Author: Matt Deegan

Al Gore grew a beard, expanded his waistline and ducked out of the limelight when he lost the 2000 presidential election. When Paul Beyer missed a seat on the Charlottesville City Council by 31 votes last August, he didn’t hole up. Instead, he enlisted the aid of friends, community contacts and those who helped with his campaign and started crafting plans for a month-long music, arts and ideas festival.

And Beyer pulled it off, despite skepticism from some that his ambitious vision of a Charlottesville version of Austin’s South by Southwest festival could be organized in three months. The Tom Tom Founders Festival wrapped up May 13 with the sounds of the First Baptist Church gospel choir and local trumpeter John D’earth at the IX Project on Second Street S.E.

“People now know that it can happen, and they can see where it could go,” Beyer said. “Before, they questioned whether it could happen at all.”

If beer sales are any indication, Tom Tom had a solid first run. Concertgoers downed all 20 of the kegs of “Tom Tom Founders White IPA” supplied by Wild Wolf Brewing Company, according to the brewery’s distributor, Tommy Frank, sales manager for Blue Ridge Brewing.

“It was a great opportunity to see a band for four songs and hop around the Mall and not be locked into one place,” Frank said.

Beyer acknowledged that there is much to learn from Tom Tom’s first go – including how to compete with UVA students’ Beach Week tradition – but he was quick to share that there will be Tom Tom 2013.

“I really think this festival has the ability to change the entire conversation about the city,” Beyer said. “It’s a grandiose thought, but it’s not unreasonable.” 

One central question seemed to emerge from Tom Tom 2012: What exactly did the city experience from April 13 to May 13? Was it a celebration of community diversity? A serious conversation about the future of Charlottesville’s small business culture? An all-encompassing music fest that tried to attract out-of-towners?  

The month-long festival was billed as having two faces: a series of showcases for local artists, business owners and idea peddlers and a two-day ticketed music festival featuring a lineup of mostly up-and-coming indie bands.

“There is a whole cadre of creative people in Charlottesville,” Beyer said. “All it needed was someone to get in and say, ‘You all are doing something similar. Let’s partner together and make something cool.’” 

The programming lineup read as a mishmash of artists and events that some might say lacked cohesion, but Sam Bush, frontman for the local band The Hill and Wood and Beyer’s music consultant, said it was wise to keep the scope of the first year broad. 

“Charlottesville has a lot of strengths and a lot of ideas,” Bush said, “and I think it’s a good idea to keep a festival like this broad to allow it to find its place. Hopefully, in future years, it’s going to take on a life of its own.”

He also addressed Tom Tom’s critics.

“The counterargument was that it was too broad and no one really knew what it was,” Bush said. “They thought it was this big celebration of everything. It’s a two-way street: You want to keep it broad enough where anyone feels like they can participate in it, but you also want to be able to execute it professionally.”

The ticketed music festival – which Beyer said attracted about 1,000 people each night – allowed attendees to walk among seven downtown venues. Bush was concerned about how the artists would perceive the meager turnout, but he was heartened to see congratulatory emails from bands excited to come back next year.

“I was fearing that they would be slightly disgruntled,” he said. “It turns out every artist I talked to had a wonderful time. They loved Charlottesville, they said it was a great place to visit and they understood that a first-year festival is going to be pretty small.”

Tom Tom 2013 will offer a larger menu of bluegrass, blues, gospel and jazz, in addition to the “innovative up-and-comers” featured this year, Beyer said.

Music became Tom Tom’s backdrop for a wider innovation conversation, and Beyer enlisted the help of Oliver Platts-Mills, analyst for the Charlottesville investment management firm Investure, to spearhead the talks. 

Platts-Mills had met Beyer when Beyer hosted a series of public meetings at his apartment during his city council run. After discussing his vision, Beyer tapped Platts-Mills with the task of collecting UVA professors, local political leaders and business heads for a series of business-themed discussions. Platts-Mills centered the panels around a question that has interested him personally: Can Charlottesville grow to become a start-up hub akin to Austin or Cambridge, Mass., that attracts – and keeps – entrepreneurs?

“We had pretty good participation at each of these talks – 50 or 60 people,” Platts-Mills said, “which I think is pretty good for an intellectual conversation on a Wednesday night with no music or beer. There’s a real appetite for this type of innovation talk in Charlottesville, and hopefully there will be a space where we can keep doing these types of events.”

Philippe Sommer, Director of Entrepreneurship Programs at the Darden Business School at UVA who talked on one of Tom Tom’s panels, agreed. In his eight years in Charlottesville, he has seen a growing willingness to channel the city’s entrepreneurial spirit into commercial endeavors.

Sommer was particularly impressed with Tom Tom’s crowd-source pitch night, which awarded money to innovative business ideas at The Gleason Building downtown. The winner was not a Darden student, but rather Sandra Carter, the owner of Sixth Street Mini Mart Catering, who wanted to transform her business into a hub for healthy food.

“The people who came out were not the usual suspects,” Sommer said. “And I think that’s a really powerful message, that innovation is not just something going on at UVA and at that Ivory Tower up on a hill. Having an entrepreneurial mindset is a way you view the world. It’s the difference between: ‘Someone give me a job’ and ‘I’ll go create a job for myself.’ And that mindset should be taught and should be accessible to lots of people, not just those at the university.”

After a hectic four months, Beyer plans to recharge his batteries before plotting his moves for Tom Tom 2013. One thing is clear: he will not let criticism of Tom Tom’s first year stifle its positive take-aways.

“I think Charlottesville has a way of cannibalizing its visionaries,” Beyer said. “It eats them alive. A lot of people expected the festival to get out of the box five years old and not trust its intentions.”

 On the night after President Obama delivered his State of the Union address, his regional field director and youth vote director for Charlottesville stood at the front of a 150-seat lecture hall at the University of Virginia, sharing re-election plans with 20 members of the University Democrats.

Before the talk ended, Alexa Kissinger and Rachael Klarman beamed onto the projection screen a memorable 2008 Obama stump speech, delivered in a downpour at Mary Washington University in Fredericksburg.

“Sometimes, the skies grow cloudy, and it’s dark,” Obama preached. “And you think the rains will never pass. But here’s what I understand: As long as all of us are together, there’s nothing we can’t do.”

Nearly four years later, the dark clouds and rains have yet to pass for young people, and that could have profound implications for Obama’s re-election bid. Polls now show waning support for Obama in a voting bloc that played a large role in powering him to the Oval Office. In 2008, two-thirds of the under-30 crowd voted for Obama, the largest margin of victory within any age group since the Pew Research Center started tracking such statistics in 1972. However, a recent Harvard University study found that the President’s approval rating among Millennials has dropped 12 percentage points in the last two years, prompting the question: Will young voters blame Obama for their predicament? And if they do, can he still win Virginia and extend his White House stay?

An early look at Charlottesville revealed that the Obama brand, while bruised, is alive, well, and poised to plug back in to a network that registered more than 28,000 new city voters—a record—in 2008.

The new ground troops
The local leaders of Obama’s re-election bid are young, ambitious, and committed, much like in 2008, when UVA registered a school record 4,000 students to vote. Kissinger, Charlottesville’s field director, took eight classes last semester to graduate early from Arizona State University, solely so she could work on the campaign. She also deferred enrollment to Harvard Law until 2013 and has opted to live in Charlottesville with a host family until November.

“If I were sitting in a classroom or out in an office somewhere, I’d be thinking, ‘Man, I’m not out there,’” she said.

James Schwab, UVA junior and president of the University Democrats, caught the political bug working 70-hour weeks as a summer volunteer for Tom Perriello’s re-election campaign in 2010. He and other college students will play a pivotal role in re-energizing 2008 Obama supporters, Schwab said.

“When college kids get excited, that excitement expands out into the community,” he said. “They’re willing to knock on doors and talk to people. Voting number is a small part of what college students can do for the election process.”

Kissinger, Schwab’s University Democrats and Hoos for Obama have already hit the streets, hosting voter registration drives at Alderman Library and Bodo’s Bagels, walking door to door around town, and manning phone banks at C’ville Coffee and New Cabell Hall.

“The great thing about the Obama campaign is its sense of team,” Kissinger said. “Giving responsibility to these teams allows them to bond, and it gets the volunteers on them more excited.”

The Millennial challenge
While teamwork might spur excitement, the crucial element for Team Obama among Millennials will be crafting a message that convinces them he and his government have made their lives better—no small task given the data.

In 2011, the jobless rate among 18- to 24-year-olds reached 16.3 percent, according to a study from the Pew Research Center. Also, one in four 18- to 34-year-olds moved back home with their parents, and nearly half said they took a job they didn’t want just to pay the bills. To boot, 30 percent of 18- to 34-year-olds have more than $10,000 in personal debt—excluding mortgages, according to a poll conducted by the non-partisan group Demos.
If you’re 24, burdened with college loans and underemployed at Starbucks, will you happily vote Barack in 2012?

Emily Blakemore, a 2010 UVA graduate and leader of Hoos for Obama in 2008, was so affected by her time working to elect Obama that she is pursuing a Masters in Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University. Though she intends to support him in November, Blakemore has been dissatisfied with Obama’s communication skills.

“I’m an avid reader of politics, but I feel like if you talk to the average voter, they’re not hearing all the good things,” she said. “And I was happy we got the health care deal, but I hated the process with which we did it. At some point, he had to let go of that rhetoric of ‘We’re not a black America or a white America, we’re the United States of America,’ but I don’t know. It makes me kick myself.”

Also, she is not sure what to tell many of her friends—recent college graduates—who are struggling to find jobs.

“That’s where my own knowledge fails me,” Blakemore said. “I think they have a right to feel disappointed.”

Blakemore’s biggest fear for her peers is that their financial woes will lead to civic apathy.
“I don’t see Romney making it any better,” she said. “My fear is losing people from the political process altogether.”

Kissinger is stationed in town to prevent that from happening. She plans to correct the misperceptions of Obama’s economic decisions. Recent upticks in employment figures show that his policies are starting to work, she said.

“I think we could do a better job of messaging those successes and showing that Democratic policies have helped,” Kissinger said. “But it’s complicated messaging that, right? I don’t have a good sound bite for that. All I know is my friends are able to get jobs now that seniors when I was a freshman were not able to get.”

The spirit of compromise has died, and both sides appear ready to dig in for another battle.

After spending two years seeking a middle ground with Charlottesville officials, Albemarle County’s elected leaders have dropped the olive branch. The county board recently asked Delegate Rob Bell, whose 58th district includes part of Albemarle, to introduce legislation during this year’s General Assembly session that would adjust Virginia’s school funding formula to add about $2.5 million to Albemarle’s school coffers and subtract the same from Charlottesville’s school funds.

Bell introduced the same budget amendment in 2010, but it failed after city officials sent a lobbyist to Richmond to thwart the bill and a majority of state Senators refused to support it.

The silver lining to the 2010 showdown was that it galvanized a conversation between city and county leaders that centered on how the two locales could share costs amid a challenging budgetary climate and avoid another round of infighting. Those talks have stalled, and Albemarle leaders say that the window for compromise has shut.

“[The talks] went absolutely nowhere,” said county Supervisor Dennis Rooker, who did not support Bell’s amendment in 2010 but is backing it this year. “I think we’re back to where we were two years ago.”

The city-county tension, and the impetus for Bell’s bill, is rooted in both pressing budgetary needs and a 30-year deal between locales. State funds for education have shrunk in recent years, straining school budgets and prompting districts to search for new revenue streams. In addition, city and county officials have come to interpret their 1982 revenue-sharing agreement differently, and that fundamental difference won’t be easily resolved.

2010 vs. 2012

Rooker isn’t the only official in Albemarle to have a different view of Bell’s amendment in 2012. In fact, the county’s elected leaders are unanimous in their support of the bill this time around, signaling a solidarity that didn’t exist two years ago. In 2010, county supervisors voted 4-2 to support Bell’s bill, and the school board favored it by a 4-3 margin.

Rooker opted not to back Bell’s bill in 2010 because he wanted to engage the city in talks to see if the issue could be resolved locally, without General Assembly intervention.

“I thought we should try a less polarizing way, and we did,” Rooker said. “A few years have gone by, and we held off [introducing the amendment] last year to try to achieve a solution that was mutually palatable, but that has not emerged.”

Delegate David Toscano, who represents residents in both Charlottesville and parts of Albemarle, refereed a meeting in April 2010 between city and county leaders in an attempt to find the common ground that Rooker and others were seeking.

At that meeting, several committees were asked to brainstorm how some of the $18 million that the county gives the city each year in accordance with their revenue sharing agreement could be devoted to joint projects. The committees met intermittently, and the responsibility of finding ways to share funds was eventually passed on to both school boards. These talks trailed off without much progress.

After both boards initially agreed to share the cost of virtual class offerings, the county lost interest in the idea, and in any sort of collaboration, according to Ned Michie, chairman of the Charlottesville School Board.

“I don’t know why,” Michie said. “We were holding up on our end, and they lost interest.”

Rooker tells a different version.

“The word I kept getting back was that the city school board told the county: ‘We can’t agree to anything because the City Council won’t allocate the funds for it,’” he said.

However the impasse played out, the altered political winds in Virginia have given county officials reason to think they’ll get their way with Bell’s amendment in 2012. As a result of November’s elections, the General Assembly now seats decidedly more Republicans, which seemingly helps Bell, a Republican.

“I’m hesitant to make predictions,” Bell said, “but I’m guardedly optimistic.”

Rooker shared Bell’s optimism.

“Rob will probably have more influence on the legislation,” Rooker said.

For his part, Michie felt that the amendment transcends party politics. Its fate will be determined not by a favorable political position in the General Assembly, he said, but rather by common sense.

“I think that logic will hopefully rule the day,” he said, “and [state legislators] will understand that this is terrible state policy, even if it isn’t going back on a bargain, which it is.”

Fundamental differences = permanent impasse?

Michie feels strongly that the claim inherent in Bell’s bill breaches the terms of the revenue-sharing agreement, so much so that he recently wrote a 49-page memo that lays out the city’s case.

Michie’s inspiration in writing the opus was to add historical context.

“I don’t think anyone on any of the county boards was around in 1982,” Michie said. “So to them, [Bell’s bill] looks like easy money in tough economic times.”

To Michie, it looks like county officials are defying a bargain they made 30 years ago and seeking special treatment by revising a statewide funding formula in order to benefit their coffers.

Michie is absolutely certain that county officials in 1982 accepted the fact that the revenue sharing agreement would last forever and knew how the agreement would forever impact the state’s school funding formula–two crucial claims, since county officials are claiming ignorance.

To understand why county officials agreed in 1982 to set no time limit on their deal with the city, one needs to slip into the shoes of those negotiating at the time, Michie says. Virginia’s constitution stipulates that all municipalities in the state categorized as cities are “independent cities” and are, therefore, not politically part of a county, even if they might be entirely surrounded by one, as is the case with Charlottesville and Albemarle. Furthermore, the constitution protects these landlocked independent cities by allowing them to add land through court decisions. Otherwise, the argument goes, the cities might be overly burdened with the financial stress of providing services to a growing population, without the option to add land for business and commerce that could generate needed streams of revenue.

In the 1960s, Charlottesville successfully annexed county land on two occasions, most notably in 1964, when it almost doubled in size and added what is today the Greenbrier neighborhood, the Barracks Road shopping area and Johnson Village. After a 10-year suspension of annexations imposed by the General Assembly in the ‘70s, Charlottesville sought to annex more land once the moratorium was lifted in July 1980. Wishing to avoid the prospect of losing any more land to the city, county officials signed the revenue sharing agreement in 1982. In doing so, Charlottesville officials promised not to annex county land. In return, Albemarle agreed to transfer to Charlottesville 10 cents for every dollar of real estate property tax that it collects each year. Currently, that transfer amounts to about $18 million annually, though the figure fluctuates.

This is where the current tensions with school funding begin: Virginia’s school funding formula determines how much is doled out annually to each school division based on the wealth of a locality. As it stands now, the formula counts the revenue sharing agreement’s transfer of money towards Albemarle’s wealth, even though the money goes into Charlottesville’s coffers.

Bell’s bill is asking the state to credit the agreement’s transfer as city money. It assumes that county officials in 1982 did not know that the transfer would count toward the county’s wealth in the school formula.

Michie is dubious that county officials in 1982 were that ignorant. He claims that county officials were willing to accept the funding formula situation, even if it meant a potential loss in school funds for perpetuity. After all, Michie said, the alternative—to watch the city annex more county land—would have been more financially damaging.

“I think a fundamental flaw in the county’s argument is their presumption that there is a transfer of wealth from the county to the city every year,” Michie said. “It’s just not accurate. It’s an exchange of wealth. They give us money, and for another year, they get to keep the land that the city would have annexed in 1980 and the income that comes from that land.”

For his part, Rooker asserts that Michie is making a leap of faith by implying that county officials in 1982 knew how the agreement would affect school funding and were willing to accept that the agreement would last forever.

“His argument is that everybody knew about it at the time,” Rooker said. “And because it wasn’t dealt with, the parties are obligated to stay in that position forever. I don’t know that the contract implies that.”

Rooker suggested that Michie’s memo might be cherry-picking quotes and facts that favor his point of view.

What’s next?

Should Bell’s bill pass, the school funding that the city would permanently lose—currently $2.5 million, according to the formula—would be a “crippling blow,” Michie said.

As such, the city will look to hire a lobbyist – like it did in 2010 – to educate state legislators about what city officials see as “terrible state policy” and to convince them of the county’s self-interested motives, Michie said. Other counties in the state have similar revenue sharing agreements with independent cities, he contends. Why should Albemarle receive special treatment?

As for Toscano, the unofficial legislative referee for the county and city feels that the bill has a greater chance of passing this year, and he laments the waning desire for compromise.

“Unfortunately, I think some leaders in both jurisdictions see this as a zero-sum game. City leaders think: ‘We don’t have to do it because there’s no chance [the revenue sharing agreement] will ever be changed.’ And county leaders say, ‘Why should we compromise? We’ll eventually get our way.’ That is not the way this community should operate.”

The General Assembly began its 2012 session January 11, and Bell has every intention of introducing the amendment soon, “absent some last-minute agreement.” Stay tuned.
 

It may have been a grim 2011 for Virginia Democrats overall, but Delegate David Toscano, D-Charlottesville, bucked the trend. Now, Toscano faces one of the more challenging tasks of his political career: lifting his party caucus from the depths of historically dour election results.

Toscano tallied more than 80 percent of votes in the 57th District on November 8, earning him his fourth term in the House of Delegates. However, some of his blue-striped comrades did not fare as well. In fact, in the history of Virginia’s House, Democrats have never held as few seats, 32, as they do now. Eleven days after Election Day, House Democrats gathered at their annual retreat in Richmond and unanimously chose Toscano as their Minority Leader.

“He has a lawyerly, reassuring presence on the House floor,” said Del. Mark Sickles, D-Fairfax, who will work closely with Toscano in 2012 as the new Caucus Chairman for House Democrats. “He has an ability to make a point without being obnoxious or disagreeable about it.”

From his seat across the state’s political aisle, House Majority Leader Kirk Cox feels Toscano will be a level-headed House counterpart.

“We both don’t like to surprise the other side,” said Cox, R-Colonial Heights. “We’re different philosophically on some things, but I think the tone we’ll try to set for Virginia is that we’ll try to work on things we agree on and we’ll try to be civil where we disagree.”

C-VILLE Weekly recently sat down with Toscano in his law office on East High Street to talk about his new role as House Minority Leader, as well as his outlook on Virginia’s political scene in 2012. The following is an excerpt from that conversation.

C-VILLE: How will you have to adjust your mindset to your new role?

Toscano: I’ll have to represent my caucus’ view, rather than simply my personal view of what my constituents want. So I have a fine line to walk. It’s like being a mayor, in a way. When I was mayor, there were times when I would say, ‘I’m speaking for the Council here,’ and there would be other times when I would say, ‘I’m speaking for myself.’ You have to be sure you draw that distinction.

As a result of the fall elections, Democrats hold only 32 seats in the House of Delegates, the lowest number in Virginia history. Given the challenges that go with this extreme minority, why did you accept this leadership role?

It is a great challenge and a great opportunity. It’s a great challenge because our numbers aren’t as high as they should be, but it’s a great opportunity because I can help shape the message and influence the debate in ways I couldn’t when I was just one member.

Would you characterize this role as your most important in your political career to date?

Ask me in a year. Being mayor of Charlottes-ville was quite an honor. Being elected to a seat that was once held by Jefferson is not something that you can toss away lightly. This potentially takes it to a whole different level in influencing the debate, but we’ll see if it’s going to be the best [role] of my career.

What tone do you plan to set as the leader of the Democratic Party in the House?

First, my role is to keep the Democrats in the House together, because we only have power if we’re unified. The second thing is to draw very clear distinctions between Democrats and Republicans on issues as diverse as taking guns into a bar to funding for education. The third is to present some positive proposals that potentially could be accepted by Republicans or that can win the hearts and minds of the public and influence the legislative process. We are not going to be the party that sits back and says ‘no’ to everything.

You talk about unifying the Democratic caucus. Within Virginia’s Democratic Party, there’s such a diversity of political views. How will you unify them?

We have a common set of principles that we can organize around, and we’re going to talk about that throughout the [General Assembly] session and beyond. I’ve talked about Democrats being the party of jobs, economic opportunity, and the middle class. That’s what we’ve been about for a century. We need to talk about how we are the party of education. That we believe in science. That we’re the party of diversity and the party of fiscal responsibility. The last President to balance the budget? Bill Clinton, a Democrat. And [former governor] Mark Warner came in and bailed the state out of a huge fiscal challenge that was left by his Republican predecessor. We need to grab that mantle and claim it as ours. Finally, we’re the party that helps people in need. We’re going to defend the shredding of the social safety net.

What will be your No. 1 policy priority?

Education funding. This is the year that we re-benchmark for Standards of Quality. The long and short of it is: the state promises to provide assistance to school divisions based on these standards. Every two years, we re-benchmark and ask: What’s happened with inflation? What’s happened with wages? That generates a dollar figure that gets allocated across the school division. My thinking is that Republicans are going to say that there is not enough money to provide what is needed, and that’s where the fight will come.

To what extent do you see Republicans’ strong showing this November as a bellwether for 2012?

One of the reasons we are now 32 seats [in the House] has to do with redistricting, which was controlled by the Republicans. We’ve known for a while that our numbers were going to drop pretty precipitously, and it was only somewhat due to the attitude of the electorate. It had a lot to do with how the districts were drawn; they redistricted in a way that made it very difficult for Democrats to compete.

Also, the attitude over the last two election cycles has been very anti-government and very anti-incumbent, and I actually think that’s starting to change a little bit now. I think the economy is starting to pick up, and people are a little bit more optimistic. Throw into the mix the fact that the voter turnout will be higher and more Democratic, and we’ll have to wait and see.

How important will Virginia be to the national political landscape in 2012?

I think it’ll be tremendously important. Between the Kaine-Allen race and the Presidential race, this is going to be a hotbed for political activity. It’s going to be an incredible election cycle for Virginians. You’ll see the president here a lot, and in the Kaine-Allen race, they’ll spend a lot of money and there’ll be a lot at stake. And if [Governor] McDonnell somehow ends up on the [national] ticket, you increase the interest dramatically.

Do you think that’s a possibility?

I think it’s a possibility. He’s been running for vice president for the last six months.

Support grew one cupcake sale at a time, and it culminated in a reworded Bob Dylan song in a Crozet gymnasium.

“How many times must a turbine turn,” sang the Henley Middle School choir, “to give us enough energy?”

Last Friday, Henley students, teachers and a throng of representatives from the U.S. Department of Energy and local government met outside the school to christen its Renewable Energy Center, funded in part by federal stimulus dollars.

Henley’s librarian and the project’s brainchild, Susan Guerrant, peered up at a 45′ high wind turbine and surveyed her giggling students, some donning Santa hats and reindeer antler headbands to celebrate the last school day before holiday break.
“It’s been pretty exciting to watch the kids respond,” said Guerrant, who was an English teacher for 12 years at Henley and has been its librarian for 13.

Later that day, in the school’s gym, Jonathan Bartlett, market development manager for the U.S. Department of Energy, followed the choir’s Dylan remix by plugging the value of careers in math and science.

“Hopefully some of you will move into renewable energy, be it solar, wind or water,” Bartlett said.

The idea for the center was hatched in 2007, when Guerrant and a group of Henley teachers decided to start raising money to install solar thermal panels that would further Henley’s focus on environmental studies.

“We thought this would be a great way to focus the kids’ energy,” said Guerrant, who also heads Henley’s Environmental Club. “As we look to the future, our finite resources will run out and we’ll put ourselves in interesting political situations because we depend on them now, so to use renewables is forward-thinking. It’s important to educate kids at this age about it, when they’re still thinking about careers and shaping their belief systems about the world.”

Through bake sales, a golf tournament, cereal box top collections and other small fundraisers, the school made steady strides toward its fundraising goal. Then, Lindsay Snoddy, Environmental Compliance Manager for the Albemarle school division, entered the fray. Snoddy spotted a chance to expand Guerrant’s vision and applied for a grant sponsored by the Virginia Department of Mines, Minerals and Energy.

“Based on what Henley was already doing, it just seemed like a natural fit,” Snoddy said. The grant’s funders agreed, and awarded Henley $211,000. The center also used $40,000 raised by Henley and $35,000 from the Albemarle school division.

The Renewable Energy Center has four facets: the wind turbine, more than 100 solar energy panels that blanket Henley’s roof, a solar thermal collector that will warm about 60 percent of Henley’s hot water, and a Web-based tracking system that will broadcast the school’s renewable energy output on a TV monitor in the school’s lobby. The tracking system is the same one used by almost 50 other wind turbines throughout the U.S., so students can compare a trove of data and glean meaning from it.

When Henley’s center is fully functional in January, it will account for 6 percent of the school building’s annual energy usage.

In addition to its practical energy uses, the center has also been a way for math and science teachers to connect their lessons to a tangible, real-world project. Renewable energy is already part of Virginia’s sixth grade Standards of Learning science curriculum, but Henley teacher Leslie Kenner said the center will allow her students to slip into the shoes of scientists, engineers, economists, and policymakers.

“They take energy for granted,” Kenner said. “They flick on a light switch or plug in their iPods and don’t think twice about it. We were able to give them mini solar panels and examine the inside of them to see how it generates energy. We hope this center will make it more relevant for them.”

Charlottesville City Schools have decided to embrace the uncertainty that comes with adopting new technology on a large scale as they implement the use of tablet computers in the classroom this year.

The funding scheme for the tablet computer plan pools money from different chests to accomplish a dramatic overhaul. Overall, it will cost the division $780,000 to launch, and its four-year maintenance contract will amount to $540,000 per year.

Ned Michie, a city School Board member since 2004, wasn’t afraid of the decision.

“Textbooks are going to go away,” Michie said. “Could we wait five more years? Sure, we probably could. But we were able to put together the money to do this initiative now, and I think sooner is better than later.”

City school officials will soon ink a deal to purchase 1,932 Windows 7 tablet computers for the coming school year, with the aim of every student in grades six-12 using one by the end of the year. Teachers, meanwhile, were given iPads in June and granted the summer to get acquainted with the devices.

Charlottesville High students will be allowed to take their tablets home, while Buford Middle and Walker Upper Elementary students will hand theirs in at the end of each school day. Tablet deployment will start at Charlottesville High in October, and if all goes as planned, it will continue at Buford and Walker in November.

Before this fall, city teachers could reserve laptop carts for when their classes needed Internet access. According to Llezelle Dugger, vice chairwoman of the School Board, the tablet plan is “the logical next step.”

“I can’t believe I’m saying this, but laptops are becoming outdated,” Dugger said. “Technology has moved on from the laptop initiative we were talking about several years ago. It’s easier for our kids to carry a tablet than a laptop.”

The funding scheme for the tablet computer plan pools money from different chests to accomplish a dramatic overhaul. Overall, it will cost the division $780,000 to launch, and its four-year maintenance contract—which includes software and licensing fees and infrastructure up-keep—will amount to $540,000 per year, according to the schools’ director of technology, Dean Jadlowski.

Not many school divisions in Virginia—or in the country, for that matter—have implemented such an extensive computing plan. As the rollout approaches, the question becomes: Is the division moving too fast, with too large of an investment in a tool still in its exploratory phase, or will the bold plan become a successful model for other districts?

A transformative tool

With a tablet’s touch screen, students can manipulate maps and diagram math and chemistry equations, providing interactivity from their desks that laptops cannot offer. Also, tablet batteries last seven to 10 hours longer than laptops, making it less likely that students will interrupt teachers with power problems.

As for the direct effect on learning, students are more engaged in classwork when using their tablets, according to Radford University education professor Matt Dunleavy, who led a recent study for the Virginia Department of Education that evaluated iPad use in four Virginia schools. Through his observations and interviews, it became apparent to Dunleavy that students were more rapt with tablets, most likely because of their comfort level—and interest—involving all things digital, he said.

Tablets also allow students to instantly gauge what they know, at their own pace. With them, students don’t have to wait for their teachers to correct and return tests that assess basic skills and knowledge. Digital games, puzzles or quizzes immediately evaluate students, and those who are quick to grasp a concept can move to a higher difficulty level without having to wait for the rest of the class, Dunleavy noted.

“The instant, one-on-one feedback is powerful,” he said. “Cognitive science tells us that the quicker the feedback, the more relevant the feedback, and the greater the student achievement level and the greater the retention of information.”

In addition, tablets empower students to explore and research on their own, from their desk, so they can bolster an argument during a class discussion or answer a question they might not want to ask in front of the entire class. Of course, allowing students to follow their own paths of inquiry from their seats might send them down what Dunleavy calls a digital rabbit hole.

“We’ve all done this to some extent—wasting time on a stupid YouTube video that is not related to our work,” he said.

To combat this time-wasting, Dunleavy suggests that teachers employ good old fashioned management techniques, such as offering clear directions that give structure to a digital activity and outline specific learning goals.

“I think we need to guard against the idea that these tablets are somehow radically changing instruction,” the education professor said. “They are radically changing students’ access to information, and they have the potential to radically shorten the feedback loop. But I don’t think it’s going to change how teachers should be teaching. Teachers should be on top of their students at all times, whether there are computers in the classroom or not.”

Too large, too soon?

Even with its immense upside, the tablet computer is still a new educational tool, prompting some to call to question the scale of the city schools’ plan.

“I’m not sure if large-scale implementation is the way to go,” Dunleavy said. “I would encourage people to be conservative in the beginning with a small-scale pilot involving teachers who you know will be comfortable exploring the uses of the iPad.”

Moreover, definitive evidence does not yet exist proving that the use of advanced technology improves student achievement. Some recent studies, however, are promising. Henrico County’s 2001 plan showed that ubiquitous computer use does make an impact. According to a three-year study done by the e-learning firm Interactive Inc., Henrico’s laptop plan resulted in higher test scores in biology, history, chemistry, reading and earth science.

“A body of literature does show that there is a positive correlation between the presence of technology and achievement,” Dunleavy said. “That doesn’t mean technology is causing that higher achievement.”

In fact, some within the education realm feel technology has been oversold and underused. According to members in this camp, too many school officials naively think that by infusing the latest tech gadget into curriculum, instructional magic will somehow occur. Studies have definitively proven, however, that skilled teachers directly instigate higher student achievement, and so—the argument goes —education money is better spent on developing teachers’ skills, not on the latest gizmo.

While part of this argument has merit, according to Dunleavy, it also has flaws.

“You can’t sit and wait for a bulletproof study,” he said. “If we do, no one will try. It’s fundamentally flawed to think that we have to wait for a standardized test increase to rationalize the use of these tools.”

Michie and Dugger agree. The main way that today’s students engage with the world is through the Web and digital devices, they said, so why deprive them of those things during the school day? Also, by acclimating students to tablets and teaching them to effectively navigate the digital world, the school division is preparing them for the workforce.

“Most jobs you can think of now require some interaction with a computer,” Michie said.

School officials also decided to launch such a large-scale computing plan, Jadlowksi said, so that students are introduced to digitized learning early and then gradually build their skills as they move through school.

“The further ahead we are in using these tools in the early grades, the more advanced [students] will be when they come to high school,” Jadlowski noted.

On July 3, 1936, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt manned a microphone at Skyline Drive Milepost 51 and christened Shenandoah National Park (SNP) as he marveled at its restorative powers.

“In their tents under the stars,” said Roosevelt with his signature cadence, “with an open fire to cook by, with the smell of the woods and the winds in the trees, they will forget the rush and strain of all the other long weeks of the year, and for a short time at least, the days will be good for their hearts and for their souls.”

SNP officials are now celebrating the 75th anniversary of the park by once again extolling its virtues, as they should. The park comprises roughly 80,000 acres of designated wilderness area north and west of Charlottesville. However, beneath the pageantry lies the unsavory story of about 500 families, including some from Albemarle, who were forced to move off their land in the late ’20s and early ’30s by the state of Virginia in order to establish the park.

The removal story is often omitted from the mainstream telling of the park’s history. The Byrd Visitor Center—in the Big Meadows area of Skyline Drive, 45 miles north of Charlottesville—now more fully details the plight of the mountain residents. However, “it doesn’t tell the whole story,” according to Virginia Tech English professor Katrina Powell, who recently wrote a book based on letters that mountain families sent to the park service.

Tim Silver, a history professor at Appalachian State University who teaches a course on the national parks, agreed that the mountain families’ stories have been underreported because they detract from the romantic notions of what a national park represents.

“The idea that people were removed is a disquieting concept and not the kind of thing that people want to dwell on when they go to a national park to take in the views and marvel at nature,” Silver said. “These parks depend on visitors, so I can understand why they wouldn’t want to publicize it.”

Early in the ’20s, the National Park Service sought space for a park in the southern Appalachians that would connect East Coast urban dwellers to nature and impress Congressmen in nearby Washington, D.C., into lobbying for national parks funding. A group of local real estate moguls caught word of the park service’s interest in the area, and, anticipating huge paydays from urban tourists, they persuaded the service to create Shenandoah.

In addition to the economic potential that a national park carries, a series of surveys and studies on the mountain families fueled the push to establish SNP. These surveys portrayed the families as backward hillbillies who would be better off if they were relocated and more fully integrated into mainstream society. Social worker and educator Miriam Sizer, who was hired by the state of Virginia to study the mountain families, described them as “steeped in ignorance, wrapped in self-satisfaction and complacency, possessed of little or no ambition…little comprehension of law, or respect for law, these people present a problem.”

On the contrary, mountain families were quite intelligent, just not in the traditional sense, according to Powell.

“If they didn’t have a formal education or used bad grammar, the assumption was that they are not intelligent,” Powell said. “They knew what their rights were and that was what was compelling to me. They knew what the responsibilities were of the state government and of the park service in helping them to move.”

A whirlwind of bureaucratic acts made it difficult for mountain families to decipher what their rights were. In 1926, Congress authorized the establishment of Shenandoah National Park. The bill, however, stipulated that no federal funds could be used to acquire the land, which meant that the state of Virginia had to obtain the land. Rather than attempt to negotiate with each landowner, Virginia passed the Public Park Condemnation Act in 1928, which allowed the state to purchase the land by right of eminent domain—meaning that the government was justified in taking land from individuals because it was being put to public use.

Of the 500 families who were displaced, many left willingly, although some chose to stay and challenge the government, legally or otherwise. For Powell and others, the legacy of eminent domain remains tied to the park.

“If a locale or state deems that there is some use for the land—for the public good or for public use—then that land is vulnerable to be taken from an individual,” said Powell. “That was eye-opening to me.”

 Two candidates, Republican James Norwood and Democrat Christopher Dumler, have emerged as potential heirs to the Scottsville District seat on the Albemarle Board of Supervisors. The seat is currently held by Lindsay Dorrier, who announced in April that he would not seek another term after 18 years on the board.

The race could act as a barometer for where the district stands politically: what it feels is an appropriate real estate tax rate for Albemarle, and what it deems an appropriate funding level for governmental services.

Dorrier, a Democrat, has often aligned with Republican supervisors on fiscal decisions, especially when setting the county’s real estate tax rate. Supervisors recently voted to keep the tax rate at 74.2 cents per $100 of assessed value for the third consecutive year.

In Albemarle, the tension between maintaining government services and setting an appropriate tax rate has become more pronounced, and Dorrier’s successor will face tough political decisions that could compel him to buck party orthodoxy. However, both Norwood and Dumler seem to understand that.

“Lindsay had very minimal partisanship in his ways of managing, and that’s certainly how I would look at myself,” Norwood tells C-VILLE.

Dumler sings a similar tune: “When I’ve been out canvassing, I’ve heard from many people who are pleased that the tax rate has stayed where it is the last three years.”

Both candidates said they have supported the Supervisors’ recent tax rate decisions, citing the dire straits of the economy. However, subtle differences in ideology emerged: Dumler said he would be open to raising taxes if it were the will of his constituents.

“I’m not the type of person who is going to take a ‘No tax’ pledge or a ‘Yes, I’ll raise taxes’ pledge,” says Dumler. “It really depends on the economic climate and what people want at that point in time.”

Norwood, meanwhile, seems singularly focused on belt-tightening.

“I think we’ve been a spoiled populace for years and years,” says Norwood, who adds that he is for “minimal government.”

“Now, we have to face the music and make sure we get an added value for every tax dollar we spend. At this point in time, raising taxes in this economy is not the right thing to do, by any stretch.”

Norwood moved to the area in 1997 and made his mark on the local business scene with a series of shoe stores located in the city and county. He also served as the Economic Development Director for the Scottsville Chamber of Commerce from November 2009 to December 2010, during which time tire manufacturer Hyosung shuttered its Scottsville plant, leading to more than 100 lay-offs.

“In a year’s time, we’ve managed to open six or seven new businesses in Scottsville, and those six or seven businesses have been able to produce about half of the jobs we lost from the factory,” says Norwood. “Scottsville is more vibrant than it was a year ago…and I think I helped contribute to that.”

Dumler arrived in Albemarle in late 2006 to start law school at UVA, and moved to Scottsville in May 2010. In addition to running his own law practice, he has served on a number of local boards, including the Albemarle County Natural Heritage Committee and Region Ten Community Services.

Dumler would like to change how the county builds and revises its five-year comprehensive plan. “The excessive flexibility, and the understanding that you can mess with the plan, creates a lot of uncertainty and hurdles to jump over which might be holding back the county,” says Dumler.

Dumler also vows to help repair Albemarle’s “poisonous” relationship with the city, and notes that he has formed relationships with every member of the City Council and current council candidates.

“There’s a feeling in the city that the county throws around its weight, and there’s a feeling in the county that the city is dragging its feet, trying to revisit every issue,” says Dumler. “I’m not interested in litigating whose fault it is.”