Category: Children and Families
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Youngkin Tackles Maternal Health Disparities the Right Way
by James A. Bacon Governor Glenn Youngkin has launched an initiative to address disparities in maternal healthcare outcomes, and he’s doing it right. Rather than presupposing what the problem is and what the solutions are, he is resurrecting the Task Force on Maternal Health Data Quality Measures to do a deep dive into the data…
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Frosted Fame in Chesterfield
by Jon Baliles The Chesterfield County weekly newsletter featured a great story last week about Bailey Sheetz, a 13-year old Chester resident who is now on a first-name basis with Jerry Seinfeld and Melissa McCarthy in Hollywood. Sheetz made his movie debut in Seinfeld’s new Netflix movie Unfrosted, the satirical comedy about the launch of…
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Mother’s Day in Virginia
by Kerry Dougherty It all began in 2020. Our annual Mother’s Day escape. Four years ago Ralph Northam’s reign of Covid despotism was underway and we were desperate to shake off the suffocating restrictions he imposed on a weekly basis. (The governor’s Thursday press conferences were a source of stress and dread for many of…
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Partisan Poison: Va Dems Quash a Bill to Protect School Kids
by Kerry Dougherty How exactly is Virginia’s General Assembly celebrating Black History Month? By killing a bill to protect children in public school lavatories, introduced by Del. A.C. Cordoza of Hampton. Cordoza is an African-American. And a Republican. He was famously denied membership in the Virginia Legislative Black Caucus when he was elected in 2022.…
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Teacher Vacancies in Virginia Cities with a Majority of Black Students Continue to be Very High
by James C. Sherlock The statewide performance of Black kids on Virginia’s SOLs was horrible. Chronic absenteeism is a primary reason. But I continue to look for underlying reasons and solutions for both. This morning I checked the Staffing and Vacancy Dashboard. The teacher vacancy rate for Region 2, Tidewater and the Eastern Shore, is…
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Boys Left Behind Academically – Yet Another Crisis in Virginia Schools
by James C. Sherlock Girls significantly outperform boys in English Language Arts (ELA) (reading and writing) in public schools and perform about as well in math and science, both across the nation and in Virginia. Virginia statewide SOL performance statistics give the details here. Across the state, girl students are better readers and far better…
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Daughter of Heroines
by Margot Heffernan The year is 2023 but it feels as if the calendar has rolled back a hundred years for women and girls in Virginia, and just about anywhere else in the Western world. Hyperbolic? Over the top? Sadly, no. Each day women are censored, denigrated, and erased; called bigots for speaking biological fact;…
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Charlottesville, Its Public Schools and UVa – Part Three – CCS Abandons Truancy Filings, Absenteeism Soars
by James C. Sherlock The effects of public policies can be murky. Not this one. The subject in this Part 3 is alarming chronic absenteeism of Charlottesville City Schools (CCS). At issue is the virtual abandonment by that division of the use truancy filings with the Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court, removing parental consequences. …
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Charlottesville, Its Public Schools and UVa – Part Two – Black Students
by James C. Sherlock What drew me to this story is the fact that Black students in Charlottesville City Schools (CCS) have suffered to a degree unequaled elsewhere in the Commonwealth. Keeping in mind the domination of Charlottesville and its schools by the University of Virginia and its School of Education and Human Development discussed…
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Charlottesville, Its Public Schools and UVa – Part One – Bad things Happen
by James C. Sherlock In the relationship between Charlottesville and the University of Virginia, very bad things have happened to Charlottesville and continue to do so. I have developed a working thesis on that relationship. The city is at the mercy of the University by virtue of the latter’s wealth, influence, and power in Charlottesville…
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A VSU Officer was Shot and Left Paralyzed. At Thanksgiving, Readers Can Help Him and His Family
by James C. Sherlock Virginia State University (VSU) Police Officer Bruce Foster, 38, was shot on November 12. He had chased down a suspect who was causing an early Sunday morning disturbance on campus. Officer Foster was shot from behind while making the arrest. He remains hospitalized and paralyzed from the waist down. The five-year…
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Yes, Virginia, There is a TikTok, and It’s Chinese
by James C. Sherlock From the NY Post: “TikTok shredded as influencers promote Osama bin Laden’s ‘terrorist propaganda’ tirade dubbed ‘Letter to America’ after 9/11 attacks” Virginia bans porno sites. How did we miss our kids’ favorite (Chinese) app TikTok?
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Never Again
by James C. Sherlock At 78, I have been all over the world often and for long periods of time. I felt myself reasonably immune to cultural surprises. But I had never seen anything like this. It was the Maghrib prayer time about 5 p.m. on Saturday. On the southeast corner of 12th and Pennsylvania…
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Freedom, Consistency, and Tuesday’s Election
by Shaun Kenney One of the great things about being a conservative is that we are inherently an anti-ideology. As the late William F. Buckley Jr. once put it, the great task of the modern conservative movement is to stand athwart history yelling STOP! Yet in a wider sense, it is far easier for conservatives…
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“Good old TikTok: Chinese spy engine and purveyor of virulent antisemitic lies.” Sen. Josh Hawley
by James C. Sherlock Taylor Lorenz, the estimable young Tech and Online Culture columnist for The Washington Post, has been the author of some of the most important reports on the Hamas-Israel war. Today, she published with Drew Harwell, a Post reporter covering artificial intelligence and the algorithms changing our lives, “Israel-Gaza war sparks debate…