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Charlottesville Tomorrow
After 50 years of bussing Westhaven kids away from their neighborhood school, City Schools votes to rezone Venable
When Charlottesville schools were desegregated in 1966, Black kids in the city were finally given the freedom to attend their neighborhood schools. Or so they thought. Since it was built in the early 1960s, Black children who lived in the Westhaven public housing community on Hardy Drive have been zoned for schools far from their neighborhood — not the one closest to them. James Bryant was one of those students.
In Jefferson Park Avenue, UVA and the city of Charlottesville are finding ways to live together
As the University of Virginia increases its enrollment at a faster rate than its on-campus housing, nearby neighborhoods like Jefferson Park Avenue catch the spillover. Sandwiched between UVA and Fry’s Spring, JPA is a desirable place for students to live. They can walk the short distance to class, or take one of the university or city transit buses that stop frequently along Jefferson Park Avenue itself.
A decade of data tells a story of how Charlottesville’s neighborhoods are changing
Charlottesville is changing. Some of it is easy to see, with the constant construction of luxury offices and apartments and the hard-won redevelopment of public and low-income housing communities. Older homes are being renovated anew and new neighbors are arriving every day. But many of the changes aren’t as visible...
In less than a decade, more than 100 Black residents moved out of Starr Hill
Rebecca McGinness lived all of her 107 years in Charlottesville, first in the Fifeville neighborhood and then in Starr Hill. She had a keen eye to the changes that occurred throughout the city and in her neighborhood. When she sat down for an interview for the Oral History Project of...
We’re about a third of the way through Charlottesville’s massive rezoning effort
Charlottesville is in the midst of a major rezoning project that will help shape the city’s future. Literally. Both the city’s Comprehensive Plan and Affordable Housing Plan, adopted by City Council last year, outline the need for more housing in the city. One of the major recommendations for achieving that is revising the city’s zoning code to allow for more housing density, and therefore more variety of housing.
The public has 30 days to comment on Youngkin’s new transgender student policies and Charlottesville teachers and parents are weighing in
A mandatory, 30-day public comment period for the Youngkin administration’s proposed policies related to transgender students in Virginia opened Monday morning. As of Tuesday morning, more than 16,000 people weighed in on the Department of Education’s proposal which, if adopted, would serve as a model for school boards across the state to adopt. Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s policies walk back those set by the prior Gov. Ralph Northam’s administration that require schools to fully accommodate transgender students and allow teachers and administrators to decide whether or not to inform parents.
Race is at the center of Louisa County School Board special election
Can an all-white school board adequately represent its minority constituents? That’s the question Louisa County voters are being asked to answer in a Nov. 8 special election. The school board, which governs eight schools with about 30% non-white students, has been all white since 2014. When two Black residents...
We’re hiring: Cover big stories in local news as a reporter with Charlottesville Tomorrow
Charlottesville Tomorrow is a community-driven, socially conscious news organization. We serve our neighbors by connecting them to each other and to the issues that affect them most. Our reporters dig deeply into issues that affect our community, regularly producing work that highlights issues often ignored by other media. We center...
Charlottesville Tomorrow awarded two-year, $200,000 grant from the Ford Foundation in support of expanding capacity for local news
This fall, central Virginia’s nonprofit newsroom Charlottesville Tomorrow is joining the collective of journalism organizations that receive support from the Ford Foundation with the receipt of a two year, $200,000 grant under the Foundation’s Creativity and Free Expression program. “We are building a strong local newsroom that can...
After learning that Albemarle was struggling to stock period products, a local mom took matters into her own hands
When Sarah Harris called Henley Middle School last year to inquire about their period product supply, she was told they were out. She quickly gathered donations, both from herself and her neighborhood Facebook group, and provided the school with dozens of boxes of pads and tampons. Harris didn’t want a...
While Charlottesville erected Confederate monuments, hundreds of African American residents were sitting for professional portraits
A new exhibition showing 180 portraits of local African Americans taken during the early 20th Century opens in Charlottesville next week. The people featured in “Visions of Progress: Portraits of Dignity, Style, and Racial Uplift” lived in Charlottesville, Albemarle County and Nelson County. They posed and paid for their portraits during the Jim Crow era, which makes the portraits contemporary with the attempted lynching of two Black men in a Charlottesville jail; with the installation of Confederate statues, including ones of generals Robert E. Lee and Thomas J. Jackson, in public parks; with the rebirth of the Ku Klux Klan.
Wanna try an e-bike? Josh Carp will lend you his
Josh Carp can’t go anywhere on his e-bike without someone asking him about it. Kids swarm it when Carp picks up his oldest child at daycare. Adults pepper him with questions when he rides it to Bodo’s for bagels. Carp’s not only happy to talk about his e-bike,...
With just six bus drivers, more than 3,000 Charlottesville City Schools children are making their own ways to school this year
A group of girls holding brand new sneakers in their hands, giggled and chatted as they walked up Cherry Avenue toward Buford Middle School on Wednesday morning. A crossing guard held up a stream of cars, many of them waiting to drop off students, to allow the girls to cross Tenth Street SW onto the school grounds. As the girls approached school doors they were surrounded by children streaming out of cars, or arriving on foot and bicycles.
Our reporters are building community, in and out of the newsroom
Here at Charlottesville Tomorrow, we see ourselves as both journalists and members of this community. So we want you to know who we are!. We’re thrilled that Vinegar Hill Magazine has featured one of our reporters, Tamica Jean-Charles in their pages. Writer Katrina Spencer gets to the heart of Tamica’s work:
Eviction filings soar as rent relief program winds down
More than 100 people packed into the Albemarle County General District Courthouse on Thursday afternoon. Over the course of nearly two hours, presiding judge the Hon. Matthew Quatrara went through a docket of more than 90 landlord disputes, the vast majority of them eviction cases for nonpayment of rent. If...
Public housing resident speaks about new youth program — ‘We have to show them that those dreams are possible’
The Charlottesville Public Housing Association of Residents offers paid internships to residents of public housing and recipients of Section-8 housing vouchers. Over the course of six months, for approximately 10 hours each week, PHAR interns learn about national and local housing policies, community resources, public speaking, and more, with the goal of using their knowledge and voices to influence the decisions made about their homes and communities.
After struggling as a child, mother and grandmother in Charlottesville public housing, Mary Anderson wants to help a new generation thrive
The Charlottesville Public Housing Association of Residents offers paid internships to residents of public housing and recipients of Section-8 housing vouchers. Over the course of six months, for approximately 10 hours each week, PHAR interns learn about national and local housing policies, community resources, public speaking, and more, with the goal of using their knowledge and voices to influence the decisions made about their homes and communities.
New pictures of Charlottesville in 2017 tell the story of a community that fought back
For about a decade now, Ézé Amos has walked all over the city with his camera, capturing slices of Charlottesville life — friends catching up over drinks on the Miller’s patio, children dancing to a busker’s tune. He knows everyone, and everyone knows him. Amos...
Why Charlottesville? Geography, history, racism and local politics all collided in 2017
“It wasn’t like I set out to go fight Nazis,” said Emily Gorcenski. When hate groups came together to rally in Charlottesville on Aug. 11 and 12, 2017, Gorcenski was there as a resident and counterprotester. She was attacked by white supremacists and targeted online by some of the most powerful people in their movement.
In Charlottesville’s ‘summer of hate,’ a Chinese American pastor found his place in the struggle for civil rights
On Aug. 12, 2017, I spent the day at First United Methodist Church, helping counterprotesters and faith leaders communicate while white supremacists, neo-Nazis and racists marched the streets of Charlottesville, my home town. The church was a sanctuary for counter protesters, where I witnessed people seek care after being bloodied and bruised by the violence that day.
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Founded in 2005, Charlottesville Tomorrow is a hyperlocal journalism nonprofit with a mission to expand civic engagement and foster a vibrant, inclusive, and interdependent community.
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