🔧 Good morning, RVA: More teachers, more unions, more tools

Good morning, RVA! It’s 22 °F, and that’s definitely the coldest morning temperature we’ve seen in a good, long while. Highs today will eventually creep up into the 40s, but, if you’ve gotta leave the house this morning, make sure you bundle up and maybe even grab a scarf. Maintain for just a couple of days because warmer temperatures return this weekend.
 

Water cooler

Megan Pauly at VPM reports on a neat new program Richmond Public Schools launched called Build Our Own Teachers. The program helps existing RPS staff—think long-term subs or instructional assistants—become fully licensed teachers by covering the costs for required classes and tests. This seems like a smart way to help increase the number of teachers by pulling from a pool of folks already committed to and invested in the District. Interested folks can learn more on the RPS website and sign up for the second cohort (which kicks off in January).
 

The Richmond Times-Dispatch’s Em Holter reports on the push to establish a collective bargaining agreement for the City’s general service workers. Timing is sort of the essence here, as the ordinance which established collective bargaining for City employees (ORD. 2022–221) sets a December 1st deadline for at least a portion of the process, theoretically giving the Mayor and his team enough time to adjust the upcoming budget. Sounds like—after an unproductive session earlier this week—both parties intended to continue meeting ahead of Friday’s deadline, and we should know more in a few days.
 

A couple weeks back, someone broke into Groundwork RVA’s bike shop in Bellemeade and took a bunch of bike tools. A huge bike-related bummer all around. Unfortunately, before the shop can get back to supporting all the bike-needs of folks in the community, they’ve got to replace a couple toolboxes worth of tools. But that’s where you come in! Check out this spreadsheet of tools and sign up to drop off any spares you have laying around—or, and maybe even better, just send them a package with a few shiny, new pliers, wrenches, and other things that I have no idea how to use. Make sure you scroll all the way to the bottom of the sheet for a short list of other items they could use like u-locks, inner tubes, and tires. There’s only about 40 tools on the spreadsheet, and that seems like a totally achievable goal for folks reading this newsletter to knock out this morning!
 

A few months ago, RICToday launched a neat “Know Your City” series that, so far, has covered a few of Richmond’s really wonderful community centers/parks/public places: Humphrey Calder, Ann Hardy, and Pine Camp. Tap through to learn more about each, and then make a plan to check them out in person (but maybe only once the temperature warms up a little, though).
 

This morning’s longread

A blog post is a very long and complex search query to find fascinating people and make them route interesting stuff to your inbox

I thought this was a clever way of thinking about writing online—and using that writing to connect with other folks who share your same, weird interests. I say try it out, start writing about your favorite weird stuff, and see what happens. This newsletter—a couple hundred words about zoning, rezoning, and sewer systems sent each day—is proof that it can work!
 

When writing in public, there is a common idea that you should make it accessible. This is a left over from mass media. Words addressed to a large and diverse set of people need to be simple and clear and free of jargon. It is valuable to write clearly of course, to a degree. Clear writing is clear thinking. But to make the content accessible? To cut digressions and obscure references to reduce the number of things people need to understand to make sense of your argument? Really? That is against our purposes here. A blog post is a search query. You write to find your tribe; you write so they will know what kind of fascinating things they should route to your inbox.
 

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

Picture of the Day

Not just for carrying around bikes.