Tag: Jennifer McKeever

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Moving forward: School board votes to continue in-person reopening plans

Charlottesville City Schools Superintendent Rosa Atkins gave her stamp of approval to the school board’s decision to move forward with in-person classes at the beginning of the school year. PC: Eze Amos

After nearly six months of remote learning, Charlottesville City Schools is moving forward with its plans to begin in-person classes at the start of the new year.

During its virtual meeting last Thursday, the Charlottesville School Board unanimously voted to allow the district’s COVID-19 advisory committee to continue working on its reopening proposal, which received a stamp of approval from CCS Superintendent Dr. Rosa Atkins earlier this month.

Under the current proposal, preschool through sixth grade will have in-person classes four days a week, starting January 11. Seventh grade and up will be at school twice a week beginning February 1, and do independent work the other days.

The board will take a final vote on the plan during its December 16 meeting.

According to a binding intent form sent out at the beginning of the month, 2,296 students, or 66 percent of the district, want to attend in-person classes. Staff are reaching out to the roughly 17 percent of families who have not filled out their form yet.

Because the district is currently using all of its bus drivers to deliver meals and transport special needs students, it plans to use CARES funds to contract additional drivers, who will help serve the 373 students who said they cannot get to school without the bus.

Though COVID safety restrictions make providing large-scale bus service very difficult, the district will also work to accommodate as many of the 561 other students who requested bus rides—but could still get to school without them—as possible.

In stark contrast to previous surveys, a majority of the district’s 470 teachers indicated they felt safe enough to return to the classroom.

Seventy-two percent of kindergarten through sixth grade teachers volunteered to do face-to-face classes, along with 65 percent of those teaching seventh through 12th grade.

However, 139 teachers and 24 instructional assistants across all grades asked to continue to work remotely. Most said they were either high-risk, or taking care of a loved one who is.

An additional 27 teachers and nine instructional assistants requested paid medical leave through the federal government’s Families First Coronavirus Response Act, which requires select employers to provide their staff with paid leave for reasons related to COVID-19.

Though the district so far has approved every complete request for leave, Charlottesville Education Association President Jessica Taylor accused administrative staff of not properly communicating with teachers in need of ADA accommodations.

“Educators who submitted paperwork should receive acknowledgment of receipt without having to make numerous follow-up inquiries,” she said during Thursday’s public comment. “There’s [also] been a breakdown in understanding…One CEA member was given a choice to either provide face-to-face services for a student or resign. She chose to resign.”

“We don’t want any teachers resigning. COVID will not last forever. We’re going to get through this,” said Atkins. “We need them. We want them on board.”

Also during public comment, parents voiced their concerns with the binding intent form.

“There are families like my own who are choosing on the intent form to go in-person, even though it is not our preference, for fear we will get locked out if we change our minds later,” said Maria Stein.

While the city’s current numbers are low compared to the rest of Virginia, health experts anticipate case spikes in the coming weeks due to winter weather and holiday gatherings.

“We will handle individual cases,” responded Atkins. But now, “in order to plan for transportation, make a master schedule, and assign teachers, we have to know who’s going to be in-person, who has elected to continue with virtual.”

During the rest of the meeting, board members discussed class schedules for middle and high schoolers at length, taking issue with the large amount of asynchronous learning.

The district currently plans to divide each grade level into two groups made up of both in-person and virtual learners. When one group of students is in the classroom, their classmates in the same group will watch the class live on Zoom. Meanwhile, students in the other group will work on independent assignments from home during school hours.

Having far fewer live classes worries board members that students will not progress academically.

“To me, that takes us back to last spring when the quality of what was happening wasn’t real good and we were all scrambling,” said school board member Sherry Kraft. “We’ve done so much work to provide quality instruction.”   

But with the limited staffing available, asynchronous learning is impossible to avoid, explained CHS Principal Eric Irizarry.

“Every student’s schedule is so unique at the high school, and we’re the only high school. We have two and half chemistry teachers, we have one orchestra teacher, one band,” he said. “A student that comes into the building, they’re going to need to see all of those teachers for that day. There’s not a way to run a concurrent master schedule.”

Still, the board urged district staff and the COVID-19 advisory committee to look at different ways to deliver instruction during the times set aside for independent work, and present their findings at the December 16 meeting.

“I would rather them continue to be virtual then go to that model,” said board chair Jennifer McKeever of middle and high schoolers. “We are small enough to solve the problem, and not have three days of asynchronous learning.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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Quest in context: Troubled roots of city school’s gifted program

Former Charlottesville High School teacher Margaret Thornton says her research suggests that city schools' gifted education program, Quest, was created to segregate students. Courtesy photo

Though the gifted education program in Charlottesville City Schools has recently come under fire for its racial disparities, such gaps have existed since the program was created in 1976, and may have even been part of its intention.

At tonight’s School Board meeting, former Charlottesville High School teacher and Ph.D. student Margaret Thornton will present new research that suggests the elite program, called Quest, was formed as a way to keep white students separate from the black students who had recently integrated into the city’s public schools after a time of resistance to desegregation.

Thornton’s report includes a letter from a local woman who proposed a program that the highest-achieving and mainly white students would test into. These students would be pulled out of class to study separately from the others three days a week, the woman, Ms. Smith, said. She also acknowledged that a small percentage of them could be “negroes.”

“It is to be hoped that the plan as outlined above offers a limited form of desegregation, which may placate the fears of those who object to any opportunity of social intermingling of the races, may satisfy the federal courts, and last but not least, may give us a form of desegregated education of which we can all be proud,” wrote Smith.

Roughly 19 years later, in 1976, Quest was born. And its structure was almost exactly the same as Smith’s proposal, says Thornton.

By 1983, Thornton found that 19 percent of the school district’s white students, and fewer than 3 percent of its black students had tested into Quest, prompting city schools to expand its definition of “gifted” to include more students. But the next year, an audit by the U.S. Department of Education still found that black students were underidentified in gifted programs, and overidentified in special education.

At CHS, says Thornton, “walkouts ensued.”

And the issue of the disparity has periodically boiled to the surface of conversation in Charlottesville ever since. Most recently, the topic was raised last fall when The New York Times and ProPublica published a scathing indictment on persistent and widening achievement gaps between white and black students, highlighting, among other problems, the overrepresentation of white students in Quest.

“When people bring up Quest, we get angry,” said CHS 12th-grader Trinity Hughes in the October article. “We all wish we had the opportunity to have that separate creative time. It drives a gap between students from elementary school on.”

Despite efforts by Charlottesville City Schools to address the issue, it’s only gotten worse: the percentage of white students who are identified as gifted has shot up from 11 percent in 1984 to roughly 33 percent today. Overall, white students make up more than 70 percent of students in Quest—in a district that is only 43 percent white.

Thornton formerly taught some “honors-option” English classes at CHS, where students of all abilities are in the same class and examine the same big questions, but use different texts and assignments depending on whether they’re working for honors-level credit. Now she studies similar initiatives (commonly known as “detracking”) at UVA, and says she’s interested in how school leaders and teachers can work together to create heterogeneous classrooms that work for all students.

“Now that I understand how firmly rooted these [gifted] programs are in avoiding integration, I hope we as a community can realize we can’t tweak Quest,” says Thornton. “We have to come up with something new that enriches every student.”

After hearing about Thornton’s research, Superintendent Rosa Atkins invited her to present to the school board. Board chair Jennifer McKeever, who is also familiar with Thornton’s research, says it’s important to recognize the historical context of Quest, and the program should be re-examined.

“Now that we kind of understand better, we have to do better,” she says, adding that two of her kids have been through the gifted program and one has not.

Federal law requires some separation of students by ability, she says, and segregation “is absolutely not” the current goal of Quest.

Says McKeever, “It’s really concerning that this is such a clear indication of structural bias and institutional racism.”

Updated May 3 to correct an error: Quest began roughly 19 years after Ms. Smith’s letter, not 9.

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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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Racist threat reverberates: Schools closed, teens arrested, students protest

More than 100 students and community allies joined the Charlottesville High School Black Student Union in its walkout for racial justice on Monday, March 25. eze amos

As thousands were celebrating literature at the Virginia Festival of the Book in Charlottesville, a less-exalted missive from the nether regions of the internet, threatening “ethnic cleansing” at Charlottesville High, closed all city schools last Thursday and Friday. It also prompted CHS’ Black Student Union to lead a walkout for racial justice on Monday.

More than 100 students and community allies gathered at McIntire Park, where they marched past the skate park and up to the guard rails abutting the U.S. 250 Bypass.

“When black lives are under attack, what do we do? Stand up fight back,” they chanted, waving protest signs toward the oncoming traffic, and cheering when drivers honked in solidarity.

Black Student Union president Zyahna Bryant read a list of 10 demands for the school system, including hiring more black teachers for core classes. “We have one black teacher that teaches an AP class at CHS,” she said.

The group also wants the school to give more weight to African American history, and for school resource officers to have racial bias and cultural sensitivity training.

Senior Althea Laughon-Worrell said CHS administration tried to keep students in school. ”It wasn’t until they saw that we had an outpouring of community support that they seemed to accept that it was happening,” she said. “We can’t personally ensure that our demands are met, but we plan to keep putting pressure on the city and the school board to deal with the issues we have identified.”

Students lined the 250 Bypass on Monday, holding signs spelling out their demands for change. eze amos

Bryant had posted a screenshot of the threat, from the message board 4chan, on Thursday, and said racism in city schools isn’t new. There will be no reconciliation without structural change and the redistribution of resources for black and brown students, she added.

“In the past, when students of color have brought forth racial concerns, there has been no real change,” Bryant said on Thursday. “This is the time to act and show black and brown students that they matter with lasting changes and reform. Now is not the time to pass another empty resolution. It is time to back the words up with action.”

Around noon Friday, March 22, Charlottesville police announced they had arrested and charged a 17-year-old male with a Class 6 felony for threatening to commit serious bodily harm on school property, and harassment by computer, a misdemeanor.

At a press conference, Charlottesville Police Chief RaShall Brackney told reporters and community members that the culprit identifies as Portuguese, was in Albemarle County at the time of the arrest, and is not a Charlottesville High School student. She said state laws prohibit police from publicly identifying the minor, unless he were to be tried as an adult.

Local, state, and federal partners located the suspect’s IP address with the help of internet service providers, according to Brackney. She did not divulge whether he had any weapons.

“We want the community and the world to know that hate is not welcome in Charlottesville,” Brackney said. “And in Charlottesville and around the globe, we stand firmly in stating: There are not very fine people on both sides of this issue.”

Similarly, Mayor Nikuyah Walker said at the press conference that she hopes the way the threat was handled will lessen fear associated with future threats, and that Charlottesville is “leading the fight for justice globally.”

Also on March 22, Albemarle police reported the arrest of an Albemarle High teen for posting on social media a threat to shoot up the school. Police say that is unrelated to the Charlottesville High threat to kill black and Hispanic students.

City schools Superintendent Rosa Atkins said the decision to close schools a second day and keep 4,300 students home was to make sure everyone in the community, including students and staff, feel safe returning to school.

The racial terrorism was a painful reminder to a community already traumatized from the August 2017 invasion of white supremacists.

UVA media studies professor Siva Vaidhyanathan tweeted on Friday, “Today, as Charlottesville teachers and students sit home for a second day trying not to let fear overtake them, I’m reminded of those who told me after August 12, 2017, that white supremacists were not a threat to this country. If you think that, be glad you have that luxury.”

Charlottesville School Board Chair Jennifer McKeever said, “It’s unfortunate and frankly it’s really frustrating that we live in this world where people can make these threats and feel comfortable making these threats.”

Courtney Maupin’s daughter is a freshman at CHS. “It’s scary to know there are people out there who don’t like you for the color of your skin,” she said. “I had to explain to my two younger children who didn’t understand why they weren’t in school.”

Like most parents, Kristin Clarens, a local anti-racist activist and mom of three, said she’s glad the city made safety a priority.

“I’m grateful for the efforts that people are making to keep our kids safe on every level, but I also think we should be more forceful in calling this act of white supremacy and terrorism out for what it is,” she said. “I’m heartbroken that we live in a climate where this is allowed to get to this level.”

McKeever, too, was heartened by the outpouring of community support in the face of a situation that is “not something you want to have to explain to our children.”—with additional reporting by Lisa Provence

An earlier version of this story appeared online.

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Arrest made in online threat against Charlottesville High School minorities

Charlottesville schools are closed for a second day while police investigate an anonymous online threat made for an ethnic cleansing at Charlottesville High School. Staff photo

By Samantha Baars and Lisa Provence

As thousands are celebrating literature at the Virginia Festival of the Book in Charlottesville, a less-exalted missive from the nether regions of the internet, threatening ethnic cleansing at Charlottesville High, has closed all city schools for a second day Friday.

Around noon Friday, Charlottesville police announced they had arrested and charged a 17-year-old male with a Class 6 felony for threatening to commit serious bodily harm to people on school property, and harassment by computer, a misdemeanor.

At a following press conference, Charlottesville Police Chief RaShall Brackney told reporters and community members that the person they arrested identifies as Portuguese, was in Albemarle County at the time of the arrest, and is not a Charlottesville High School student. She said state laws prohibit police from publicly identifying the minor, unless he were to be tried as an adult.

Local, state, and federal partners located the suspect’s IP address with the help of internet providers, according to Brackney. She did not divulge whether he had any weapons.

Chief Brackney addresses media and community members.

“We want the community and the world to know that hate is not welcome in Charlottesville,” Brackney said at the press conference. “There are not very fine people on both sides of this issue.”

Charlottesville Superintendent Rosa Atkins also spoke, and said she found it “particularly troubling” that the person who made the threat is not enrolled in the city school system. School will resume as normal next week, and counselors will be available as usual.

“We will give [students] a warm welcome Monday morning,” Atkins said.

Mayor Nikuyah Walker said she hopes the way the threat was handled will lessen any fear of future threats, that Charlottesville is “leading the fight for justice globally,” and that “the world is aware that this will not be welcomed [here.]”

Thursday, Albemarle police arrested an Albemarle High teen for posting on social media a threat to shoot up the school. Police say that is unrelated to the Charlottesville High threat to kill black and Hispanic students.

Atkins says the decision to close city schools a second day and keep 4,300 students home is to make sure everyone in the community, including students and staff, feel safe returning to school.

The racial terrorism is a painful reminder to a community already traumatized from the August 2017 invasion of white supremacists.

UVA media studies professor Siva Vaidhyanathan tweeted, “Today, as Charlottesville teachers and students sit home for a second day trying not to let fear overtake them, I’m reminded of those who told me after August 12, 2017, that white supremacists were not a threat to this country. If you think that, be glad you have that luxury.”

Another reaction came from UVA law professor Benjamin Spencer, who tweeted, “America: This is life as a black family in America. My children cannot go to school for a second day in a row because some rando person has threatened to murder all the “n*ggers” and “w*tbacks” at C’ville High School. #Charlottesville #ThisIsAmerica”

City School Board Chair Jennifer McKeever says, “It’s unfortunate and frankly it’s really frustrating that we live in this world where people can make these threats and feel comfortable making these threats.”

CHS senior and activist Zyahna Bryant, president of the Black Student Union, posted a screenshot of the threat from the message board 4chan, and says racism in city schools isn’t new. There will be no reconciliation without structural change and the redistribution of resources for black and brown students, she adds.

“In the past, when students of color have brought forth racial concerns, there has been no real change,” says Bryant. “The is the time to act and show black and brown students that they matter with lasting changes and reform. Now is not the time to pass another empty resolution. It is time to back the words up with action.”

Courtney Maupin’s daughter is a freshman at CHS. “It’s scary to know there are people out there who don’t like you for the color of your skin,” she says. “I had to explain to my two younger children who didn’t understand why they weren’t in school yesterday.”

When she heard Thursday schools would be closed again, “I cried last night because it’s heartbreaking,” says Maupin.

Kristin Clarens, a local anti-racist activist and mom of three, is one of several community members who says she’s working to dismantle white supremacy at a local, national, and international level. In the immediacy of the school closings, they’re making sure food insecure students who rely on school lunch are still getting fed.

Two of her children go to Burnley Moran Elementary, the city’s largest elementary school, where kids from two public housing projects—Westhaven and one near Riverview Park—are bused in everyday. Clarens, who’s watching four extra kids today, says these students can be particularly vulnerable, and their parents can’t always find childcare or transportation when school is cancelled abruptly.

During yesterday’s closing, she and other parents hosted an open invitation lunch at Westhaven, and they’re planning to have another one today from 12-2pm. It will be paid for by the Burnley Moran PTO, which is accepting donations of money and nonperishable food that can be delivered to the Westhaven Recreation Center during the community lunch hours.

Like most parents, Clarens says she’s glad the city made safety a priority.

“I’m grateful for the efforts that people are making to keep our kids safe on every level, but I also think we should be more forceful in calling this act of white supremacy and terrorism out for what it is,” she says. “I’m heartbroken that we live in a climate where this is allowed to get to this level.”

McKeever, too, is heartened by the outpouring of community support in the face of a situation that is “not something you want to have to explain to our children.”

Updated Friday, March 22 at 11:53am with the Charlottesville Police Department announcement that they’d made an arrest.

Updated Friday, March 22 at 1:50pm with information from the press conference.