L
EGACY Yesterday. Today. Tomorrow.
WEDNESDAYS • June 16, 2021
INSIDE McAuliffe beats election expectations - 2 A preview: A conversation with “Mr. K”-3 Pharrell launching Norfolk priv. school - 4
Richmond & Hampton Roads
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‘Return to Earn’ program would incentivize new workers with up to $1,000
“These bonuses will serve as an incentive for unemployed workers to get back into the workforce while also helping employers fill vacant jobs. The Virginia Return to Earn Grant Program is about empowering the true catalysts of our economic comeback—Virginia’s workers and small businesses.”- Gov. R. Northam KATE ANDREWS To combat Virginia’s tight labor market, the state plans to invest $3 million in a program to provide new employees of qualifying small businesses with up to $1,000 to support their transition back into the workforce, Gov. Ralph Northam announced Friday. The Virginia Return to Earn grant program will match up to $500 from eligible small businesses that are paying new hires at least $15 an hour and employ fewer than 100 people. The program will be funded through Virginia’s federal Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA) funding, and additional COVID-19 pandemic recovery funds may be allocated based on demand, the governor’s office said. “Many Virginians who lost their jobs as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic still face a variety of barriers to returning to work like access to affordable child care, transportation and a living wage,” Northam said in a statement. “These bonuses will serve as an incentive for unemployed workers to get back into the workforce while also helping employers fill vacant jobs. The Virginia Return to Earn grant
Virginia’s ‘Return to Earn’ program will match employer bonuses with federal aid. program is about empowering the true catalysts of our economic comeback — Virginia’s workers and small businesses.” To qualify for the state’s matching fund of up to $500 per person, businesses must pay that amount directly to a new employee hired after May 31, either as a lump sum or in installments to offset ongoing costs of child care, transportation or other barriers to reemployment. Funds will be reimbursed only to businesses that pay at least $15 per hour for
jobs that qualify as W-2 employment, either full time or part time. Virginia has seen a staffing crisis this year, part of a national trend, as businesses that were shut down or at limited capacity during the pandemic are now fully reopening for businesses — or would if they had enough employees. There are a variety of reasons for the labor shortage, among them state and federal unemployment
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The LEGACY
2 • June 16, 2021
McAuliffe beats already sky-high expectations VM - Terry McAuliffe won Petersburg, the hometown of one of his top opponents, former delegate Jennifer Carroll Foy, who had accused him of neglecting the majority-Black city during his first term. He won in Richmond, where Sen. Jennifer McClellan had an advantage due to her strong local following. He won in Nelson County, a hotbed of opposition to the controversial Atlantic Coast Pipeline project that earned McAuliffe the ire of activists who pressed unsuccessfully for him to block it during his first term. He got almost 65 percent support in Fairfax County, the biggest prize in prosperous Northern Virginia. He did just as well or better in far Southwest Virginia, a region with some of the lowest per-capita incomes in the state. He won everywhere. Literally. By winning the most votes in all 133 of Virginia’s cities and counties, McAuliffe’s victory exceeded the most optimistic expectations of his own campaign, even with its cash advantages and built-in name recognition. “If you’re a McAuliffe staffer, you might just be coming down from the high,” said Quentin Kidd, director of the Wason Center for Public Policy at Christopher Newport University. Public polls had shown McAuliffe getting around 50 percent of the vote. Unofficial results showed him exceeding 62 percent, with almost as many raw votes as Gov. Ralph Northam got in his more competitive 2017 primary contest against former congressman Tom Perriello. “Terry was overwhelmed to receive the support of all 133 cities and counties in Virginia,” said McAuliffe spokesman Jake Rubenstein. “Each and every one of these communities mean so much to Terry and Dorothy, and their confidence in his
Terry McAuliffe campaigns for governor in Richmond. (Ned Oliver/VM) record and vision mean the world.” McAuliffe will now face off against Republican nominee Glenn Youngkin in what’s expected to be a closely watched, expensive generalelection battle. In a post-race memo, the Carroll Foy campaign said her distant second-place finish could be partially attributed to “historically difficult” conditions for nonincumbent candidates. Because of the COVID-19 pandemic and the grueling 2020 presidential campaign, the memo said, “voter exhaustion was significant.” “It became easier to default to the person voters knew: Terry McAuliffe,” the Carroll Foy campaign wrote. Carroll Foy earned almost 20 percent of the vote, and her campaign touted the strides she made going from little-known newcomer to statewide contender in just a few years. But she has no other elected office to return to after quitting her House of Delegates position last year to focus on running for governor and raising money. After her third-place finish at 11.6 percent, McClellan plans to continue serving in the Senate.
Unlike Carroll Foy, she didn’t sharply attack McAuliffe in the primary contest, perhaps preserving her standing in the party moving forward. Immediately after McAuliffe’s victory, the Youngkin campaign released an ad featuring a highlight reel of Carroll Foy’s criticisms of McAuliffe as a lackluster, throwback politician. Though McClellan and Carroll Foy competed for resources and were often grouped together as two potentially history-making Black women, some political observers say it’s an oversimplification to suggest they hopelessly split a portion of the electorate that would’ve aligned against McAuliffe. McAuliffe and McClellan were both competing in an establishment lane, Kidd said, while Carroll Foy was competing with Del. Lee Carter, D-Manassas, more the party’s progressive wing and running against the status quo. If McClellan hadn’t been in the race, Kidd said, some of her support might have gone to McAuliffe instead. “I don’t think it would’ve all been to Carroll Foy,” Kidd said. “And even if it did, McAuliffe still would have doubled that.”
McAuliffe was also running against several candidates trying to make the leap from the General Assembly to the top Executive Branch job, forgoing the more traditional route of running for governor after serving as attorney general or lieutenant governor. Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax’s hopes for higher office changed abruptly in February 2019, when two women accused him of sexual assault. He adamantly denied the allegations, but his fourth-place finish Tuesday showed the scandal was too much to overcome despite his higher profile as a statewide officeholder. With Virginia’s gubernatorial contest serving as one of the first barometers of Democratic enthusiasm, there was debate Tuesday over what to make of the primary turnout. An estimated 8 percent of registered voters participated in the Democratic primary, according to the Virginia Public Access Project, down from the 2017 spike of 9.9 percent but up from 6.4 percent in 2009. Stephen Farnsworth, director of the University of Mary Washington’s Center for Leadership and Media Studies, said he read the numbers as “a draw.” “Turnout was not so high that Democrats can be gleeful and not so low that Republicans can be gleeful,” Farnsworth said. “It was better than some years, worse than others.” Kidd said he thinks Democrats can feel good about not seeing a bigger dip toward 2009 turnout levels, even if it didn’t match the 2017 levels that foretold the eventual Democratic takeover of state government. The fact that McAuliffe ran against a diverse field and still walked away with more than 60 percent of the vote, Kidd said “says a lot.” “It’s a resounding message of support among Democrats for him,” Kidd said.
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A conversation: ‘Mister K’ MARIA-PAULA Local radio luminary, Calvin King, recently celebrated the 50th anniversary of his history-making start in radio. On June 1, 1971, King took to the airwaves at WHSV/ WJWS in South Hill, becoming the first black deejay at the radio station. King helmed the show “Mr. K” beginning a career that spanned a decade/several years. In observance of June as Black Music Appreciation Month, this reporter communicated with King, to better understand the history of black music and black professionals in radio and what the future may hold. Read this space next week for our full interview and Q&A with Mr. King.
Eric Terry, left.
‘Return to Earn’ (from page 1) benefits extended through Sept. 4 and a lack of child care options. Businesses are offering signing and referral bonuses, as well as free meals and end-of-shift cocktails at some restaurants. Hotels and restaurants have been hit particularly hard, notes Eric Terry, president of the Virginia Restaurant, Lodging & Travel Association, who estimates that about 56,000 hotel jobs were lost in Virginia last year, prompting some workers to move on to other career fields. Another pressure point
for some employers is Virginia’s minimum wage raise from $7.25 to $9.50 per hour in May, a first step toward $12 an hour by January 2023, and the fact that Northam has set the grant program eligibility at a $15-per-hour minimum. In response to the governor’s announcement, Terry said, “We are very disappointed that the wage level was set so far above the state minimum wage of $9.50, which was just increased last month. This will do very little to ease the labor crisis our members are feeling as the tourism and restaurant industry tries to recover.”
June 16, 2021 • 3
4 • June 16, 2021
Op/Ed & Letters
The LEGACY
System ‘needs to be broken’: Pharrell Williams launching private school in city of Norfolk
ROGER CHESLEY Virginia Beach native and multiple Grammy Award winner Pharrell Williams has announced he’ll create a private school in Norfolk initially aimed at thirdto-fifth-graders from low-income families. He will thus become the latest entertainer around the country to spearhead an alternative to traditional schools. It will be called Yellowhab and provide tuition-free education for the original 40 to 50 students, at least for the first year. The microThe LEGACY NEWSPAPER Vol. 7 No. 25 Mailing Address P.O. Box 12474 Richmond, VA 23241 Office Address 105 1/2 E. Clay St. Richmond, VA 23219 Call: 804-644-1550 Online www.legacynewspaper.com
school, opening this fall in as-yet undisclosed location, will offer “highly personalized education that knits together transformative learning opportunities at school, at home, online and in the community,” according to a news release. Students will be picked through a lottery, and the plan is to eventually open more schools. There will be an emphasis on science, technology, engineering, art and math — or STEAM. The idea for the school is an outgrowth of STEAM-focused summer camps that Williams started in 2008, so he’s no The LEGACY welcomes all signed letters and all respectful opinions. Letter writers and columnists opinions are their own and endorsements of their views by The LEGACY should be inferred. The LEGACY assumes no responsibility for unsolicited material. Annual Subscription Rates Virginia - $50 Other states - $75 Outside U.S.- $100 The Virginia Legacy © 2020
stranger to educational leadership. He also took a shot at the current school model, which he contends fails too many young people. “If the system is fixed and unfair, then it needs to be broken,” Williams said bluntly in the release. “We don’t want lockstep learning where so many kids fall behind; we want bespoke learning designed for each child, where the things that make a child different are the same things that will make a child rise up and take flight.” Sounds a little amorphous to me. Then again, I’ve never won a baker’s dozen of Grammys. Or boosted my hometown with an array of musical acts and other events over a weekend in 2019, thus helping to reduce the violence that Virginia Beach officials seemed powerless to prevent on previous College Beach Weekends. Or been a partner in an ongoing $325 million multi-use project at the Virginia Beach Oceanfront. It’s disappointing that so many schools, especially public ones, are failing their students around
the country. We know the usual culprits: a lack of readiness by young students; inadequate school funding; the constant need for new construction and renovation; crowded classrooms and low teacher pay that devalues the critical roles they play. (Though the COVID-19 pandemic has forced many parents, thrust into teaching burdens at home, to re-evaluate their attitudes toward educators.) Nor is the presence of a big-name celebrity a guarantee of success for these alternative programs, which often are charter schools. It’s easy to find results that run the gamut. LeBron James opened an “I Promise” school in Akron, Ohio, in 2018 for some of that district’s worst student performers, and it’s gained generally positive reviews. Graduates who attend the University of Akron now have the chance to get additional financial aid under a scholarship program announced this year. Pro Football Hall of Famer Deion Sanders, however, had a rocky
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P.T. Hoffsteader, Esq.
June 16, 2021 • 5
(from page 4) tenure as a co-founder of the Prime Prep Academy in Dallas, a charter school that opened in 2012. It closed in early 2015, and The Washington Post reported “the school’s brief existence was marred by crushing debt, administrative infighting and a trail of lawsuits.” A 2018 article at voanews.com tells of forays into education by singers, athletes and others with varying results.
None of that dissuades Leon Rouson about Pharrell’s effort in Norfolk. Rouson is a professor in the School of Education at Norfolk State University, and he says the Yellowhab project is “an effort to improve educational opportunities for all” – particularly for certain populations. “You have to give credit to that effort,” said Rouson, who’s been at NSU for 17 years and is a former public school teacher. Some celebrities believe they can help groups who previously have
struggled in the classroom, he told me this week. “They want to have some kind of impact,” Rouson said. “It has to start with education. They grasp that.” Pharrell envisions his small private schools to expand to other locations. And there are no plans to seek local approval or funding to make the school a public charter, a Yellowhab official told The Virginian-Pilot. Such schools have sometimes been criticized for draining the public school system of
funding and other resources.. Nor do I think this is a vanity project for the talented entertainer. He’s put his name, talent and money behind plenty of projects that he cares about. For the children who attend Pharrell’s schools, the experience could spark all sorts of possibilities. For their sake, I hope the project’s an overwhelming success. - VM Chesley worked at the (Newport News) Daily Press and The (Norfolk) Virginian-Pilot from 1997 - 2018.
6 • June 16, 2021
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