,” Kathleen Legg, Floyd County’s tourism director, said in a press release.

“Our moonshine heritage has deep roots tracing back to the region’s early settlers, who relied on the production of illicit distilled spirits as a means of survival and income,” Patrick County tourism director James Houchins said during an April 30 event celebrating the trail. 

“We’re so excited to be able to share it with the rest of the world and we hope … that you will work with us to develop the trail, to develop the stops, to tell those stories [and] to tell that history,” said Kevin Tosh, Franklin County’s director of tourism and marketing.

The tourism trail will promote 10 to 12 sites in each of the three counties, he said. Tosh and his Patrick and Floyd county counterparts began working on the trail two years ago, although the idea was first proposed by their predecessors prior to COVID.

The unveiling was held at the Blue Ridge Institute and Museum at Ferrum College, which will be a destination along the Mountain Spirit Trail, according to Bethany Worley, its executive director. 

“We have the largest moonshine collection in the world, including stills … photographs and documents,” she said, adding that the climate-controlled archive includes collections from multiple historians. 

Following the announcement, Worley led a group tour of the archives. Old distilling equipment fills a large back room; many of the items were donated to the museum, she said.

Henry Law of Law’s Choice Distillery, Moonshine Explosion museum owner Greg Graham and Living Proof Beer Company head brewer Rob Amos stood in the corner discussing the stills and other moonshining artifacts. 

Law noted the workmanship of a large copper worm, a coiled copper tube that would have been used in a still to condense steam back into liquid moonshine, according to BRIM.

Law could tell that the worm had been handcrafted in the tradition of old-time coppersmiths. 

“You can’t get them [like that] anymore,” he said.

The worm Law was referring to, standing about knee-high and held up by a wooden frame, was fashioned by the late Hansel Turner of Patrick County, said Caleb Bailey, BRIM’s office manager and festival organizer. 

The worm shows seams in the tubing. Traditional coppersmiths would take sheets of copper, roll them into tubing and solder the edges together. They would then wind the tube into a hefty coil. 

“We don’t have to do all the soldering that they had to do. Every time you do a little bit of soldering you take more chances of a leak,” Law said.

Modern-day distillers can buy copper tubing to wind into worms. There’s little chance of having a leak with the new method, Law said. 

Law’s family continues to pass down the moonshining tradition, in a more legal fashion. His distillery is a couple of miles south of Rocky Mount; he said he prides himself on still doing everything in the traditional way.

“Everything we have, we built,” Law said, telling of a time that a federal Alcohol, Tax and Trade Bureau official asked him for serial numbers for the equipment. He said he didn’t have any serial numbers because they had built everything themselves.

“He couldn’t wrap his brain around it,” Law said.

“It’s a dying art. We don’t push stuff like this, it will all be lost. And we don’t want it to be lost,” Law said to the crowd during the event, mentioning that his son Austin would eventually take over Law’s Choice Distillery. 

“I never dreamed I’d be able to hand it down to my son. My grandfather, my father, me and now my son — it gives me chills to even talk about it,” he said.

* * *

The Mountain Spirit Trail’s roots are in the state’s “Virginia is for Moonshine Lovers” campaign, according to Houchins. 

On Jan. 16, 2019, the spinoff of the state’s larger “Virginia is for Lovers” brand was unveiled during a ceremony that also commemorated the 100th anniversary of the ratification of the 18th Amendment, which ushered in Prohibition, according to The Smith Mountain Eagle. 

At the 2019 ceremony, then-Franklin County Tourism Director David Rotenizer said, “We need to own Prohibition from a tourism perspective and from a community pride perspective.”

“You might say that David passed off the baton,” Houchins said as he explained the history of the project to the crowd gathered last week.

Rotenizer pitched the idea of a moonshine trail shortly after Houchins took over the Patrick County tourism department. Houchins loved the idea, and decided to see how much information he could gather about moonshining in his county.

“The ball started rolling,” he said. Houchins brought Tosh on board, and then Floyd County Tourism Director Floyd Legg. 

Houchins and Patrick County tourism associate Noah Mabe began sifting through records at the Patrick County Historical Society. They sought out people like former Patrick County Sheriff’s Office Investigator Danny Martin, who now works as an interpretive ranger at Fairy Stone State Park.

Martin, 77, worked narcotics his first three years in the sheriff’s office, he said, and was involved in the investigations or raids of eight Patrick County moonshine stills. Most often, informants would report moonshine operations to Martin, or he would find them when he was walking through the woods, he said.

“I love to walk a little, to hike. I’ve been all over these mountains, all these woods. I’ve found the ruins of a number of stills. Probably a dozen or so,” Martin said. 

“I was told at a very early age, if I ever heard anything about moonshine, keep my mouth shut,” he said, explaining that he grew up in the region and understood all about the history of the trade.

Even today, he imagines that people are still making illicit liquor somewhere out there, maybe to keep up the tradition or the culture, or just because of greed.

Martin and his stories helped the team identify a number of Patrick County trail locations, Houchins said. 

One of those will be Fairy Stone State Park, where Martin leads a Moonshine Hollow Hike that winds past two historical still locations, only accessible by trailblazing through the woods, he said.

The Patrick County section will also take in I.C. DeHart Park, No Business Mountain at the Reynolds Homestead, and the Patrick County Historical Museum, according to Mabe. 

Over in Floyd County, trail stops will include the Floyd County Historical Society, 5 Mile Mountain Distillery, Old Church Gallery, LUSH Lounge and the historical marker commemorating the birthplace of bootlegger-turned-NASCAR-driver Curtis Turner, among other places, according to Legg. 

Franklin County offers three distilleries with tasting rooms: Franklin County Distilleries, Twin Creeks Distillery and Roosters Rise N Shine Distillery; all three will be featured on the trail, Tosh said. While Law’s Choice Distillery does not have a tasting room, restaurants and bars serving its products will be listed as stops on the trail. Other stops in that county will include BRIM, the Franklin County Historical Society and the Moonshine Explosion museum, which opened May 1 in the basement of Rocky Mount’s Olde Towne Social House.

In terms of moonshine history, the building has housed both Turner Motor Company and Helms Farmer Exchange, the latter of which was the focus of a state and federal moonshine investigation and trial beginning in 1998. 

As for Turner Motor Company, the car dealership and repair shop’s legendary fire is the reason the museum exists. On July 11, 1930, three Model Ts dropped through the building’s wooden first floor and into the basement during a massive fire. 

The fire had started shortly after a car was pulled into a garage bay, full of fuel and full of moonshine, said museum co-owner Beth Graham. 

​”[The car] was running hot as it usually was, because it was running from the law,” she said. The mechanic left the car to cool down and he left the building, she said. 

The mechanic, Reedy Dillon, closed the garage door on his way out of the building, according to information provided by Linda Stanley at the Franklin County Historical Society. 

But the engine didn’t cool down. Instead, a leaking fuel pump sparked the fire, according to The Franklin News Post. 

“[The car] exploded with the two cars beside it and fell through to the basement,” Beth Graham said, noting that the wooden floor burned through. Burn marks can still be seen on the building’s first floor interior walls.

Three cars have remained in the basement ever since. In 2008 and again in 2015, they were discovered during building renovations, when contractors opened up the basement’s brick walls. Now, they are on display for public viewing. 

“That’s just great timing that it all happened that way,” said Greg Graham, regarding the museum’s opening coinciding with the announcement of the trail.

* * *

“I’m really anxious to see the whole lineup of what [the trail] has to offer and how that can be utilized by businesses and community partners,” said Kalen Hunter, senior destination development manager at Virginia Tourism Corporation, the state’s tourism agency.

“Our vision … is to take this to a regional and then also to a state level, to have a Moonshine Heritage Trail that retells the history of moonshine,” Houchins said during the event at BRIM.

The Mountain Spirit Trail received $5,500 in the spring of 2023 from the Virginia Tourism Corporation’s Marketing Leverage Program. Patrick County partnered with Floyd County and Franklin County to supply $5,500 in matching funds. 

“It’s beneficial to see communities coming together to promote their assets,” Hunter said.

Marketing and managing the trail will be a collective effort between the three counties and the West Piedmont Planning District Commission. 

In 2022, tourism contributed $108.7 million in direct impact to Franklin, Patrick and Floyd counties, according to data from the Virginia Tourism Corporation. More than half of that, $67.9 million, was spent in Franklin County. That can probably be attributed to Franklin County’s location along Smith Mountain Lake, Tosh said, since the VTC data includes second-home spending. 

In 2022, Franklin County brought in $2.7 million in taxes attributable to visitor spending, according to the VTC data. Patrick and Floyd counties followed with $1.2 million and $700,000, respectively. 

According to Legg, she, Houchins and Tosh have drawn inspiration from the success of Kentucky’s Moonshine Trail. 

“It’s the perfect time because if you look [back] 10 to 15 years ago, it was still sort of taboo to talk about, but now more people are realizing that this is about their heritage,” Houchins said.

“We’re not promoting, per se, the consumption of moonshine. Although we know if you study something long enough, you’re going to want to see what it is,” he said.

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Want more news about Virginia’s changing demographics? We’ve collected all our demographic coverage in one place.

Every day, there are about 55 earthquakes around the world. Most are small, sometimes imperceptible except to seismic instruments, but the ground beneath our feet is always moving as the tectonic plates inside the earth shift back and forth.

Our demographics change in much the same way — usually slowly, in ways we barely notice, until the pressure builds up enough that there’s a big ground-shaker and earth-splitter.

Across Virginia, particularly the western part, we’re seeing the tremors caused by those changing demographics. Franklin County is closing two schools because there aren’t enough students. Bedford County and Lynchburg have looked at closing schools for the same reason, but so far elected officials there have managed to avoid that unpopular, although sometimes necessary, outcome.

Russell County is the latest to experience the demographic ground shifting enough that it, too, might have to close some schools. Superintendent Kimberly Cooper has recommended that the Copper Creek and Swords Creek elementary schools be closed; the school board is set to vote May 7. Cardinal’s Susan Cameron reported on a recent public hearing where parents and others implored the board not to close the schools. This isn’t new: Seven years ago, Russell County closed Givens Elementary.

Russell County has a declining population, declining school enrollment and faces a budget deficit that must be closed.

None of these things have come about suddenly, nor are many of these trends unique to Russell County — Russell’s just where the numbers have gotten to a point to force some action. With that in mind, let’s dive into the data to understand this better.

Bedford County and Lynchburg are interesting, and unusual, because their overall populations are growing, even though school enrollment isn’t — a dual consequence of aging populations and declining birth rates. Franklin County has been gaining population for a long time but only recently slipped into the population loss category even though more people are moving into the county than out of it — but those numbers are dwarfed by deaths outnumbering births and net in-migration.

Russell County fits into a different category because it’s been losing population in five of the last seven Census Bureau headcounts. Like many rural counties, it’s long seen an exodus of people — typically young adults — moving out. Russell also has another factor working against it: declining employment in the coal business.

To look at the specific numbers: Russell County’s population peaked at 26,818 in 1950 and then began declining as the coal industry became more mechanized and required fewer workers. By 1970, the county’s population had fallen to 24,533. The oil crises of the 1970s were an economic boom for coal counties — part of President Jimmy Carter’s energy policy was to dig more coal. During the 1970s, the populations in many coal counties surged. In Russell, it went up 29.5% to a record 31,761. By 2020, the county’s population was down to 25,781 (about what it had been sometime in the early 1970s).

The Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service at the University of Virginia, which handles the state’s demographic data, projects that Russell’s population will keep on declining — to 22,340 in 2030, to 19,781 in 2040, to 17,517 in 2050.

Again, this isn’t unusual: Only one locality west of Montgomery County is projected to have a bigger population in 2050 than today, and that’s Washington County. The sharpest declines have been — and will likely continue to be — in Buchanan County. Buchanan peaked in 1980, just as Russell did, at 37,989. By 2020, it was down to 20,355. By 2050, it’s projected to be just 9,558.

None of these are happy numbers, but they are numbers that communities must contend with.

Some rural counties across Virginia have seen a demographic turnaround since the pandemic — they’re now seeing more people move in than out. I’ve called this a Zoom-era migration, although it’s hard to tell how much of that is truly driven by remote workers (although we have seen remote work increase in many places).

Russell County, though, has not benefited from this.

In the most recent population estimates, Russell is seen losing population two ways. It continues to experience out-migration — a net loss of 280 people via the moving van since 2020. And, like most places, it sees far more deaths than births — a deficit of 468, for a total population loss of 748.

There are two ways to look at this.

One way is this: Even if nobody moved out of the county, Russell County would keep losing population because the deaths-over-births rate is so high.

The other way is this: The county can’t do much about people dying, but it might be able to do something to make the county more attractive to newcomers. Not every county in that part of Southwest Virginia is seeing net out-migration. Lee County and Scott County are now both seeing more people move in than move out. Russell’s migration deficit isn’t unimaginably big. It seems something that, over time, could be turned around.

Having more people move in won’t necessarily help the county’s enrollment issues — witness Bedford County and Lynchburg.

Some of that has to do with the age of who’s moving in (which we can’t track precisely) and declining birth rates (which we can).

In the 2001-2002 school year, Russell County schools had an enrollment of 3,944. Last year that was down to 2,924. This year it’s back up to 3,178 but is projected to fall again to 2,929 by the 2028-2029 school year.

What Russell County schools need is a baby boom, but that doesn’t seem likely — not with birth rates declining, and not with the age structure of Russell’s population. Look at this Census Bureau population pyramid for Russell County:

Russell’s two biggest age cohorts are 55 to 59 and 65 to 69.

The smallest are ages 5 to 9 and under 5. The age cohort under age 5 is the smallest of any cohort under age 75 to 79.

Russell County is not that different from other counties in Southwest Virginia. Here’s the population pyramid for neighboring Washington County:

As with Russell County, Washington County’s two biggest age cohorts are on the older side — ages 60 to 64 and 65 to 69. In Washington’s case, the age cohort under age 5 is the youngest of any age cohort under age 80 to 84.

Now notice how different Russell’s population pyramid is from Fairfax County:

In Fairfax, the biggest age cohorts are ages 35 to 39 and 40 to 44. The age cohorts under age 10 are much larger than any of those age 65 and older.

Now let’s look at Arlington County:

This looks like a Christmas tree. The biggest age cohort is ages 25 to 29, with ages 30 to 34 being the next biggest. Athough those dwarf the age cohorts under age 20, the youngest age cohort is comparable to those ages 55 to 59 — and bigger than any age cohort older than that.

The short version: Fairfax and Arlington have younger populations than Russell County, which means they produce more children.

Having grown up in a rural area, and living in one now, I’m quite sympathetic to the idea of keeping rural schools open — they seem far more central to a rural community than an urban one. Closing a school also doesn’t make it easier to attract people to a community. At some point, though, the numbers are in charge. How much is Russell County willing to pay to keep all its schools open?

Russell County’s real estate tax rate is 63 cents per $100 of assessed value. That’s in line with what its neighbors charge (except for Buchanan County, where the rate is just 39 cents per $100). To raise the real estate tax rate would be unpopular, and put Russell County at a market disadvantage in its region. However, residents in more urban areas of the state won’t have much sympathy for Russell. People in Roanoke pay $1.22 per $100, those in Norfolk, $1.25; those in Falls Church, $1.32.

It’s not my place to tell Russell County what the county should do. But whatever it does, these are the numbers that will have to be part of that decision.  

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