There is about to be a major shift in the makeup of Charlottesville’s School Board.

Four of the board’s seven seats are up for election this fall, and three of the incumbent members have decided they will not run again. It’s unclear if the fourth incumbent member, Jennifer McKeever, will seek reelection. McKeever did not respond to Charlottesville Tomorrow’s request for comment, and as of Thursday she had not filed the necessary paperwork with the Voter Registration Office to run, said Joshua Jenkins, chief deputy registrar. She has until Tuesday to do so.

That means it’s possible the School Board will have four new faces this fall. While it’s not often that the board welcomes so many new members at one time, even with four open seats, it does happen. The last time the School Board had four new members was in 2005. 

But there is regular turnover on the board, said Jenkins. And, members tend to hold their positions for years. McKeever and exiting board member Sherry Kraft served for more than eight years, exiting member James Bryant served for five years and LaShundra Bryson Morsberger for four years.

This is Superintendent Royal Gurley’s first election cycle. He said the four seats up for election is not something he is particularly worried about. He looks forward to having new voices to offer input.

“It’ll be four new people coming on with four new ideas,” said Superintendent Royal Gurley. “I’m sure anyone whose running is qualified.”

But who those people will be is still a mystery. So far, only two people — Chris Meyer and Amanda Burns — have completed the necessary paperwork to run. Five additional people have started the process to become candidates, but had not completed it as of Thursday, said Jenkins.

Whomever takes the new board seats will be making a lot of important decisions in the coming years.

“It is a policy-making role, not a management one,” said Kraft. “It’s hard work but it’s worth it.” 

Just in the last two years, the Charlottesville School Board secured $90 million to rebuild Buford Middle School. It also rezoned the historically redlined and still predominantly Black neighborhood of Westhaven so that the students there will attend the nearby Trailblazer (formerly Venable) Elementary School rather than be bussed across town to Burnely-Moran. It was among the first in the state to approve a collective bargaining agreement with school workers and took over full ownership of the Charlottesville Albemarle Technical Education Center.

Kraft said the board has also worked to fix inequities within the schools’ gifted program and improve mental health services for students.

The future School Board will immediately face more issues. There remains a major school bus driver shortage that has kept thousands of students from getting a bus to school. The board must also finalize some “foundational decisions” for how it will run CATEC by next summer. Standardized testing also remains an issue, with Charlottesville schools testing below the state average in some subjects, particularly its students of color.

Both Kraft and Morsberger emphasized the need for new members to tackle equity issues within the school system. Students of color and economically disadvantaged students in Charlottesville are less likely to enroll in Advanced Placement courses or be in the school’s gifted program, according to the two members. It’s a problem the School Board has been discussing for years. 

“We still have issues with achievement with students of color, there was more learning loss among disadvantaged students. We need to continue to work on that and bringing those kids farther along,” said Kraft. 

Kraft said she hopes the new board members will be “younger.” Four of the board’s seven members are over 50, two are over 70. Kraft, the board’s oldest member, is 75. 

The four-term member hopes having a younger makeup will challenge the rest of the board and the community, which could be beneficial, she said.

That said, new members should be prepared for the dedicated time commitment, but should not be afraid to only take on what they can, said Bryson Morsberger. And it can be difficult to balance, especially for people with full time employment or other responsibilities.

Bryson Morseberger, an human resources specialist with the National Park Service, limited her commitment by not joining school committees. Still, the two-three hours a week she spent on Board business became a lot to balance with working a separate full-time job and being a mother. During the earlier stages of the pandemic, board members were at meetings multiple times a week, said Bryson Morsberger, 

On top of the monthly meetings, School Board members are assigned to committees each year. Some members can be in one to seven committees, and the time commitment for those groups can range.

Within the last year, the School Board pivoted to aiding in student discipline assessments for kids looking at out-of-school suspensions or expulsions in addition to their other obligations. The meetings would last an hour or so, but the process still left some members burnt out. 

“There were times where we would do a discipline hearing and I would just go home and pass out,” said Bryson Morsberger. “It was taxing.”

She continued, “In the beginning of my term, I felt like I could balance it all, but after the pandemic, I’m feeling burnt out.”

So, she encourages new board members to only take on what they’re able to.

“Show up the way you can, even if it doesn’t fit perfectly,” said Bryson Morsberger.  

Kraft’s only concern is new board members may lack institutional knowledge, which would make deciding on long term issues more difficult, she said.

“There could be some people who don’t know the history of how we got to this point,” said Kraft

Board members serve a two-year term, which means three or more seats are up for election every two years. Board Members Lisa Larson-Torres, Dom Morse and Emily Dooley will remain on the board during the election. 

In order to run, prospective candidates must get 125 signatures from Charlottesville citizens. 

The deadline for candidate applications is June 20. Those interested in petitioning can visit the State Board of Elections website for more information. The Charlottesville registrar can be contacted at 434-970-3250 or vote [at] charlottesville.org.

Election day is Nov. 7.

The post Four of Charlottesville School Board’s seven seats may turn over this fall, bringing in entirely new leadership for the district appeared first on Charlottesville Tomorrow.

The Bedford County School Board voted Thursday to approve a policy preventing teachers from initiating discussions with students about sexual orientation or gender identity.

The policy, which was amended from a 2021 version, is the first of its kind in the state at the school board level, according to the American Civil Liberties Union of Virginia. It’s also an example of a growing national debate about what teachers can discuss in their classrooms.

The board voted 5-1 to approve the policy update, titled “teaching about controversial issues.” The new language says that teachers may respond to questions from students about sexual orientation or gender, but can’t start those conversations outside of approved curriculum. 

One example that was frequently referenced in discussions about the proposed change had to do with questions that students might have about a teacher’s personal life after seeing a family photo in the classroom.

Under the initial language of the policy update, a teacher would not be able to engage in that conversation at all. Though the board members who wrote the policy said the update applies to curriculum discussions only, others had expressed concerns that the language was too vague and didn’t support students and faculty who identify as LGBTQ+.

The language was amended before the vote to say that the teacher can respond to student questions but should avoid being forthcoming about their life outside the classroom. 

The policy was last revised in fall 2021; prior to that it was last updated in 2012. 

The most recent version said that in teaching about “controversial topics,” instructors were expected to “provide instruction in an atmosphere that is free from bias, prejudice, or coercion,” and to keep related instruction to a level that’s appropriate for the students in question. It did not dictate how or whether teachers could discuss sexual orientation or gender.

School board members Marcus Hill and Christopher Daniels, who sit on the board’s intergovernmental affairs committee with the superintendent, proposed the updated policy for review at the board’s April meeting. 

Minutes from the March 2023 committee meeting, where a review of the policy was first discussed, are not included in monthly minutes archived in a Bedford County Public Schools Google Drive folder.

In a heated discussion about the language of the proposed policy at the board’s May meeting, Daniels stressed that parents should be the first to respond to their children’s questions about sexual orientation or gender, not teachers or counselors.

On Thursday, school board member Susan Mele cast the only vote against the policy change. In discussion before the vote, she raised concerns that the policy language may make it difficult to fairly determine whether classroom discussions are “reasonable” or “controversial.”

The ACLU sent a letter to the school board on June 6 warning against approving the policy change.

“By using incredibly broad terms to define its prohibitions, this provision invites discriminatory enforcement,” the letter says. “Anyone who discusses or acknowledges any aspect of LGBTQ+ identity will fear running afoul of the policy, while the myriad of daily explicit and implicit discussions of heterosexuality or cisgender identity will be assumed to be the default and thus permissible under this policy.” 

Hill City Pride, a nonprofit supporting the LGBTQIA+ community in the greater Lynchburg area, also issued a letter ahead of the vote. “Due to its subjective nature and a lack of clear guidelines, teachers will have no definitive way of knowing which conversations will be perceived as appropriate,” it wrote. “This will breed an environment of fear for educators, students and all who identify as LGBTQIA+, which will result in their silence and isolation.” 

School board chair Susan Kirby said she didn’t comment on the policy when it was first discussed earlier in the spring. “I do know there are a lot of homes in this county in which the teacher is the only one that a student feels safe going to talk to,” she said.

She added, “On the same token, I believe teachers should maintain professionalism and keep their personal life at home as much as possible.”

Some in the audience applauded the move after a public comment session that included mixed reactions from community members.

Amy Snead, a parent who identified herself as a member of the parental rights group Moms for Liberty, said during public comment, “If an issue arises such as gender identity or sexual orientation, the parents should always be the first conversation about this, regardless of anything else.” Critics of Moms for Liberty say it promotes conspiracy theories that children are being sexualized in school.

In his remarks following the vote, Superintendent Marc Bergin said that Bedford County Public Schools does not tolerate discrimination against staff or students “with regard to any of their personal characteristics” and that “school is and must always remain a safe space for everyone.”

The revised policy resembles a law passed in Florida last year to prohibit discussion of sexual orientation and gender in classrooms. Opponents of the legislation have termed it the “Don’t Say Gay” law; it is officially called the Parental Rights in Education law.

Pro-LGBT group Equality Virginia has called the Bedford County approval the state’s first “Don’t Say Gay or Trans” rule and has said it could lead to further limitations on classroom discussion. 

Some Virginia school systems have considered similar rule changes that reflect policies Gov. Glenn Youngkin has proposed since taking office last year. 

Youngkin, who has promoted the role of parents in education, has called for additional policies that would prevent educators from addressing students by a pronoun that doesn’t correspond with their enrollment documents and would require transgender students to use restrooms that correspond with their biological sex. The Virginia Department of Education is still reviewing public comment in response to those proposed policies.

Bedford County Public Schools has complied with a 2022 state law that mandates school systems have policies to notify parents about any curricular material that could be viewed as sexually explicit.

In Orange County, north of Charlottesville, the school board has tabled a discussion on whether to implement a policy requiring schools to notify parents if a student “self-identifies” their gender.

The post Bedford County School Board approves policy limiting discussion of sexual orientation and gender appeared first on Cardinal News.

Meteorologists expect smoke from Canadian wildfires to remain over central Virginia until this weekend.

That means air quality will remain poor in Charlottesville and surrounding counties until around Saturday, and people should try and avoid exerting themselves outside, especially those with heart and lung issues.

The National Weather Service has issued a “code red air quality alert” for this area beginning Tuesday. That means, the air quality could become so poor that it could be dangerous for even healthy people to be physically active outside.

The air quality was not quite that bad in Albemarle County as of 10 a.m. Wednesday. The Virginia Department of Environmental Quality measured the amount of fine particulate matter in the air to be at a moderate level, which is most dangerous to “unusually sensitive individuals” with heart or lung disease or older adults.

“That is currently moderate, but it’s a high moderate,” said Dan Salkovitz, a VDEQ meteorologist.

And that could change at any time, he added. If the amount of fine particulate matter in Albemarle County increases just a bit, more groups of people become at risk for health issues — including children.

The issue is wind direction. Well, and wildfires.

As of Tuesday there were 240 wildfires deemed “out of control” by the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre. Many are directly north of this area in the Québec province, and many have been burning for days.

As those fires burn, the smoke that billows from them contains the fine particle matter that the DEQ measures to determine weather quality.

Right now, there is an area of low atmospheric pressure just over New England, and the wind surrounding that area of low pressure is rotating counterclockwise, said Kevin Rodriguez, the lead forecaster with the National Weather Service in the Baltimore/Washington office. That circulation is perfect for grabbing up smoke and fine particles from those massive wildfires raging in eastern Canada and slinging it south over the mid Atlantic and into Virginia.

“We’re going to be in this pattern for at least the next two or three days,” Rodriguez said. “And then another weather system will come in over the weekend. They might get some showers out of that Friday, but the main thing is it’s going to change the wind direction so it will come from the west. And we’ll finally get some cleaner air that’s not coming from Canada.”

When that happens, the smoke from the fires will be pushed out over the Atlantic Ocean, he added.

In the meantime, folks in central Virginia can keep track of the air quality at this link. The site will take you to a map of Virginia. Click on the box over Charlottesville. That box will show the measured air quality at Albemarle High School, the only station in this region that measures air quality.

The changing weather patterns this weekend will give this area a welcome reprieve from smoke, Salkovitz said. But it’s impossible to know how long it will last. As long as the wildfires continue burning in Canada, Virginia’s air quality will be at the mercy of the winds.

The New York Times has created a map tracking the smoke from Canada’s wildfires.

To learn more about the possible health concerns from breathing smoke, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has a fact sheet that includes information about how to keep smoke and fine particles out of your home.

The post Meteorologists expect smoke from Canada to remain over central Virginia until the weekend appeared first on Charlottesville Tomorrow.

With President Joe Biden’s signature fresh on legislation that would expedite the completion of the Mountain Valley Pipeline, pipeline officials aim to have it up and running by year’s end, while the project’s opponents are considering their options.

The Fiscal Responsibility Act, which Biden signed Saturday, suspends the U.S. debt ceiling for nearly two years. It also includes a provision specific to the Mountain Valley Pipeline: It authorizes all remaining permits and other approvals necessary for the natural gas pipeline’s construction and operation, and it shields the project from further legal challenges by removing the jurisdiction of courts to review such approvals.

Initially planned for completion in 2018, construction on the 303-mile pipeline through Virginia and West Virginia has effectively been halted since 2021 by federal and state permitting delays and by legal battles brought by landowners, environmentalists and others who have challenged the pipeline’s acquisition of private property through eminent domain and its impact on forests, streams, wetlands and endangered species, among other legal grounds.

“The MVP project has gone through more environmental review and scrutiny than any natural gas pipeline project in U.S. history, having been issued the same state and federal authorizations two and three times, only to have those authorizations be routinely challenged and vacated in court,” Thomas Karam, chairman and CEO of Equitrans Midstream, the pipeline’s operator, said in a news release after Biden signed the bill.

The $6.6 billion, 42-inch pipeline is set to start in northwestern West Virginia and proceed into Virginia, where it will pass through Giles, Craig, Montgomery, Roanoke and Franklin counties before connecting to a compressor station in Pittsylvania County. Pipeline officials say the project is more than 90% complete, though opponents dispute that claim.

Pipeline supporters say the project is an important source of secure, domestic, lower-carbon energy that meets a demand for natural gas. U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin, D-West Virginia, who was the primary driver of the pipeline provision’s inclusion in the debt-limit deal, called it a “critical energy security project” and said it “opens up markets for our natural resources, giving us untold new revenue sources and developing industries that our grandchildren and future generations will benefit from.”

Opponents say the project is unnecessary and harmful to the environment, both in terms of future greenhouse-gas emissions and the impact of its construction — and some say they aren’t ready to give up the fight.

“Even if some of these permits are issued and initially shielded from judicial review, that’s not necessarily the end of the line,” said Jason Rylander, senior attorney with the Center for Biological Diversity, which advocates for species protection and other environmental causes. “The pipeline still has to cross some of the most difficult terrain along the route, through the Jefferson National Forest and other areas, and there will be opportunities to hold them accountable for the damage they are continuing to do.”

Beyond watching the pipeline’s progress to see what comes next, it’s unclear what specific further options might be available to pipeline opponents.

After Thursday’s Senate vote, the Protect Our Water, Heritage, Rights — or POWHR — coalition released a statement from Denali Nalamalapu, its communications director, saying, “Our global movement to stop the Mountain Valley Pipeline is stronger than ever.

“While we are outraged and devastated in this unprecedented moment, we will never stop fighting this unfinished, unnecessary, and unwanted project. Our hearts are broken but our bonds are strong,” the statement said.

Asked about specific next steps, Nalamalapu replied in an email: “We don’t have clear answers at the moment but we likely will in the coming days/weeks.

“Right now we are focusing on mobilizing in front of the White House on June 8th to respond to this unprecedented decision and hold Biden accountable to his broken climate promises,” Nalamalapu wrote, referring to a protest, sponsored by People vs. Fossil Fuels, scheduled in front of the White House from 2 to 4 p.m. Thursday.

Tom Cormons, executive director of the grassroots environmental protection group Appalachian Voices, said in a statement that “the fight is not over.”

“Defeating this unnecessary and ill-conceived project that has already degraded water quality across two states and would contribute significantly to the climate crisis if it is completed and brought into service is a top priority,” Cormons said.

Preserve Bent Mountain, which is a local chapter of the Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League and part of the POWHR coalition, released a statement saying, “It is not yet clear whether the stench of the MVP/debt limit deal will surpass legal scrutiny.”

“While repulsed at this Dirty Deal, we will go forward — as we have since the inception of this destructive boondoggle, with all regulatory and legal challenges available. We will not be governed by the gas industry,” the group said in a statement sent by member Roberta Bondurant, a Roanoke County resident.

One possible path forward for opponents could be contesting the pipeline provision itself.

“Clearly the bill, or what will soon be the law, forecloses most court actions on the pipeline. But the one thing that is left is a possible challenge to the law itself, presumably on constitutional grounds,” said David Sligh, conservation director of Wild Virginia, an environmental advocacy nonprofit. 

U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Virginia, suggested the same during a conference call with reporters last week ahead of the Senate’s vote on the bill. Senators also voted 30-69 to defeat an amendment brought by Kaine that would have removed the Mountain Valley Pipeline provision from the debt-limit legislation. 

“I would think that frankly the only option under this bill is not to challenge any aspect of the pipeline but to challenge, did Congress have the legal ability to do what it just did?” Kaine said. “That would be the only remaining challenge.

“Now of course at the end of the day, once the pipeline’s underway, there may be provisions where people can say, ‘Wait a minute, you didn’t do the restoration on my land right,’” Kaine said. “We haven’t eliminated that down the road, if the pipeline violates state laws, because in both West Virginia and Virginia the construction of the pipeline has violated water quality standards and state agencies have been able to challenge them. They still have to comply with state laws.”

Kaine noted that the authors of the Mountain Valley Pipeline provision appear to have anticipated a potential legal challenge against the provision itself: The bill specifies that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit “shall have original and exclusive jurisdiction over any claim alleging the invalidity of this section or that an action is beyond the scope of authority conferred by this section.”

Sligh, of Wild Virginia, said environmental advocates will continue monitoring Mountain Valley Pipeline’s work on the ground, ensuring that any citizen complaints are funneled to the appropriate governmental agencies and following up to verify that regulatory rules are enforced.

“I have looked at thousands — thousands — of the inspection reports that the state of Virginia has done … and they have done a pretty good job of being out there and documenting some of the problems, a lot of the problems. But Virginia has not done what it needs to do to stop them once it finds them,” he said.

Beyond that monitoring work, Sligh said, “I think everybody is quickly trying to assess what else is possible.”

The post With path cleared for the Mountain Valley Pipeline, opponents weigh next steps appeared first on Cardinal News.

In 2016, 336 violent crimes were reported in Danville.

That year saw 17 homicides, 76 robberies, 211 aggravated assaults. 

The city of 40,000 had the highest homicide rate per capita in the state that year. Property crimes, too, had reached a concerning level: 1,537 cases in that year alone. 

But since then, the city has seen a drastic reduction in crime across the board. 

A primary reason, according to local leaders: heightened collaboration among the city, the community and the police.

A new policing model has been implemented. Programming has been created for at-risk youth. The city has partnered with other localities and organizations to benefit from their expertise.

“Collaboration is the new currency,” said Robert David, the city’s youth and gang violence prevention coordinator. 

“A lot of the success has to do with agencies working together. City council, law enforcement, community collaboration. And if you don’t work with the individuals living in the communities, you have no influence.”

A new policing model, and an apology

By 2018, crime in Danville hadn’t improved much. But that was part of the reason Scott Booth was attracted to the city. He wanted to work somewhere that provided a challenge, he said.  

Booth became police chief that year, after a brief stint with the federal government and almost 20 years with the Richmond Police Department before that. Since coming to Danville, he has been working with city government and community members to lower the crime rate. 

“[In 2018], Danville and the police department had no community policing model,” Booth said. “There were some things that we really needed to do. One of those was build a robust community policing model, and the other was focus on crime.”

A community policing model is a set of strategies to address conditions that lead to crime through partnership and problem-solving, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.

Danville has seen a 52% average annual reduction in violent crime since the policing model was implemented, according to data from the police department. From 2021 to 2022 alone, violent crime decreased by 21%. 

In 2022, the city saw the lowest number of reported burglaries since data tracking began in 1985, with 76 total. It was the fourth year in a row that a new low had been set. 

Homicides also decreased — to seven in 2022, down from 17 in 2016, a number that was “astronomical,” according to David Kennedy, a professor of criminal justice at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York.

“That’s a higher rate than Chicago, which is not unheard of for smaller jurisdictions,” Kennedy said. “They don’t get the attention that Chicago does, but on a per-capita basis, you can find relatively small places that have shockingly high homicide rates.” 

Not only has the crime rate itself decreased in Danville, but the case clearance rate has increased. Cleared crimes are those that have been solved, or “cleared,” by arrests. 

Of the 260 burglaries in 2016, only 38 were cleared. In 2022, 56 out of 76 burglaries were cleared. 

In fact, the Danville police department has exceeded the FBI’s national clearance averages since the policing model’s implementation in 2019. 

About 71% of homicides in Danville were cleared between 2019 and 2022, which is 17 percentage points higher than the FBI’s national clearance rate of about 54%. 

This drastic reduction in crime wasn’t achieved by simply increasing police activity, Booth said. 

“I truly believe that you can’t arrest a problem away when it comes to crime,” Booth said. “I don’t believe in over-policing neighborhoods. I don’t believe in just throwing officers out into entire neighborhoods and stopping everything that moves.”

Booth called that an “old way” of policing, saying that he believes in being more strategic. 

The police department began to home in on violent offenders, Booth said, adding that a small percentage of people usually commit the majority of violent acts in any given community. 

So the department focused on chronic violent offenders who had already been identified, as well as places in the city that were producing the highest numbers of criminal instances. 

To do this, the Danville Police Department partnered with the U.S. attorney’s office in Charlottesville in 2018 to begin implementing a program called Project Safe Neighborhoods.  

The goal was to identify violent offenders using data to create a comprehensive database of the most criminally active and violent people in Danville, said Maj. David Whitley, the department’s assistant chief of services. 

The data came from criminal investigations, charges, street gang participation, violent crime convictions and other legally sourced information, he said. 

“Each element was used in an objective scoring system to identify the most violent and active individuals committing crimes of violence,” Whitley said. 

Once these people and places were identified, the police department and city government could address “systemic and societal challenges” that lead to crime in these areas, like “poverty, lack of resources, and family structure or lack thereof,” Whitley said. 

At the same time, the department made an increased effort to build rapport and trust with the community, said Matt Bell, the police department’s public relations specialist. 

Rebuilding the relationship was critical, Booth said.

Many residents harbored resentment for and distrust of the police, feelings that sometimes went back decades, to Bloody Monday, a series of attacks and arrests by Danville police in June 1963, during a civil rights protest. 

Police attacked nonviolent protesters with clubs and fire hoses, injuring 47 and arresting 60, according to a historic marker outside the Danville courthouse.  

The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., the U.S. Department of Justice and national media outlets condemned the actions of the police and court system in Danville. 

“That was a community trauma,” Booth said. “I’ve worked in larger cities, and I never could remember one incident really having a hold on a city like Bloody Monday did in Danville.”

While researching the event, Booth said he found that it was “a real deterrent” to rebuilding a relationship between the community and the police department. It was the reason many residents thought crime would never improve, he said. 

This is textbook, said Kennedy. 

“Homicide and gun violence are an American problem, and almost the overwhelming preponderance of that violence is felt by and occurs in historically damaged communities of color,” he said. 

And a good relationship between a community and its police department is absolutely critical in remedying this, Kennedy said.

If the relationship is solid, then “when people are contemplating violence, they should understand that their own community rejects it, that they don’t want it to happen,” he said. “Then it’s not just the police saying it shouldn’t happen, but the community itself saying it shouldn’t happen. That’s way more powerful.”

And if there is a crime, the good relationship between the community and law enforcement can address that. 

“There’s a community expectation that there will be accountability if violence occurs,” Kennedy said. 

A step toward this good relationship is acknowledgement of any historical division, he said; other police outreach efforts will seem superficial without it. 

“If you have historical division between the community and the police that goes back to police violence against community members in the civil rights struggle, and everybody knows it, and nobody’s ever acknowledged it or done anything about it, then sending police officers to talk to kids in schools or having community meetings or having barbecues or having basketball leagues or something like that, not only is that a shallow perspective, it’s insulting,” Kennedy said.

“Because it is the authority saying to the community, ‘We’re going to pretend that this never happened and we expect you to like us and work with us anyway.’”

In 2019, the Danville Police Department offered a public apology for police actions during the summer of 1963. 

“I think for the community, it did speak that we’re willing to take steps in the right direction,” Booth said. 

City programming for at-risk youth

Another effort to decrease crime was increased collaboration between the police department and the city government.

Local officials and law enforcement had a common goal of reducing crime, so working together was in everyone’s best interest, said David, the city’s youth and gang violence prevention coordinator. 

David has been doing this kind of work for the better part of four decades, he said, starting when he volunteered at an alternative school in California. In 2017, when Danville was in the throes of high crime, the city created his position. 

He runs a program called Project Imagine, which is targeted toward at-risk and gang-affiliated youth. 

When the program first started in 2018, it involved a nine-week work readiness program to provide paid work experience and mentoring. Now, it’s more focused on life skills and support. 

It takes a holistic approach, he said, and helps not only the youth but their families.

There’s a big focus on increasing stability in the lives of the young people they work with, David said, because lack of stability is often the impetus for an individual’s involvement with crime. 

“If you’re 16 years old and you have a child, and that child is hungry, and you live with a parent and don’t have your basic needs, it’s hard to go to school,” he said. “But if we can create a level of stability in a youth’s life, they can move forward. That seemingly has nothing to do with gang violence or crime, but it does.” 

Project Imagine works with local organizations and businesses to create job opportunities. But it also can help with problems at home, like getting a new refrigerator or fixing a broken air conditioner. 

“We work with every aspect of the family, the girlfriends, the baby mamas, everybody,” David said. 

Since it began, Project Imagine has graduated about 100 people.

An outreach worker continues to mentor each graduate for at least a year. And again, collaboration and partnership with the police department plays a role. 

Sometimes instead of charging a young person, David said, police will refer them to Project Imagine. 

He got emotional talking about the graduation ceremony at the end of each Project Imagine course. 

“I cry almost every graduation, no lie,” he said. “I get teary-eyed because, like I tell them, you really didn’t have to be here. And I thank them for their time, I thank their parents for allowing them to be there. We applaud them for making that decision to change their lives.”

David said the work amplifies local voices that otherwise might go unnoticed.

“There was a population of people whose voices weren’t being heard,” he said. “All I did was turn on the mic.”

Project Imagine didn’t get formal funding until 2020. Before that, David said he tapped into community resources. There was some existing money in the city for youth jobs, he said, and he also built relationships with local business owners. 

In 2020, Project Imagine got a grant from the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, part of the U.S. Department of Justice, and David used it to hire outreach workers. 

The police department, too, has created programming to engage youth and community members. One event series in particular, called Pass the Perspective, invites kids to get an inside look at police work. 

The new police department building, which opened last year, is a good place to hold events and community meetings, Booth said. Outreach has played an important role in bolstering trust in the police department. 

“We started engaging the community with community walks, we built programs like our youth police academy and Pass the Perspective,” Booth said. “Anything that we can do to open our doors and let the community in.”

The police department also began to put community members on its interview panels for police hires and promotions, as well as on a review board for use-of-force cases, Booth said. 

Targeting gangs by empowering communities

Between 2016 and 2018, the majority of Danville’s 484 aggravated assaults and 41 homicides had direct ties to street gangs, Whitley said.

“In almost every community, gang participation is an issue due to systemic and societal challenges such as poverty, lack of resources and family structure, or lack thereof,” he said. “Danville has these challenges.”

Around 2017, Danville began implementing a comprehensive gang model, a program with some of the same strategies and goals as Project Safe Neighborhoods. 

Once criminally active individuals and places are identified through Project Safe Neighborhoods methods, a community can use its comprehensive gang model to reduce or prevent youth gang violence. 

It takes a multifaceted approach to address these issues, Whitley said. 

“Criminal street gang activity still exists, but we have become much better at addressing the issues before violence occurs and stemming further violence after an incident has occurred,” he said.

The model that Danville employed was developed by social researcher Irving Spergel and tested by the DOJ’s Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, which now houses the National Gang Center. 

The model has several components, said Sean Baldwin, a senior research associate at the Institute for Intergovernmental Research, which contracts with the National Gang Center.

It focuses on empowering communities that are plagued by violence and providing opportunities for their youth. It seeks to move youth away from gang violence — and to provide close supervision of at-risk kids.

And it requires organizational change, he said.

“We’ve found, with this model being developed over decades, that a lot of times it’s not enough to have a great program,” he said. “You’ve got to have a program that’s accessible and that is delivered with equity so that the people that need it most can get it.”

Collaboration and a sustained effort

In 2020 and 2021, 100% of homicides were cleared by the Danville Police Department. And between 2018 and 2022, seven previous cold cases were solved. 

Between 2016 and 2018, before Danville implemented its new policing model, the city saw 41 homicides, with an average of about 13 per year. From 2019 to 2022, after the model was launched, there were 20 homicides, or an average of about six per year. 

Baldwin has worked with both Booth and David in Danville’s implementation of the comprehensive gang model, and he said he thinks the city “has got a good hold on the problem.” 

Danville has taken a long-term approach to many initiatives, specifically economic development and revitalization. And a long-term strategy is a game-changer when it comes to crime, too, Baldwin said. 

“These types of strategies fail when they’re not sustained over time,” he said. “A community might have some early success until other priorities come up.” 

Plus, many of the problems that Danville has been working to solve are intertwined. When there’s success in one area, it can help bring about success in another. 

Education and poverty influence a city’s crime rate, for example, Baldwin said.

“Some of the risk factors for youth joining gangs include poverty, kids growing up in neighborhoods that have high rates of violence, and academic performance. Even how a child is doing in school can affect that,” he said. “So, anything that a community can do to improve economic and educational conditions for their residents … can reduce or eliminate those risk factors.” 

Baldwin said he’s been to Danville several times, and he was a police chief in a community that had similar economic hardships. 

“It is impressive, the sort of holistic approach that Danville seems to be taking to address not only the violence, but those things that may be leading, either directly or indirectly, to the risk factors,” he said. 

One overarching thing that Danville has done well is focus on collaboration, Baldwin said. The communities that see the most success with crime reduction are those that focus on partnerships, he said. 

“Regardless of how perfect or imperfect a model may be in implementation, we find that the most success comes from those partnerships,” he said. “It would be difficult for me to point out another community where the relationship between the police chief and the director of intervention and prevention is so strong.”

In 2020, in the wake of George Floyd’s murder and the deaths of other Black Americans at police hands, Booth and David collaborated to write a book expressing their two distinct perspectives with a central message. 

“Bigger than Black and Blue: Candid conversations about race, equity, and community collaboration” was released in December 2020 and can be found on Amazon. 

Both Booth and David have been recognized for their efforts to reduce crime. 

In February, David was named among the Top 100 Influencers in Local Government by a nonprofit called Engaging Local Government Leaders. And in April 2022, Booth received the Excellence in Virginia Award for Innovation in Government from Virginia Commonwealth University’s L. Douglas Wilder School of Government and Public Affairs.  

But both say there’s still work to be done to further decrease crime. 

“Everything that we’ve done, we’re going to keep doing,” Booth said. “We don’t let up on anything.”

The change since 2018 is something that Booth said he’s very proud of. And Baldwin said that Danville can be a model to other communities that are also looking to lower crime. 

“This really is an incredible story of success for Danville,” Baldwin said. 

The post How Danville has drastically reduced its crime rate since 2016  appeared first on Cardinal News.

What’s in a name?

For residents of Friendship Court, a stigma. 

“I’m tired of them calling this ‘the hood,’” said Friendship Court resident Jace Wright. He has lived in Friendship Court, a Section-8 housing community in downtown Charlottesville, all his life — 17 years.

But come summer, Wright will call Friendship Court by another name: Kindlewood.

“We’re trying to make the neighborhood better for the future, a place that gives people hope,” said Wright. He knows a name alone can’t make that happen, but the community is also in the midst of being redeveloped for the first time since it was built on Garrett Street in 1978. Back then, it was called Garrett Square.

Over the next couple of years, all 150 families currently living at Friendship Court will move into an entirely new unit of their choice. With the new development, there will also be enough space for 300 additional families to join them.

The redevelopment is being paid for largely with taxpayer money. Some came from the city of Charlottesville, and the rest came from state and federal grants, and some private money. The overall cost is fluctuating because of changing construction costs, said PHA spokesperson Wes Myhre. Phase one, which is nearing completion, will cost about $45 million. That includes two rows of stacked townhomes and one apartment building —106 homes total — as well as front-end expenses like setting up a leasing office and soil remediation. Move-in for these homes will start this summer.

Phases two and three will see the construction of more townhomes and apartment buildings, as well as a community center and other amenities. PHA estimates those phases will also cost roughly $45 million each, but that number could change. The project should be done and residents all moved in by 2027.

What’s unique about this project is that all of the decisions — including the new name — were made by the residents themselves. Sunshine Mathon, executive director of Piedmont Housing Alliance, the local housing nonprofit that manages and co-owns the community with the National Housing Trust, said he hasn’t heard of anything like it anywhere else.

Wright has hope that calling the new homes by a new name will begin to dissolve the stigma around living in the community he calls home. That at the very least his peers, or grown-ups, won’t wince when they hear his Garrett Street address.

Some Charlottesville community members associate Friendship Court with violence, Wright said. Charlottesville has experienced a rise in gun violence this year and many of the incidents are occurring in low-income and public housing neighborhoods, including Friendship Court.

That’s at the front of 17-year-old Wright’s mind. As he talked about it in the Friendship Court community center in March, he leaned forward in his chair, holding his head in his hands. It’s no secret that those incidents, and not the laughter of kids riding scooters and playing tag outside, or the families having dinner together, is what people think about when they think about the area, he said. As he spoke, a young girl took a piano lesson a few feet away, a huge grin spreading across her face as she played.

The stigma surrounding the name Friendship Court also came up in a Charlottesville School Board meeting last December. As City Schools works to rename many of its schools, it asked students what they wanted their new school names to be. Clark Elementary School students voted to rename their school “Friendship,” but school board member Jennifer McKeever cautioned against it.

“I want a name that can represent a big, positive image. I don’t think Friendship alone does that for an academic environment,” said McKeever. “I would think there are additional connotations in our community. I don’t want that to be the image that Clark has to fight against.”

Like so many areas in Charlottesville, Friendship Court is fraught with history. Garrett Street is named for Alexander Garrett, who enslaved people on his Oak Hill plantation in that area. Over time, a majority Black, majority working-class neighborhood with a few white families grew there. But in the early 1970s, the city declared it blighted and bulldozed most of it, just as it had done to Vinegar Hill a few years before.

In 1978, the Garrett Square community was built with what the federal government called project-based Section-8 assistance (hence “the projects”) from the U.S. Office of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). Residents were low-income, but their economic status wasn’t the only thing separating them from the rest of the city: all of the homes’ front doors were built facing inward, at one another rather than outward into the larger community. A seven-foot black metal fence erected around it in 1996 only furthered that physical isolation.

“That fence makes the community think we’re a bunch of criminals down here,” Mary Carey, a past president of the Friendship Court Tenant Association, said in the “Reimagining Friendship Court” series published by Charlottesville Tomorrow in 2019, during the redevelopment planning phase. “These are good people, hard-working people.”

Myrtle Houchens raised her two children in Garrett Square while working as a teacher. She loved it. “It was community. It was a community where individual families looked out for one another. They supported one another. It was loving and caring. I was happy to raise my children there,” Houchens said while sitting in the neighborhood’s community center in March. As she spoke of those fond memories, the new buildings in various phases of construction were visible through the window behind her.

That was her experience in the community, but outside of it, “if you even mentioned it as your place of residency, no one wanted to be associated with you,” said Houchens. “Delivery services and all of that were limited. It put a sense of devalue on people’s humanity.”

When people applied for jobs and put “Garrett Street” for their address, employers didn’t call them back, said Carey.

The local housing nonprofit Piedmont Housing Alliance bought Garrett Square in 2002, did some interior and exterior renovations, and added some services like a GED program for residents. It also changed the name to Friendship Court.

Houchens doesn’t remember exactly how or why, or by whom that name was chosen. An article published in the Daily Progress in November 2003 talked about the community’s “transformation from stigma-ridden Garrett Square.” 

But some, like Houchens, still call it Garrett Square. And though the Friendship Court name was intended to “redefine” the neighborhood in the eyes of residents and the broader Charlottesville community, that didn’t happen. Much of what Houchens, Carey, and other residents experienced decades ago, still occurs, they said.

Residents felt, and still feel, looked down upon for their economic and social status, and, for Black and brown residents, their race.

All of the residents of Friendship Court are low-income — the average annual household income is $17,758 —  and their rents are subsidized by the government. Many of the families are Black, or, in more recent years, refugees from Middle Eastern countries.

So, when Piedmont Housing Alliance, which is under different leadership than when it purchased and renamed the property in 2002, decided to redevelop Friendship Court, it asked for the expertise, the needs, and the wants of the people who know best: The residents.

Residents decided everything for the redevelopment, from where the buildings would go to what carpet will go in the hallways, where the new urban farm would be, and what sort of playground equipment will go in the new park, which will be built in the last phase of the project, where the current residences are now.

Their decisions will change more than just how the community looks — they will change the community itself. Currently, 150 families reside in as many units in Friendship Court. The redevelopment will triple that: Kindlewood will have 450 total apartments and townhomes.

Another major change is that Kindlewood will be a mixed-income development. One-third of the apartments will be reserved for households whose income is 30% of the area median income (or AMI) and below (up to $31,450 for a family of four); one-third for household incomes between 30-60% AMI ($31,451 to $66,720 for a family of four); one-third for 60-80% AMI ($66,721 to $83,850 for a family of four), according to HUD.

In the Charlottesville Metropolitan Statistical Area, the AMI for a family of four is $111,200. 

However, income will not dictate which building, or on what floor or section of a building, a family will live in. Each of the apartment buildings and rows of townhomes will have a mix of homes reserved for all of the income tiers.

“That was essential, from the residents’ perspective,” said Houchens, the former teacher and former resident who loved raising her two children in the community. Houchens served on the redevelopment advisory committee and is now a paid community liaison with Piedmont Housing Alliance. Recreating a lower income neighborhood, or building, all over again would only perpetuate inequities, she said

“I wouldn’t want that barrier, like, ‘more money’ over here, and ‘less money’ there,” said Tamana Khaydari, a high school student whose family has lived in Friendship Court for about five years.

Some residents are skeptical, though. They worry about hearing things like, “well, I pay more than you do to live here” during neighborly conversations. They worry that the stigmas they face outside of their community could start coming from the apartment next door.

Still, having a true mix of incomes in each building, and therefore (hopefully) avoiding separation due to economic status, was more important to residents than getting the project done quickly, Mathon said. If the residents had prioritized speed, PHA could have built the first 150 units and had all current families in a new unit this summer, then focused on construction for the rest of the community.

Instead, current residents are moving into their new homes in phases.

And even though the “Friendship Court” sign has been painted over and a “Kindlewood” banner went up on Tuesday, getting folks to actually use the new name will also likely happen in phases.

Residents have known about the name change for a while — they helped choose it.

A renaming/rebranding committee made up of residents met with consultants before going out into the community asking for new name ideas.

They received dozens of ideas, which the committee narrowed down to two.

Each household then got a ballot to vote for either Kindlewood or Central City. An adult was to fill out the ballot on behalf of the family, seal it, then bring it to the community center. Houchens gathered and tallied the ballots, but a re-do was needed in some cases, she said, laughing: a few kids took the initiative to fill out their family’s ballot, unbeknownst to the adults.

In the end, 85% of households participated in the vote.

Kindlewood won with 61%.

The name is a combination of a few of the suggestions and selected because of the way that it evokes kin, family, friendship, a spark, a fireplace in the hearth and therefore home.

“It sounds very calming,” Khaydari, another of the high school students who served on the committee, said while talking with other committee members about the new name in March.

“Peaceful,” added Sallie King.

“My only hope is that it can live up to the name,” said Brandon Martin, a high school student and lifelong resident. “Maybe the name change is something that can change your view of this. Give it a second thought. Give it a chance.”

“Yeah,” Wright said, looking across the room at his neighbor and Charlottesville High School classmate. “Give it a chance.”

The post After decades dealing with stigma, Friendship Court residents decide to rename their community appeared first on Charlottesville Tomorrow.