#united states district court charlottesville va

[processservercharlottesvilleva]

https://youtu.be/1TUzBuPYNhM

ARMENHYL Virginia Process Servers are available throughout the Commonwealth of Virginia! Contact ARMENHYL today at info@armenhyl.com - (434) 260-1031 - (540) 416-1660! Visit ARMENHYL at www.armenhyl.com and on social media! We look forward to our next opportunity to serve you!

[tsgcharlottesvillevirginia]

On the Market: Charlottesville August Real Estate Report

From nearby country getaways to in-town gems, this month’s report has it all. 

Slate Hill – 3455 Presidents Rd. | Scottsville,VA | Frank Hardy Sotheby's International Realty, Murdoch Matheson, 434.296.0134 The details: 4 bedrooms, 4.5 bathrooms, 2,736 square feet, 45 acres What we love: Hand crafted from a unique original design combining traditional Virginia farmhouse style with an elegant touch of Swedish charm. The home was designed by Bethany Puopolo - local Architect. You will not find a more comfortable, simply elegant country home in all of Virginia. The house was built  designed by local architect Bethany Puopolo and built by Virginia Frame Builders. In addition to the amazing main residence, it features a one-bathroom guest cottage, three ponds, two fenced paddocks with run-in shed, storage barns and gardens, sport court and a putting green with miles of wooded walking trails meandering past Quarry Creek and traversing the property. 

Appledore – 7617 Greenwood Station Rd. | Greenwood, VA | Loring Woodriff Real Estate, Genevieve Verlaak, 434.996.6683 The details:  4 bedrooms, 4.5 bathrooms, 4,493 square feet, 10.24 acres What we love: In the heart of Greenwood, Appledore, an 1896 Queen Anne Style Victorian manor house country estate has been renovated with extra-ordinary craftsmanship to revive its original glory including the amenities of a modern residence. Majestically sitting on a knoll surrounded by rolling pastures, the residence constructed of stucco and stone walls, copper roof, large windows and plantation shutters draws you close. High ceilings, original heartpine floors, fireplaces and immaculate detailing makes each spacious room reminiscing about its past. In addition to the original structure of the house, a new kitchen, mudroom, pantry area and bathrooms were added. 

Aspian Lawn Farm – 6591 Markwood Rd. | Earlysville, VA | Frank Hardy Sotheby's International Realty, Ann Hay Hardy, 434.296.0134 The details: 6 bedrooms 4.5 bathrooms, 4,932 square feet, 183 acres What we love: Idyllic country property with historic c. 1750's home that’s been lovingly added on to and updated. Located in Albemarle County with stunning water and mountain views, only 16 miles from downtown Charlottesville. Charming details at every turn, including updated marble counters in the kitchen and marble bathrooms, a 2009 addition, wood and gas fireplaces, and new outdoor slate patio. Outdoors, 183 acres of conserved and managed forest and pastures include an 11 acre fully stocked lake, and a separate guest cottage and barn.  

2430 RIVER RIDGE RD | Charlottesville, VA | Loring Woodriff Real Estate, Liz Raney, 434.242.3889 The details: 5 bedrooms, 4 full & 2 half baths, 6,246 square feet, 14.65 acres What we love: This peaceful, private home, on the banks of the Mechums River,  built by Shelter Associates, has a thoughtful floor plan and spacious yet intimate interior. Soaring eight foot windows invite stunning woodland views and winter river views. Thee 15 secluded acres located in Wind River, offer community with privacy in the sought-after Meriwether Lewis school district. Our favorite features include a beautiful master suite, nanny/in-law suite, top grade appliances, granite countertops, whole house generator, sauna, two fireplaces, numerous outdoor rooms including screened in porch, two decks, hot tub/fire pit area, stone patio, children’s play area, finished basement, office and three-car garage.

820 East High Street | Charlottesville, VA |  Frank Hardy Sotheby's International Realty, Ann Hay Hardy, 434.296.0134 The details: 1 bedroom, 1 bathroom, 670 square feet What we love: It’s rare that a modern downtown condo at this price comes onto the market. For the ultimate in city living, this modern condo is within walking distance to all the shops, restaurants, and entertainment the Historic Downtown Mall has to offer. Features include an open floor plan, Bamboo floors, 10' ceilings and large, oversized windows that bring in an abundance of light. Small community of only 16 units with one reserved parking space with the unit. This unit is elevator accessible.

1101Calhoun Street | Charlottesville, VA | Nest Realty, Grier Murphy, 434.466.5850 The details: 3 bedrooms, 2 bathroom, 1,581 square feet, .22 acres What we love: Circa 1928 and exquisitely renovated, this unexpected jewel box of a cottage is located right in the heart of Charlottesville. Maxing out every inch of space in this cozy bungalow are secret nooks and unexpected cabinets and more extensive trim work than exists in homes three times the size. Carefully curated tile lines the walls in the kitchen which has a space for everything you could need. Hand-painted wallpaper adds a whimsical feel to the hallway. And packed into this small space is a tremendous amount of storage. The rare extra-wide lot has been professionally landscaped with flowers, annuals & trees. Detached office/studio with electric & AC. Featured in Architectural Digest and Tory Daily.

Annadale – 9244 Dixie Drive | Orange, VA | Loring Woodriff Real Estate. Loring Woodriff, 434.466.2992 The details: 4 bedrooms, 4.5 bathrooms, 5,600 square feet, 63.19 acres What we love: The centerpiece of this stately c. 1804 Virginia estate is a comprehensively, tastefully renovated and modernized federal manor home sited dramatically to overlook a four acre lake and the rolling hills of the Piedmont beyond. The Annandale residence features 12 foot ceilings, four fireplaces and a luxurious 1st floor master suite. We adore the pool shaded by massive hardwoods, guest house, three-bedroom farm manager's house, covered dock/sitting area by the lake and Sears dairy barn charmingly converted to stables. Acreage fenced & cross fenced for horses. A mere 25 minutes to Charlottesville.

[deargodsno]

WHITEFISH, Mont. — Richard B. Spencer, the most infamous summer resident in this town, once boasted that he stood at the vanguard of a white nationalist movement emboldened by President Donald J. Trump. Things have changed.“ I have bumped into him, and he runs — that’s actually a really good feeling,” said Tanya Gersh, a real estate agent targeted in an antisemitic hate campaign that Andrew Anglin, the founder of the Daily Stormer, a neo-Nazi website, unleashed in 2016 after Mr. Spencer’s mother made online accusations against Ms. Gersh. Leaders in Whitefish say Mr. Spencer, who once ran his National Policy Institute from his mother’s $3 million summer house here, is now an outcast in this resort town in the Rocky Mountains, unable to get a table at many of its restaurants. His organization has dissolved. Meanwhile, his wife has divorced him, and he is facing trial next month in Charlottesville, Va., over his role in the deadly 2017 neo-Nazi march there, but says he cannot afford a lawyer.

The turn of events is no accident. Whitefish, a mostly liberal, affluent community nestled in a county that voted for Mr. Trump in 2016 and 2020, rose up and struck back. Residents who joined with state officials, human rights groups and synagogues say their bipartisan counteroffensive could hold lessons for others in an era of disinformation and intimidation, and in the wake of the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.

“The best way to respond to hate and cyberterrorism in your community is through solidarity,” said Rabbi Francine Green Roston of the Glacier Jewish Community/B’nai Shalom, who now lectures other groups on how to ward off hate campaigns like the one Whitefish endured. “Another big principle is to take threats seriously, and prepare for the worst.” Mayor John Muhlfeld agreed, “You have to act swiftly and decisively and come together as a community to tackle hate and make sure it doesn’t infiltrate your town,” he said. On Saturday, Mr. Spencer said he kept a “very low profile” in Whitefish, and though he had been denied service in local establishments in the past, “I don’t have any anxiety dealing with anyone.” He said he does not run from Ms. Gersh and understood why people would be angry with him. “I don’t want any battles with them here in Whitefish,” he continued, “and I hope they take a similar attitude, that it’s best to move on.” His mother, Sherry Spencer, did not respond to requests for comment.

Advice and an Accusation

The trouble in Whitefish started after Mr. Trump’s victory in the 2016 election that November. Mr. Spencer, who had called his white nationalist movement a “vanguard” for Mr. Trump, delivered a racially charged speech at his institute’s conference in Washington, his words greeted by Nazi salutes. Video of the address went viral. In Whitefish, residents discussed protesting in front of a downtown commercial building owned by Mr. Spencer’s mother.

Ms. Gersh said Ms. Spencer had called her.“She flat-out asked me, ‘Tanya, I don’t believe in my son’s ideology,’” Ms. Gersh recalled over coffee in her office downtown. “‘I’m heartbroken that this is hurting Whitefish. What should I do?’” “I said: ‘Sherry, if this were my son, I would go ahead and sell the building. I would donate some money to something like the Human Rights Network to make a statement, and publish that you don’t believe in the ideologies of your son.’ And she said: ‘Thank you, Tanya. That’s exactly what I should do.’”Ms. Gersh said she had arranged to sell the property without making any profit. But a short time later, she said, Ms. Spencer sent an email saying she had changed her mind about working with Ms. Gersh. Ms. Gersh supplied names of other real estate agents.Two weeks later, in December 2016, Ms. Spencer posted an article on the open publishing platform Medium accusing Ms. Gersh of using the threat of protests to blackmail her into selling. Mr. Spencer said on Saturday that he and his former wife had written the article published under his mother’s name. He repeated their claims against Ms. Gersh, adding that she had called his mother, not the other way around. The Spencers’ accusations quickly reverberated among the far right. Mr. Anglin of the Daily Stormer exhorted his “fam” online to “TAKE ACTION” to defend Ms. Spencer.

Ms. Gersh arranged to sell a commercial property in downtown Whitefish owned by the mother of Richard B. Spencer, who once said he stood at the vanguard of a white nationalist movement emboldened by President Donald J. Trump.

He shared personal information and the social media accounts of Ms. Gersh and her family, including her son, then 12. A post in which Mr. Anglin encouraged his followers to “stop by and tell her in person what you think of her actions” was the first of some 30 articles he published targeting the Gersh family and the Jewish community in Whitefish, according to a lawsuit Ms. Gersh filed in 2017 against Mr. Anglin in U.S. District Court in Montana.Ms. Gersh received hundreds of text messages, emails and Christmas cards threatening her. Her voice mail filled up several times a day. Hateful comments about Ms. Gersh appeared on real estate websites. Homeowners were afraid to list with her.

The campaign swept in Rabbi Roston, another area rabbi, Allen Secher, and his wife, Ina Albert, and any Whitefish residents and business owners the trolls believed were Jewish.

At one point, Rabbi Roston realized one of the anonymous antagonists was the father of her son’s best friend. Her family did not confront the man, who has since moved away. “He had a lot of guns,” she said.Mr. Anglin next announced a march on Whitefish, planned for Martin Luther King’s Birthday in 2017. An ad for the event depicted the gates of the Auschwitz death camp with photos of Ms. Gersh, her son, Rabbi Roston and the other rabbi’s wife superimposed.The march was planned to end at the Gersh home.‘A Full Plan in Place’ Whitefish and Montana mobilized.Montana’s governor, attorney general and congressional delegation issued a bipartisan open letter, making it clear “that ignorance, hatred and threats of violence are unacceptable and have no place in the town of Whitefish, or in any other community in Montana or across this nation.” The governor at the time, Steve Bullock, wrote editorials condemning the antisemitic campaign and met with the families in Rabbi Roston’s home.As tensions rose in Whitefish, Mr. Spencer and his parents made public statements distancing themselves from the march and from Mr. Anglin. Behind the scenes, the police and the federal authorities readied themselves for a potentially violent event.Mr. Muhlfeld, the mayor, said that the town had not refused Mr. Anglin a special event permit but that Mr. Anglin had not met the town’s conditions, including a prohibition on firearms.

“If you asked, ‘Do you think they’re going to show up?’ they were like, ‘Nah,’ but they had a full plan in place,” Rabbi Roston said. “If you look at Jan. 6, the quickness with which people wrote off threats was dangerous,” she added.

The Anti-Defamation League, the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Secure Community Network, the official safety and security organization of the North American Jewish community, advised residents on what to do.As a result, Ms. Gersh did not speak publicly about her ordeal at the time. Rabbi Roston kept a low profile, discouraging coverage in the Jewish news media to protect the congregation and avoid giving attackers the attention they craved. The congregation did not cancel its Hanukkah party in December 2016 but moved it from the rabbi’s home to the conference room of a motel, with two armed security guards at the door. On each table, the rabbi placed a pile of supportive letters that had arrived from around the nation.Volunteers distributed thousands of paper menorahs. “There were menorahs in every window in Whitefish,” Ms. Gersh said. An anti-hate rally drew 600 participants in zero-degree weather. On the eve of the neo-Nazi march, Rabbi Roston helped organize a chicken and matzo ball soup get-together for 350 people at the middle school in Whitefish, in a demonstration of unity and appreciation. On Martin Luther King’s Birthday — Monday, Jan. 16 — not a single neo-Nazi turned up to march. “We could say they chickened out,” Rabbi Roston joked.In April, Ms. Gersh, represented by the Southern Poverty Law Center, filed suit against Mr. Anglin for invasion of privacy, intentional infliction of emotional distress and violations of Montana’s Anti-Intimidation Act. In 2019, she won $14 million in damages. A team of lawyers is still searching for Mr. Anglin and his assets. The trial in the Charlottesville case, Sines v. Kessler, begins on Oct. 25. A group of victims and counterprotesters filed suit against Mr. Anglin as well as Mr. Spencer, along with nearly two dozen people and groups involved in the “Unite the Right” rally, after a neo-Nazi at the Charlottesville march plowed his car into a crowd of counterprotesters, killing Heather Heyer, 32, and injuring at least 19 others.

Mr. Spencer’s lawyer withdrew from the case last year because he had not been paid. “Due to deplatforming efforts against me, it is very difficult for me to raise money as other citizens are able to,” Mr. Spencer told the judge in a pretrial hearing in 2020. He is now representing himself. As the trial approaches, the case has generated a number of contempt-related fines and sanctions against the defendants.“ After four years of so little accountability, it’s important to make clear that accountability matters and it works,” said Amy Spitalnick, the executive director of Integrity First for America, the nonprofit group that brought the lawsuit.Separately, in May, a federal judge in Ohio ordered Mr. Spencer’s National Policy Institute to pay $2.4 million to William Burke, a counterprotester who was severely injured in Charlottesville. Mr Muhlfeld said he had last seen Mr. Spencer in 2019, skiing at the mountain resort. “He walked into the Summit House and summarily was booed by pretty much everyone,” Mr. Muhlfeld said, referring to a restaurant there. “Richard Spencer wanted this to be his happy vacation place where he could play and have fun, and people would just live and let live,” Rabbi Roston said. “Then he started suffering social consequences for his hatred. ”Ms. Gersh said that she had been afraid to work again after the hate campaign, but that after Charlottesville, “I knew that I had to go back to work because if I didn’t, they win.”

She keeps a photo of Ms. Heyer on her desk and bear spray in its drawer.

[fuckyeahmarxismleninism]

United Electrical Workers Local 150 (North Carolina Public Service Workers Union)

National Call-In Day on November 14 as the Durham 15 stand trial!

Call Durham County District Attorney ROGER ECHOLS at: (919) 808-3010

Call NC State Senate President Phil Berger at: (919) 733-5708

Urge the state Legislature to repeal the 2015 law GS § 100-2.1 that prohibits local governments from removing Confederate statues and other vestiges of white supremacy.

Drop all criminal charges for the 15 anti-racist activists arrested for the events in Durham related to the toppling of the Confederate statue.

__________

UE150, NC Public Service Workers Union calls on the labor movement to stand in solidarity with the growing people’s movement that is challenging the racist rooted system that allows public monuments to white supremacist ideals and values in the form of Confederate statues to stand. On August 14, some residents took down the supremacist Confederate soldier statue in front of the Durham Courthouse. While everyone may not agree with this tactic, the state laws prevented the ability of people to address concerns to take down statues to their local governments. This occurred just two days after Nazi’s and KKK rallied in a “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, VA to defend Confederate statues and killed an anti-racist protester, Heather Heyer.

The Durham action was another powerful expression of people’s anger and disgust with how the system uses its power to remind Black, Brown and oppressed people of their “place” and ongoing oppression and exploitation. Some feel they should take matters into their own hands when governments attempt to stop progressive social change. In 2015, the Republican-dominated NC State Legislature passed a bill that took away authority from local city and county governments to remove Confederate statues from their property, GS § 100-2.1. This is the same state Legislature that the US Supreme Court ruled gerrymandered voting districts based on race with “laser-like precision”. The state Legislature also passed similar legislation – HB2 — that eliminated local governments’ power to protect trans-gendered people from hate crimes, or enact protections for workers from abusive employers, like raising the minimum wage and improving working conditions for contractors.

__________

NC Public Service Workers Union, UE local 150 For information about how to support this resolution, call 919-876-7187

http://ue150.org/

https://www.facebook.com/UE150/

[untioko]

Charlottesville VA

I wanted to repost what Ken San Pietro said in response to MSN (and others) reporting false information to the American public concerning Charlottesville Virginia because I think that everyone should hear the truth:

"Here are the vetted facts and what REALLY happened in Charlottesville, VA:

People protesting the removal of our Confederate Monuments (American History) got a permit to protest at 10:00. Now, let's not forget they had to take it to top VA State District Court to get their 1st Amendment right acknowledged and permit from the City & State!

Early yesterday morning Antifa members as well as BLM were being flown and bused in from around the country. (We all know who paid their way their).

At 8:45am VA Governor & Charlottesville Mayor, who didn't want the Confederate Monument protesters there to begin with, sends police in to cancel a protest that hadn't even started. They forced the protesters out in the streets to a waiting mob of antifa-fa and BLM. The police were given orders to stand down and let the protesters be attacked.

This was set up by the Virginia governor to take away protesters 1st amendment rights. It doesn't matter what the protesters had to say. They had a right to say it all.

Here is what really happened in VA today from a friend who was there and nothing of the truth actually made it to the media so they made up much of the crap you're being soon fed tonight yet people continue to believe the media..!

And since our media is completely, and utterly incapable of reporting with honesty and transparency:

-The Alt Right organized a peaceful assembly in Charlottesville called Unite the Right.

-The Organizers lawfully obtained a permit to host this event.

-Wes Bellamy, the Vice-Mayor of Charlottesville, illegally revoked the permit for this event. Wes Bellamy is a known Leftist and is affiliated with the Black Panther Party, a Black Supremacist organization.

-The ACLU successfully sued Charlottesville for violating the First Amendment, and a Federal judge ruled that the permit must be reinstated and the right to assemble honored.

-Unite the Right was scheduled to take place at 12:00pm today. At 11:30am, a heavily militarized police force illegally shut down the event, physically assaulting peaceful protesters with batons and tear gas. Several people were illegally arrested.

-While evacuating, many protesters were illegally assaulted by counter protesters from Antifa and Black Lives Matter as the police stood by and did nothing. Antifa and BLM members were recorded throwing bricks at people, using pepper spray and throwing molotov cocktails and tear gas.

-An Antifa maggot drove his car straight in to a crowd of people, killing at least one. the state of Virginia declared a state of emergency with the National Guard on standby, and Charlottesvile became the #1 news story in the world.

-The lying media intentionally portrayed this all in a way to make it look like the peaceful protesters were the perpetrators of the violence, rather than the victims despite heavy video evidence to the contrary.

This was an enormous breech of everyone's First Amendment rights, and a violent police state suppression of free speech that is now being hidden by the lying media."

PLEASE SHARE his words! He KNOWS what really happened there, as do others who were there, involved, and who had friends/family there.

[processservercharlottesvilleva]

ARMENHYL GROUP LLC - Process Service Charlottesville Virginia, Surrounding Areas and throughout the Commonwealth of Virginia!

[brajeshupadhyay]

Coronavirus News in USA: Live Updates

As new hot spots emerge, the pandemic may be entering another phase.

The simplest way to track the progress of any outbreak is by seeing how many new cases and deaths are reported in a given area each day. And in the United States, falling numbers in some of the hardest-hit places have offered glimmers of hope. Totals for the country have been on a downward curve, and in former hot spots like New York and New Jersey, the counts appear to have peaked.

But infections and deaths are rising in more than a dozen states, as they are in countries around the world, an ominous sign that the pandemic may be entering a new phase.

Wisconsin saw its highest single-day increase in confirmed cases and deaths this week, two weeks after the state’s highest court overturned a stay-at-home order. Cases are also on the rise in Alabama, Arkansas, California and North Carolina, which on Thursday reported some of the state’s highest numbers of hospitalizations and reported deaths since the crisis began.

In metropolitan areas like Fayetteville, Ark.; Yuma, Ariz.; and Roanoke and Charlottesville, Va., data show new highs may be only days or weeks away.

Outbreaks have accelerated especially sharply in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Mexico and Peru, leading the World Health Organization to say on Tuesday that it considered the Americas to be the new center of the pandemic.

And although much of the Middle East seemed to avert early catastrophe even as the virus ravaged Iran, case counts have been swelling in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.

Reported cases are not perfect measures to chart the spread of the virus because they depend on how much testing is done. Death counts are less dependent on testing, though official numbers are typically undercounts. Both counts, though, can indicate how the outbreak is evolving, especially in places where lockdown rules are easing or where governments have been ineffective at slowing the spread, and offer early clues about new hot spots.

That is why Wisconsin is being closely monitored. Two weeks ago, the conservative majority on the State Supreme Court overturned that state’s stay-at-home order, effectively removing the most serious restrictions on residents.

It can take several weeks after changes in behavior — like the increased movement and interactions associated with the end of a stay-at-home order — for the effect on transmissions to be reflected in the data. In Wisconsin, there were indications that the virus was still spreading before the order was lifted. But in the weeks since restrictions were overturned, the case numbers have continued to grow.

“It worries us,” said Dr. Nasia Safdar, the medical director for infection prevention at the University of Wisconsin Hospital in Madison. “We wonder if this is a trend in an unfavorable direction.”

Upon arriving at work, employees should get a temperature and symptom check.

Inside the office, desks should be six feet apart. If that is not possible, employers should consider erecting plastic shields around them.

If followed, the guidelines would lead to a far-reaching remaking of the corporate work experience. They even upend years of advice on commuting, urging people to drive to work by themselves, instead of taking mass transportation or car-pooling, to avoid potential exposure to the virus.

The recommendations run from technical advice on ventilation systems (more open windows are most desirable) to a suggested abolition of communal perks like latte makers and snack bins. And some border on the impractical, if not near impossible: “Limit use and occupancy of elevators to maintain social distancing of at least 6 feet.”

For millions of Americans left out of work by the pandemic, government assistance has been a lifeline preventing a plunge into poverty, hunger and financial ruin.

This summer, that lifeline could snap, reports Ben Casselman.

The $1,200 checks sent to most households are long gone, at least for those who needed them most, with little imminent prospect for a second round. The lending program that helped millions of small businesses keep workers on the payroll will wind down if Congress does not extend it. Eviction moratoriums that kept people in their homes are expiring in many cities.

And the $600 per week in extra unemployment benefits that have allowed tens of millions of laid-off workers to pay rent and buy groceries will expire at the end of July.

The latest sign of the economic strain and the government’s role in easing it came Thursday, when the Labor Department reported that millions more Americans applied for unemployment benefits last week. More than 40 million people have filed for benefits since the crisis began, and some 30 million are receiving them.

The multitrillion-dollar patchwork of federal and state programs hasn’t kept bills from piling up or prevented long lines at food banks, but it has mitigated the damage. Now the expiration of those programs represents a cliff they are hurtling toward, for individuals and for the economy.

“The CARES Act was massive, but it was a very short-term offset to what is likely to be a long-term problem,” said Aneta Markowska, the chief financial economist for the investment bank Jefferies, referring to the legislative centerpiece of the federal rescue. “This economy is clearly going to need more support.”

Even the possibility that the programs will be allowed to expire could have economic consequences, Ms. Markowska said, as consumers and businesses brace for the loss of federal assistance.

President Trump and other Republicans have played down the need for more spending, saying the solution is for states to reopen businesses and allow companies to bring people back to work. So despite pleas from economists across the political spectrum — including Jerome H. Powell, the Federal Reserve chairman — any federal action is likely to be limited.

The House voted overwhelmingly on Thursday to give businesses more time to use money borrowed under the Paycheck Protection Program, which offers forgivable loans to small businesses that retain or rehire their workers. The bill’s fate in the Senate is uncertain, but a deal seems likely to be reached.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends wearing cloth face coverings in public settings where it is difficult to maintain social distancing, including grocery stores, pharmacies and gas stations. It also continues to emphasize how critical social distancing is.

But masks have unexpectedly crossed over from public health measures to politically charged symbols, with many shops and restaurants banning customers who do not wear them — and a few others moving to ban customers who do.

In Kentucky, a gas station told customers that no one was allowed inside its convenience store if they had their face covered. In California, a flooring store near Los Angeles has encouraged hugs and handshakes but does not permit face masks or protections. And a bar in Texas taped a poster to its front door this week that said “sorry, no masks allowed.”

In New York, the hardest-hit state, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said on Thursday that he would issue an executive order authorizing businesses to deny entry to people who were not wearing face coverings.

“That store owner has a right to protect themselves,” Mr. Cuomo said. “That store owner has a right to protect the other patrons in that store.”

Dennis Townsend, a Republican supervisor in California’s rural Tulare County, said that as his conservative district reopened for business, masks had become a continuing point of contention.

“People tell me, ‘OK, I’ll go to the stores, but they better be wearing masks in there.’ And then other people tell me, ‘OK, I’ll go to the stores, but they better not make me wear a mask,’” he said.

Mr. Townsend said he was “not real big on wearing masks” himself but had done so when shopping.

“What I tell people is that with every freedom we have comes additional responsibility,” he said. “We’ve had one freedom suppressed for a little while, but now it’s back, and that’s going to require additional personal responsibility on our parts.”

Washington State says it has reclaimed $300 million in fraudulent unemployment claims.

Washington State, which has been battling a deluge of fraudulent unemployment claims, has managed to claw back some $300 million in payments that went out to fraudsters, officials said Thursday.

Suzi LeVine, the commissioner of Washington State’s Employment Security Department, said the recovery came from coordination among law enforcement agencies and financial institutions. She did not reveal exact numbers on recoveries or the total number of fraudulent claims and said that the state was continuing to work on additional collections while blocking more false claims.

“The criminals have not gone away because we continue to see significant highly suspicious traffic,” Ms. LeVine said.

The Massachusetts Department of Unemployment Assistance said in a statement that it had also seen fraudsters trying to file large numbers of illegitimate claims, while the cybersecurity firm Agari said it had seen evidence of the fraudulent claims targeting states all over the country.

Unemployment claims around the country have exceeded 40 million since the start of the pandemic.

Democrats are mobilizing to turn the $2 trillion effort that Mr. Trump is overseeing into a political liability going into his re-election campaign.

The attention has focused on a small business loan program that has been marred by glitches, changing rules and cases of big publicly traded companies receiving funds while smaller shops are left waiting.

Top Democrats, including the party’s presumptive presidential nominee, Mr. Biden have seized on examples of rich executives getting money through the Paycheck Protection Program as indicative of corporate cronyism.

The Democratic National Committee and Democratic state parties in swing states held conference calls last week with reporters and other events highlighting stories of small business owners who did not get approved for loans.

Pacronym, a progressive super PAC that focuses on digital advertising, began running a $1.5 million ad campaign in five swing states — Arizona, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — that focused on struggling small businesses.

Some Republicans are embracing the program. Senator Susan Collins, a Maine Republican facing a tough re-election battle, has spent nearly $500,000 on ads that promote her role in “co-authoring” the program, according to data from Advertising Analytics, an ad tracking firm. And Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the majority leader, spent $175,000 on an ad featuring small business owners and employees describing jobs and businesses that were “rescued” by Mr. McConnell’s efforts on the stimulus package.

The Trump administration has scrambled to rewrite the rules of the program on the fly as public backlash intensified. The Treasury on Thursday carved out $10 billion of money to be used for loans to underserved communities.

Sports fans can attend games at outdoor venues in Texas.

Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas said that starting Friday, sports fans could attend games at outdoor venues in most counties in Texas, so long as occupancy was limited to 25 percent. Fans cannot attend indoor sporting events.

Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia said amusement parks, traveling carnivals and water parks could open June 12. And in California, more than a dozen Indian casinos, asserting sovereignty, defied Gov. Gavin Newsom and reopened last week. The Viejas Casino and Resort in Alpine, Calif., vowed to impose strict limits on the number of people gambling at once. A majority of Indian casinos in the state have chosen to stay closed and are coordinating their reopening with the governor’s office, which has proposed a date in early June.

A French study found 1 in 10 diabetic patients with Covid-19 died within a week of being hospitalized.

One in 10 diabetic patients with Covid-19, the illness caused by the virus, died within a week of being hospitalized, according to a study published on Thursday by French researchers in Diabetologia, the journal of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes.

Another 20 percent were put on ventilators to assist with breathing by the end of their first week in the hospital. Just 18 percent were discharged within a week.

“I don’t want to scare people, but what is true is we did not expect to see such high mortality, with 10 percent of people admitted dying in the first seven days,” said Dr. Samy Hadjadj, a professor of endocrinology at the University of Nantes in France and one of the authors of the paper.

A majority of patients in the study had Type 2 diabetes. Many people with diabetes also have cardiovascular disease, which raises the risk of death in Covid-19 patients.

But the new study, which included 1,317 patients at 53 French hospitals, found that microvascular injuries — involving tiny blood vessels supplying the eyes, kidneys and peripheral nerves — were also linked to a higher risk of death.

Obstructive sleep apnea also raised the risk of early death in these patients, while obesity and advanced age were linked to a greater likelihood of severe disease, the study found.

“This is serious,” Dr. Hadjadj said. “If you have diabetes and are elderly or have complications, be very careful. Keep away from the virus. Go on with social distancing, wash your hands carefully, keep people away who can bring you the virus.”

Dr. Hadjadj added, “You are not the kind of person who can afford to disregard these rules.”

As more people under 40 test positive in Washington State, researchers fear they will spread the virus.

People under 40 make up an increasing share of those who have tested positive for the virus in Washington State. Researchers in Seattle said that policymakers might need to focus on younger people to limit the spread.

In a new analysis, the researchers said about half of new identified cases were among people under 40, up from one-third of infections earlier in the outbreak.

Younger people may be more likely to work or participate in social activities, especially as restrictions are eased. While they do not face as high a risk of serious complications from infections, they can expose other people they encounter who may be older or who have hazardous underlying conditions, the researchers said.

“Our findings indicate a justifiable concern regarding the phased reopening plan for Washington State in late May in light of the shift in Covid-19 incidence from older to younger age,” the researchers wrote in their report, posted on the preprint server medRvix.

The researchers said government leaders may need to pursue specific advisories for children, teenagers and young adults to warn them of the risks of social interaction.

Pennsylvania House Democrats say Republicans hid a lawmaker’s positive virus test.

Democrats in Pennsylvania’s House of Representatives on Thursday accused Republicans of keeping a lawmaker’s positive virus test a secret to avoid political embarrassment, even at the risk of exposing fellow legislators.

A Republican House member, Andrew Lewis, confirmed on Wednesday that he received a positive test on May 20 and self-isolated. Mr. Lewis said that every lawmaker or staff member he was in contact with who “met the criteria for exposure” was notified.

But Democrats disputed that, saying none of their own members were alerted even though some were near Mr. Lewis in committee meetings.

The House Democratic campaign arm accused Republicans of hiding Mr. Lewis’s positive test “to protect their public talking points against science and facts.” Another Republican representative, Russ Diamond, who said he was notified of possible exposure through contact with Mr. Lewis, had previously spoken at a shutdown protest outside the Capitol and boasted on social media of not wearing a mask while shopping.

In an emotional Facebook video recorded in his office at the Capitol, Representative Brian K. Sims, a Democrat from Philadelphia, said Mr. Diamond had “apparently been quarantining himself for weeks” but “didn’t explain that to any of us when he was in committee, talking with us or walking up and down the aisles or bumping into us or letting us hold the door open for him.”

Mr. Lewis said he had kept his positive diagnosis private “out of respect for my family and those who I may have exposed.”

Representative Ryan Bizzarro, a Democrat, disputed that Mr. Lewis had quarantined himself after his diagnosis. “We have footage of him being here,” he said.

The Trump administration will not issue a midyear update to its economic forecasts this summer, breaking decades of tradition during the uncertainty of a pandemic recession, administration officials confirmed on Thursday.

The decision will spare the administration from having to announce its internal projections for how deeply the recession will damage economic growth and how long the pain of high unemployment will persist.

When the administration last published official projections in February, it forecast economic growth of 3.1 percent from the fourth quarter of 2019 to the fourth quarter of 2021, and growth rates at or around 3 percent for the ensuing decade. It forecast an unemployment rate of 3.5 percent for the year.

The virus has rendered those projections obsolete. Unemployment could hit 20 percent in June, the White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett told CNN this week. The Congressional Budget Office said in April that it expects the economy will contract by 5.6 percent this year and end with unemployment above 11 percent.

The White House is required by law to issue both an annual budget and a midyear update to it, called a “mid-session review.” Updating economic projections in the mid-session review is optional, but it is a practice that administrations — including Mr. Trump’s — have widely followed since the review was mandated by Congress in 1970.

The review is required by law to give at least a partial window into how the administration expects the economy to perform this year and in the future.

The decision not to release updated projections was first reported by The Washington Post.

Trump administration officials have in the past resisted updating their forecasts in the face of evidence that the economy was not growing as fast as they had projected. The budget they released in February officially conceded for the first time that growth in 2018 and 2019 had not reached 3 percent, as they had predicted.

Fears about contracting the virus from contaminated surfaces have prompted many to wipe down groceries, leave packages unopened and stress about elevator buttons.

But what is the real risk? The C.D.C. recently tried to clarify its guidance: “It may be possible that a person can get Covid-19 by touching a surface or object that has the virus on it, and then touching their own mouth, nose or possibly their eyes, but this isn’t thought to be the main way the virus spreads.”

So does this mean we can get the virus from touching a doorknob, catching a Frisbee or sharing a casserole dish? The Times asked the experts.

The best way we can protect ourselves from the virus — whether it is surface transmission or close human contact — is still social distancing, washing our hands, not touching our faces and wearing masks.

Starting Thursday, anyone in Britain who has potential symptoms will be tested and, if positive, asked to list all those with whom they have recently been in close contact for at least 15 minutes. Those people, in turn, will be contacted and asked to isolate themselves for 14 days.

It is the latest national campaign that aims to prevent more infections. The results so far are mixed.

What does it feel like to have Covid-19 and not need hospitalization?

Rest and fluids are essential, but so is knowing when to call a doctor. Give yourself plenty of time to feel better.

Reporting was contributed by Mike Baker, Karen Barrow, Scott Cacciola, Ben Casselman, Emily Cochrane, Patricia Cohen, Michael Cooper, Catie Edmondson, Nicholas Fandos, Thomas Fuller, Trip Gabriel, David Gelles, Erica L. Green, Jenny Gross, Apoorva Mandavilli, Jennifer Medina, Sarah Mervosh, Talya Minsberg, Andy Newman, Nadja Popovich, Roni Caryn Rabin, Alan Rappeport, Dana Rubinstein, Margot Sanger-Katz, Anna Schaverien, Kaly Soto, Sheryl Gay Stolberg, Vanessa Swales, Jim Tankersley and Katie Van Syckle.

The post Coronavirus News in USA: Live Updates appeared first on Sansaar Times.

via Blogger https://ift.tt/36Etnjm

[kansascityhappenings]

White supremacist gets life sentence for Charlottesville car attack that killed one

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — An avowed white supremacist who drove his car into a crowd of counterprotesters during a white nationalist rally in Virginia was sentenced to life in prison Friday on hate crime charges.

James Alex Fields Jr. of Maumee, Ohio, had pleaded guilty in March to the 2017 attack that killed one person and injured more than two dozen others. In exchange, prosecutors dropped their request for the death penalty. His attorneys asked for a sentence less than life. He will be sentenced next month on separate state charges.

Before the judge handed down his sentence, Fields, accompanied by one of his lawyers, walked to a podium in the courtroom and spoke.

“I apologize for the hurt and loss I’ve caused,” he said, later adding, “Every day I think about how things could have gone differently and how I regret my actions. I’m sorry.”

Fields’ comment came after more than a dozen survivors of and witnesses to the attack delivered emotional testimony about the physical and psychological wounds they had received as a result of the events that day.

The “Unite the Right” rally on Aug. 12, 2017, drew hundreds of white nationalists to Charlottesville to protest the planned removal of a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee.

The case stirred racial tensions around the country.

Fields was charged with 29 hate crime counts and one count of “racially motivated violent interference.” He pleaded guilty to 29 of the counts.

In a sentencing memo filed in court last week, Fields’ lawyers asked U.S. District Judge Michael Urbanski to consider a sentence of “less than life.”

“No amount of punishment imposed on James can repair the damage he caused to dozens of innocent people. But this Court should find that retribution has limits,” his attorneys wrote.

Fields faces sentencing in state court on July 15. A jury has recommended life plus 419 years.

from FOX 4 Kansas City WDAF-TV | News, Weather, Sports https://fox4kc.com/2019/06/28/white-supremacist-gets-life-sentence-for-charlottesville-car-attack-that-killed-one/

from Kansas City Happenings https://kansascityhappenings.wordpress.com/2019/06/28/white-supremacist-gets-life-sentence-for-charlottesville-car-attack-that-killed-one/

[bountyofbeads]

Avowed white supremacist gets life sentence in car attack

https://apnews.com/2e61587a0b9c4849b4aec1ec3695ef22

Avowed white supremacist gets life sentence in car attack

By DENISE Lavoie | Published June 28, 2019 2:35 PM ET | AP | Posted June 28, 2019 |

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. (AP) — An avowed white supremacist who drove his car into a crowd of counterprotesters during a white nationalist rally in Virginia was sentenced to life in prison Friday on hate crime charges.

James Alex Fields Jr. of Maumee, Ohio, had pleaded guilty in March to the 2017 attack that killed one person and injured more than two dozen others. In exchange, prosecutors dropped their request for the death penalty. His attorneys asked for a sentence less than life. He will be sentenced next month on separate state charges.

Before the judge handed down his sentence, Fields, accompanied by one of his lawyers, walked to a podium in the courtroom and spoke.

"I apologize for the hurt and loss I've caused," he said, later adding, "Every day I think about how things could have gone differently and how I regret my actions. I'm sorry."

Fields' comment came after more than a dozen survivors of and witnesses to the attack delivered emotional testimony about the physical and psychological wounds they had received as a result of the events that day.

The "Unite the Right" rally on Aug. 12, 2017, drew hundreds of white nationalists to Charlottesville to protest the planned removal of a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee.

The case stirred racial tensions around the country.

Fields was charged with 29 hate crime counts and one count of "racially motivated violent interference." He pleaded guilty to 29 of the counts.

In a sentencing memo filed in court last week, Fields' lawyers asked U.S. District Judge Michael Urbanski to consider a sentence of "less than life."

"No amount of punishment imposed on James can repair the damage he caused to dozens of innocent people. But this Court should find that retribution has limits," his attorneys wrote.

Fields faces sentencing in state court on July 15. A jury has recommended life plus 419 years.

[marilynngmesalo]

Man pleads guilty to hate crimes in deadly car attack at Charlottesville rally

Man pleads guilty to hate crimes in deadly car attack at Charlottesville rally Man pleads guilty to hate crimes in deadly car attack at Charlottesville rally https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — In a case that stirred racial tensions across the country, a self-avowed white supremacist pleaded guilty Wednesday to federal hate crime charges in a deadly attack at a white nationalist rally in Virginia, admitting that he intentionally plowed his speeding car into a crowd of anti-racism protesters, killing a woman and injuring dozens.

James Alex Fields Jr. of Maumee, Ohio, pleaded guilty to 29 of 30 federal charges stemming from the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville on Aug. 12, 2017.

Under a plea agreement, federal prosecutors will not seek the death penalty against Fields and will dismiss the one count that carried death as a possible punishment. The charges he pleaded guilty to call for life in prison under federal sentencing guidelines.

Fields appeared stoic, with his hands folded in front of him for much of the hearing. He repeatedly responded “yes, sir,” when U.S. District Judge Michael Urbanski asked him if he was pleading guilty knowingly and voluntarily.

Under a “statement of facts,” Fields admitted that he “expressed and promoted” white supremacist ideology through his social media accounts and engaged in white supremacist chants during the rally in Charlottesville. He also admitted driving his car into the ethnically diverse crowd of anti-racism protesters because of their race, colour, religion or national origin.

Urbanski scheduled sentencing for July 3.

Fields, 21, was convicted in December in a Virginia court of first-degree murder and other state charges for killing anti-racism activist Heather Heyer and injuring dozens of others who were protesting against the white nationalists.

The rally drew hundreds of white nationalists to Charlottesville to protest the planned removal of a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee. Hundreds of counterprotesters demonstrated against the white nationalists.

President Donald Trump sparked a national uproar when he blamed the violence at the rally on “both sides,” a statement critics saw as a refusal to condemn racism.

After Tuesday’s hearing, U.S. Attorney Thomas Cullen said he hoped the plea agreement would help the victims move on with their lives.

“The defendant’s hate-inspired act of domestic terrorism not only devastated Heather Heyer’s wonderful family and the 28 peaceful protesters … but it also left an indelible mark on the city of Charlottesville, our state and our country,” Cullen said.

Heyer’s mother, Susan Bro, said she and Heyer’s father agreed they did not want prosecutors to seek the death penalty.

“There’s no point in killing him,” she said. “It would not bring back Heather.”

Cullen said prosecutors had been in talks with Fields’ lawyers for months about a potential plea agreement, but did not seek to finalize a deal until U.S. Attorney General William Barr last week authorized him not to seek the death penalty if Fields agreed to plead to 29 counts.

The car attack by Fields came after violent brawling between the two sides prompted police to disband the crowds.

During his state trial, prosecutors said Fields — who described himself on social media as an admirer of Adolf Hitler — drove his car into the crowd because he was angry after witnessing earlier clashes between the white nationalists and the counterprotesters.

The jury rejected a claim by Fields’ lawyers that he acted in self-defence because he feared for his life after witnessing the earlier violence.

//<![CDATA[ ( function() { pnLoadVideo( "videos", "g5pfe5heD8I", "pn_video_41073", "", "", {"controls":1,"autoplay":0,"is_mobile":""} ); } )(); //]]>

During the plea hearing Wednesday, Fields — responding to questions from the judge — said he has been treated for mental health issues since he was 6. He said he is currently on medication for bipolar disorder, depression, anxiety, schizoid disorder, explosive onset disorder and ADHD.

More than 30 people were hurt in the car attack. Some who received life-altering injuries described them in anguished detail during the state trial.

Jurors in Fields’ state trial recommended a life sentence plus 419 years, although a judge still has to decide on the punishment. Sentencing is scheduled for July 15.

A reporter asked Bro if she thought her daughter’s death had served some purpose, such as opening a discussion of race relations. She answered: “Sadly, it took a white girl dying before anyone paid attention to civil rights around here … Heather’s death is at least a catalyst for change.”

Bro said she wouldn’t have chosen that catalyst and added, “I wish we would have woken up sooner.”

Jury recommends life plus 419 years for man who rammed crowd with car

Man who drove into Charlottesville crowd convicted of first-degree murder

Man accused of running over counterprotesters at white nationalist rally to argue self-defence

Click for update news Bangla news https://ift.tt/2ux9Uz2 world news

[mystlnewsonline]

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va | Virginia city hopes to heal after man's murder conviction

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va | Virginia city hopes to heal after man’s murder conviction

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — A man who drove his car into counterprotesters at a 2017 white nationalist rally in Virginia was convicted Friday of first-degree murder, a verdict that local civil rights activists hope will help heal a community still scarred by the violence and the racial tensions it inflamed nationwide.

A state jury rejected defense arguments that James Alex Fields Jr. acted in…

[blogwonderwebsites]

Nature ‘You Are Still Black’: Charlottesville’s Racial Divide Hinders Black Students

Nature ‘You Are Still Black’: Charlottesville’s Racial Divide Hinders Black Students Nature ‘You Are Still Black’: Charlottesville’s Racial Divide Hinders Black Students http://www.nature-business.com/nature-you-are-still-black-charlottesvilles-racial-divide-hinders-black-students/

Nature

Image

Trinity Hughes, left, and Zyahna Bryant at Charlottesville High School, where they are seniors.CreditCreditMatt Eich

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — This article was reported and written in a collaboration with ProPublica, the nonprofit investigative journalism organization.

Zyahna Bryant and Trinity Hughes, high school seniors, have been friends since they were 6, raised by blue-collar families in this affluent college town. They played on the same T-ball and softball teams, and were in the same church group.

But like many African-American children in Charlottesville, Trinity lived on the south side of town and went to a predominantly black neighborhood elementary school. Zyahna lived across the train tracks, on the north side, and was zoned to a mostly white school, near the University of Virginia campus, that boasts the city’s highest reading scores.

In elementary school, Zyahna was chosen for the district’s program for gifted students. Since then, she has completed more than a dozen advanced-placement and college-level courses, maintained a nearly 4.0 grade-point average, and has been a student leader and a community activist. She has her eyes set on a prestigious university like UVA.

“I want to go somewhere where it shows how much hard work I’ve put in,” Zyahna said.

Trinity was not selected for the gifted program. She tried to enroll in higher-level courses and was denied. She expects to graduate this school year, but with a transcript that she says will not make her competitive for selective four-year colleges.

“I know what I’m capable of, and what I can do,” Trinity said, “but the counselors and teachers, they don’t really care about that.”

Charlottesville

Black population

above city average

Norfolk Southern and CSX Railroads

HALF A MILE

Black population

above city average

Charlottesville

Norfolk Southern and CSX Railroads

HALF A MILE

Black population

above city average

Charlottesville

Norfolk Southern and CSX Railroads

For every student like Zyahna in Charlottesville’s schools, there are scores like Trinity, caught in one of the widest educational disparities in the United States. Charlottesville’s racial inequities mirror college towns across the country, including Berkeley, Calif., and Evanston, Ill. But they also match the wider world of education, which is grappling with racial gaps — in areas including gifted programs and school discipline — that can undercut the effort to equitably prepare students for college in a competitive economy.

[To examine racial disparities in educational opportunities and school discipline, visit ProPublica’s interactive database of more than 96,000 public and charter schools and 17,000 school districts.]

The debate over the city’s statue of Robert E. Lee and the white supremacist march last year set Charlottesville apart, and spurred it to confront its Confederate past. But the city has not fully come to terms with another aspect of its Jim Crow legacy: a school system that segregates students from the time they start, and steers them into separate and unequal tracks.

Charlottesville is “beautiful physically and aesthetically pleasing, but a very ugly-in-the-soul place,” said Nikuyah Walker, who became its first black female mayor during the self-recrimination that swept the city after last year’s white nationalist rallies. “No one has ever attempted to undo that, and that affects whether our children can learn here.”

Today, white students make up 40 percent of Charlottesville’s enrollment, and African-American students about a third. But white children are about four times as likely to be in Charlottesville’s gifted program, while black students are more than four times as likely to be held back a grade and almost five times as likely to be suspended from school, according to a ProPublica/New York Times examination of newly available district and federal data.

Since 2005, the academic gulf between white and black students in Charlottesville has widened in nearly all subjects, including reading, writing, history and science. As of last year, half of all black students in Charlottesville could not read at grade level, compared with only a tenth of white students, according to state data. Black students in Charlottesville lag on average about three and a half grades behind their white peers in reading and math, compared with a national gap of about two grades.

Over the decades, school board members have often brushed aside findings of racial inequality in Charlottesville schools, including a 2004 audit — commissioned by the district’s first African-American superintendent — that blamed inadequate leadership and a history of racism for the persistent underachievement of its black students.

Officials in the 4,500-student district — which spends about $16,000 per pupil, one of the highest rates in the state — instead point to socioeconomic differences. The vast majority of Charlottesville’s black children qualify for free or reduced-price meals at school because of low family income.

District leaders say they are tackling the achievement gap with initiatives such as eliminating prerequisites for advanced classes. Besides, they say, test scores are only one measure of success.

Image

A statue of Robert E. Lee in Charlottesville, Va. Last year, the city’s Confederate past came into the national spotlight.CreditJared Soares

“I’m not trying to make excuses” for the test scores of black students, said Rosa Atkins, the district’s superintendent for almost 13 years, “but that’s only one measure of where they are, and who they are, and their capabilities for success.”

About a third of the 25 districts with the widest achievement disparities between white and black students are in or near college towns, according to a review of data compiled by researchers at Stanford University. Affluent families in university towns invest a large proportion of their resources in their children’s education, said Sean Reardon, a professor of education at Stanford.

In such communities, “disparities in resources — between white and black students, for example — may be more consequential,” he said.

Dr. Atkins said that it is unfair to compare black students with white classmates who attended the best preschools and have traveled abroad. “The experiences that they bring into our school system are very different,” she said. “When we start saying that until you start performing like white children, you have a deficit, I think that in itself is discrimination.”

Still, socioeconomics do not fully explain the gap. State exam data shows that, among Charlottesville children from low-income families, white students outperformed black students in all subjects over the past three years. The same pattern holds true for wealthier students.

And in the past year, even the city’s immigrant students who are learning English have outperformed black students on state exams in every subject.

Dr. Atkins said that what does not show up in test scores is how far behind black children start, and how they sometimes have to acquire two years’ worth of skills in just one year.

“I dare say that our black children are performing better than our white children” when their progress is considered, she said. “That tells me that our children have resilience, tenacity and ability far superior than what we’re giving them credit for.”

Among white parents, last year’s rallies have fostered more frank discussions of racial inequality, said one of the parents, Guian McKee, an associate professor at the University of Virginia. “There’s been a lot more openness to some of those challenging conversations,” he said.

At their predominantly black elementary school, Mr. McKee’s two children participated in the gifted program, which is about three-quarters white. Such disparities, at odds with Charlottesville’s reputation as a bastion of Southern progressivism, have long been a taboo topic, he said.

“For a lot of people, it’s really uncomfortable to see that even if you haven’t personally done anything wrong,” Mr. McKee said, “you’re part of larger structures that contribute to producing poverty and inequality, including in educational outcomes.”

Jim Crow Past

Image

African-American students studying at home while Charlottesville schools were closed in 1958.CreditEd Clark/The LIFE Picture Collection, via Getty Images

Much like its Confederate past, Charlottesville’s history of school segregation weighs heavily on the present day. “I don’t think the hate groups selected our community by chance,” Dr. Atkins said.

Charlottesville greeted the Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown v. Board of Education desegregation decision with a firm no. In 1958, Gov. J. Lindsay Almond of Virginia ordered the city to shut down two white-serving public schools rather than integrate.

Many white families opted for private schools, which were able to secure public funding through voucherlike tuition grants. Under pressure from the Supreme Court of Virginia, Charlottesville reopened its schools in 1959, allowing a dozen black students to attend its historically white schools.

But the city’s resistance to integration persisted. Instead of outright segregation, the white-led district established testing requirements solely for black students who tried to enroll in historically white schools. It also allowed white students who lived in attendance zones of historically black schools to transfer back to predominantly white schools. Black students who lived near mostly white schools were assigned to black schools.

After a federal appeals court invalidated the district��s attendance policies, the city relied more closely on residential zones to sort students. In 1984, Charlottesville High School ignited after its student newspaper published derogatory remarks about black students. The high school was shut down for a day. “Seniors for White Supremacy” was painted in its parking lot.

Two years later, the board considered redrawing school zones to bolster racial and economic equity, but worried about white flight. In the end, elementary school boundaries were largely left alone. The district pooled the city’s middle school students into two schools, one serving all fifth and sixth graders, and the other serving all seventh and eighth graders. The number of white students declined about 20 percent within a decade.

‘Future of Such a Legacy Is Dire’

Image

Venable Elementary School, which Zyahna attended, has the highest reading proficiency of all of the elementary schools in the city.CreditJared Soares

Other efforts to reshape attendance zones faced resistance. In 2003, a group of predominantly black families asked to send 20 of their children to Venable Elementary School, one of the historically white schools that had once closed rather than integrate.

Venable, which Zyahna would later attend, has the highest reading proficiency of all of the elementary schools in the city. The black families lived several blocks from Venable, and they had grown frustrated by their children’s long commutes to their zoned school. But when the school board proposed reassigning the 20 children, white parents from Venable “freaked,” said Dede Smith, then a board member.

“We will NOT accept redistricting when it is done, as in this situation, sloppily and hurriedly and in a way which negatively impacts the quality of education for all students involved,” read a letter from the Venable parent-teacher organization. It took a year for the board to rezone the children to Venable, according to Ms. Smith. Today, some black families are able to send their children there, but residents of a mostly black public housing complex nearby are not among them.

“We only put our toe in the water,” she said.

The next year, in 2004, the school board hired Scottie Griffin as superintendent. She tapped a respected education association to review inequities across the district. The report, by five academics, revealed a deeply fractured school system.

“While some members of the community might wish for an elongated period of time to ponder and debate changes, the children are in school only once and then they are gone,” the audit concluded. “No city can survive by only serving one-half its constituents well. The future of such a legacy is dire.”

The auditors pushed for increasing black students’ access to high-level academic programs, including gifted and advanced-placement courses.

Image

“There is an incentive to segregate these kids,” said Dede Smith, a former school board member.CreditJared Soares

Kathy Galvin, a parent who is now a City Council member, responded to the audit in an internal memo to the school board, urging the board to reject the racial bias findings, which she called “unnecessary and in fact harmful,” and implored members to focus on improving “our educational system for the benefit of all children.”

Today, Ms. Galvin largely stands by that position. “A ‘too narrow and racially biased’ focus on the schools does a disservice to the dedicated educators who have made a difference and risks misdiagnosing a complex problem, leading to ineffective solutions,” she said.

In 2005, within a year of her hiring, Dr. Griffin was pushed out. She did not respond to questions from The Times and ProPublica.

Dr. Atkins said she has incorporated some of the audit’s recommendations, such as data-driven decision-making and a reorganization of central office staff, into the district’s strategic plan.

One of the audit’s central focuses was the city’s gifted program, known as Quest. As white enrollment in the city’s schools contracted over the years, the program tripled in size, according to an analysis by a University of Virginia researcher, largely benefiting the white families who remained.

To black families, segregation had returned by another name.

“Everyone wants the best for their kid, but this has been the thing that has helped drive the segregation engine,” said Lisa Woolfork, an associate professor at UVA and a member of Black Lives Matter Charlottesville, whose children attend Charlottesville schools. “I have always been of the opinion that this type of internal segregation is the way to keep white people in the public schools. This is a way that white supremacy undergirds the public school system.”

In 1984, only 11 percent of Charlottesville’s white students qualified as gifted, according to federal data from the UVA analysis. By 2003, according to the audit, about a third of white students qualified, the same proportion as today. White students make up more than 70 percent of the district’s gifted students.

When students are selected for Quest, they are pulled out of their regular classrooms for enrichment sessions in academics and arts with a specialized teacher in a designated classroom.

“When people bring up Quest, we get angry,” Trinity said. “We all wish we had the opportunity to have that separate creative time. It drives a gap between students from elementary school on.”

Image

Lisa Woolfork, an associate professor at the University of Virginia, whose children attend Charlottesville schools, said, “I have always been of the opinion that this type of internal segregation is the way to keep white people in the public schools.”CreditJared Soares

For children who read below grade level, the city offers a supplemental program called Extending the Bridges of Literacy. But the program takes place after school, and it is taught by instructors who volunteer to extend their workday for extra pay, regardless of whether they have specialized intervention training.

Racial inequities persist into the high school’s advanced-placement courses, which provide students with college credits. White students in Charlottesville are nearly six times as likely to be in advanced courses as their black peers, according to recently released federal data.

“There is an incentive to segregate these kids,” Ms. Smith said. “I don’t think the schools see anything positive in an academic mixing pot because the white parents will leave.”

In the past two years, Charlottesville High administrators have introduced staff training on racial inequalities. Teachers have participated in professional development that included studying “equity-based teaching”; lessons in Charlottesville’s local black history and Civil War history; and workshops on implicit bias. The school’s principal also set up focus groups and surveyed high-performing black students about underrepresentation in advanced courses.

Dr. Atkins, the school district’s superintendent, has introduced other initiatives aimed at reducing the achievement gap. Besides abolishing prerequisites for advanced courses, she created a “matrix” that families could follow to map out a sequence of coursework. She has also tried to remedy the underrepresentation of minorities and girls in science electives by giving every middle schooler an opportunity to take an engineering course.

The district, meanwhile, expanded what it calls “honors option” courses, in which students can choose to meet requirements for regular or honors credit.

Jennifer Horne, an English teacher at Charlottesville High School, called her honors option course “the most beautiful place in the building.”

“You’ve got struggling readers, and kids who are way smarter than me in the same room,” she said.

Ms. Horne added that she is able to pose the “big questions,” which are usually reserved for advanced courses, and identify students with untapped potential.

Confidence Game

Image

Zyahna said that she felt isolated in the sea of white faces at school. She later became an activist for African-American students.CreditMatt Eich

With the help of a scholarship, Zyahna attended preschool through part of first grade at an elite private school. Her preparation helped her to pass an admission test for the gifted program after she entered Venable. As she got older, church members who worked in the schools advised her on the programs and classes she needed to stay on pace with her white peers.

Zyahna felt isolated in the sea of white faces. She became an activist, founding the Black Student Union, petitioning the City Council to remove the Lee statue and speaking out at school board meetings about the achievement gap. “It has caused me to become even more of an advocate for people of color, just for my blackness, because you enter into this whole sunken place when you get into honors and A.P. courses,” she said.

Zyahna likened her high school experience to shopping because students have to scout out the best deals. “You literally have to go ask for everything yourself,” she said, “and not everyone has those skills or confidence.”

Trinity said she lost that confidence as teachers repeatedly rejected her requests to enroll in higher-level courses. She tried to take Algebra II her junior year, an essential course for many colleges. Trinity had struggled early in a geometry course, but had stayed after school, sought tutoring and earned a B. She figured that she could work just as hard in Algebra II, but her geometry teacher would not allow it, Trinity said.

The teacher declined to comment on individual students. School officials said that a student’s performance in geometry is not the only factor in a teacher’s recommendation for Algebra II.

Trinity’s mother, Valarie Walker, fought for Trinity to take higher-level courses, but school personnel did not “want to listen to what the black kids have to say,” she said.

“I don’t think our voices were as strong as they needed to be,” Ms. Walker said. “They kept saying, ‘This would be better.’ I think we gave up fighting.”

Tale of 2 Diplomas

Image

Trinity said she lost confidence as teachers repeatedly rejected her requests to enroll in higher-level courses.CreditMatt Eich

In Charlottesville’s schools, the mantra is, “Graduate by any means necessary.” Bring up anything else — test scores, suspension rates — and Dr. Atkins counters, “We prefer to focus on the long-term goals, and the long-term goal is graduation.”

About 88 percent of black students graduate, just under the state average for African-American students, and up from 66 percent a decade ago. They trail their white peers by about eight percentage points. The district’s graduation rate, 92.6 percent, is at its highest since the segregation era, Dr. Atkins said.

But all diplomas are not equal. About three decades ago, Virginia established a two-tier diploma track in which districts award “standard” or “advanced” diplomas based on a student’s coursework. It is one of at least 14 states with this kind of approach. Three years ago, the state superintendent of public instruction proposed moving to a single-diploma system, but backed off when parents complained.

The advanced diploma requires students to complete an additional credit in mathematics, science and history and mandates that students to take at least three years of a foreign language; for the standard diploma, learning a language is not compulsory. Starting as early as middle school, honors and accelerated courses put some students on a path to advanced high school credits. In Charlottesville, about three-quarters of white students graduate with an advanced diploma, compared with a quarter of their black peers.

The type of diploma that students receive overwhelmingly dictates whether they enroll in two- or four-year colleges, or move on to higher education at all. In Virginia, only a tenth of students with standard diplomas enroll in a four-year college, a recent study found.

Dr. Atkins acknowledged that some minority students may be discouraged from taking higher-level courses that could qualify them for better colleges and said that the district will remind parents to bring these rebuffs to her attention. Mayor Walker, whose son is a sophomore at Charlottesville High, said some attitudes have not changed: “There have been a lot of people who just don’t believe in the potential of our kids.”

Since middle school, Trinity’s goal has been to attend James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Va. She has gained enough credits for an advanced diploma, but last month she learned that she would need a math class higher than Algebra II to gain admission.

A university representative recommended she go to community college, then possibly transfer to James Madison. Michael Walsh, the university’s dean of admissions, said that 99 percent of the students it accepts have gone beyond Algebra II.

Trinity was crushed: ���It made me realize I really haven’t been prepared like the rest of the students to be ‘college ready.’”

Zyahna’s achievements make her a prime candidate for an elite university, so she was taken aback when, as she was beginning her search, her principal encouraged her to explore community college. The principal says the context was a broad discussion with black student leaders about community college as an affordable option.

That is not how Zyahna heard it.

“No matter how high your scores are or how many hours you put into your work, you are still black,” Zyahna said. “There’s a whole system you’re up against. Every small victory just cuts a hole into that system reminding you how fragile it is. But it’s still there.”

Read More | https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/16/us/charlottesville-riots-black-students-schools.html |

Nature ‘You Are Still Black’: Charlottesville’s Racial Divide Hinders Black Students, in 2018-10-16 11:44:04

[processservercharlottesvilleva]

ARMENHYL GROUP LLC - Process Service - Charlottesville, Virginia

info@armenhyl.com (434) 260-1031 (540) 416-1660

[brajeshupadhyay]

As new hot spots emerge, the pandemic may be entering another phase. The simplest way to track the progress of any outbreak is by seeing how many new cases and deaths are reported in a given area each day. And in the United States, falling numbers in some of the hardest-hit places have offered glimmers of hope. Totals for the country have been on a downward curve, and in former hot spots like New York and New Jersey, the counts appear to have peaked. But infections and deaths are rising in more than a dozen states, as they are in countries around the world, an ominous sign that the pandemic may be entering a new phase. Wisconsin saw its highest single-day increase in confirmed cases and deaths this week, two weeks after the state’s highest court overturned a stay-at-home order. Cases are also on the rise in Alabama, Arkansas, California and North Carolina, which on Thursday reported some of the state’s highest numbers of hospitalizations and reported deaths since the crisis began. In metropolitan areas like Fayetteville, Ark.; Yuma, Ariz.; and Roanoke and Charlottesville, Va., data show new highs may be only days or weeks away. Outbreaks have accelerated especially sharply in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Mexico and Peru, leading the World Health Organization to say on Tuesday that it considered the Americas to be the new center of the pandemic. And although much of the Middle East seemed to avert early catastrophe even as the virus ravaged Iran, case counts have been swelling in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. Reported cases are not perfect measures to chart the spread of the virus because they depend on how much testing is done. Death counts are less dependent on testing, though official numbers are typically undercounts. Both counts, though, can indicate how the outbreak is evolving, especially in places where lockdown rules are easing or where governments have been ineffective at slowing the spread, and offer early clues about new hot spots. That is why Wisconsin is being closely monitored. Two weeks ago, the conservative majority on the State Supreme Court overturned that state’s stay-at-home order, effectively removing the most serious restrictions on residents. It can take several weeks after changes in behavior — like the increased movement and interactions associated with the end of a stay-at-home order — for the effect on transmissions to be reflected in the data. In Wisconsin, there were indications that the virus was still spreading before the order was lifted. But in the weeks since restrictions were overturned, the case numbers have continued to grow. “It worries us,” said Dr. Nasia Safdar, the medical director for infection prevention at the University of Wisconsin Hospital in Madison. “We wonder if this is a trend in an unfavorable direction.” Upon arriving at work, employees should get a temperature and symptom check. Inside the office, desks should be six feet apart. If that is not possible, employers should consider erecting plastic shields around them. If followed, the guidelines would lead to a far-reaching remaking of the corporate work experience. They even upend years of advice on commuting, urging people to drive to work by themselves, instead of taking mass transportation or car-pooling, to avoid potential exposure to the virus. The recommendations run from technical advice on ventilation systems (more open windows are most desirable) to a suggested abolition of communal perks like latte makers and snack bins. And some border on the impractical, if not near impossible: “Limit use and occupancy of elevators to maintain social distancing of at least 6 feet.” For millions of Americans left out of work by the pandemic, government assistance has been a lifeline preventing a plunge into poverty, hunger and financial ruin. This summer, that lifeline could snap, reports Ben Casselman. The $1,200 checks sent to most households are long gone, at least for those who needed them most, with little imminent prospect for a second round. The lending program that helped millions of small businesses keep workers on the payroll will wind down if Congress does not extend it. Eviction moratoriums that kept people in their homes are expiring in many cities. And the $600 per week in extra unemployment benefits that have allowed tens of millions of laid-off workers to pay rent and buy groceries will expire at the end of July. The latest sign of the economic strain and the government’s role in easing it came Thursday, when the Labor Department reported that millions more Americans applied for unemployment benefits last week. More than 40 million people have filed for benefits since the crisis began, and some 30 million are receiving them. The multitrillion-dollar patchwork of federal and state programs hasn’t kept bills from piling up or prevented long lines at food banks, but it has mitigated the damage. Now the expiration of those programs represents a cliff they are hurtling toward, for individuals and for the economy. “The CARES Act was massive, but it was a very short-term offset to what is likely to be a long-term problem,” said Aneta Markowska, the chief financial economist for the investment bank Jefferies, referring to the legislative centerpiece of the federal rescue. “This economy is clearly going to need more support.” Even the possibility that the programs will be allowed to expire could have economic consequences, Ms. Markowska said, as consumers and businesses brace for the loss of federal assistance. President Trump and other Republicans have played down the need for more spending, saying the solution is for states to reopen businesses and allow companies to bring people back to work. So despite pleas from economists across the political spectrum — including Jerome H. Powell, the Federal Reserve chairman — any federal action is likely to be limited. The House voted overwhelmingly on Thursday to give businesses more time to use money borrowed under the Paycheck Protection Program, which offers forgivable loans to small businesses that retain or rehire their workers. The bill’s fate in the Senate is uncertain, but a deal seems likely to be reached. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends wearing cloth face coverings in public settings where it is difficult to maintain social distancing, including grocery stores, pharmacies and gas stations. It also continues to emphasize how critical social distancing is. But masks have unexpectedly crossed over from public health measures to politically charged symbols, with many shops and restaurants banning customers who do not wear them — and a few others moving to ban customers who do. In Kentucky, a gas station told customers that no one was allowed inside its convenience store if they had their face covered. In California, a flooring store near Los Angeles has encouraged hugs and handshakes but does not permit face masks or protections. And a bar in Texas taped a poster to its front door this week that said “sorry, no masks allowed.” In New York, the hardest-hit state, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said on Thursday that he would issue an executive order authorizing businesses to deny entry to people who were not wearing face coverings. “That store owner has a right to protect themselves,” Mr. Cuomo said. “That store owner has a right to protect the other patrons in that store.” Dennis Townsend, a Republican supervisor in California’s rural Tulare County, said that as his conservative district reopened for business, masks had become a continuing point of contention. “People tell me, ‘OK, I’ll go to the stores, but they better be wearing masks in there.’ And then other people tell me, ‘OK, I’ll go to the stores, but they better not make me wear a mask,’” he said. Mr. Townsend said he was “not real big on wearing masks” himself but had done so when shopping. “What I tell people is that with every freedom we have comes additional responsibility,” he said. “We’ve had one freedom suppressed for a little while, but now it’s back, and that’s going to require additional personal responsibility on our parts.” Washington State says it has reclaimed $300 million in fraudulent unemployment claims. Washington State, which has been battling a deluge of fraudulent unemployment claims, has managed to claw back some $300 million in payments that went out to fraudsters, officials said Thursday. Suzi LeVine, the commissioner of Washington State’s Employment Security Department, said the recovery came from coordination among law enforcement agencies and financial institutions. She did not reveal exact numbers on recoveries or the total number of fraudulent claims and said that the state was continuing to work on additional collections while blocking more false claims. “The criminals have not gone away because we continue to see significant highly suspicious traffic,” Ms. LeVine said. The Massachusetts Department of Unemployment Assistance said in a statement that it had also seen fraudsters trying to file large numbers of illegitimate claims, while the cybersecurity firm Agari said it had seen evidence of the fraudulent claims targeting states all over the country. Unemployment claims around the country have exceeded 40 million since the start of the pandemic. Democrats are mobilizing to turn the $2 trillion effort that Mr. Trump is overseeing into a political liability going into his re-election campaign. The attention has focused on a small business loan program that has been marred by glitches, changing rules and cases of big publicly traded companies receiving funds while smaller shops are left waiting. Top Democrats, including the party’s presumptive presidential nominee, Mr. Biden have seized on examples of rich executives getting money through the Paycheck Protection Program as indicative of corporate cronyism. The Democratic National Committee and Democratic state parties in swing states held conference calls last week with reporters and other events highlighting stories of small business owners who did not get approved for loans. Pacronym, a progressive super PAC that focuses on digital advertising, began running a $1.5 million ad campaign in five swing states — Arizona, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — that focused on struggling small businesses. Some Republicans are embracing the program. Senator Susan Collins, a Maine Republican facing a tough re-election battle, has spent nearly $500,000 on ads that promote her role in “co-authoring” the program, according to data from Advertising Analytics, an ad tracking firm. And Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the majority leader, spent $175,000 on an ad featuring small business owners and employees describing jobs and businesses that were “rescued” by Mr. McConnell’s efforts on the stimulus package. The Trump administration has scrambled to rewrite the rules of the program on the fly as public backlash intensified. The Treasury on Thursday carved out $10 billion of money to be used for loans to underserved communities. Sports fans can attend games at outdoor venues in Texas. Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas said that starting Friday, sports fans could attend games at outdoor venues in most counties in Texas, so long as occupancy was limited to 25 percent. Fans cannot attend indoor sporting events. Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia said amusement parks, traveling carnivals and water parks could open June 12. And in California, more than a dozen Indian casinos, asserting sovereignty, defied Gov. Gavin Newsom and reopened last week. The Viejas Casino and Resort in Alpine, Calif., vowed to impose strict limits on the number of people gambling at once. A majority of Indian casinos in the state have chosen to stay closed and are coordinating their reopening with the governor’s office, which has proposed a date in early June. A French study found 1 in 10 diabetic patients with Covid-19 died within a week of being hospitalized. One in 10 diabetic patients with Covid-19, the illness caused by the virus, died within a week of being hospitalized, according to a study published on Thursday by French researchers in Diabetologia, the journal of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes. Another 20 percent were put on ventilators to assist with breathing by the end of their first week in the hospital. Just 18 percent were discharged within a week. “I don’t want to scare people, but what is true is we did not expect to see such high mortality, with 10 percent of people admitted dying in the first seven days,” said Dr. Samy Hadjadj, a professor of endocrinology at the University of Nantes in France and one of the authors of the paper. A majority of patients in the study had Type 2 diabetes. Many people with diabetes also have cardiovascular disease, which raises the risk of death in Covid-19 patients. But the new study, which included 1,317 patients at 53 French hospitals, found that microvascular injuries — involving tiny blood vessels supplying the eyes, kidneys and peripheral nerves — were also linked to a higher risk of death. Obstructive sleep apnea also raised the risk of early death in these patients, while obesity and advanced age were linked to a greater likelihood of severe disease, the study found. “This is serious,” Dr. Hadjadj said. “If you have diabetes and are elderly or have complications, be very careful. Keep away from the virus. Go on with social distancing, wash your hands carefully, keep people away who can bring you the virus.” Dr. Hadjadj added, “You are not the kind of person who can afford to disregard these rules.” As more people under 40 test positive in Washington State, researchers fear they will spread the virus. People under 40 make up an increasing share of those who have tested positive for the virus in Washington State. Researchers in Seattle said that policymakers might need to focus on younger people to limit the spread. In a new analysis, the researchers said about half of new identified cases were among people under 40, up from one-third of infections earlier in the outbreak. Younger people may be more likely to work or participate in social activities, especially as restrictions are eased. While they do not face as high a risk of serious complications from infections, they can expose other people they encounter who may be older or who have hazardous underlying conditions, the researchers said. “Our findings indicate a justifiable concern regarding the phased reopening plan for Washington State in late May in light of the shift in Covid-19 incidence from older to younger age,” the researchers wrote in their report, posted on the preprint server medRvix. The researchers said government leaders may need to pursue specific advisories for children, teenagers and young adults to warn them of the risks of social interaction. Pennsylvania House Democrats say Republicans hid a lawmaker’s positive virus test. Democrats in Pennsylvania’s House of Representatives on Thursday accused Republicans of keeping a lawmaker’s positive virus test a secret to avoid political embarrassment, even at the risk of exposing fellow legislators. A Republican House member, Andrew Lewis, confirmed on Wednesday that he received a positive test on May 20 and self-isolated. Mr. Lewis said that every lawmaker or staff member he was in contact with who “met the criteria for exposure” was notified. But Democrats disputed that, saying none of their own members were alerted even though some were near Mr. Lewis in committee meetings. The House Democratic campaign arm accused Republicans of hiding Mr. Lewis’s positive test “to protect their public talking points against science and facts.” Another Republican representative, Russ Diamond, who said he was notified of possible exposure through contact with Mr. Lewis, had previously spoken at a shutdown protest outside the Capitol and boasted on social media of not wearing a mask while shopping. In an emotional Facebook video recorded in his office at the Capitol, Representative Brian K. Sims, a Democrat from Philadelphia, said Mr. Diamond had “apparently been quarantining himself for weeks” but “didn’t explain that to any of us when he was in committee, talking with us or walking up and down the aisles or bumping into us or letting us hold the door open for him.” Mr. Lewis said he had kept his positive diagnosis private “out of respect for my family and those who I may have exposed.” Representative Ryan Bizzarro, a Democrat, disputed that Mr. Lewis had quarantined himself after his diagnosis. “We have footage of him being here,” he said. The Trump administration will not issue a midyear update to its economic forecasts this summer, breaking decades of tradition during the uncertainty of a pandemic recession, administration officials confirmed on Thursday. The decision will spare the administration from having to announce its internal projections for how deeply the recession will damage economic growth and how long the pain of high unemployment will persist. When the administration last published official projections in February, it forecast economic growth of 3.1 percent from the fourth quarter of 2019 to the fourth quarter of 2021, and growth rates at or around 3 percent for the ensuing decade. It forecast an unemployment rate of 3.5 percent for the year. The virus has rendered those projections obsolete. Unemployment could hit 20 percent in June, the White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett told CNN this week. The Congressional Budget Office said in April that it expects the economy will contract by 5.6 percent this year and end with unemployment above 11 percent. The White House is required by law to issue both an annual budget and a midyear update to it, called a “mid-session review.” Updating economic projections in the mid-session review is optional, but it is a practice that administrations — including Mr. Trump’s — have widely followed since the review was mandated by Congress in 1970. The review is required by law to give at least a partial window into how the administration expects the economy to perform this year and in the future. The decision not to release updated projections was first reported by The Washington Post. Trump administration officials have in the past resisted updating their forecasts in the face of evidence that the economy was not growing as fast as they had projected. The budget they released in February officially conceded for the first time that growth in 2018 and 2019 had not reached 3 percent, as they had predicted. Fears about contracting the virus from contaminated surfaces have prompted many to wipe down groceries, leave packages unopened and stress about elevator buttons. But what is the real risk? The C.D.C. recently tried to clarify its guidance: “It may be possible that a person can get Covid-19 by touching a surface or object that has the virus on it, and then touching their own mouth, nose or possibly their eyes, but this isn’t thought to be the main way the virus spreads.” So does this mean we can get the virus from touching a doorknob, catching a Frisbee or sharing a casserole dish? The Times asked the experts. The best way we can protect ourselves from the virus — whether it is surface transmission or close human contact — is still social distancing, washing our hands, not touching our faces and wearing masks. Starting Thursday, anyone in Britain who has potential symptoms will be tested and, if positive, asked to list all those with whom they have recently been in close contact for at least 15 minutes. Those people, in turn, will be contacted and asked to isolate themselves for 14 days. It is the latest national campaign that aims to prevent more infections. The results so far are mixed. What does it feel like to have Covid-19 and not need hospitalization? Rest and fluids are essential, but so is knowing when to call a doctor. Give yourself plenty of time to feel better. Reporting was contributed by Mike Baker, Karen Barrow, Scott Cacciola, Ben Casselman, Emily Cochrane, Patricia Cohen, Michael Cooper, Catie Edmondson, Nicholas Fandos, Thomas Fuller, Trip Gabriel, David Gelles, Erica L. Green, Jenny Gross, Apoorva Mandavilli, Jennifer Medina, Sarah Mervosh, Talya Minsberg, Andy Newman, Nadja Popovich, Roni Caryn Rabin, Alan Rappeport, Dana Rubinstein, Margot Sanger-Katz, Anna Schaverien, Kaly Soto, Sheryl Gay Stolberg, Vanessa Swales, Jim Tankersley and Katie Van Syckle. The post Coronavirus News in USA: Live Updates appeared first on Sansaar Times.

http://sansaartimes.blogspot.com/2020/05/coronavirus-news-in-usa-live-updates.html

[computacionalblog]

Nature ‘You Are Still Black’: Charlottesville’s Racial Divide Hinders Black Students

Nature ‘You Are Still Black’: Charlottesville’s Racial Divide Hinders Black Students Nature ‘You Are Still Black’: Charlottesville’s Racial Divide Hinders Black Students http://www.nature-business.com/nature-you-are-still-black-charlottesvilles-racial-divide-hinders-black-students/

Nature

Image

Trinity Hughes, left, and Zyahna Bryant at Charlottesville High School, where they are seniors.CreditCreditMatt Eich

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — This article was reported and written in a collaboration with ProPublica, the nonprofit investigative journalism organization.

Zyahna Bryant and Trinity Hughes, high school seniors, have been friends since they were 6, raised by blue-collar families in this affluent college town. They played on the same T-ball and softball teams, and were in the same church group.

But like many African-American children in Charlottesville, Trinity lived on the south side of town and went to a predominantly black neighborhood elementary school. Zyahna lived across the train tracks, on the north side, and was zoned to a mostly white school, near the University of Virginia campus, that boasts the city’s highest reading scores.

In elementary school, Zyahna was chosen for the district’s program for gifted students. Since then, she has completed more than a dozen advanced-placement and college-level courses, maintained a nearly 4.0 grade-point average, and has been a student leader and a community activist. She has her eyes set on a prestigious university like UVA.

“I want to go somewhere where it shows how much hard work I’ve put in,” Zyahna said.

Trinity was not selected for the gifted program. She tried to enroll in higher-level courses and was denied. She expects to graduate this school year, but with a transcript that she says will not make her competitive for selective four-year colleges.

“I know what I’m capable of, and what I can do,” Trinity said, “but the counselors and teachers, they don’t really care about that.”

Charlottesville

Black population

above city average

Norfolk Southern and CSX Railroads

HALF A MILE

Black population

above city average

Charlottesville

Norfolk Southern and CSX Railroads

HALF A MILE

Black population

above city average

Charlottesville

Norfolk Southern and CSX Railroads

For every student like Zyahna in Charlottesville’s schools, there are scores like Trinity, caught in one of the widest educational disparities in the United States. Charlottesville’s racial inequities mirror college towns across the country, including Berkeley, Calif., and Evanston, Ill. But they also match the wider world of education, which is grappling with racial gaps — in areas including gifted programs and school discipline — that can undercut the effort to equitably prepare students for college in a competitive economy.

[To examine racial disparities in educational opportunities and school discipline, visit ProPublica’s interactive database of more than 96,000 public and charter schools and 17,000 school districts.]

The debate over the city’s statue of Robert E. Lee and the white supremacist march last year set Charlottesville apart, and spurred it to confront its Confederate past. But the city has not fully come to terms with another aspect of its Jim Crow legacy: a school system that segregates students from the time they start, and steers them into separate and unequal tracks.

Charlottesville is “beautiful physically and aesthetically pleasing, but a very ugly-in-the-soul place,” said Nikuyah Walker, who became its first black female mayor during the self-recrimination that swept the city after last year’s white nationalist rallies. “No one has ever attempted to undo that, and that affects whether our children can learn here.”

Today, white students make up 40 percent of Charlottesville’s enrollment, and African-American students about a third. But white children are about four times as likely to be in Charlottesville’s gifted program, while black students are more than four times as likely to be held back a grade and almost five times as likely to be suspended from school, according to a ProPublica/New York Times examination of newly available district and federal data.

Since 2005, the academic gulf between white and black students in Charlottesville has widened in nearly all subjects, including reading, writing, history and science. As of last year, half of all black students in Charlottesville could not read at grade level, compared with only a tenth of white students, according to state data. Black students in Charlottesville lag on average about three and a half grades behind their white peers in reading and math, compared with a national gap of about two grades.

Over the decades, school board members have often brushed aside findings of racial inequality in Charlottesville schools, including a 2004 audit — commissioned by the district’s first African-American superintendent — that blamed inadequate leadership and a history of racism for the persistent underachievement of its black students.

Officials in the 4,500-student district — which spends about $16,000 per pupil, one of the highest rates in the state — instead point to socioeconomic differences. The vast majority of Charlottesville’s black children qualify for free or reduced-price meals at school because of low family income.

District leaders say they are tackling the achievement gap with initiatives such as eliminating prerequisites for advanced classes. Besides, they say, test scores are only one measure of success.

Image

A statue of Robert E. Lee in Charlottesville, Va. Last year, the city’s Confederate past came into the national spotlight.CreditJared Soares

“I’m not trying to make excuses” for the test scores of black students, said Rosa Atkins, the district’s superintendent for almost 13 years, “but that’s only one measure of where they are, and who they are, and their capabilities for success.”

About a third of the 25 districts with the widest achievement disparities between white and black students are in or near college towns, according to a review of data compiled by researchers at Stanford University. Affluent families in university towns invest a large proportion of their resources in their children’s education, said Sean Reardon, a professor of education at Stanford.

In such communities, “disparities in resources — between white and black students, for example — may be more consequential,” he said.

Dr. Atkins said that it is unfair to compare black students with white classmates who attended the best preschools and have traveled abroad. “The experiences that they bring into our school system are very different,” she said. “When we start saying that until you start performing like white children, you have a deficit, I think that in itself is discrimination.”

Still, socioeconomics do not fully explain the gap. State exam data shows that, among Charlottesville children from low-income families, white students outperformed black students in all subjects over the past three years. The same pattern holds true for wealthier students.

And in the past year, even the city’s immigrant students who are learning English have outperformed black students on state exams in every subject.

Dr. Atkins said that what does not show up in test scores is how far behind black children start, and how they sometimes have to acquire two years’ worth of skills in just one year.

“I dare say that our black children are performing better than our white children” when their progress is considered, she said. “That tells me that our children have resilience, tenacity and ability far superior than what we’re giving them credit for.”

Among white parents, last year’s rallies have fostered more frank discussions of racial inequality, said one of the parents, Guian McKee, an associate professor at the University of Virginia. “There’s been a lot more openness to some of those challenging conversations,” he said.

At their predominantly black elementary school, Mr. McKee’s two children participated in the gifted program, which is about three-quarters white. Such disparities, at odds with Charlottesville’s reputation as a bastion of Southern progressivism, have long been a taboo topic, he said.

“For a lot of people, it’s really uncomfortable to see that even if you haven’t personally done anything wrong,” Mr. McKee said, “you’re part of larger structures that contribute to producing poverty and inequality, including in educational outcomes.”

Jim Crow Past

Image

African-American students studying at home while Charlottesville schools were closed in 1958.CreditEd Clark/The LIFE Picture Collection, via Getty Images

Much like its Confederate past, Charlottesville’s history of school segregation weighs heavily on the present day. “I don’t think the hate groups selected our community by chance,” Dr. Atkins said.

Charlottesville greeted the Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown v. Board of Education desegregation decision with a firm no. In 1958, Gov. J. Lindsay Almond of Virginia ordered the city to shut down two white-serving public schools rather than integrate.

Many white families opted for private schools, which were able to secure public funding through voucherlike tuition grants. Under pressure from the Supreme Court of Virginia, Charlottesville reopened its schools in 1959, allowing a dozen black students to attend its historically white schools.

But the city’s resistance to integration persisted. Instead of outright segregation, the white-led district established testing requirements solely for black students who tried to enroll in historically white schools. It also allowed white students who lived in attendance zones of historically black schools to transfer back to predominantly white schools. Black students who lived near mostly white schools were assigned to black schools.

After a federal appeals court invalidated the district’s attendance policies, the city relied more closely on residential zones to sort students. In 1984, Charlottesville High School ignited after its student newspaper published derogatory remarks about black students. The high school was shut down for a day. “Seniors for White Supremacy” was painted in its parking lot.

Two years later, the board considered redrawing school zones to bolster racial and economic equity, but worried about white flight. In the end, elementary school boundaries were largely left alone. The district pooled the city’s middle school students into two schools, one serving all fifth and sixth graders, and the other serving all seventh and eighth graders. The number of white students declined about 20 percent within a decade.

‘Future of Such a Legacy Is Dire’

Image

Venable Elementary School, which Zyahna attended, has the highest reading proficiency of all of the elementary schools in the city.CreditJared Soares

Other efforts to reshape attendance zones faced resistance. In 2003, a group of predominantly black families asked to send 20 of their children to Venable Elementary School, one of the historically white schools that had once closed rather than integrate.

Venable, which Zyahna would later attend, has the highest reading proficiency of all of the elementary schools in the city. The black families lived several blocks from Venable, and they had grown frustrated by their children’s long commutes to their zoned school. But when the school board proposed reassigning the 20 children, white parents from Venable “freaked,” said Dede Smith, then a board member.

“We will NOT accept redistricting when it is done, as in this situation, sloppily and hurriedly and in a way which negatively impacts the quality of education for all students involved,” read a letter from the Venable parent-teacher organization. It took a year for the board to rezone the children to Venable, according to Ms. Smith. Today, some black families are able to send their children there, but residents of a mostly black public housing complex nearby are not among them.

“We only put our toe in the water,” she said.

The next year, in 2004, the school board hired Scottie Griffin as superintendent. She tapped a respected education association to review inequities across the district. The report, by five academics, revealed a deeply fractured school system.

“While some members of the community might wish for an elongated period of time to ponder and debate changes, the children are in school only once and then they are gone,” the audit concluded. “No city can survive by only serving one-half its constituents well. The future of such a legacy is dire.”

The auditors pushed for increasing black students’ access to high-level academic programs, including gifted and advanced-placement courses.

Image

“There is an incentive to segregate these kids,” said Dede Smith, a former school board member.CreditJared Soares

Kathy Galvin, a parent who is now a City Council member, responded to the audit in an internal memo to the school board, urging the board to reject the racial bias findings, which she called “unnecessary and in fact harmful,” and implored members to focus on improving “our educational system for the benefit of all children.”

Today, Ms. Galvin largely stands by that position. “A ‘too narrow and racially biased’ focus on the schools does a disservice to the dedicated educators who have made a difference and risks misdiagnosing a complex problem, leading to ineffective solutions,” she said.

In 2005, within a year of her hiring, Dr. Griffin was pushed out. She did not respond to questions from The Times and ProPublica.

Dr. Atkins said she has incorporated some of the audit’s recommendations, such as data-driven decision-making and a reorganization of central office staff, into the district’s strategic plan.

One of the audit’s central focuses was the city’s gifted program, known as Quest. As white enrollment in the city’s schools contracted over the years, the program tripled in size, according to an analysis by a University of Virginia researcher, largely benefiting the white families who remained.

To black families, segregation had returned by another name.

“Everyone wants the best for their kid, but this has been the thing that has helped drive the segregation engine,” said Lisa Woolfork, an associate professor at UVA and a member of Black Lives Matter Charlottesville, whose children attend Charlottesville schools. “I have always been of the opinion that this type of internal segregation is the way to keep white people in the public schools. This is a way that white supremacy undergirds the public school system.”

In 1984, only 11 percent of Charlottesville’s white students qualified as gifted, according to federal data from the UVA analysis. By 2003, according to the audit, about a third of white students qualified, the same proportion as today. White students make up more than 70 percent of the district’s gifted students.

When students are selected for Quest, they are pulled out of their regular classrooms for enrichment sessions in academics and arts with a specialized teacher in a designated classroom.

“When people bring up Quest, we get angry,” Trinity said. “We all wish we had the opportunity to have that separate creative time. It drives a gap between students from elementary school on.”

Image

Lisa Woolfork, an associate professor at the University of Virginia, whose children attend Charlottesville schools, said, “I have always been of the opinion that this type of internal segregation is the way to keep white people in the public schools.”CreditJared Soares

For children who read below grade level, the city offers a supplemental program called Extending the Bridges of Literacy. But the program takes place after school, and it is taught by instructors who volunteer to extend their workday for extra pay, regardless of whether they have specialized intervention training.

Racial inequities persist into the high school’s advanced-placement courses, which provide students with college credits. White students in Charlottesville are nearly six times as likely to be in advanced courses as their black peers, according to recently released federal data.

“There is an incentive to segregate these kids,” Ms. Smith said. “I don’t think the schools see anything positive in an academic mixing pot because the white parents will leave.”

In the past two years, Charlottesville High administrators have introduced staff training on racial inequalities. Teachers have participated in professional development that included studying “equity-based teaching”; lessons in Charlottesville’s local black history and Civil War history; and workshops on implicit bias. The school’s principal also set up focus groups and surveyed high-performing black students about underrepresentation in advanced courses.

Dr. Atkins, the school district’s superintendent, has introduced other initiatives aimed at reducing the achievement gap. Besides abolishing prerequisites for advanced courses, she created a “matrix” that families could follow to map out a sequence of coursework. She has also tried to remedy the underrepresentation of minorities and girls in science electives by giving every middle schooler an opportunity to take an engineering course.

The district, meanwhile, expanded what it calls “honors option” courses, in which students can choose to meet requirements for regular or honors credit.

Jennifer Horne, an English teacher at Charlottesville High School, called her honors option course “the most beautiful place in the building.”

“You’ve got struggling readers, and kids who are way smarter than me in the same room,” she said.

Ms. Horne added that she is able to pose the “big questions,” which are usually reserved for advanced courses, and identify students with untapped potential.

Confidence Game

Image

Zyahna said that she felt isolated in the sea of white faces at school. She later became an activist for African-American students.CreditMatt Eich

With the help of a scholarship, Zyahna attended preschool through part of first grade at an elite private school. Her preparation helped her to pass an admission test for the gifted program after she entered Venable. As she got older, church members who worked in the schools advised her on the programs and classes she needed to stay on pace with her white peers.

Zyahna felt isolated in the sea of white faces. She became an activist, founding the Black Student Union, petitioning the City Council to remove the Lee statue and speaking out at school board meetings about the achievement gap. “It has caused me to become even more of an advocate for people of color, just for my blackness, because you enter into this whole sunken place when you get into honors and A.P. courses,” she said.

Zyahna likened her high school experience to shopping because students have to scout out the best deals. “You literally have to go ask for everything yourself,” she said, “and not everyone has those skills or confidence.”

Trinity said she lost that confidence as teachers repeatedly rejected her requests to enroll in higher-level courses. She tried to take Algebra II her junior year, an essential course for many colleges. Trinity had struggled early in a geometry course, but had stayed after school, sought tutoring and earned a B. She figured that she could work just as hard in Algebra II, but her geometry teacher would not allow it, Trinity said.

The teacher declined to comment on individual students. School officials said that a student’s performance in geometry is not the only factor in a teacher’s recommendation for Algebra II.

Trinity’s mother, Valarie Walker, fought for Trinity to take higher-level courses, but school personnel did not “want to listen to what the black kids have to say,” she said.

“I don’t think our voices were as strong as they needed to be,” Ms. Walker said. “They kept saying, ‘This would be better.’ I think we gave up fighting.”

Tale of 2 Diplomas

Image

Trinity said she lost confidence as teachers repeatedly rejected her requests to enroll in higher-level courses.CreditMatt Eich

In Charlottesville’s schools, the mantra is, “Graduate by any means necessary.” Bring up anything else — test scores, suspension rates — and Dr. Atkins counters, “We prefer to focus on the long-term goals, and the long-term goal is graduation.”

About 88 percent of black students graduate, just under the state average for African-American students, and up from 66 percent a decade ago. They trail their white peers by about eight percentage points. The district’s graduation rate, 92.6 percent, is at its highest since the segregation era, Dr. Atkins said.

But all diplomas are not equal. About three decades ago, Virginia established a two-tier diploma track in which districts award “standard” or “advanced” diplomas based on a student’s coursework. It is one of at least 14 states with this kind of approach. Three years ago, the state superintendent of public instruction proposed moving to a single-diploma system, but backed off when parents complained.

The advanced diploma requires students to complete an additional credit in mathematics, science and history and mandates that students to take at least three years of a foreign language; for the standard diploma, learning a language is not compulsory. Starting as early as middle school, honors and accelerated courses put some students on a path to advanced high school credits. In Charlottesville, about three-quarters of white students graduate with an advanced diploma, compared with a quarter of their black peers.

The type of diploma that students receive overwhelmingly dictates whether they enroll in two- or four-year colleges, or move on to higher education at all. In Virginia, only a tenth of students with standard diplomas enroll in a four-year college, a recent study found.

Dr. Atkins acknowledged that some minority students may be discouraged from taking higher-level courses that could qualify them for better colleges and said that the district will remind parents to bring these rebuffs to her attention. Mayor Walker, whose son is a sophomore at Charlottesville High, said some attitudes have not changed: “There have been a lot of people who just don’t believe in the potential of our kids.”

Since middle school, Trinity’s goal has been to attend James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Va. She has gained enough credits for an advanced diploma, but last month she learned that she would need a math class higher than Algebra II to gain admission.

A university representative recommended she go to community college, then possibly transfer to James Madison. Michael Walsh, the university’s dean of admissions, said that 99 percent of the students it accepts have gone beyond Algebra II.

Trinity was crushed: “It made me realize I really haven’t been prepared like the rest of the students to be ‘college ready.’”

Zyahna’s achievements make her a prime candidate for an elite university, so she was taken aback when, as she was beginning her search, her principal encouraged her to explore community college. The principal says the context was a broad discussion with black student leaders about community college as an affordable option.

That is not how Zyahna heard it.

“No matter how high your scores are or how many hours you put into your work, you are still black,” Zyahna said. “There’s a whole system you’re up against. Every small victory just cuts a hole into that system reminding you how fragile it is. But it’s still there.”

Read More | https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/16/us/charlottesville-riots-black-students-schools.html |

Nature ‘You Are Still Black’: Charlottesville’s Racial Divide Hinders Black Students, in 2018-10-16 11:44:04

[blogparadiseisland]

Nature ‘You Are Still Black’: Charlottesville’s Racial Divide Hinders Black Students

Nature ‘You Are Still Black’: Charlottesville’s Racial Divide Hinders Black Students Nature ‘You Are Still Black’: Charlottesville’s Racial Divide Hinders Black Students http://www.nature-business.com/nature-you-are-still-black-charlottesvilles-racial-divide-hinders-black-students/

Nature

Image

Trinity Hughes, left, and Zyahna Bryant at Charlottesville High School, where they are seniors.CreditCreditMatt Eich

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — This article was reported and written in a collaboration with ProPublica, the nonprofit investigative journalism organization.

Zyahna Bryant and Trinity Hughes, high school seniors, have been friends since they were 6, raised by blue-collar families in this affluent college town. They played on the same T-ball and softball teams, and were in the same church group.

But like many African-American children in Charlottesville, Trinity lived on the south side of town and went to a predominantly black neighborhood elementary school. Zyahna lived across the train tracks, on the north side, and was zoned to a mostly white school, near the University of Virginia campus, that boasts the city’s highest reading scores.

In elementary school, Zyahna was chosen for the district’s program for gifted students. Since then, she has completed more than a dozen advanced-placement and college-level courses, maintained a nearly 4.0 grade-point average, and has been a student leader and a community activist. She has her eyes set on a prestigious university like UVA.

“I want to go somewhere where it shows how much hard work I’ve put in,” Zyahna said.

Trinity was not selected for the gifted program. She tried to enroll in higher-level courses and was denied. She expects to graduate this school year, but with a transcript that she says will not make her competitive for selective four-year colleges.

“I know what I’m capable of, and what I can do,” Trinity said, “but the counselors and teachers, they don’t really care about that.”

Charlottesville

Black population

above city average

Norfolk Southern and CSX Railroads

HALF A MILE

Black population

above city average

Charlottesville

Norfolk Southern and CSX Railroads

HALF A MILE

Black population

above city average

Charlottesville

Norfolk Southern and CSX Railroads

For every student like Zyahna in Charlottesville’s schools, there are scores like Trinity, caught in one of the widest educational disparities in the United States. Charlottesville’s racial inequities mirror college towns across the country, including Berkeley, Calif., and Evanston, Ill. But they also match the wider world of education, which is grappling with racial gaps — in areas including gifted programs and school discipline — that can undercut the effort to equitably prepare students for college in a competitive economy.

[To examine racial disparities in educational opportunities and school discipline, visit ProPublica’s interactive database of more than 96,000 public and charter schools and 17,000 school districts.]

The debate over the city’s statue of Robert E. Lee and the white supremacist march last year set Charlottesville apart, and spurred it to confront its Confederate past. But the city has not fully come to terms with another aspect of its Jim Crow legacy: a school system that segregates students from the time they start, and steers them into separate and unequal tracks.

Charlottesville is “beautiful physically and aesthetically pleasing, but a very ugly-in-the-soul place,” said Nikuyah Walker, who became its first black female mayor during the self-recrimination that swept the city after last year’s white nationalist rallies. “No one has ever attempted to undo that, and that affects whether our children can learn here.”

Today, white students make up 40 percent of Charlottesville’s enrollment, and African-American students about a third. But white children are about four times as likely to be in Charlottesville’s gifted program, while black students are more than four times as likely to be held back a grade and almost five times as likely to be suspended from school, according to a ProPublica/New York Times examination of newly available district and federal data.

Since 2005, the academic gulf between white and black students in Charlottesville has widened in nearly all subjects, including reading, writing, history and science. As of last year, half of all black students in Charlottesville could not read at grade level, compared with only a tenth of white students, according to state data. Black students in Charlottesville lag on average about three and a half grades behind their white peers in reading and math, compared with a national gap of about two grades.

Over the decades, school board members have often brushed aside findings of racial inequality in Charlottesville schools, including a 2004 audit — commissioned by the district’s first African-American superintendent — that blamed inadequate leadership and a history of racism for the persistent underachievement of its black students.

Officials in the 4,500-student district — which spends about $16,000 per pupil, one of the highest rates in the state — instead point to socioeconomic differences. The vast majority of Charlottesville’s black children qualify for free or reduced-price meals at school because of low family income.

District leaders say they are tackling the achievement gap with initiatives such as eliminating prerequisites for advanced classes. Besides, they say, test scores are only one measure of success.

Image

A statue of Robert E. Lee in Charlottesville, Va. Last year, the city’s Confederate past came into the national spotlight.CreditJared Soares

“I’m not trying to make excuses” for the test scores of black students, said Rosa Atkins, the district’s superintendent for almost 13 years, “but that’s only one measure of where they are, and who they are, and their capabilities for success.”

About a third of the 25 districts with the widest achievement disparities between white and black students are in or near college towns, according to a review of data compiled by researchers at Stanford University. Affluent families in university towns invest a large proportion of their resources in their children’s education, said Sean Reardon, a professor of education at Stanford.

In such communities, “disparities in resources — between white and black students, for example — may be more consequential,” he said.

Dr. Atkins said that it is unfair to compare black students with white classmates who attended the best preschools and have traveled abroad. “The experiences that they bring into our school system are very different,” she said. “When we start saying that until you start performing like white children, you have a deficit, I think that in itself is discrimination.”

Still, socioeconomics do not fully explain the gap. State exam data shows that, among Charlottesville children from low-income families, white students outperformed black students in all subjects over the past three years. The same pattern holds true for wealthier students.

And in the past year, even the city’s immigrant students who are learning English have outperformed black students on state exams in every subject.

Dr. Atkins said that what does not show up in test scores is how far behind black children start, and how they sometimes have to acquire two years’ worth of skills in just one year.

“I dare say that our black children are performing better than our white children” when their progress is considered, she said. “That tells me that our children have resilience, tenacity and ability far superior than what we’re giving them credit for.”

Among white parents, last year’s rallies have fostered more frank discussions of racial inequality, said one of the parents, Guian McKee, an associate professor at the University of Virginia. “There’s been a lot more openness to some of those challenging conversations,” he said.

At their predominantly black elementary school, Mr. McKee’s two children participated in the gifted program, which is about three-quarters white. Such disparities, at odds with Charlottesville’s reputation as a bastion of Southern progressivism, have long been a taboo topic, he said.

“For a lot of people, it’s really uncomfortable to see that even if you haven’t personally done anything wrong,” Mr. McKee said, “you’re part of larger structures that contribute to producing poverty and inequality, including in educational outcomes.”

Jim Crow Past

Image

African-American students studying at home while Charlottesville schools were closed in 1958.CreditEd Clark/The LIFE Picture Collection, via Getty Images

Much like its Confederate past, Charlottesville’s history of school segregation weighs heavily on the present day. “I don’t think the hate groups selected our community by chance,” Dr. Atkins said.

Charlottesville greeted the Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown v. Board of Education desegregation decision with a firm no. In 1958, Gov. J. Lindsay Almond of Virginia ordered the city to shut down two white-serving public schools rather than integrate.

Many white families opted for private schools, which were able to secure public funding through voucherlike tuition grants. Under pressure from the Supreme Court of Virginia, Charlottesville reopened its schools in 1959, allowing a dozen black students to attend its historically white schools.

But the city’s resistance to integration persisted. Instead of outright segregation, the white-led district established testing requirements solely for black students who tried to enroll in historically white schools. It also allowed white students who lived in attendance zones of historically black schools to transfer back to predominantly white schools. Black students who lived near mostly white schools were assigned to black schools.

After a federal appeals court invalidated the district’s attendance policies, the city relied more closely on residential zones to sort students. In 1984, Charlottesville High School ignited after its student newspaper published derogatory remarks about black students. The high school was shut down for a day. “Seniors for White Supremacy” was painted in its parking lot.

Two years later, the board considered redrawing school zones to bolster racial and economic equity, but worried about white flight. In the end, elementary school boundaries were largely left alone. The district pooled the city’s middle school students into two schools, one serving all fifth and sixth graders, and the other serving all seventh and eighth graders. The number of white students declined about 20 percent within a decade.

‘Future of Such a Legacy Is Dire’

Image

Venable Elementary School, which Zyahna attended, has the highest reading proficiency of all of the elementary schools in the city.CreditJared Soares

Other efforts to reshape attendance zones faced resistance. In 2003, a group of predominantly black families asked to send 20 of their children to Venable Elementary School, one of the historically white schools that had once closed rather than integrate.

Venable, which Zyahna would later attend, has the highest reading proficiency of all of the elementary schools in the city. The black families lived several blocks from Venable, and they had grown frustrated by their children’s long commutes to their zoned school. But when the school board proposed reassigning the 20 children, white parents from Venable “freaked,” said Dede Smith, then a board member.

“We will NOT accept redistricting when it is done, as in this situation, sloppily and hurriedly and in a way which negatively impacts the quality of education for all students involved,” read a letter from the Venable parent-teacher organization. It took a year for the board to rezone the children to Venable, according to Ms. Smith. Today, some black families are able to send their children there, but residents of a mostly black public housing complex nearby are not among them.

“We only put our toe in the water,” she said.

The next year, in 2004, the school board hired Scottie Griffin as superintendent. She tapped a respected education association to review inequities across the district. The report, by five academics, revealed a deeply fractured school system.

“While some members of the community might wish for an elongated period of time to ponder and debate changes, the children are in school only once and then they are gone,” the audit concluded. “No city can survive by only serving one-half its constituents well. The future of such a legacy is dire.”

The auditors pushed for increasing black students’ access to high-level academic programs, including gifted and advanced-placement courses.

Image

“There is an incentive to segregate these kids,” said Dede Smith, a former school board member.CreditJared Soares

Kathy Galvin, a parent who is now a City Council member, responded to the audit in an internal memo to the school board, urging the board to reject the racial bias findings, which she called “unnecessary and in fact harmful,” and implored members to focus on improving “our educational system for the benefit of all children.”

Today, Ms. Galvin largely stands by that position. “A ‘too narrow and racially biased’ focus on the schools does a disservice to the dedicated educators who have made a difference and risks misdiagnosing a complex problem, leading to ineffective solutions,” she said.

In 2005, within a year of her hiring, Dr. Griffin was pushed out. She did not respond to questions from The Times and ProPublica.

Dr. Atkins said she has incorporated some of the audit’s recommendations, such as data-driven decision-making and a reorganization of central office staff, into the district’s strategic plan.

One of the audit’s central focuses was the city’s gifted program, known as Quest. As white enrollment in the city’s schools contracted over the years, the program tripled in size, according to an analysis by a University of Virginia researcher, largely benefiting the white families who remained.

To black families, segregation had returned by another name.

“Everyone wants the best for their kid, but this has been the thing that has helped drive the segregation engine,” said Lisa Woolfork, an associate professor at UVA and a member of Black Lives Matter Charlottesville, whose children attend Charlottesville schools. “I have always been of the opinion that this type of internal segregation is the way to keep white people in the public schools. This is a way that white supremacy undergirds the public school system.”

In 1984, only 11 percent of Charlottesville’s white students qualified as gifted, according to federal data from the UVA analysis. By 2003, according to the audit, about a third of white students qualified, the same proportion as today. White students make up more than 70 percent of the district’s gifted students.

When students are selected for Quest, they are pulled out of their regular classrooms for enrichment sessions in academics and arts with a specialized teacher in a designated classroom.

“When people bring up Quest, we get angry,” Trinity said. “We all wish we had the opportunity to have that separate creative time. It drives a gap between students from elementary school on.”

Image

Lisa Woolfork, an associate professor at the University of Virginia, whose children attend Charlottesville schools, said, “I have always been of the opinion that this type of internal segregation is the way to keep white people in the public schools.”CreditJared Soares

For children who read below grade level, the city offers a supplemental program called Extending the Bridges of Literacy. But the program takes place after school, and it is taught by instructors who volunteer to extend their workday for extra pay, regardless of whether they have specialized intervention training.

Racial inequities persist into the high school’s advanced-placement courses, which provide students with college credits. White students in Charlottesville are nearly six times as likely to be in advanced courses as their black peers, according to recently released federal data.

“There is an incentive to segregate these kids,” Ms. Smith said. “I don’t think the schools see anything positive in an academic mixing pot because the white parents will leave.”

In the past two years, Charlottesville High administrators have introduced staff training on racial inequalities. Teachers have participated in professional development that included studying “equity-based teaching”; lessons in Charlottesville’s local black history and Civil War history; and workshops on implicit bias. The school’s principal also set up focus groups and surveyed high-performing black students about underrepresentation in advanced courses.

Dr. Atkins, the school district’s superintendent, has introduced other initiatives aimed at reducing the achievement gap. Besides abolishing prerequisites for advanced courses, she created a “matrix” that families could follow to map out a sequence of coursework. She has also tried to remedy the underrepresentation of minorities and girls in science electives by giving every middle schooler an opportunity to take an engineering course.

The district, meanwhile, expanded what it calls “honors option” courses, in which students can choose to meet requirements for regular or honors credit.

Jennifer Horne, an English teacher at Charlottesville High School, called her honors option course “the most beautiful place in the building.”

“You’ve got struggling readers, and kids who are way smarter than me in the same room,” she said.

Ms. Horne added that she is able to pose the “big questions,” which are usually reserved for advanced courses, and identify students with untapped potential.

Confidence Game

Image

Zyahna said that she felt isolated in the sea of white faces at school. She later became an activist for African-American students.CreditMatt Eich

With the help of a scholarship, Zyahna attended preschool through part of first grade at an elite private school. Her preparation helped her to pass an admission test for the gifted program after she entered Venable. As she got older, church members who worked in the schools advised her on the programs and classes she needed to stay on pace with her white peers.

Zyahna felt isolated in the sea of white faces. She became an activist, founding the Black Student Union, petitioning the City Council to remove the Lee statue and speaking out at school board meetings about the achievement gap. “It has caused me to become even more of an advocate for people of color, just for my blackness, because you enter into this whole sunken place when you get into honors and A.P. courses,” she said.

Zyahna likened her high school experience to shopping because students have to scout out the best deals. “You literally have to go ask for everything yourself,” she said, “and not everyone has those skills or confidence.”

Trinity said she lost that confidence as teachers repeatedly rejected her requests to enroll in higher-level courses. She tried to take Algebra II her junior year, an essential course for many colleges. Trinity had struggled early in a geometry course, but had stayed after school, sought tutoring and earned a B. She figured that she could work just as hard in Algebra II, but her geometry teacher would not allow it, Trinity said.

The teacher declined to comment on individual students. School officials said that a student’s performance in geometry is not the only factor in a teacher’s recommendation for Algebra II.

Trinity’s mother, Valarie Walker, fought for Trinity to take higher-level courses, but school personnel did not “want to listen to what the black kids have to say,” she said.

“I don’t think our voices were as strong as they needed to be,” Ms. Walker said. “They kept saying, ‘This would be better.’ I think we gave up fighting.”

Tale of 2 Diplomas

Image

Trinity said she lost confidence as teachers repeatedly rejected her requests to enroll in higher-level courses.CreditMatt Eich

In Charlottesville’s schools, the mantra is, “Graduate by any means necessary.” Bring up anything else — test scores, suspension rates — and Dr. Atkins counters, “We prefer to focus on the long-term goals, and the long-term goal is graduation.”

About 88 percent of black students graduate, just under the state average for African-American students, and up from 66 percent a decade ago. They trail their white peers by about eight percentage points. The district’s graduation rate, 92.6 percent, is at its highest since the segregation era, Dr. Atkins said.

But all diplomas are not equal. About three decades ago, Virginia established a two-tier diploma track in which districts award “standard” or “advanced” diplomas based on a student’s coursework. It is one of at least 14 states with this kind of approach. Three years ago, the state superintendent of public instruction proposed moving to a single-diploma system, but backed off when parents complained.

The advanced diploma requires students to complete an additional credit in mathematics, science and history and mandates that students to take at least three years of a foreign language; for the standard diploma, learning a language is not compulsory. Starting as early as middle school, honors and accelerated courses put some students on a path to advanced high school credits. In Charlottesville, about three-quarters of white students graduate with an advanced diploma, compared with a quarter of their black peers.

The type of diploma that students receive overwhelmingly dictates whether they enroll in two- or four-year colleges, or move on to higher education at all. In Virginia, only a tenth of students with standard diplomas enroll in a four-year college, a recent study found.

Dr. Atkins acknowledged that some minority students may be discouraged from taking higher-level courses that could qualify them for better colleges and said that the district will remind parents to bring these rebuffs to her attention. Mayor Walker, whose son is a sophomore at Charlottesville High, said some attitudes have not changed: “There have been a lot of people who just don’t believe in the potential of our kids.”

Since middle school, Trinity’s goal has been to attend James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Va. She has gained enough credits for an advanced diploma, but last month she learned that she would need a math class higher than Algebra II to gain admission.

A university representative recommended she go to community college, then possibly transfer to James Madison. Michael Walsh, the university’s dean of admissions, said that 99 percent of the students it accepts have gone beyond Algebra II.

Trinity was crushed: “It made me realize I really haven’t been prepared like the rest of the students to be ‘college ready.’”

Zyahna’s achievements make her a prime candidate for an elite university, so she was taken aback when, as she was beginning her search, her principal encouraged her to explore community college. The principal says the context was a broad discussion with black student leaders about community college as an affordable option.

That is not how Zyahna heard it.

“No matter how high your scores are or how many hours you put into your work, you are still black,” Zyahna said. “There’s a whole system you’re up against. Every small victory just cuts a hole into that system reminding you how fragile it is. But it’s still there.”

Read More | https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/16/us/charlottesville-riots-black-students-schools.html |

Nature ‘You Are Still Black’: Charlottesville’s Racial Divide Hinders Black Students, in 2018-10-16 11:44:04