Signer’s snow day dust up
Last week, after Charlottesville City Schools called off school on Tuesday due to lingering hazards from the weekend’s snowstorm, former mayor Mike Signer took to Twitter to voice his opposition. He was met with derision—who could possibly be anti-snow day? But Signer doubled down, and published an op-ed in Time last Friday, entitled “Democrats Lost Virginia By Ignoring Parents. Snow Days Show They Still Are.”
“The very idea of a ‘snow day,’ when the entire school system shutters (along with its core mission) is as antiquated and counter-productive as the agrarian-era summer break,” wrote Signer, who now works as an exec at WillowTree. “If you’re a family with two working parents, a snow day isn’t just the kids having fun outside. It’s a 10-hour expanse of time where, inside, you want your kids to have their brains stimulated, but you have to work, and you have no idea what their education should be that day—because that’s what their schools and teachers are for.”
Signer argues that Charlottesville should adopt policies similar to those in Prince William County, where students are expected to complete asynchronous work during some inclement weather closures, and that the Republican victory in the 2021 governor’s race came because Virginia Democrats didn’t pay attention to “the feelings and ideas of struggling public-school parents.” He also includes a handful of the mean tweets that people wrote about him.
Christine Esposito, a city schools teacher, was among the locals who used social media to voice their disagreement with Signer’s op-ed.
In a Facebook post, Esposito pointed out that not all Charlottesville residents have easy access to the internet, making virtual school an inequitable proposition. The same goes for teachers, many of whom have been pushed to rural areas by high urban housing costs. “Just giving kids worksheets doesn’t work either. Where are they getting the worksheets from? Are they going to be delivered by carrier pigeon?”
“One group of parents wants their kids to be kept busy, so [they] are demanding virtual school on snow days. Another group of parents will not have the ability to pull that off,” Esposito wrote. “The privilege boggles.”
COVID keeps coming
The region continues to see high numbers of new COVID cases each day. On Friday, the Blue Ridge Health District reported 227 new cases. That’s down from the all-time high of 618 new cases in a day, which was reported last Tuesday, but nonetheless indicative of a serious surge. Before December 2021, the all-time high was 245, in February of 2021. Various area health agencies are offering vaccines and COVID tests. For information on where, when, and how to get vaccinated or tested in the area, visit vdh.virginia.gov/blue-ridge/.
In brief
Majors killers sentenced
In December 2019, Charlottesville native Tessa Majors was killed in a New York City park near Barnard College, where she had just begun studying. Three teenagers, aged 13 and 14 at the time of the killing, were charged in relation to Majors’ death. On January 19, the third and final individual, Rashaun Weaver, was sentenced to 14 years to life after pleading guilty to his involvement in the murder. Weaver, who wielded the knife in the attack, and Luchiano Lewis, who was sentenced to nine years, were charged as adults despite their age when the murder occurred.
“[Weaver] is a symptom rather than a cause in a very broken system,” said Weaver’s lawyer at the trial, reports the New York Times. “Nothing absolves him for what he did, but it does explain why we’re here.”
Greene with envy?
Greene County’s school board voted 3-2 to repeal the district’s mask mandate last week, days after newly empowered Governor Glenn Youngkin issued an executive order dictating that mask wearing should be optional in schools. Both Charlottesville City Schools and Albemarle County Public Schools have elected to defy the governor’s order and keep their mask mandates in place, along with dozens of other districts across the state.
Heaphy out at UVA
New Attorney General Jason Miyares has fired 30 state employees since taking over, including UVA Counsel Tim Heaphy. In the weeks after 2017’s Unite the Right, Heaphy put together a major report on what went wrong as the rally unfolded. More recently, he’s been on leave from his post at UVA to serve as chief investigative counsel to the U.S. House committee that’s investigating the January 6 Capitol insurrection.