INSIDE Local food distributor donates 200 turkeys for families in need > page 8
Volume 66 Number 46 • November 25, 2021
A bountiful
Survey: Many support move to adjust GCPS calendar, but not next year
harvest Local organization’s community garden effort has been helping feed residents in need
Teachers make up largest group lending support to “balanced calendar” plan
By Roslyn Ryan Editor
By Roslyn Ryan Editor
To local community activist Sekou Shabaka, helping those in need can often come down to simply paying attention. When you live in a community, Shabaka said, you learn where the needs are. After that, it’s all about figuring out how you can best address that need. It was exactly this philosophy that helped guide Shabaka on his latest mission, an effort to provide locally-grown, nourishing food to local residents facing hunger. As the founder and president of the Shrine of the Black Madonna Sanctuary (SBMS), a charitable, nonprofit organization focused on serving low-income and marginalized families in Goochland, Shabaka has partnered with lifelong gardener Mary Holland to create and maintain three separate community garden spaces aimed at combatting hunger in Goochland. see Garden > 5
Contributed photo
Earlier this year, a young volunteer carefully tended to a section of the community garden created three years ago by the Shrine of the Black Madonna Sanctuary, a local nonprofit focused on addressing the needs of the county’s underserved residents.
For nearly a decade, Goochland County Public Schools (GCPS) has been eyeing the possibility of a change to the school calendar that would move away from the traditional long summer holiday in favor of spreading the same number of instructional days— currently 180—more evenly throughout the year. But while the discussion has continued on and off—and led to the school division securing a state planning grant to investigate the issue further in 2014—the overall view remained the same: Goochland as a community was not ready to embrace what school officials refer to as a “balanced calendar” concept. Seven years later, however, there is evidence that some teachers, parents and students may be beginning to warm to the idea and the documented benefits a change could bring. Included among them are a reduction in the so-called “summer slide,” the loss of academic progress that occurs over the traditional three-month summer break, as well as increased opportunities for academic enrichment.
see Calendar > 3