Good morning, RVA: Schools, education, and more schools

New FDA guidance means you probably should grab a stack of at-home COVID
tests next time you're out.

Good morning, RVA! It's 64 °F, and today looks great. Expect highs in the mid 80s plus some clouds in the sky later this afternoon. The weekend looks decent, too—we'll just have to see if any rogue rain pops up or not. For now, though, call dibs on your favorite outside chair and plan to spend the next couple mornings out there drinking your beverage of choice.

Water cooler

As of last night the COVID-19 Community Level is high in Richmond but medium in both Henrico and Chesterfield. The 7-day average of new COVID-19 cases per 100,000 people in each locality is 296, 197, and 150, respectively. The 7-day average of new COVID-19 hospital admissions per 100,000 is 15.3. We're back into split decision territory! Which I don't love! While the case rates do appear to be dropping in parts of our region, the hospital admission rates keep climbing, and I'm not sure what to make of that. I'll still be wearing my mask and doing what I can to reduce my chances of getting COVID for the foreseeable future because 1) it's easy, 2) Henrico's "197" case rate is real close to "200" (at which it'd be in a high level), and 3) I'm patiently waiting to hear about those new fall COVID-19 boosters.

One other COVID-related piece of news, did y'all see the FDA’s new guidance on using at-home tests? Because our current at-home tests are less successful at accurately detecting omicron, the FDA now recommends that folks with symptoms follow a negative at-home test with a second at-home test 48 hours later. If you don't have symptoms but believe you've been exposed, follow that original negative test with another 48 hours later and then one more after that (for a total of three). Do you have a huge pile of at-home tests in your cabinet? If not, now's the time to grab a few more!

KidsFirst RPS has put together their summary from this past Monday's RPS School Board meeting. With Board meetings that run over five hours long, I'm thankful that someone is doing this work—and that it's not me. You'll definitely want to pair the summary with the scorecard for the meeting, too, which includes this bummer of a sentence: "RPS staff confusion, followed by the sinking realization that their work has been sabotaged by the Board’s unrelenting skepticism and cynicism for the admin, is becoming a really disheartening trademark of these meetings." KidsFirst is referencing this discussion on a student assessment data tracking platform (that the Board eventually voted down), but they could be talking about almost any and every issues that ever comes up at these Board meeting. It's exhausting and demoralizing, and I'm just sitting on the sidelines. I can't imagine what it's like for school administration and staff.

Also schools-related, Jessica Nocera at the Richmond Times-Dispatch reports on the newly released statewide SOL scores, which you can dig around in for yourself here. Passing rates across the board—across the region—are down from pre-pandemic levels, which, I dunno. Certainly not great, but does that tell us much new information? The last couple of years have been hard for everyone, and I think it's reasonable to expect to see that reflected in the SOLS (and, of course, to expect a lot of hard work from everyone involved to move beyond the last couple of years, too).

VPM's Ben Paviour has a quick follow up from this week’s Virginia Board of Education meeting, at which the Board decided to delay a review of new history and social science standards. Virginia Superintendent of Public Instruction, Jillian Balow, has this quote that I wanted to preserve for the record (just in case): "She said a delay in reviewing the standards is not connected to Youngkin’s campaign pledge to ban the teaching of critical race theory...'We don't want to conflate concepts like African American History and CRT,' Balow told reporters on Wednesday. 'Those are different conversations entirely.'" OK, sounds good...ish. Let's check back in a couple weeks and see what those words actually mean.

Did Virginians invent barbecue? Karri Peifer (and RIchmond-based writer Deb Freeman) say yes! That's a bold, saucy claim, but who am I to argue?

Reminder: VCU move-in days continue! Expect the flood of young people and family-member tears to continue through the weekend.

This morning's longread
Are the Shipwreck Origins of the Chincoteague Ponies Real?

A disappointing case of Betteridge's Law of Headlines, but still an interesting read.

To tell the story of how a purported cow tooth dug up in the Caribbean might corroborate the mythical origin of wild horses off the coast of Maryland and Virginia, let us begin, naturally, with a children’s book, Misty of Chincoteague. If you know, you know—horse girls, I’m looking at you. For everyone else: This beloved 1947 children’s novel tells the story of Misty the pony, born on the beaches of an uninhabited barrier island. The story is fictional, but the setting is real. A band of wild horses still roams that island today, eating seagrass and largely ignoring tourists who come for selfies with a real-life version of Misty. No one knows how the horses first arrived there, but Misty of Chincoteague retells a dramatic bit of local lore.

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