Good Morning, RVA: Bikes, trees, and schools
In the not-too-distant future, you’ll be able to bikeshare your way down to the Maggie Walker statue-tree.
Good morning, RVA! It’s 34 °F, and today will be sunny and clear with highs in the mid-40s. Still gearing up for that 60-degree weekend, though.
Water cooler
Rememeber talk of Richmond’s bikeshare program? We saw them briefly and limitedly at the Big Bike Race™, and now it looks like real progress is being made. Bewegen, manufacturers of a top-to-bottom bikeshare program, have a little blurb on their website announcing that they’ll be coming to Richmond in 2016 with 220 bikes. That does not seem like a ton of bikes, but I’m excited for a first step towards a useful system and am eagerly awaiting a map of proposed station locations!
Block off some time this Saturday to roll by the Richmond Public Library and see the first concept of the Maggie Walker statue and accompanying plaza design. Will they keep The Tree or won’t they?! The suspense–it feels like a season finale of Friends!
Soon An Bui will own that entire strip mall. And maybe the Rappahanock dudes will eventually own their entire block, too (their new raw bar and market opens this week)!
Here’s an editorial in the RTD from the editorial board about Henrico County Schools showing that white privilege video to students. It basically argues, “not all white people!” For more on why this argument derails any real conversation read this article in TIME about the history of #notallmen, or at least read this sentence: “The Not-All-Man hero and his minions are paralyzingly obsessed with protecting their own self-concept, to a degree that prevents them from engaging in sincere discussion.”
If you traffic in Facebook, there is a Facebook group called Support Richnond Public Schools in which you will find these 26 gross pictures from various school buildings. Pair these pictures with today’s longread for a full-body bummer session.
These two graphs in the New York Times about the overall conservativeness/liberalness of the Supreme Court (pending new nominee) are an interesting way of looking at things.
Pitchers and catchers report today, which is a thing I read on Twitter multiple times and feel like I should repeat here.
Sports!
- Hokies were up by one at the half (22-21, bleh), but lost to #11 Miami 49-65.
This morning’s longread
Richmond’s Growth As a City Starts With Fixing Its Education System
Mature, adult conversations about what Richmond must do to fix its educations system. I’m into it!
From the most recent auditor of public accounts comparative cost reports, Richmond is 10th in total spending per capita statewide but 63rd in education spending per capita. Education is the only function of local government that is below the state average spending per capita.
Comparing dollars spent on education to total governmental spending for select localities, the data shows Chesterfield and Hanover counties at 61 percent, Henrico County at 53 percent, Hampton and Norfolk at 44 percent, Newport News at 50 percent, and Portsmouth at 45 percent. Richmond spent 37.6 percent on education.
This morning’s Instagram
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Ross Catrow
Founder and publisher of RVANews.
Notice: Comments that are not conducive to an interesting and thoughtful conversation may be removed at the editor’s discretion.