Good morning, RVA: Teacher vacancies, masks in schools, and a good speaker

GMRVA aims to be the premier zoning and rezoning email in the Richmond
area!

Good morning, RVA! It's 63 °F, and today's forecast looks lovely—a lot like yesterday but with more sun and less drizzle. You can expect highs right around 80 °F and perfect weather for an evening walk around your neighborhood.

Water cooler

National Teacher of the Year Rodney Robinson pointed me towards this article in the Richmond Times-Dispatch by Anna Bryson from a couple days back: "Teacher vacancies in Varina, Fairfield put strain on Henrico County Schools." Henrico has over 180 vacancies, but the map at the top of the article shows a striking gradient of disparity between the eastern and western parts of the County. According to Bryson, the eastern districts, which have the most teacher vacancies, also are home to "majority-Black populations and serve more than half of Henrico's economically disadvantaged students." In the original tweet that linked me to this article, Robinson says, "The teacher shortage is the biggest equity issue in education right now. Black, Brown, and economically disadvantaged populations will suffer the most." Henrico's not unique in dealing with a teacher shortage—it's an issue facing school districts across the nation—but that map really paints a stark picture.

Related, the RPS School Board met last night, and Jessica Nocera, also at the Richmond Times-Dispatch, reports that the District has 144 teacher vacancies. Superintendent Kamras believes "between long-term subs, additional hires over the next two weeks and some ... leveling of positions that we will have every single class covered on the first day of school." Nocera also reports that RPS will "continue universal indoor masking in all school buildings and on buses for students and staff." Good! Richmond has, for the last forever, been in a high COVID-19 Community Level, and the CDC recommendations continue to be for everyone, regardless of vaccination status, to wear masks indoors. Kamras says he's open to adjusting the District's policy should we (eventually) drop down to a medium or low Community Level.

City Council will hold a special meeting tomorrow—gasp! during their August recess! You can find the snoozy agenda here, but Tyler Lane at WTVR reports that 2nd District Councilmember Jordan wants to talk about the alleged July 4th plot and RPD’s current operating procedures. It's not clear to me if that'll happen at tomorrow's special meeting or a future one, but, either way, sounds like these discussion will be held in a closed session.

Historic St. John's Church—the liberty or death one—will host Pulitzer Prize Winner Michael Paul Williams on October 6th for a talk, appropriately titled "The Question Remains: Liberty or Death?" I think this could be rad! A couple weeks ago, I linked to the Memory Wars podcast by local journalist Mallory Noe-Payne, which features MPW. I really, really enjoyed the last couple episodes where Williams flips the podcast a little and starts interviewing Noe-Payne about how her research into post-war Germany has changed her conceptions of life and family in a Richmond still dealing with the long shadow of its own war. He's a compelling and thoughtful guy—I mean he did win a Pulitzer Prize! Anyway, this event is a million years from now but does feel like something that will sell out, so get your ticket now if you're interested.

Richmond Magazine has piece by Paula Peters Chambers and Dina Weinstein listing out all the local media options we’ve got in Richmond. They talked to me, which was nice, and I'm delighted to have an actual magazine print that GMRVA "aims to be the premier zoning and rezoning email in the Richmond area."

Reminder! The penultimate public meeting on those three zoning changes (Airbnbs, parking minimums, and accessory dwelling units) is tonight at 6:00 PM (the final one is tomorrow at 12:00 PM). If neither of those times work for you, check out the slides from a previous meeting here or curl up on the couch with the City's YouTube channel and watch a recording of the August 10th meeting here. As for next steps, flip to page 38 of the slides for a proposed timeline: these two final telephone town halls, focus groups in September, drafts of the changes for public review in October, and then Planning Commission and City Council approval by early next year.

This morning's longread
Did Anyone Really Know the Bike Wanderer?

This is ultimately a sad story (content warning: suicide), but I'm always inspired by these Into the Wild-type folks who manager to just...walk away. After reading this article, I unintentionally spent 30 minutes watching one episode of See the World. It's soothing and distracting (in a good way), and I think you'll enjoy it.

We all need to get away sometimes, and Iohan Gueorguiev got, arguably, more escape time than perhaps any other cyclist on earth. The endearing, soft-spoken star of his own wildly popular YouTube channel, See the World, Iohan spent most of six years—2014 to 2020—tracing a circuitous path south from the frozen hinterlands of the Canadian Arctic toward, but never quite reaching, the southern tip of Argentina. Calling himself the Bike Wanderer, he slithered over ice roads in the Arctic on a fat bike whose frame bags were laden with camping and camera gear. He communed with bison in Wyoming, got frisked by cops at the Mexican border, crossed the Darién Gap with his bike in a kayak, and then moved on toward the salt plains of Bolivia.

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