Good morning, RVA: 14,339 • 492; a new education reporter; and poison ivy

Good morning, RVA! It’s 49 °F, and highs today will almost reach 80 °F! We should see some clouds here or there before Big Rain moves in tomorrow bringing with it a Flood Watch from 4:00–8:00 AM on Thursday. It says we can expect 1–2 inches of rain. I know we’re mostly all pros at staying inside at this point, but, if you need to do some prep work for tomorrow’s storms, make sure you do so!

Water cooler

As of this morning, the Virginia Department of Health reports 14,339 positive cases of the coronavirus in the Commonwealth, and 492 people in Virginia have died as a result of the virus. VDH reports 1,635 cases in and around Richmond (Chesterfield: 488, Henrico: 835, and Richmond: 312). For whatever weekend reasons, a Tuesday data dump always seems to bring with it peaks. Yesterday was no exception to that and marked the highest number of new reported positive cases in a single day (804) and, after a week of increased testing, dropped the number of reported tests back to around 2,500. This, of course, reset the 14-day countdowns on percent positive and hospitalization.

The Henrico Citizen has some good testing news: The County has tested more than 1,000 of their “front-line workers” and only one tested positive for COVID-19. The Deputy County Manager for Public Safety says “We can say fairly conclusively that we do not have a large number of infected employees working on the front line, which also means that they are not asymptomatic carriers of the virus.” That’s a big whew, considering Henrico leads the region in number of cases and deaths.

Readers! Welcome Kenya Hunter, the Richmond Times-Dispatch’s newest education reporter! Hunter’s first byline is up this morning and looks at yesterday’s RPS budget meeting and the School Board’s continued struggles to find $19 million to cut from the Superintendent’s proposed budget. Give Kenya Hunter a follow on Twitter (@KenyaTheHunter) if that’s your scene.

GRTC’s CEO Julie Timm has a good thread laying out her thinking behind hazard pay and what she has already done to address operator pay with the authority and budget she has at the moment. The whole thread, including some of the replies, is worth reading, but here’s the detailed bit from Timm: “$0.50/hr equals $250K– my authorized emergency spending limit outside the budget process. We started processing that as a lump sum bonus of $500 for all operators last Friday. It is not, and is not intended to be, hazard pay. GRTC staff deserve all our respect for their service. If I pay them what I believe they are worth, there would be no money left. My first budget priority must be their health and safety. My second is to maintain payroll and service. THEN - I can recommend hazard pay.” As I wrote yesterday, the vast, vast majority of GRTC’s funding comes from local, state, and federal governments. If we believe hazard pay for bus operators is a priority, then money for that needs to show up in those budgets. For some context, Timm has previously said she needs $3 million to provide time-and-a-half pay through June. As you’ll read below, you’ve got an opportunity to weigh in on Richmond’s budget in the coming weeks, and I do think it might be worth an email to your federal legislators about this as they continue to put together relief packages. There’s also an unknown amount of transportation cash headed toward our region from the Central Virginia Transportation Authority. That money won’t start flowing until October but is fairly unrestricted in its use. Something to noodle on, for sure.

City Council will hold another budget work session today at 1:00 PM. They haven’t posted the agenda or any of the documents yet, but, theoretically, you can tune in to the audio stream over on the City’s legislative website. There are three total budget meetings remaining—that includes today’s and the final public hearing on May 11th. While your opportunities to weigh in are limited, they do still exist!

It’s been way too long since you’ve had the opportunity to take a fun land use survey, hasn’t it? The Richmond 300 folks, still busy working on master planning our City’s future, have released this Land Use Planning for a Post-Pandemic Society survey that you should fill out. Admittedly—it even says so right at the top of the survey—we probably lack the perspective and distance to know exactly how the way we plan our city will change over the next couple of months and years. But, that said, it’s great to see the Planning Department already thinking about this and getting folks' early thoughts and feelings.

Useful reminder from /r/rva as we all practice safe social distancing and sometimes end up in the woods (or just an overgrown alley): It’s poison ivy season. Remember: Leaves of three, let it be; leaves of four, eat some more! The Virginia Cooperative Extension has an actual and real guide to identifying and understanding poison ivy.

This morning’s longread

‘It Was Just Too Much’: How Remote Learning Is Breaking Parents

It was only a matter of time before we start seeing a bunch of articles like this one, right?

With teachers relegated to computer screens, parents have to play teacher’s aide, hall monitor, counselor and cafeteria worker — all while trying to do their own jobs under extraordinary circumstances. Essential workers are in perhaps the toughest spot, especially if they are away from home during school hours, leaving just one parent, or no one at all, at home when students need them most. Kindergartners need help logging into Zoom. Seventh-graders need help with algebra, last used by dad circa 1992. “School” often ends by lunchtime, leaving parents from Long Island to Dallas to Los Angeles asking themselves the same question: How bad am I if my child plays Fortnite for the next eight hours?

If you’d like your longread to show up here, go chip in a couple bucks on the ol’ Patreon.