Good morning, RVA: 2,558* • 15; school stuff, and great snow pics

Good morning, RVA! It’s 28 °F, and today it looks like you should expect rain or freezing rain or icy rain. No snow unfortunately. If you’ve got to leave your house for some reason, please be careful! Sidewalks and streets are bound to be slippery with the temperature hovering around freezing for the entire day. In fact, we’ve got a Winter Weather Advisory until 10:00 AM.

Richmond Public Schools has their first virtual snow day today—you can’t have school, even virtual school, if you can’t deliver meals. Chesterfield Public Schools has cancelled both in person and virtual learning. Henrico will continue with their virtual learning, but teachers who had taught from school buildings will now teach form their homes.

Water cooler

As of this morning, the Virginia Department of Health reports 2,558 new positive cases of the coronavirus in the Commonwealthand 15 new deaths as a result of the virus. VDH reports 372 new cases in and around Richmond (Chesterfield: 181, Henrico: 92, and Richmond: 99). Since this pandemic began, 679 people have died in the Richmond region. What’s this? A statewide total of new cases in the 2,000s! Haven’t seen that in a while. But, before you get too excited, VDH has the following notice up on their data dashboard: “Surveillance system upgrades occurring on Saturday, January 30, 2021, will affect the data on the COVID-19 Cases & Testing Dashboards on January 31 and February 1, 2021. A decrease in the number of cases and tests reported on January 31, and an increase in the number of cases and tests reported on February 1 is anticipated because of these upgrades.”

Related to big numbers, on Saturday almost 5,000 seniors were given their first dose of vaccine at a regional vaccination event at the Raceway. That’s a lot of folks in a single day—especially folks who may have some mobility challenges or may just move a little slower. It should definitely give everyone a little hope that massive events like this are already possible in our region without any additional support from the Virginia National Guard or federal government. Our state and federal leaders have talked about both of those things, so adding them to our mix would only increase (and stabilize) our vaccination capacity. However, no one—local, state, or federal—can run massive vaccination events like this without massive amounts of vaccine. Unless something changes in the immediate future we may just have to sit on this infrastructure, waiting for the shots to show up.

The Richmond Times-Dispatch’s Jessica Nocera reports that after today’s snow day, Chesterfield County Public Schools will return elementary students to in-person learning. 14,000 students will return, while 13,000 have decided to stay virtual. Interestingly, the District’s superintendent originally pitched reopening on April 1st, but, after a meeting with the School Board, that date shifted to February 1st. It’s not clear to me whether the original plan was to return all students on April 1st or just elementary students on April 1st—a big difference. Of course, the context to this entire discussion is that most of Chesterfield’s teachers have not received their first round of vaccine but are still headed back to the classrooms.

Richmond’s School Board meets tonight and will further discuss the Superintendent’s proposed budget (full agenda here). Boardmembers have already asked a bunch of questions about the budget, which the administration has already answered, and that means you get this really fascinating Q&A PDF. For example: “How will we address air conditioning concerns with a year-round calendar? The HVAC investments we are hoping to make this spring and summer (using the federal stimulus) should address these concerns.” or “Will we have a nurse at every school? Yes. The FY22 proposed budget will finally help us achieve our goal of having at least one licensed nurse at every school!” I love this kind of stuff. The first two pages of the aforelinked PDF focus on year-round school, if you’re interested in learning more about the specifics of how that would work. Oh! Also! It’s always a good time to email the entire School Boardand let them know you support extending Superintendent Kamras’s contract for four years (so we can continue to get fascinating PDFs like this).

Jonathan Spiers at Richmond BizSense has a quick update on Henrico’s GreenCity project (formerly Richmond’s Navy Hill project). The County has officially transferred the Best Products site to their Economic Development Authority, which is the first step in getting the property into the hands of developers. Expect a bunch of slow-trickle, done-deal sounding news about this project for the next, I dunno, year?

Over on /r/rva, Creative Dog Media has put together 14 drone photos from yesterday’s snow day that you should flip through. The overheads of the train station and the Manchester climbing wall! Ack! So good.

Holly Rodriguez, writing for Richmond Magazine, has a profile of Roscoe Burnems—who you may remember as Richmond’s first poet laureate. I like this quote from Burnems, “Richmond is getting known for these beautiful murals on display across the city, and I want to add a literary component to that.”

This morning’s longread

The Pandemic Has Erased Entire Categories of Friendship

I think a lot about how just before the pandemic I’d finally become a regular at a coffee shop—to the point where they made my coffee when they saw me come in. I miss those people!

Understandably, much of the energy directed toward the problems of pandemic social life has been spent on keeping people tied to their families and closest friends. These other relationships have withered largely unremarked on after the places that hosted them closed. The pandemic has evaporated entire categories of friendship, and by doing so, depleted the joys that make up a human life—and buoy human health. But that does present an opportunity. In the coming months, as we begin to add people back into our lives, we’ll now know what it’s like to be without them.

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