Month: February 2020

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Funding fight: City and school board struggle with budget as statewide activism gathers steam

Activists hold signs over the bypass to advocate for increased state investment in public schools. Photo: John Robinson

“FUND OUR SCHOOLS” read the twinkling electric signs over the Dairy Road footbridge on the evening of January 29. Students, parents, teachers, and activists held the individual letters, making the simple demand that the state devote more money to public education. The message was met with a stream of supportive honks from drivers on the 250 Bypass below. 

“We’re in this exciting moment where Democrats have control in both chambers,” said Brionna Nomi, education organizer at the Legal Aid Justice Center, which coordinated the demonstration. “So we’re hoping to make some movement on state funding legislation for public schools.”

In particular, the group supports bills in both the House of Delegates and State Senate that would repeal public education spending limits put in place after the 2008 recession.

The Charlottesville protest comes less than a week after hundreds of teachers from around the state rallied in Richmond to make similar demands. In Virginia, the state holds power over cities and counties when it comes to generating revenue and dispensing funds. Nomi says local districts have to pick up the slack for what the state does not provide, and that’s an undue burden. “We need to generate more revenue, and we believe that that’s the responsibility of legislators,” she says.

That burden was on display last week when the Charlottesville City School Board presented its annual budget request to City Council and the city manager. 

In part because of state funding cuts, the board requested a budget increase of $4.5 million. But City Manager Tarron Richardson said he’d hoped the figure would be more like $2.1 million. 

The city is trying to cut back its own budget, and the disparity between the school’s request and the city’s anticipated number is significant. “I want to help as much as we can, but that additional two-plus million will really impact us in terms of trying to close our gap,” Richardson said. 

The city increased the school’s budget by $2.7 million in fiscal year 2019 and $3.4 million in fiscal year 2020, for a total of $57 million last year.

The school district’s request provides for the creation of a handful of new positions, including an additional orchestra instructor for Walker Upper Elementary, where one conductor currently teaches 199 students, and a “specialist for annual giving,” a new position that would solicit philanthropic contributions to the public schools. “That’s a position the board has desired for quite a number of years,” said Superintendent Rosa Atkins.

Hundreds of students are enrolled in a new engineering program at Walker, but Buford Middle School doesn’t have sufficient engineering faculty, so the district also hopes to hire someone to keep the program running as those students transition schools.

But the bulk of the requested budget increase—$2.8 of the $4.5 million—would go toward insurance and salaries for teachers and staff. “We are in the people business,” said school board member Jennifer McKeever. “So much of this is so they continue to be insured and able to live around here.”

Charlottesville’s skyrocketing property values have serious effects on the schools. Teachers need to earn more to live here comfortably, and the school district receives less funding from the state. 

Virginia distributes money based on each district’s relative need, measured through a metric called Local Composite Index. LCI takes into account the value of property owned by each school district, and this year, CCS’s property value increased “about 23 percent,” according to Atkins. In the eyes of the state, CCS is less needy than other localities and will therefore receive less state money. That’s one reason the district’s request to the city was higher than Richardson’s ideal figure.

Council will have to work with the schools and the city manager’s office to close the gap between Richardson’s number and CCS’s request.

“I don’t have too many comments at this time, because we haven’t received the full presentation on our budget,” said Mayor Nikuyah Walker at the work session. “Once we have that meeting I’ll have a better understanding. Just in case people are wondering why I’m quiet.” 

Those discussions will continue through the spring, but according to Atkins, the budget may not be finalized until June.

Meanwhile, the long-term future of the district includes a major school reconfiguration. Buford will expand to include sixth graders, elementary schools will add fifth grade, and Walker will become a citywide preschool. The district plans on hiring an architectural firm this month, but there won’t be a cost estimate for the project until 2021. 

The city allocated $3 million to the project in its five-year Capital Improvement Plan, but some early estimates say the reconfiguration could cost as much as $58 million. 

“We will not know how much the project will cost until it gets at least partially through the design process,” says Michael Goddard, a senior project manager with the city. “As of the present, no funds have been allocated for construction of the project. It will be up to city leadership to direct funding for construction.”

 

Correction 2/5: Updated to reflect that the city has not yet hired a design firm for the school reconfiguration process. 

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Counting up: Pay raise for census takers reflects the importance of getting the numbers right

The Census Bureau is looking to hire hundreds of census takers in Charlottesville and Albemarle County.

With a new decade comes a new census. Starting March 12, every household across the country will receive a letter in the mail, explaining how to respond to the 2020 census by phone, mail, or—for the first time ever—online. 

Census data is used to redraw legislative districts, determining the amount of seats each state is allotted in the House of Representatives, as well as to appropriately distribute more than $675 billion in government funding to communities across the country.

“The census is tied to everything, from health care to housing to social services,” says Kathy O’Connell, who works for the division of the census that oversees Virginia. “It’s extremely important that we have a good count of who lives in a particular place.”

To catch those who don’t respond on their own, the bureau also employs census takers to go door to door and record responses in person. And it is looking to hire hundreds right here in Charlottesville.

“We need large numbers,” says O’Connell, “We are [especially] interested in candidates with language abilities.”

To encourage more people to apply, the bureau has raised the pay for census workers to $22 an hour in Charlottesville and $21.50 in Albemarle County. Other perks include paid training, weekly paychecks, mileage reimbursement, and flexible hours.

Some populations are underrepresented in the data, particularly young people and immigrant communities. Our local Complete Count Committee includes a subcommittee focused on ensuring that refugees and immigrants are aware of the census, as well as identifying and addressing what prevents these populations from participating, such as limited English proficiency and mistrust of the government, says committee co-chair Caitlin Reinhard.

To subvert the many misconceptions surrounding the census, the subcommittee is emphasizing to local communities that the census is confidential, and that “it will have a huge impact on the resources and representation available [to them] over the next 10 years,” Reinhard says.

The Census Bureau is also partnering with a variety of local organizations to increase its outreach. Here in Charlottesville, the International Rescue Committee has created postcards and posters in 10 different languages about the census, along with other informational materials.

“It’s hugely important—now more than ever—that their voices are heard,” says Reinhard, who is also the resettlement manager for the IRC, “and that they are counted as people who make up this great country, whether or not they’re citizens.” (The Trump administration’s attempt to add a question about citizenship status was struck down by the Supreme Court.)

Lakshmi Fjord, a visiting scholar at UVA’s Department of Anthropology, has witnessed the consequences of inadequate census data firsthand. As Dominion Energy worked to build a natural gas compressor station in the historically African American community of Union Hill, the company used broad data from the 2010 census to claim that the area was sparsely populated and predominantly white. 

However, by conducting a door-to-door count of the population, Fjord showed that Union Hill has a greater population density than all other parts of the county, with 83 percent minority residents—meaning the compressor would disproportionately (and illegally) affect African Americans. (The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals repealed Dominion’s permit last month.)

“It’s well known that in particularly rural, and maybe everywhere in African American communities, there is far less chance people will open their door to census takers…[so] we trusted elders from the community to go door-to-door,” Fjord says. “This is also an important thing for the census. You cannot just hire eager young people to go around because there’s just not a sense of who they are.”

For this reason, O’Connell strongly encourages residents who are from the local community and know it well to apply to be census takers. Applications are available now at 2020census.gov. 

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In brief: News news, cow mural draws ire, Common House’s new house

The above cow illustration will adorn a large wall on the side of Dairy Central.

Stop spreading the news

Billionaire Warren Buffett has thrown in the towel on his newspaper empire. Last Wednesday, Buffett’s multi- national conglomerate, Berkshire Hathaway, announced it was selling all of its newspapers to Lee Enterprises Inc. for $140 million.

Lee will acquire BH Media Group, which owns more than 100 weekly publications and 30 daily newspapers—including The Daily Progress. The company has been managing BH’s papers since 2018.

Warren Buffett no longer owns the Daily Progress.

Last October, Progress staff formed a union, The Blue Ridge NewsGuild, in part because of concern about Lee’s history of layoffs, outsourcing, and pay cuts at the papers it manages. And now that Lee officially owns the Progress, the union has expressed greater concern about the future of the paper. 

In a statement on its website, the union says it found “some hope” when Lee executives emphasized “their mission to deliver high-quality local news, information, and advertising” during a recent conference call. “We look forward to hearing more about Lee’s strategies for ensuring the sustainability of the Progress and other newspapers around the country,” the union said.

Buffett’s announcement did not come as a surprise. Though he has long been a staunch supporter of the newspaper business (his first job was a newspaper delivery boy for The Washington Post), he’s expressed concern over the serious decline in newspaper advertising revenue over the past two decades, with internet giants like Google and Facebook sucking up most advertising sales.

Excluding The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal, Buffet ultimately believes all newspapers are “going to disappear,” he told Yahoo Finance last April. 

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Quote of the Week

“We need to pay attention to the tech crunch that’s coming in Charlottesville. These high-paying jobs are going to bring people with high salaries, and they’re going to push people out of the city.”

­—Local resident and activist Tanesha Hudson, addressing City Council about the construction of the CODE building downtown

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In brief

Don’t have a cow

City Council voted 3-2 on Monday to approve a signage plan for the new Dairy Central development, including the installation of a mural on a wall facing 10th Street NW. The Board of Architectural Review approved the 61-foot-long design, an apparent homage to a cow statue that used to stand in front of the former Monticello Dairy building. Councilor Michael Payne and Mayor Nikuyah Walker voted against the plan, citing comments by residents of the historically black 10th and Page neighborhood nearby, who asked for a design that might better “represent the history of the neighborhood.”

 

Common themes

Charlottesville-based social club Common House has announced plans for a third location, this time in Chattanooga, Tennessee. A former YMCA will now house a podcast studio, bocce court, and steam room for members paying $1,800 per year, plus a $300 initiation fee. Fortune magazine reports that once-rugged Chattanooga, where one out of every 4.8 residents lives in poverty, is “transforming into a tech hub,” while local activists have organized to combat a “crisis of housing.” Sound familiar?

Too much smoke

The American Lung Association gave Virginia four Fs and a D in its annual State of Tobacco Control report, released this week. As youth vaping continues to spark panic around the country, the Old Dominion was chastised for feeble tobacco taxes and prevention programs, and weak smoke-free workplace laws. Put that in your pipe and smoke it.

Moving on

After five years on the job, Charlene Green is stepping down from her position as manager of the Office of Human Rights, and joining the Piedmont Housing Alliance, where she will serve as deputy director, reports The Daily Progress. Green first joined city staff in 2010, when she became program coordinator for the city’s Dialogue on Race, leading to the creation of OHR. She is now the eighth high-profile city official to call it quits since Tarron Richardson became city manager last May.

 

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Race-based bias: Consultants demonstrate racist policing, council says study didn’t go far enough

Local justice systems disproportionately contact black people, a new report finds.

A report from a private consulting firm has concluded that Charlottesville and Albemarle disproportionately arrest black people, and that race-based disparities exist in the treatment of individuals in otherwise similar situations.

The report analyzes adult arrest data from the beginning of 2014 through the end of 2016. During that period, more than half (51.5 percent) of those arrested in Charlottesville were black men, despite black men making up only 8.5 percent of the city’s total population. In Albemarle County, where black men made up only 4.4 percent of the population, 37.6 percent of arrests were of black men. (The full report can be viewed here.)

That disproportionality is accompanied by racial disparity at multiple levels of the area’s criminal justice systems. African American defendants received harsher charges than white defendants for similar crimes. African American defendants were held without bond more often. African American men were held in jail prior to trial twice as long, on average, as white men.

The majority of people booked in Charlottesville are black, even though black people make up a small minority of the city’s population.

The city commissioned MGT Consulting Group, a national firm that often works with municipal governments, to put together the report in 2018. The city paid for $65,000 of the $155,000 project, with the remaining funding coming from the state. Charlottesville ran a similar study on the juvenile criminal justice system in 2011, which also found racial disproportionality.

In addition to the raw data, the report incorporates interviews with law enforcement officers, lawyers, and people who have been arrested, and consultants held a series of community meetings over the last nine months.

At the February 3 City Council meeting, the consultants made an official presentation of their findings.

The report provides statistical support for a state of affairs that was already well known to those affected.

“If you’re a member of the black community, as I am, this is something that I’ve been seeing for years,” said Mayor Nikuyah Walker at the meeting. “You didn’t need this study in the first place. You have the lived experience of it.”

“What this study does is it documents the problem, it validates the problem,” said Reggie Smith, the director of the project for MGT. “Perceptions and opinions are one thing. But we have done the work and the statistical analysis to say this is not happening by chance.”

Kaki Dimock, the city’s director of human services, said at the council meeting that the report was a “marathon data problem,” the beginning of a “seven- to 10-year process,” and a jumping-off point that “begs a series of additional sets of whys.”

“We do know the why,” Walker responded. “And the why has been apparent since enslavement ended.”

Walker and others were critical of the report’s recommendations for addressing the disparities. The document suggests supporting re-entry programs, increasing transparency in city and county police departments, increasing diversity in law enforcement, conducting additional research, and more. 

“These are things that we have been doing,” Walker said. “The city has been investing millions of dollars into some of these programs.”

A strong Police Civilian Review Board, to provide transparency and  community oversight of the police, is among the report’s recommendations. Charlottesville created an initial CRB  in 2018, and councilors are currently interviewing candidates for a permanent board. Albemarle County does not have a Police Civilian Review Board, and according to the consultants, the county Board of Supervisors has not scheduled a time to formally hear the report.

Charlottesville criminal justice lawyer Jeff Fogel says he feels the report provides valuable data, but he wants more specificity in the plan moving forward.

“I would take a look at all the police officers and what their rates of arrest are in terms of blacks and whites,” Fogel says. Taking a more individualized approach could help determine if the cause of the disparity can be ascribed to specific officers or larger systems.

Councilor Lloyd Snook, a defense attorney, called for similar specificity. “Which judges are doing what? Which judges are worse than others?” Snook asked. 

The study did not identify specific persons at any point in the justice continuum, even though that data could have been made available to the researchers, says Fogel.

“I don’t think we can move forward if we don’t look at the who,” Walker said. “We have to be bold enough to take a look at that.”

The report also doesn’t address the longer-term effects of discriminatory policing, which Fogel would like to see studied. “How many people can’t get jobs because they have a prior record?” the attorney asks. “How many people are not living with their partners because they have a drug offense and they cannot live in public housing? We know if a child’s parent goes to prison, the likelihood of that child going to prison has been multiplied.”

Council will have to decide how much more city money to spend on additional research. 

“One of the big questions I have,” said councilor Michael Payne, “is what does this change? What, if anything, changes in the behavior and policies of the city as a result of this? That’s a question in part for us as a council to resolve.”