Tag: James Sherlock
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North Carolina AG Investigation Quashes Sentara/Cone Health Merger
by James C. Sherlock In the big merger equivalent of “spend more time with our families,” Cone and Sentara issued a joint statement on June 2 that they “have jointly decided not to move forward” with their planned merger. “As this work progressed, we realized that each of our communities and key stakeholders require support…
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Sentara, Cone Health Call Off Merger
From Virginia Business: “Sentara Healthcare and Greensboro, North Carolina-based Cone Health mutually called off a merger Wednesday, according to a statement by the Norfolk-based health care system.” The Sentara Healthcare Board of Directors and the Cone Health Board of Trustees came to the mutual agreement to end affiliation plans late last week, according to the…
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Some Northern Virginia Schools Get Failing Grades on Black Student Literacy and Numeracy
by James C. Sherlock We spend a lot of time here documenting the raging debates at Northern Virginia school board meetings over Critical Race Theory in schools. Raging is the right word. Yet those same school systems fail to educate the kids they claim to care about most. Consider what we see from VDOE…
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An Agenda for High Quality Primary Care
by James C. Sherlock I have written columns here and in various newspapers across the state for a number of years supporting health enterprise zones (HEZ’s) in underserved areas of Virginia. I drafted and Republican Attorney General candidate Jason Miyares sponsored legislation of that title in the General Assembly. It lost. Like night follows day,…
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Martinsville and the Reversion – Part 2
by James C. Sherlock Dick Hall-Sizemore yesterday gave us a rather bloodless, bureaucratic, and relatively positive description of the upcoming shotgun marriage between Martinsville and Henry County. He could not seem to understand the angst on the part of Henry County. I’ll try to help him out. It was good to have the historical perspective…
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The One-Sided Decision in the Reversion of Martinsville – the Start of a Trend?
by James C. Sherlock The Martinsville Bulletin, perhaps the best remaining newspaper in the state for local coverage, published a must-read article on the reversion of Martinsville from city to town and joining Henry County. Overview Martinsville’s current city logo, above, was perhaps prescient. Martinsville has been hemorrhaging population, losing more than 18% in the…
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Math and Reading Remediation Coming to Richmond Public Schools
by James C. Sherlock I spent the past couple of days writing about thousands of human tragedies playing out in Richmond Pubic Schools (RPS), their complexity and the large bureaucracy responsible for fixing it. Half of the Black kids in fourth grade in RPS schools could not read in 2018-19. Nine year olds. Half could…
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Teachers’ Unions Frightened by Implications of Remote Learning
by James C. Sherlock Well, never mind. Mayor de Blasio announced Monday that New York City schools will be all in person this fall with no remote options. Surprised? If you haven’t been keeping up, the teachers’ unions have discovered that a lot of their members are replaceable by remote instructional content from commercial sources.…
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The Complexity of Richmond Public Schools
by James C. Sherlock Yesterday I wrote a column about the broad and deep failures of the Richmond Public School (RPS) system in educating the children in its care. Today I will present RPS’ organizational structure, budget and headquarters staffing for managing the complexity of the system. I suspect RPS’ level of complexity is similar…
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Richmond’s Disastrous Public Schools Expose Hypocrisy of State Equity Policy
by James C. Sherlock I am, tomorrow, going to report a hopeful note about the City of Richmond Public Schools (RPS). It will relate the story of an impressive woman who is working hard to turn around the absolutely horrendous reading and math capabilities of RPS students. But in order to put her challenge…
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UVa President Ryan on UVa Religious Studies Professors Attacking Evangelicals
by James C. Sherlock University of Virginia President Jim Ryan was kind enough to read my column detailing the unacceptable behavior of two Department of Religious Studies professors. There are two “counts” I charged against them: First, slander. All speakers trashed all white evangelicals as racists and “confederates” who are sorry the South lost the Civil…
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No One in Virginia Schools is Licensed to Practice Social-Emotional Learning
by James C. Sherlock The Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotion Learning defines SEL as: the process through which children and adults understand and manage emotions, set and achieve positive goals, feel and show empathy for others, establish and maintain positive relationships, and make responsible decisions. It raises the question of who in the school…
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Some Virginia Black Children Have Restricted Access to In-Person Learning — But It’s Complicated
by James C. Sherlock I just spent a good bit of time researching the statewide return-to-school instructional schedules of 132 school districts (May 3 VDOE data) in order to determine if Black students are being disproportionately disadvantaged. They are, but the data show a very complex picture. The answers to “why and by whom?” get…
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Social Emotional Learning Standards Comments to VDOE Nearly 90% Negative
by James C. Sherlock There have been two Virginia Town Hall web pages on which Virginians have commented to the VDOE on the proposed Social Emotional Learning standards for Virginia public schools. If I counted correctly, the current tally on the two pages is 606 against and 64 in favor. And there is still time…
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Vertically Integrated Health Providers/Insurers – Weak State Oversight But New Federal Authority
by James C. Sherlock In the contest between Virginia’s disorganized attempts to oversee vertically integrated health care and health insurance businesses, Sentara being the most prominent example, and Virginia’s regional monopolies’ defenses against effective regulation and legislation, the monopolies have won. This piece discusses Virginia’s failed legislative and regulatory oversight structures. I will recommend structural…