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Unequal justice: City and county seek feedback on criminal justice disparities

MGT Consulting Group held a series of listening sessions to hear about community members’ experiences with the local criminal justice system. The group is working on a disparity and disproportionality study, and plans to make recommendations this summer. Photo by Martyn Kyle

To the list of racial disparities in Charlottesville and Albemarle County, we can add arrest rates: According to a new study, African Americans are booked at significantly higher rates than whites at the Albemarle-Charlottesville Regional Jail, and the greatest disproportionality occurs during felony arrests.

This is a national problem—black adults are 5.9 times more likely to be incarcerated than whites, according to The Sentencing Project, and racial disparities exist in every stage from arrest rates to the lengths of sentences. But to address the problem locally, City Council hired an independent consulting firm to collect data on both the city and the county, solicit community feedback, and make recommendations for change. While it’s mostly being funded by the Virginia Department of Criminal Justice Services, the city is picking up $10,000 of the $100,000 tab.

After 10 months of analyzing data, MGT Consulting Group—a “disparity solutions” consulting group with approximately 10 offices across the country, and one in Richmond—held four community meetings to gather additional, firsthand experiences from folks such as ex-offenders, victims, witnesses, cops, jail staff, and attorneys.

At the first meeting, on April 25 at Jack Jouett Middle School, MGT announced that although the disproportionality is smaller when it comes to misdemeanor arrests, black arrest rates are still considerably higher.

This isn’t news for some.

“You’re probably saying this is something you already know,” admitted project director Reggie Smith. He added that the firm will not release any other, more specific, data until the study concludes in June.

He then turned the floor over to the first speaker, a woman who came to talk about her experiences with law enforcement. She was recently involved in a small fender bender, called the police for safety, and ended up behind bars, she said.

This was a story that other people in the room knew too well, and some nodded their heads in support. “The whole call went so wrong, and I felt like, ‘Lord, I shouldn’t have called the police,’” the woman said.

When the man she collided with became aggressive, she said she felt unsafe and called for help. And when the cop arrived on the scene of the already-tense situation, she said, “He automatically assumed I was the aggressive person. …We went back and forth, but nothing disrespectful, and he placed me under arrest.” Her charges? Disorderly conduct and DUI.

When the officer indicated that he smelled alcohol, she said she admitted to having a beer, which she told him wasn’t against the law. She said she then refused a breathalyzer test because she didn’t know her rights. The cop took her to the magistrate’s office to swear out a warrant for a blood test, which was then administered at UVA. After the test, she said he took her back to the jail, where staff gave her the option of staying locked up until they could ensure she wasn’t drunk, or taking the breathalyzer test to prove her sobriety. When she opted for the latter, she blew a 0.02 percent, she said, well below the legal limit of 0.08 percent.

Her car was towed from the scene—even though she said her sister and neighbor were on-hand to park it in her driveway—and now she’s hoping to be reimbursed for the $250 it took to get her car back.

“If it had been a white woman, then it would have been handled totally differently,” she told the consultants.

Another person talked about the disproportionate police presence at race-related protests compared to demonstrations about gun control or the environment, and specifically noted the large number of undercover cops in unmarked vehicles at the recent Charlottesville High School Black Student Union protest in McIntire Park.

“It’s something about race,” she said. Referring to the police, she added, “Something about anti-racist activists just trips their trigger.”

A man told the consultants about recently buying a house in a new neighborhood. One day before move-in, he went to check out his new digs during his lunch break, and said he noticed a white woman following him through the neighborhood in her car. When he parked outside his new house, she did, too. And when he introduced himself, he said she refused to give him her name, said he was “harassing her,” and called the police.

“I just walked away because I didn’t want to be the next Trayvon Martin,” he said. “It’s just this idea that I can’t even exist without the police being called on me for being in a place that someone thought I shouldn’t be.”

The last person to speak was Darrell Simpson, a former Sheriff’s deputy in Rockingham County who has also worked as a case manager for the Department of Corrections.

“One of the reasons I left that line of work is the disparity and disproportionality that I witnessed, and the fact that my viewpoints were in the extreme minority,” he said, adding that he often witnessed racism from “inside the walls. …I didn’t feel like I was really a part of the family in any of those settings, so I decided to get out.”

Harold Folley, a community organizer with the Legal Aid Justice Center, attended the April 27 meeting at the Carver Recreation Center, where he says approximately 10 or 15 people shared their stories.

He notes that MGT didn’t share any specific data it has collected, and that most people are already aware of the local disparity.

“You didn’t have to do a $100,000 study to say, ‘Oh my God, this is happening,’” he says.

And perhaps there was a relatively low turnout because people have little faith that this study—or any study—could actually have any influence on the criminal justice system.

Says Folley, “They just feel like nothing’s going to change.”

 

Corrected May 1 at 12:55 to show that the disproportionality is smaller when it comes to misdemeanor arrests. We originally reported the study showed that the disparity is smaller when it comes to misdemeanor arrests.

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Still guilty: Statue trespassers appeal their sentences, with mixed results

In March 2018, Brian Lambert (left) said he and Christopher Wayne (right) would take their punishment for trespassing and attempting to remove the tarps off the Lee and Jackson statues “like men.” Then they appealed, and all but one of their convictions were upheld. Photo by Eze Amos

The outspoken Confederates convicted for trying to remove the shrouds that once covered the Lee and Jackson statues downtown were back in court on appeal April 25–and one of them was back to his past courtroom antics.

Christopher Wayne, a 35-year-old from Monterey, was removed from the courtroom, handcuffed, and given an additional 10 days in jail for his bad behavior, which included hurling a pen across the room and screaming, “You can all go fuck yourselves.”

In March 2018, Wayne was found guilty of destruction of property and two counts of trespassing. Judge Joseph Serkes—whom Wayne repeatedly argued with—sentenced him to serve five months in jail, prompting the defendant to spew profanity outside the courtroom, and flash his middle finger at reporters.

During this go-round, in Charlottesville Circuit Court, Wayne continued to make offhanded comments to testifying witnesses, his own attorney, and prosecutor Nina Antony, who asked him to stop multiple times. Judge Rick Moore called it “entirely improper,” but refused to reprimand him in that moment.

“If he thinks he’s helping his case, I’m going to let him do it,” Moore said, noticeably annoyed.

Defense attorney Josh Wheeler, former director of the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression, called two of Wayne’s friends—one who said he met the defendant through “heritage events” and the other through the Virginia Flaggers—to the stand to dispute evidence from another witness, Hank Morrison, who claimed he saw Wayne tampering with the tarp in Market Street Park on February 16.

Morrison recounted seeing Wayne standing inside the orange fencing the city had erected around the Lee statue. He also said it sounded like someone was yanking on the tarp that shrouded Lee as the city mourned the August 12, 2017, death of Heather Heyer.

Wayne and one other person, identified as William Shifflett, began walking away when they noticed Morrison take out his cell phone to call the police, Morrison said. An officer responded almost immediately and stopped Wayne and Shifflett near the park.

But both Shifflett and Wayne’s other friend, Barry Isenhour, who said he drove the men downtown that day for “supper” on the Downtown Mall, testified that they never saw Wayne tamper with the tarp covering the statue.

Wheeler argued that the testimony from Shifflett and Isenhour was as credible as Morrison’s, and the judge agreed.

Moore upheld Wayne’s guilty verdict for trespassing that day, but dismissed the charge for destruction of property, saying the prosecutor didn’t prove without a reasonable doubt that he also tampered with the tarp that night. Though “chances are, he did it,” Moore said.

He also found Wayne guilty of trespassing in Court Square Park on February 23. Detective Declan Hickey testified that he saw Wayne hiding in the park’s bushes after 11pm, when the park is officially closed, which is marked on signs at its entry points.

When Hickey approached Wayne, the officer testified the defendant claimed he didn’t know the park was closed because he can’t read. Added Hickey, “He called me a fat cunt [and] asked how many kids I’d had sex with,” and when he took him to jail, Hickey said Wayne told the magistrate he identified as an “African helicopter.”

This second guilty verdict apparently didn’t sit well with Wayne, who stood, called it “a farce of justice,” and said he was just trying to enjoy his Confederate statues.

“Your statues?” asked Moore of the Monterey man.

Wayne then asserted again that he couldn’t read the “no trespassing” signs.

“I don’t know [I’m trespassing] if I don’t know how to read,” Wayne said. And answered the judge, “I don’t think you know how to think. …Your attitude is horrible.”

Deputies stationed in the courtroom began inching toward the aggravated defendant, which is when he threw his pen and shouted an obscenity as he was being escorted out. Out of view, but within earshot, Wayne was charged with contempt of court. A short physical altercation could be heard as he was being handcuffed.

“Christopher!” exclaimed one of his supporters, who was also clearly frustrated.

“Bring him back in,” said the judge. Moore then added an additional 10 days for bad behavior onto Wayne’s 45-day jail sentence.

“If you want to keep adding to the sentence, I will let you do that,” the judge said, to which Wayne responded, “Great.”

Brian Lambert, who flashed a white power symbol at his last trial was also appealing his statue-related convictions, but, as the judge noted, behaved considerably better than Wayne this time around.

Moore found that Lambert, 50, was still guilty of the two trespassing and two destruction of property charges, but that the sentence Serkes initially imposed of eight months in jail was too harsh.

Even Antony, the prosecutor, said that punishment was “substantially more than what we would ever anticipate, and Moore sentenced Lambert to just 55 days.

The men didn’t have the right to interfere with the shrouds just because they didn’t like them, Moore reminded them. “We are a nation of laws,” he said.

Lambert said he was “embarrassed for the town,” after August 12, 2017, and the tarps “added insult to injury. …In my heart, I really honestly felt like I was doing the right thing.”

Quipped Wheeler, who also represented Lambert, “The road to hell is often paved with good intentions.”

Correction April 30: Josh Wheeler is the former director of the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression, not its current director.

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‘Deeply and irreparably sorry:’ Student who threatened ‘ethnic cleansing’ apologizes

Superintendent Matt Haas read a public apology from the Albemarle teen who made a racist threat against CHS students. Staff photo

The 17-year-old Albemarle County student who threatened an “ethnic cleansing” at Charlottesville High in March, prompting a city-wide school closure for two days, has offered an apology in a letter written from the Blue Ridge Juvenile Detention Center.

County schools Superintendent Matt Haas read the letter written by Joao Pedro Souza Ribeiro at a recent press conference.

“All students make mistakes and we want to be here to help them,” Haas said. “I think it will help people understand there is a person behind what happened.”

Ribeiro, who has no prior criminal record and whom prosecutors acknowledged showed no signs of carrying out violence, was charged with a felony and a misdemeanor for making the anonymous threat on the message board 4chan.

The teen says he tried to delete the post almost immediately, but he acknowledged that his explanation “should not and will not” be acceptable to the community.

“That website represents all that I abhor in this world,” Ribeiro said about 4chan, parts of which have been a haven for white supremacists and hate speech. “I regret including racial slurs, including one that targeted my own demographic group and that of my friends. Looking back, I don’t really understand why I did it. Maybe I was looking for support from the hateful people who traffic in the embrace of violence so I could then reveal to them what I really believed and tell them that the joke was on them.”

The letter prompted surprisingly little response on social media, and students contacted for this piece did not respond to a request for comment. Jane Mills, whose daughter is a senior at Albemarle High School, had mixed feelings.

“I run Loaves & Fishes Food Pantry, and we get people doing court-ordered community service, and for some reason, the apology felt like somebody made him do it,” she says. “But like most parents of teenagers, who were dumb teenagers at one time, too, I tend to forgive those dumb judgments and I think we are probably likely to forgive this kid.”

Ribeiro said he’s sorry for letting down the community, and specifically his parents, who cry when they visit him in juvenile detention. “I had never seen my father cry before,” he added.

At the press conference, Haas detailed new measures to encourage students to report potential threats, including an anonymous reporting system and a cash reward.

But in this case, reporting was not the problem. When asked about what the schools are doing to prevent students from posting something like this in the first place, county schools spokesperson Phil Giaramita says it’s “impractical” to block internet access on school property, and one of the most effective ways to deter this behavior is by making students aware of the consequences.

“We’re trying to help students realize that images posted on social media don’t disappear simply because they are deleted and that the punishment can be severe,” he says, though he didn’t offer details.

Amanda Moxham, an organizer with the Hate-Free Schools Coalition of Albemarle County, says her group is “deeply concerned” by the lack of anti-racist eduction in local schools.

She says the county school system “has not acknowledged their role in sustaining a racist system that creates a culture in which making a racist threat is viewed as a joke.”

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Climate changer: Youth activists are fighting for their own future

As the planet continues to increase in temperature, 11-year-old Gudrun Campbell says we don't have time to argue. Photo: Amy and Jackson Smith

Flashback to March 15, when the Downtown Mall teemed with 200 miniature activists rallying as part of the national Youth Climate Strike. Among them was 11-year-old Gudrun Campbell, who fearlessly gripped a microphone attached by a curly black cord to the bullhorn held by her dad.

Drawing the mic half an inch from her mouth, she declared, “For years, our government has known about climate change, and for years, they have done nothing.”

Her voice hung over the near-silent crowd of peers and parents.

“We will not sit here and watch them do nothing. We will not sit here and watch them trade our futures, and the futures of millions of people, millions of children, for profits of billions of dollars. We can’t.”

And then the sixth-grader, her blonde hair pulled back in a low ponytail, read a list of demands for grown up government leaders: approve the Green New Deal and transition entirely to renewable energy by 2030, declare a national emergency on climate change, mandate comprehensive education on global warming in schools, commit to reforestation, and change the agriculture industry to focus on plant-based instead of carbon-based farming.

The Walker Upper Elementary student, who also plays cello in the school orchestra and studies Brazilian jiu-jitsu, says her interest in environmental activism was ignited earlier this year, when her language arts teacher showed the class a video of 16-year-old climate activist Greta Thunberg’s headline-making speech in Davos, Switzerland.

Campbell says she went home and read more about Thunberg and the climate, which led her to  “school strikes” and Alexandria Villaseñor, a 13-year-old climate activist who’s been skipping school every Friday to protest in front of the United Nations. Then Campbell and a classmate coordinated the local strike, which she called “necessary.”

“I organized it because there isn’t any time to quietly contemplate the pros and cons of fighting to save our planet, only time to act,” she says.

And while she has certainly proven that she can talk the talk, she’s also walking the walk.

Last summer, Campbell was one of many protesting the Mountain Valley and Atlantic Coast natural gas pipelines, which opponents say would destroy landscapes, contaminate drinking water, disproportionately affect minorities, and create dirty energy that won’t be needed because of the country’s transition to renewables.

“Stopping them means putting pressure on Dominion Energy and the state to halt the construction of the pipelines and the Union Hill compressor station,” she says, referencing one of three ACP compressors proposed in a small, predominantly black neighborhood in Buckingham County, which was partially founded by emancipated slaves, and where Dominion would like to build in the immediate vicinity of unmarked slave burials.

On the last weekend in March, Campbell joined Villaseñor and other young climate activists in a strike outside the U.N.’s headquarters in New York City.

“Meeting these people gives me hope that more youth will join us in standing against the climate crisis and creating lasting and meaningful change,” she says.

And because opponents often criticize environmental advocates for the carbon footprint of their activism, Gudrun is quick to clap back.

“Back off haters, I took the train.”

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Going solar together

Though there’s always that initial investment, going solar can be a profitable way to save the planet.

A new co-op opportunity in Charlottesville aims to help area home and business owners save money on solar panels and electric vehicle chargers by bulk purchasing the equipment.

Solar United Neighbors, a nonprofit headquartered in D.C., has developed similar co-ops in multiple states, including Virginia, to help neighbors save on solar while building a community of solar supporters.

“Rather than recruit a large number of participants that are less engaged, we focus on recruiting a smaller, more engaged group by forming a solar co-op,” says Aaron Sutch, the Virginia program director.

It starts with interest. After prospective participants sign up online, the Solar United Neighbors team will screen each person’s roof via Google Earth and Bing Maps to make sure their structures are fit for solar. Then the team issues a request for proposals from local solar installers to provide a base price for the entire group.

About 25 folks went to a local information session in March, and 20 have already signed up, according to Sutch. The group wants to recruit about 10 more people, he says, and then they’ll be ready to issue the RFP for installers, which will likely happen in mid-May. The absolute deadline to sign up is August 31.

Next, a committee of participants will review the bids and select one installer to complete all of the projects for the group. The installer will meet with participants to provide individualized proposals that list the size and cost of each solar system (with a group discount), and those who choose to move forward will then sign an official contract.

Sutch says the group rate can typically give customers up to a 20 percent discount, and while the co-op offers an especially good deal, solar, in general, can be a profitable way to save the planet. A small system might cost about $8,000 upfront, but you can expect to save about $17,500 on energy costs over 25 years, say co-op organizers. That’s a net profit of nearly $10,000.

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We’ve got work to do: Lagging behind, Charlottesville aims for more ambitious climate goals

In Charlottesville, carbon emissions per household are more than a ton above the national average. Photo: Skyclad Aerial

In the words of Kermit the Frog, it’s not easy being green. Though the Muppet references the color of his amphibian skin, the famous line is a sentiment that also rings true for Charlottesville, where carbon emissions per household are more than a ton above the national average.

With 10 tons of carbon emissions per home annually, the United States trails the considerably more environmentally-friendly Europe by nearly five tons, but “as a city, we’re even further behind,” says Susan Kruse, the executive director of the Charlottesville Climate Collaborative.

Charlottesville lags behind both America and its neighboring continent by clocking in at 11.2 tons of greenhouse gas emissions per household, according to local environmentalists like Kruse, who used an emissions calculator from the California-based Community Climate Solutions.

“We have a lot of work to do,” she says.

City data shows that local greenhouse gas emissions have decreased by nearly a quarter since 2000, from approximately 470,584 metric tons to 362,192 metric tons in 2016. But according to an Environmental Protection Agency equivalency calculator, that’s still enough carbon dioxide to match the greenhouse emissions from 76,899 cars in one year.

Why is an ostensibly progressive community like Charlottesville doing so poorly? Kruse has a few theories, including that the city’s current emissions reduction goal is weak, and the average income here is greater than the national average, so more people own bigger homes and additional vehicles.

“Another factor is that our city was not designed around a robust public transportation system,” she says. “Without an adequate base of affordable housing to serve our community, those who cannot afford to live in Charlottesville rely on their cars to get to work.”

Time for a change

There’s a bit of history to the city’s various attempts to reduce its footprint. In 2011, it committed to a community-wide greenhouse gas reduction goal of 10 percent below those 2000 baseline levels by 2035, a far less ambitious goal than other Virginia cities like Richmond, which has pledged to reduce emissions by 80 percent by 2025. But when city leaders signed on to the Global Covenant of Mayors in June 2017, they agreed to tackle a more aggressive, three-phase goal, which started with an inventory of citywide gas emissions, and will now require setting a new target for reduction, and the development of a climate action plan.

The time may be right, says Susan Elliott, Charlottesville’s Climate Protection Program manager. Given the changes in available technology, cost improvements, utilities integrating more renewables into their fuel mixes, and the city’s increased focus on affordable housing, “Charlottesville is both capable and at a timely point to adopt a new and more ambitious reduction goal,” Elliott says.

She gave the most recent update on this initiative to City Council in November, when she said the inventory phase was finished, and that residential energy, commercial energy, and transportation were the highest contributors to carbon dioxide emissions—at 29.8, 27, and 26.6 percent, respectively. The city then accepted public comments through March to give community members a chance to weigh in on a draft recommendation for an official reduction target and action plan, which will be presented to council May 6.

The Charlottesville Climate Collaborative is one of several groups urging what it calls a “best in class” climate goal of a 45 percent reduction (of 2010 emissions levels) by 2030, with the additional objective of total carbon neutrality by 2050. This is the threshold recommended by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and one that Elliott says she expects her draft recommendations will reflect.

Albemarle officials recently proposed the same net zero goal for 2050.

But Anna Bella Korbatov, chair of the Cville100 Climate Coalition, says environmentalists are urging local leaders to do more than just set robust climate goals. In order to meet their target, she suggests committing to conducting a greenhouse gas inventory every two years, benchmarking progress, and making the data clearly available to the public to make the process more transparent.

And while Charlottesville is already taking steps to address climate change, areas in which the city could use some work include addressing equity issues, tree cover, and transportation, she adds.

Making goals a reality

“Energy efficiency work is really at the nexus of affordable housing and climate change action,” says Chris Meyer, the executive director of the Local Energy Alliance Program “It is not very sexy, but it delivers immediate results to reduce energy bills [and] related greenhouse gas emissions, and increases a low-income household’s quality of living.”

LEAP is tackling this issue head-on, and in 2018 it delivered free energy efficiency improvements—such as new insulation, LED light bulbs, and aerators for faucets and shower heads—to 475 low-income homes in Charlottesville and Albemarle, with financial support from the city, county, and Dominion Energy.

Charlotte and Ralph Terrell are grateful to the Local Energy Alliance Program for improvements that keep their home warm in the winter and cool in the summer. Photo: Eze Amos

Over the past several years, LEAP has made multiple improvements to Charlotte and Ralph Terrell’s home in the 10th and Page neighborhood, including insulating multiple walls, ceilings, and closets. They’ve also made safety enhancements to their dryer hose, installed an upstairs heating and cooling unit, and replaced 13 60-year-old windows.

“Our gas bill has gone down considerably because the house is holding the heat in the winter,” and staying cool in the summer, says Charlotte. “We are very, very thankful for that.”

One of the major challenges Meyer’s organization faces is identifying those in need. “There are resources available, we just have a tough time connecting with those who are eligible,” he says.

Another way to make a home—and a city—more efficient is quite simple, says Wild Virginia board member and lifelong nature lover Lil Williams. Look no further than the trees.

“You don’t have to recreate the wheel,” she says. “You have to plant the right kind of trees in the right place and you have to maintain them.”

Cities are heat islands that absorb and retain warmth, and are generally a few degrees warmer than rural areas. Planting shade trees is proven to decrease a city’s temperature from two to nine degrees based on the type and location, she says.

Due to increasing development and natural causes, Virginia cities are losing approximately 3,000 acres of trees per year, and globally, 20 percent of total greenhouse gas emissions can be attributed to deforestation, says Williams.

“In Charlottesville, we’ve cut down whole swaths of forest and put in apartments and shopping centers,” she adds.

While development may be inevitable, Williams recommends the city plant broad-leaf deciduous trees in more densely populated areas with higher pollution levels, such as near schools, hospitals, and in disadvantaged communities, where shade is proven to decrease the cost of air conditioning and electricity.

The city’s 2007 comprehensive plan established a goal of 40 percent tree cover, and a 2009 study found that number at 47 percent. When the city reassessed it in 2015, tree cover had decreased by 2 percent.

Williams expects tree cover has continued to decrease over time, and seemingly without a one-for-one replacement.

A 2018 city “greenprint” noted that, “while 45 percent is a good canopy coverage, the citywide percentage does not tell the whole story,” because 72 percent of that canopy was on private land, and increasing cover would require participation from the private and public sector.

The city’s urban forester, Mike Ronayne, says the tree commission has recently said it would like to instate a 50 percent canopy goal.

Aside from encouraging the planting of more trees, community activists also hope the city’s forthcoming climate action plan will include a better plan for regional transportation, which accounts for 26.6 percent of all local gas emissions.

City residents have long complained about the ineffectiveness of the Charlottesville Area Transit. “People have a hard time getting from point A to point B in a reasonable amount of time,” says C3’s Kruse. “The buses are not always reliable.”

She says the city should look at public transportation and its layout as an aspect of affordability and emissions reduction.

“It’s not just about whether Charlottesville is walkable or bikeable, it also has to have public transit for the people for whom those are not options,” she adds.

Signs of hope

But it’s not all bad news—there are some areas in which the city is successful. Charlottesville has been a leader in piloting and funding climate protection-related programs, including joining the U.S. Mayors Climate Protection Agreement in 2006, and drafting its vision for becoming a “green city” by 2025 three years later, CPG’s Elliott says.

In 2017, Charlottesville was the first Virginia city to earn a SolSmart designation, meaning city leaders incentivized going solar by hosting a community “solarize” campaign, reviewing zoning codes, and identifying and addressing restrictions that prohibited solar development.

Several city buildings—including the Smith Aquatic and Fitness Center, Fontaine Fire Station, and Lugo-McGinness Academy—have installed solar panel systems, and the city tracks their energy production. The solar arrays at Charlottesville High School, installed in 2012, supply about an eighth of the school’s annual electricity usage.

Some private companies have followed suit: Carter Myers Automotive in Albemarle, for example, recently built a solar array that covers more than 90 percent of the dealership’s energy use.

To meet a more ambitious carbon reduction goal, the city will also have to work with UVA, its largest employer. The university has its own climate goal—currently, it’s a 25 percent reduction of 2009 emission levels by 2025. Despite university growth, it has already reduced emissions by nearly 19 percent, says sustainability director Andrea Trimble, and is on a trajectory to meet its goal ahead of schedule. Like the city and county, UVA is in the process of developing a new sustainability plan and more aggressive climate goal, and Trimble says all three entities are working on coordinating their efforts.

Says Kruse, “We have leaders in our community who are stepping out and doing the right thing. What we need to do as a community is learn from those leaders and put forward new policies.”

Corrected April 17 at 1:43pm with the correct figure from the Environmental Protection Agency equivalency calculator.

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Curriculum crusade: Spanish as elective perturbs parents

Exterior photo of Walker Upper Elementary School
If city school reconfiguration moves forward, Walker Upper Elementary would be converted to a preschool, with the building also housing a health clinic and counseling services. PC: Staff photo

Come this fall, Walker Upper Elementary, which serves the city’s fifth and sixth graders, will drop its Spanish language requirement for a focus on math and science instruction.

During a January school board meeting, Principal Adam Hastings said the change, which the school board approved in February, was prompted by “a need for students to receive focused math and science instruction.” But when reached for comment, Hastings focused on the fact that the school is also adding a second elective, and said “having kids find joy and love learning” helps make them successful.

Still, the move to make Spanish an elective has recently raised alarm among parents, some of whom showed up at an April 11 school board meeting to express their discontent.

“I wish I wouldn’t have thoughts of taking my kid out of Walker, but I do have them,” says Minou Beling, whose 11-year-old is a fifth grader there.

Many of the area’s private schools have foreign-language requirements through middle school, including the Waldorf School, St. Anne’s-Belfield, Village School, and the Field School.

“So the rich will continue to get this,” says Tony Lin, whose son is a sixth grader at Walker. “The wealthy will put their kids there. …They’re going to have a leg up on everybody else.”

School officials say some misinformation has been circulating among parents about the upcoming changes, and that they will be adding a second elective to next school year’s course load to give students more options. All students will be required to take a fine arts elective, and they will choose from a second fine arts class, Spanish, or STEM as the additional elective. STEM content is also already wrapped into the core curriculum.

Beling says she doesn’t want her son to have to choose between those offerings.

“Making my son decide between STEM or Spanish is putting him on a track,” she says. While she wants her children to have specialized education in STEM, she also thinks they’ll be most successful if they start learning a language in elementary school and continue until graduation.

Currently, city schools provide mandatory Spanish language instruction starting in first grade.

Amy Ogden, a French professor at UVA with a sixth grader at Walker, has been encouraging parents to write letters to the school board, Hastings, and Superintendent Rosa Atkins, in opposition to the changes.

“It might seem that we shouldn’t worry if Spanish becomes an elective—offering more choices and looking for new ways to engage students sounds like a good thing,” she wrote to parents. “The core of the problem is that making Spanish optional rather than required shows that the community does not consider foreign-language learning as important as physical education, English, math, science, social studies, or fine arts, all of which are required.”

And making Spanish and STEM mutually exclusive choices could further undermine the language program, she says, because STEM has become so popular across the country, and parents will likely steer their kids toward it instead of Spanish.

“Reduced enrollments means reduced resources, and rather than strengthening the program, the change really risks killing it,” says Ogden.

Lin says he’s in favor of reevaluating the curricula, but he doesn’t think it will solve the achievement gap, which was spotlighted last fall when The New York Times and ProPublica published a story on Charlottesville City Schools’ racial inequities. And as someone from Argentina, he says the school sends a good message by requiring that students learn Spanish.

“To know that all my classmates have to learn the language of my parents and my family, it does something for the immigrant students,” says Lin, who works as a research scholar at UVA’s Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture. “It creates a different kind of culture for the school.”

The more practical reason to require students to learn the language, he says, is because the United States is the second-largest Spanish-speaking country in the world—second only to Mexico.

School Board Chair Jennifer McKeever says students who opt to take Spanish instead of STEM will still receive the project-based learning that STEM promotes in their core science classes.

“Dr. Hastings is trying to meet the needs of all of our children,” she says, and encourages parents to talk to the principal before pulling their kids out of Walker.

Matthew Gillikin, whose elementary schooler goes to Jackson-Via, has been following the debate at Walker, and says, “It just seems so reactionary.”

Because so many folks have been reeling over information that later changed, he says, “If parents are going to try to advocate, they need to have their facts straight. Ask questions first and then make demands second.”

Corrected April 18 at 9am. We incorrectly reported that parents were incorrect in thinking their students would be required to choose between a Spanish and fine arts elective. Amy Ogden says a March 11 email from the school’s principal said students would only be able to choose one elective—a decision that was later changed to allow for two.

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Pump the brakes: New cameras target motorists illegally passing stopped buses

Due to new legislation and cameras, you could be sent a $250 ticket if you illegally pass a stopped school bus. Photo by Martyn Kyle

Approximately 6,000 drivers whiz past stopped school buses in Albemarle County each year, putting students getting on and off the bus in jeopardy. New legislation that allows the installation of stop-arm cameras aims to put an end to this dangerous trend.

County school officials say they’ve been advocating for the technology for at least six years, and dozens of aggravated bus drivers signed a petition calling for cameras in March 2018. In the most recent General Assembly session, Delegate Rob Bell, an Albemarle resident, carried and helped pass a bill to allow the cameras.

The politician says putting kids on the bus under current conditions can be scary.

“It’s a leap of faith,” he says. “You put your little one on the bus and hope that it works.”

Bell’s daughter usually catches a ride to Baker-Butler Elementary with bus driver Chris Conti, whose route goes up U.S. 29 North and through the Briarwood neighborhood.

“On a regular, weekly basis, I have cars that run my lights,” says Conti.

From the time Conti turns on his amber lights—the ones that signal drivers to slow down before he applies the red lights, which mean stop—he adds, “You can almost see people hit the accelerator instead of the brake. They go shooting by me on the left, and the students are getting off on the right. It’s a scary situation.”

Recently, in Earlysville, a motorist plowed right through a bus’ stop arm, which Albemarle County Supervisor Diantha McKeel calls “shocking.”

“We’ve been lucky in this community that we haven’t had a tragedy,” she says.

The Board of Supervisors will need to pass an ordinance that matches the new state code to allow the cameras to be installed, and McKeel says it intends to do it before the next school year begins.

Though Albemarle County Public Schools have about 160 buses, somewhere between 20 and 40 vehicles in the most problematic and high-volume traffic areas will be the first to see the new technology, according to Jim Foley, the division’s director of transportation.

He suspects folks often speed past the buses “out of ignorance of knowing the law,” but a $250 fine will likely help educate them. The motion-sensing cameras will photograph the license plate of the offending driver, and then county police will mail a ticket to the car’s owner.

The cameras are proven to be an effective deterrent: Foley says only about 1 percent of offenders get caught more than once.

Says bus driver Conti, “Word will get out and hopefully behaviors will change.”

The news of stop-arm camera installations also pleases Forest Lakes parent Josh Cason, who has been drawing attention on social media to cars passing stopped buses at a bus stop in the southern part of his neighborhood since last school year.

After calling, emailing, and sending videos to the Albemarle County Police Department for months, he was disappointed when he only noticed cops stationed at the stop a handful of times, though the department assured him on Twitter that officers focus on school zones and bus routes.

Says Cason, “I think it’s about time it’s being taken seriously.”

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Everybody plays: All-access playground moves forward

The parents of Bennett McClurken-Gibney, who died of spinal muscular atrophy in February 2018, will now build an all-abilities playground at Pen Park in his honor. It’ll be modeled after his favorite park in Richmond, where Bennett’s mom says he loved to lay in the saucer swing. Courtesy Kara McClurken

A place for all to play.

That’s the goal of Bennett’s Village, a proposed playground for children and adults of all abilities in Charlottesville, which City Council approved April 1. The parents of Bennett McClurken-Gibney, a child with spinal muscular atrophy who died in February 2018, now have permission to build a $5-million playscape at Pen Park. The city has agreed to maintain it as part of the deal.

Kara McClurken says she would like to model the playscape after Richmond’s Park365, which used to be her 5-year-old son’s favorite place to play. He loved to be rocked on the saucer swing and to climb the wheelchair-accessible treehouse.

“Almost every kid—they love heights, they love wind on their face, they love movement,” says McClurken. “That idea of really being able to look down [from the treehouse] across a landscape is something that he didn’t get very many opportunities to do, because he couldn’t use most equipment.”

Though the proposed three-acre space at Pen Park hasn’t been designed yet, she says it will include similar equipment that provides height and movement—such as the saucer swing, treehouse, or a merry-go-round with an option to lock in wheelchairs.

McClurken and a friend, the mom of another child with special needs, started to discuss the development of an accessible playground before Bennett’s death, she says. But the day after he passed, McClurken says her mission became more clear.

As she and her husband were leaving Johnson Elementary—where Bennett’s class was celebrating Dr. Seuss week, and the parents had already committed to bringing the eggs for green eggs and ham—“We were walking back through the playground and we just sort of looked at each other and said, ‘Let’s build that playground,’” she says. “‘Let’s make that his legacy.’”

So far, the parents and supporters have raised nearly $100,000 through their GoFundMe website and other donations. They also plan to apply for grants, and McClurken says she doesn’t anticipate the hefty price tag being much of a barrier.

“People just believe in the dream,” she says. “I haven’t met a single person who doesn’t understand why this is a good idea.”

Not only will it provide a space for children with limited mobility, but also for family and friends with similar disabilities who’d like to be able to play with the children in their lives.

“Bennett is certainly our inspiration and our light, but there’s just so much need,” she adds.

Vice-Mayor Heather Hill is in favor of the project. “I certainly support the concept of an all-abilities playground and bringing it to life through a public-private partnership,” she says. “Based on what we have heard from the community and what was presented to us at our [March 18] council meeting, this is clearly an unmet need in our immediate region.”

City staff will now draft a memorandum of agreement to define the partnership between the city and the folks of Bennett’s Village.

McClurken says she wishes she had her son’s help with bringing the playground to life.

“Bennett would probably be able to advocate for the park better than we can,” she says. “You could see him in his power chair and you could see his energy. We are poor substitutes for telling his story.”

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Surprise, surprise: Councilors Bellamy and Signer will not run for re-election

City Councilors Mike Signer and Wes Bellamy will not seek re-election. Photos: Jen Farriello and Mina Pirasteh

For some, it came as a shock when City Councilor Wes Bellamy announced yesterday that he would not run for re-election, especially considering his public remarks the week before that made it sound otherwise.

At his March 20 Virginia Festival of the Book event with former New Orleans mayor Mitch Landrieu, where the two politicians discussed how Confederate statues are symbols of institutional racism, Bellamy indicated he was likely to run for a second term because the best way to change policy “is through elected office.”

But a Rob Schilling report—from just a few hours before the 125 signatures needed to participate in the Democratic primary were due yesterday—cited “recent reports from deep inside the nascent Bellamy campaign” that he was more than 75 signatures short.

Then the former vice-mayor penned an open letter to the community, which said, “I love the people of this city, but I love my wife, my daughters, and our unborn child more. And because of my love for them, I am stepping aside for new energy. …Honestly, I need a break for my mental health, my physical health, and my family’s well being.”

Though city council voted unanimously to remove Charlottesville’s Confederate monuments after the Unite the Right rally, Bellamy, who has been calling for their removal since 2016, bore the brunt of the vitriol from local and faraway statue supporters and racists. Those included Jason Kessler, who dug up some problematic, years-old tweets from the only black councilor at the time, and called for his resignation.

Bellamy has publicly discussed the multitude of threats he and his family members receive daily.

“Some people will say that I’m quitting, or that I’m giving up, and that’s okay,” Bellamy wrote. “Some will say that the haters won. That’s okay, too. What matters most is not what people say, but what we do.”

Local activist and UVA professor Jalane Schmidt says Bellamy’s legacy includes bringing up the city’s difficult white supremacist history and present, a push for equity, a community presence, and an effort to connect people who’ve “been left out by the system” to city resources.

Deacon Don Gathers says he was “troubled and somewhat hurt” to find out Bellamy wasn’t running again, but he understands putting family first.

“I applaud him and I appreciate everything that he’s done and tried to do for the city as a whole and the black community, specifically,” says Gathers. “I really think that he has always had the community’s best interest at heart, and not everybody was going to agree with the direction that he took to try to move us forward.”

Gathers initially planned to run for council this term, but cited health concerns as a reason he did not officially launch a campaign. He and Schmidt have publicly supported Democratic candidate Michael Payne, who will now officially run against Lloyd Snook, Bob Fenwick, Sena Magill, and Brian Pinkston in the primary, where no incumbents will be on the bill.

Former mayor Mike Signer’s name also didn’t make the list of those in the running, and in the public statement he posted to Twitter yesterday, he also mentioned his family.

“My wife and I never intended that I would serve more than one term on city council,” he said. “Another four years would however be hard to balance with the competing demands of raising two young kids, my day job, and my work on initiatives like Communities Overcoming Extremism.”

Schmidt says it was no secret that Signer had higher political ambitions—including an unsuccessful campaign for the Democratic nomination for lieutenant governor in 2009—before moving to Charlottesville and being elected to city council in 2015.

“There were many of us who suspected that this was a kind of stepping stone,” she says. “It seems that his aspirations were dashed by his failure to address the [August 11 and 12, 2017,] attacks.”

Signer’s leadership came under fire in former federal prosecutor Tim Heaphy’s independent review of that summer’s white supremacist events. In what was already a maelstrom of poor planning, Heaphy found that city council further complicated matters by making a last-minute decision to move the Unite the Right rally to McIntire Park, despite nearly unanimous advice that such a move would not withstand a legal challenge and spread police resources even further.

In an August 24 Facebook post, Signer publicly pointed the finger at then-city manager Maurice Jones and police chief Al Thomas for the devastating events.

And then on August 30, his fellow councilors held a three-hour closed door meeting to discuss his performance and potential discipline, where they seemingly accepted his apology—which he also read to reporters and community members who gathered in council chambers.

“In the deeply troubling and traumatizing recent weeks, I have taken several actions as mayor, and made several communications, that have been inconsistent with the collaboration required by our system of governance and that overstepped the bounds of my role as mayor, for which I apologize to my colleagues and the people of Charlottesville,” he said.

Schmidt says he’ll also be remembered for his reluctance to move the statues, support of luxury developments such as Keith Woodard’s now-defunct West2nd condos at a time when affordable housing was a pressing need, and his “foray into public consciousness,” when he became president of the Fifeville Neighborhood Association just as it was starting to gentrify, she says.

Though Gathers was one of Signer’s more vocal critics, especially in the fallout of August 12, he says he wishes him success in all his future endeavors.

“As he exits, I’m certainly not going to take shots at him,” he says. “I’m sure that he did the best that he thought he could, and what he felt was best at the time.”

Though Fenwick is once again in the running, the departure of Signer and Bellamy—along with Kathy Galvin, who’s running for the House of Delegates, instead—means there could be no remaining councilors on the dais who called the shots during the Summer of Hate. Is Charlottesville turning over a new leaf?

 

Updated March 29 at 2:37pm.