Selected writing
U.S. probe into racial bias in Henrico Schools prompts gifted overhaul
Richmond Times-Dispatch || February 20, 2023
For years, Black students like Matthew Docteur have been systemically underrepresented in Henrico County’s gifted program. Countywide, Black students made up 36% of the public schools population in the 2020-21 academic year, but only 14% of the gifted program.
The Office for Civil Rights, an arm of the U.S. Department of Education, investigated whether Henrico County Public Schools discriminated against African American students by failing to provide them with comparable resources and educational opportunities that are provided to white students to prepare them for postsecondary education or careers.
Richmond’s Jewish community remembers Kristallnacht
Richmond Times-Dispatch || November 6, 2022
On the night of Nov. 9, 1938, Nazi paramilitary forces and German civilians engaged in a wave of violence and vandalism targeting Jewish homes, businesses and synagogues across Germany and Austria. The campaign of violence became known as Kristallnacht, the “Night of Broken Glass,” because of the shattered glass strewn in the streets.
On Sunday afternoon, Holocaust survivors and their family members gathered at the Emek Sholom Holocaust Memorial Cemetery in Henrico County, the oldest Holocaust memorial in the country, for an annual Kristallnacht memorial service.
23 Va. school districts have taken books off shelves in past two years
Richmond Times-Dispatch || May 7, 2022
To understand the landscape of challenges to books in Virginia, the Richmond Times-Dispatch sent public records requests to each of the state’s 132 public school systems seeking information on books that had been removed or placed under review in the past two school years.
Twenty-three school districts confirmed that they had taken at least one book out of circulation for content reasons, while 90 said no books had been brought up for review.
First-time homebuyers feel squeezed out in hot Richmond housing market
Richmond Times-Dispatch || April 30, 2022
An analysis of home sales data by the Richmond Times-Dispatch found that since 2017, average sale prices across the city of Richmond and Chesterfield, Hanover and Henrico counties have shot up by more than $120,000, despite median household income increasing by less than $10,000 in that time period.
Furthermore, the traditional “starter home” price point is rapidly vanishing from the market. In 2017, over 30% of home sales in the area closed for $200,000 or less. Now, less than one of 10 houses sells below that threshold, while twice as many homes sell for over $500,000.
Richmond is Virginia’s overdose capital. Nine of 10 fatal overdoses in the city involve fentanyl.
Richmond Times-Dispatch || January 26, 2022
More than 2,000 Virginians died of drug overdoses through the first nine months of 2021, a 17% increase over the same time frame in 2020. Virginia is on pace to record nearly 2,700 overdose deaths in 2021, a figure nearly four times higher than when the state began tracking overdoses in 2007 in response to the painkiller epidemic.
The spike in overdose deaths — 2021 is poised to be the eighth year in the past nine that Virginia saw record highs — has been driven almost entirely by fentanyl, a synthetic opioid 50 times more potent than heroin. Fentanyl deaths have increased every year since 2012, while deaths not related to the opioid have declined in each of the past five years.
5 ways celebrities use offshore
International Consortium of Investigative Journalists || October 4, 2021
Shakira did it. So did Ringo Starr, Claudia Schiffer, Julio Iglesias and cricket legend Sachin Tendulkar. They have all set up companies “offshore,” in places like the British Virgin Islands (BVI), where tax rates are low or zero and where their businesses — and their identities — are hidden from the public.
And they’re among the celebrities, politicians and billionaires named in a trove of leaked files obtained by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. Those records are part of the Pandora Papers, an investigation of the offshore financial system that the rich and famous use to buy yachts and private jets, invest in real estate and protect their families’ wealth while avoiding scrutiny.
Disconnected: Students struggle with e-learning obstacles, lawmakers earmark solutions
Capital News Service || November 20, 2020
In both Baltimore City and Allegany County, the number of households without a broadband connection hovers around 40%, but usually not for the same reasons.
Allegany County residents are hamstrung by topography that blocks cell signals, and a population density too low to justify the investment of broadband providers. In Baltimore, broadband infrastructure is plentiful. But urban connectivity often comes down to affordability, according to state officials and city stakeholders.
Confusion over federal eviction moratorium led to selective enforcement
Capital News Service || September 2, 2020
A two-month investigation by the Howard Center for Investigative Journalism found that while the federal and state moratoriums dramatically decreased eviction filings in April and May, cracks in the federal law appeared immediately.
Confusion about the moratorium’s language, which played out in conflicting guidance from federal agencies and the courts, led to selective enforcement. Landlords were expected to determine for themselves if their property was covered by the CARES Act. Renters had virtually no legal help to fight back. And eviction filings in some cities dropped more steeply in white neighborhoods than minority neighborhoods during the federal moratorium.