Yesterday, the Progressive Voice’s Krysta Jones wrote about what has happened in Virginia after the jarring revelations about Governor Northam and Attorney General Herring earlier this year. She tries to answer whether it has been an opportunity for “racial healing and atonement?” It is an important question.
Ms. Jones goes on to discuss things that have been done and things that can be done. Before making a suggested addition to her list, let’s first look at the current state of our politics.
For parents with black children in Arlington Public Schools, hope and wariness accompanies the experience. Like other families, we have hopeful expectations about our community’s excellent schools. We read the headlines. APS Named Top School System in Virginia for the second year in a row. Four of our high schools are ranked in the top 2% of schools nationwide. We hope our children will also be beneficiaries of that excellence. Yet, the data tells a different story. It tells a tale of (at least) two school systems in one County. One which offers countless advantages to white children, the other which offers far less to black children.
The tale unfolds in APS’s own published data recently compiled by Black Parents of Arlington. In one story, a white child enters APS, and from the first years in school, that child has a one in four chance of being identified as gifted. By middle school that child has a 46% chance of being of being labeled gifted. 46%! That “gifted” child will be, at times, clustered with other “gifted” students, and will ultimately end up in higher-level classes which are disproportionately white. Just as the white child’s high intelligence will be presumed, that child’s innocence will also be presumed, with a far lower likelihood of being suspended than their black and Latinx counterparts.
By Krysta Jones
It’s been about seven months since Virginia and the nation were stunned by the revelations that Gov. Ralph Northam “may have” posed in blackface or Ku Klux Klan uniform. In the subsequent days, Attorney General Mark Herring also admitted to posing in blackface.
Astronaut John Glenn was the first American to orbit the earth. He was also an Arlington resident for about 5 years.
The group Preservation Arlington points out that Glenn’s former home, a mid-century rambler near Williamsburg Middle School, is now for sale with the listing hinting — “the value is in the land,” it says — that it will likely be a tear-down. The property is listed for $1,050,000.
We are now officially in the back half of August and the final innings of summer.
That is especially true if you define summer as the time between Memorial Day and Labor Day, which pools are open and shandies are still stocked on supermarket beer shelves.
Two months beforethe July 8 flooding, a catastrophic and expensive sewer failure occurred not far from Amazon’s new HQ.
That May 5 sewer failure, combined with the multiple July 8 sewer failures, graphically illustrate Arlington’s lack of integrated long-range planning and investment in Arlington’s below ground infrastructure (e.g., sewer, storm water, water mains) even as new development continues to get a green light.
It is time for the Arlington County Fair, one of my favorite local traditions. This year the fair features a butterfly encounter, a first-ever beer garden, and goat yoga among other things.
As with every year, the fair also features appearances by your elected officials here in Arlington. Your school board members and interim superintendent, your county board members, the treasurer, and the sheriff will be there.
By Martha Villanigro-Santiago
At any age, we must be intentional about living your best possible life, especially being healthy and active. It’s important that individuals, community and government use data and resources to develop policies, programs and other assets that enable aging residents to flourish in Arlington.
It’s August and lots of people are going on vacation (including the person writing this post, from Gate 28 at DCA), but for those staying here it looks to be a beautiful weekend.
For a week in typically slow August, the past few days were especially busy news- and readership-wise.
Despite only being a few miles apart as the crow flies, some residents of Arlington and D.C. are reticent to date people who live in the other jurisdiction.
For some, it’s the perceived differences among people who live on opposite banks of the Potomac. For others, it’s more practical concerns: the distance makes Metro travel slow and Uber travel pricey.
Two recent columns discussing Arlington’s July 8 countywide flooding and Donaldson Run’s pollution and flood damage explained how the County’s development and construction policies and practices have increased impervious surfaces and resulted in the loss of mature trees. Combined, these factors have almost certainly heightened our flood risk and intensified the damage.
Today, I focus on the July 8 flood impacts on Lubber Run Park.
The recent audit of the Arlington County Fire Department’s (ACFD) budget crunching overtime costs is exactly the type of work that was envisioned when the independent auditor was proposed.
As reported on ARLnow, the audit found that ACFD is insufficiently staffed to avoid overtime. The department is fighting against attrition of an average of two employees per month. According to the audit, “it takes almost 12 months and costs almost $100,000 per recruit to recruit, hire and train” new firefighters And ACFD is unable to conduct as much training of existing personnel.
