Category Archives: schools

VCU Move-In Weekend Brings Road Closures

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From VCU News:

Virginia Commonwealth University will welcome its largest freshman class this week when the class of 2022 moves into the university’s residence halls, launching the annual Welcome Week schedule of activities that marks the opening of the academic year.

VCU freshmen will move into their residence halls from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Saturday. Reuban Rodriguez, Ed.D., associate vice provost and dean of student affairs, will be available for media interviews about move-in day and the opening of the academic year from 10 to 10:30 a.m. on Saturday in front of Brandt Hall, at the corner of Laurel and Franklin streets.

VCU will enroll an estimated 31,000 students this fall. The freshman class is expected to comprise approximately 4,600 students. The previous record freshman class had 4,234 students in the fall of 2016. Thirty-three percent of this year’s freshmen are first-generation college students.

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Traffic congestion is expected in the areas near VCU’s student residence halls on Saturday and there will be limited street parking available.

To ensure safety and order as students move into residence halls, the following streets will have travel restrictions or will be closed:

Franklin Street: One lane will be open for through traffic between Harrison and Belvidere streets; traffic arriving for move-in will be reduced to one travel lane between Harrison and Belvidere streets.
Grace Street: Travel lanes will remain open, however, drivers may experience some congestion between Ryland and Belvidere streets.
Cary Street: Travel lanes will remain open, but drivers may experience some congestion between Cherry and Jefferson streets.
Laurel Street: The street will be closed between West Grace and West Main streets. Parishioners of the Cathedral of the Sacred Heart will be allowed to park in designated spots on Cathedral Street and in the West Main Street Parking Deck (until 2 p.m.). Drivers may experience some congestion between Cathedral and Cary streets.
Floyd Ave: This street will be closed to through traffic but parishioners from the Cathedral of the Sacred Heart will be able to utilize it.

Traffic restrictions and closures will be in effect on Saturday from 5 a.m. to 8 p.m. VCU Police will handle traffic control as students move in.

Litter Cleanup Monday with RVA Clean Sweep and VCU’s Ram Camp

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The 5th District and RVA Clean Sweep are partnering with RAM CAMP again this year to pick up litter throughout the city! RAM CAMP is VCU’s welcome week for new freshmen students. They all know there is a community service component to the week. RAM CAMP volunteers will be in the neighborhood this coming Monday, August 13 from ~8:45 am-noon. They will be meeting at the Peddler On Pine Street restaurant. Wonderful neighbors will be helping lead this effort along with a RVA Clean Sweep volunteer lead. The focus will be litter pick up on Idlewood & Cumberland along with graffiti removal from public property. All are welcome to join in!

For more information, visit the MeetUp page by clicking here.

VCU’s ‘Free Ride’

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This past week Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) announced that it had signed an agreement with the Greater Richmond Transit Company (GRTC) that will give their students and employees unlimited access to the new $65 million Pulse system and all other GRTC bus routes. In other words, as much local media trumpeted, VCU students and workers will get to ride ‘for free’.

Of course, this is welcome news. If nothing else, it may alleviate parking pressures and reduce carbon emissions. However, Richmond citizens should look past the headlines and consider the big picture of VCU’s ‘free ride’.

The conversation about the need to grow GRTC and mass transit in general has increased measurably as VCU has grown in both population and physical plant. All along, this community news site has advocated for more commitment from counties and universities to GRTC and mass transit. This call has only increased as ‘The Pulse’ BRT project has spent federal and state funds for implementation.

The problem is that with federal and state monies now spent, more and more of the cost burden will be shifted back to City taxpayers. And VCU, despite the announcement this week, is still falling very short in its commitment. $1.2 million is a drop in the bucket. Heck, VCU probably spent close to $1.2 million on all of the PR for their new ICA building. One year is not that long. Consider that VCU has made more of a commitment to its basketball coach than Richmond’s mass transit.

So what, the neoliberals say, college basketball brings in more money and GRTC can’t even support itself. VCU spends so much on transportation per student, university administrators say (if I was a student, I would be looking at where that money is going exactly). Yet, despite supposed sports profits and rising tuition, more poor and longterm Richmond residents are getting forced out of the City with rising tax bills. The City of Richmond continues to pay the overwhelming majority of GRTC’s budget and now it has increased its operational costs. Remember when ‘The Pulse’ backers said that it was designed to help Richmond’s poor? Now the largest entity by far on ‘The Pulse’ route is hedging its bets and waiting to see how the chips fall.

The local media and elected officials should be questioning this ‘deal’ more, but the majority of them won’t for fear of falling out of VCU’s favor (and advertising budget). If VCU alumni want to arrogantly claim that ‘they built this city’, they should be required to put their money where their mouth is. Other urban universities do more than brag.

Education Compact Meeting Scheduled/Goldman’s Proposal

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On Monday, July 30 at 6pm City Council, the School Board, and the Mayor are meeting for the Education Compact quarterly joint meeting at the Main Richmond Public Library (101 East Franklin Street).

It will be very interesting to see if there are substantial changes in direction and priority. From an earlier post:

One big question is if the Mayor and other leaders who ran and were elected on ‘Education’ platforms will continue to champion the Tom Farrell coliseum plan while ignoring the Put Schools First movement. No doubt, we will hear the same tired and false arguments about how Richmond needs to increase its tax base BEFORE modernizing schools. Don’t fall for them. Take note of what is being financed before school modernization, and who proposes what. Another question is what political candidates will eventually emerge to challenge the leaders who don’t want to put schools first.

Meanwhile, from former Chairperson of the Democratic Party of Virginia and local activist Paul Goldman, on school modernization financing:

Part (1): STATE LEVEL. Assuming the $250 million annual projection is accurate, it is being both principled and pragmatic to propose using $150 million of the $250 million to support the debt service on the first-ever state K-12 school bond issue. To repeat: These are not funds from a new tax but merely from taxes currently owed yet knowingly not paid. Thus both parties can support this approach without violating any platform promises. Part (2): LOCAL LEVEL. Since this is a first-ever proposal, it makes sense to ask localities – legally responsible for local school maintenance and modernization – to match $100 million from this historic state contribution. I have studied local financial resources. This is a very fair number to use with accomations for certain distressed localities. Part (3): Brown II Mandate: The fact Virginia refused or failed, depending on your point of view, to live up to the state’s responsibility under the long overlooked maintenance and modernization part of the decision doesn’t justify continuing to avoid responsibility 63 years later! Indeed, the opposite imperative is more to the point. In that regard, the state can afford to allocate $150 million annually to fix school facilities covered by that case but never properly addressed.
THE BOND ISSUE MATH:’
Part (1) can pay debt service for roughly a $ 3 billion dollar 30 year bond issue at current rates. Part (2) can pay debt service for roughly another $ 2 billion and Part (3) can pay debt service for roughly an additional $3 billion. Added together: $8 billion potential. The plan outline assumes the state will be backing everything and that certain laws will be amended accordingly. Thus a bipartisan consensus is possible to develop an historic state/local effort to address the “crumbling” school facility crisis distressing Governor Northam. I have conceived it as a pilot program, requiring state and localities to work together here. Should the Kaine-Evans legislation pass, the dramatic reduction in local school modernization costs for many projects would allow the bond issue contemplated here to be more far reaching.
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The key point: All three parts are independent by design . Part 1 is the base of any state initiative. It can pass stand alone. Part II is my judgment of a likely political decision to have a match type requiremeant with consideration for hard pressed areas. Part III is my own view that a Brown II initiative is both orally and historically justified/right thing to do and would be enactable you got pervious consensus for Parts 1 and 2. Like any other bold out of the box idea, it is a work in progress, designed for improvement by others. But progress requires someone doing the work to get it out there so the discussion has a concrete reference point. Improvements welcomed!

Letter From State Senator Stanley To Mayor Stoney

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VA Senator Bill Stanley, the Chairman of the new State Senate Subcommittee on School Facilities, wrote a letter to Mayor Stoney. It was emailed to the Mayor’s office this morning. In keeping with the Subcommittee’s mandate to keep abreast of the implementation efforts required under S.B. 750 in RVA (effective yesterday as the new School Facilities mandate in the Richmond City Charter), Senator Stanley has written the letter requesting an answer to a matter of vital importance to RVA. It is hoped the answer will prove helpful in drafting new legislation for the 2019 GA Session that can benefit RPS school students.

Broken Promises: Richmond’s Leaders Don’t Want To Put Schools First

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As the local media has noted, starting today, prepared meals in the City of Richmond will cost more. At the same time, City residents are receiving property tax assessments that show huge increases. So what, some liberals (many of them relatively new and affluent come’heres) say, all that money will help the schools. Unfortunately, the reality is quite different. And what facts show is a whole reel of broken promises.

Recall that the previous meals tax increase from more than a decade ago, which was passed to pay for the private, now-defunct Virginia Performing Arts Foundation, was promised to help children. The boosters for that deal, including some members of City Council, promised, infamously with ‘feet held to fire’, that the meals tax would be rescinded once the Carpenter Center was renovated. And that was not the only dishonorable lie that followed. But this has all been covered before….

Let’s fast forward, past other attempts to hijack public money, to this year, when City Council passed yet another meals tax increase (while voting down a proposed cigarette tax). Everyone promised that all of this money would go to the schools. Really?

From an article in this week’s Richmond Free Press, written by reporter Jeremy Lazarus:

But in a little noticed policy shift, City Hall and the Richmond School Board have agreed to cut back that investment ahead of Sunday, July 1, when Richmond diners will start to see the government’s take from meals rise from 11.3 percent to 12.8 percent, including the 1.5 percent earmarked for schools construction.

Instead of spending $150 million — a level of expenditure even the mayor acknowledges falls far short of the need — City Hall and the Richmond School Board plan to invest $100 million to $110 million, leaving $40 million to $50 million unused.

Instead of four schools, requests for proposals to build just three new schools — two elementary schools and a new middle school — were issued last month by City Hall, which is handling procurement.

Also consider what local activist (and former chairperson for Virginia’s Democratic Party) Paul Goldman wrote yesterday:

Redskins v RVA School Children? In 14 hours and 15 minutes, the new unprecedented Richmond City Charter provision on School Facilities will become law. The City’s elected leaders all decry the intolerable building conditions, a top official calling them “heartbreaking.” But in the new city budget likewise effective tomorrow, the Mayor/Counsel slash basic annual maintenance 80%, claiming RVA lacks the $400000 needed to finance such repairs. At the same, they voted to provide $750000 – for the next 15 years – to finance the training facility built by the city for the Redskins!

Yes, that’s right, the much celebrated, popular Put School First referendum is now law also. And hopefully it will inspire and spawn other referendums across the state.

That said, given the Richmond Free Press revelations, Richmond school modernization still faces an uphill battle. At a get-together at K-Town restaurant this past Thursday, Paul Goldman was pretty negative about real change happening, taking stock of the lack of legal momentum and a Richmond leadership that has been hostile to public demands.

One big question is if the Mayor and other leaders who ran and were elected on ‘Education’ platforms will continue to champion the Tom Farrell coliseum plan while ignoring the Put Schools First movement. No doubt, we will hear the same tired and false arguments about how Richmond needs to increase its tax base BEFORE modernizing schools. Don’t fall for them. Take note of what is being financed before school modernization, and who proposes what. Another question is what political candidates will eventually emerge to challenge the leaders who don’t want to put schools first.