Charlottesville resident Dhanya Babu moved to the city from India when she was 8 years old. Unable to speak English well, she enrolled in the ESOL program at Albemarle County Public Schools—and came full circle last year when she returned to work for the school division. Now, she is headed to West Africa to teach […]
Weeks after a power-sharing dispute between descendants of enslaved workers and previous leadership was resolved at James Madison’s Montpelier, descendants at another former president’s home will formally gather for the first time. Organized by the Highland Council of Descendant Advisors, Descendants Day at James Monroe’s Highland will happen on June 11 from 1-4pm. The event […]
After Charlottesville City Council voted to rezone Hinton Avenue United Methodist Church—the future site of Rachel’s Haven, a 15-unit apartment complex for low-income individuals, adults with developmental disabilities, and people at risk of homelessness—from residential to neighborhood commercial corridor in 2019, nearly three-dozen disgruntled residents filed a petition against the city, demanding a judge overturn […]
Montpelier gets new leadership With more than half its members now representing the descendants of enslaved workers at Montpelier, the Montpelier Foundation Board is moving quickly to undo actions taken by previous leadership during a months-long dispute over control of the board. First on that to-do list: rehiring high-level staffers who’d been fired for speaking […]
It seems that student-athletes have always been placed in a separate sphere from the rest of the UVA community. To non-student-athletes, they are the basketball players, the football players, the NCAA champions—defined by their wins and losses. A project brought to the University of Virginia by three members of the women’s soccer team—Rebecca Jarrett, Lacey […]
The fate of thousands of people eligible for release from Virginia prisons under a new state law that goes into effect July 1 may rest with Governor Glenn Youngkin, once the conferenced budget is approved by the General Assembly on Wednesday. The expanded earned sentence credit law, passed with bipartisan support in late summer of 2020, […]
CHS music legend retires The woman who built Charlottesville High School’s orchestra into an award-winning juggernaut is retiring after 40 years. “Laura Mulligan Thomas has influenced generations of students in Charlottesville with a music education that is second to none,” said Charlottesville Superintendent Royal A. Gurley, Jr. in a release announcing her retirement. “She leaves […]
By Maryann Xue and Brielle Entzminger In the wake of 2020’s Black Lives Matter protests, the Virginia General Assembly passed the Marcus-David Peters Act. Named in honor of a 24-year-old Black high school biology teacher killed by a Richmond police officer during a severe mental health crisis in 2018, the 2020 law required localities to […]
Following the arrival of the coronavirus pandemic, gun violence spiked across Charlottesville, particularly in the city’s predominantly Black neighborhoods. There were four gun homicides in 2020—a notable uptick from the two homicides in 2019 and one in 2018. By the end of the year, the Charlottesville Police Department had responded to 122 shots-fired incidents. This […]
In a virtual meeting last week, the Metropolitan Planning Organization’s Citizens Transportation Advisory Committee discussed how Charlottesville and Albemarle County are working to drastically slash their carbon emissions, particularly in the context of transportation. Susan Elliott, Charlottesville’s climate protection program manager, explained that 95 percent of the city’s emissions come from the community. Residential, commercial, […]