Governor Youngkin celebrates public Education Innovation and Signs Proclamation Ahead of Teacher Appreciation Week

RICHMOND, Va. – The founders of Fonticello Food Forest bent down under the picnic table to pick edible chickweed leaves and lavender flowers. Moments later they were running to their neighbors’ aid – some of their chickens were loose.

Jameson Price and Laney Sullivan founded the outdoor space, which serves as a free source of fresh and perishable food for community members. The food is donated or grown on-site, the pair said. The property is located in Carter Jones Park, south of the James River in Richmond.

Price and Sullivan are part of a larger effort to mitigate food insecurity and food waste across Virginia.

Grassroots efforts

Nationally, food insecurity went unchanged at 10.5% between 2019 and 2020, according to the USDA. However, food pantry usage increased between those two years.

More than 4% of families used food pantries in 2019 and, almost 7% of families reported using a food pantry in 2020, according to USDA. The 2021 data was not available as of mid-April, according to USDA.

Food pantry usage is higher among those who experience food insecurity, according to USDA.

Local grocery stores and nonprofit organizations such as Feed More food bank provide food for the Fonticello Food Forest, Price and Sullivan said. They have built contacts with store employees to help acquire leftover food; one method also deployed by the food sharing organization Food Not Bombs where Sullivan also works.

Over 816,000 tons of surplus food were sent to the landfill in Virginia in 2019, according to data from ReFED, a nonprofit dedicated to ending food loss and waste across the U.S. That includes food surplus from manufacturing, retail, food service, farming, and residential sources. The food that Fonticello Food Forest saves from waste is a tiny piece of the billions of pounds of food thrown away every day, Sullivan said.

“This is not the better world,” Sullivan said. “This is better than it would be if it was all going in the trash, but it’s not the ideal.”

RVA Community Fridges works to increase access to fresh, locally-grown food, according to Taylor Scott, the mutual aid nonprofit’s founder. The program works to keep 10 established fridges in the Richmond area stocked with free food. Scott founded RVA Community Fridges in 2020 after wanting to redistribute surplus tomatoes she grew in her home garden.

Mutual aid is the principle of serving one’s community to meet the immediate needs of community members, according to GlobalGiving, a nonprofit organization that connects other nonprofits with donors and companies.

The goal is to add more fridges in food deserts, areas that are far from grocery stores and have limited access to affordable and fresh food.

The newest fridge was established at Ms. Girlee’s Kitchen—a restaurant in the Fulton Hill neighborhood—after community members highly requested it. The area is a food desert lacking basic infrastructure, according to Scott.

Providing food for the Fulton Hill community has been rewarding, Scott said. Over 60% of the neighborhood’s population is Black, and 10% are over age 65, according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau. Scott wants to add more fridges in communities of color. Black individuals make up 29% of the population of Richmond and Petersburg but account for 48% of people experiencing poverty, according to United Way, an organization that funds nonprofits in the Richmond area. Latino individuals make up 6% of the population but account for 15% of individuals experiencing poverty, according to the same data.

Black Space Matters

The Institute for Contemporary Art at VCU in 2020 started a collaboration with Duron Chavis, an urban farmer, and community activist, to highlight issues of food insecurity. Chavis grew food in the vacant lot outside the museum that was later distributed. The project also highlighted the importance of Black community spaces to have conversations about food justice.

People cannot discuss food insecurity without discussing the issue of land use, Chavis said, because those who do not have access to healthy food often don’t have access to land to grow that food.

“Our work is about reaching people’s dignity and their ability to be self-determining and to make decisions for themselves that increase their health and increase access to healthy food without hoping on some outside resources to come in and make everything better for them,” Chavis said.

Governments could create something like an office dedicated to urban agriculture, but Richmond hasn’t established such an office, Chavis said.

Mark Davis, the founder of Real Roots Food Systems, also is working to expand access to locally-grown food. The organization’s goal is for people to know where their food comes from and experiment with ways to obtain food that doesn’t involve purchasing items.

“I think it’s a special thing to be in a cashless exchange in times like these, to create a resiliency in communities like this,” Davis said recently when interviewed for the “Black Space Matters” Season Two documentary series.

Davis said that he grows food on land in Hanover County, owned by Richmond-based First Baptist Church. The church then donates the food to food pantries and other outlets. RealRoots wants to create less waste in landfills and meaningful collection of research around waste diversion.

Legislative action

Virginia legislators are also enacting laws to help support access to local agriculture. Del. Sam Rasoul, D-Roanoke, introduced House Bill 2068 in the 2021 Virginia General Assembly session to connect local farmers to local consumers, he said.

The bill, which was passed unanimously by both chambers in 2021, established the Local Food and Farming Infrastructure Grant Program. The program created grants to support infrastructure and other projects to support local farming. The grants are available on a competitive basis and award up to $25,000 per grant, according to the bill.

Some examples of ways the grants have been used include flash freezing produce, canning farmed food, and transferring farmed food to wholesale markets, Rasoul said.

“So, it’s all about trying to get that local food from the farm to the market, and at the same time reducing our [carbon] footprint,” Rasoul said.

Rasoul introduced HB 323 this past session to double the program’s available grant money from $25,000 to $50,000. Both chambers in the General Assembly also passed this measure unanimously.

The grant program awarded eight grants in December 2021 to various food infrastructure projects. Two of the projects involve improving farmer’s markets, two involve meat processors and two involve upgrading local canning systems, according to the Virginia Department for Agriculture and Consumer Services.

This finding inspired environmental studies professor John Jones to dream up a miniature version of the main food pantry on campus, which began in 2014 and is located inside the University Student Commons at VCU.

Little Ram Pantries launched in October 2021 in various locations around campus. People can take however much of the nonperishable items they need and donate as much food as they can.

One aspect preventing people from using the main food pantry on campus is the stigma associated with food pantries, according to Jones. He wanted to employ the Little Ram Pantries as a way to eliminate the stigma surrounding using resources, he said.

Jones received program funding from the Office of Community Engagement and VCU Service Learning and has support from the school’s Institute for Inclusion, Inquiry, and Innovation. Each box has a sensor to track when the boxes are opened and closed for Jones’ research.

Jones found students interact with the Little Ram Pantries at over twice the rate they visit the main campus food pantry. The main food pantry on campus receives about 34 visits per week, Jones said, while the satellite version he launched receives about 75. This success led to him expanding the program by creating more locations.

Professors from the University of Alabama and the University of West Georgia reached out to him about starting their own version of the program, Jones said. He wants to launch a website that details best practices for miniature food pantries, he said.

“If our society wants to be serious about fixing the underlying issue as to why people are hungry, then we need to look at the issue of why people aren’t being paid enough,” Jones said.

Fonticello Food Forest founders Price and Sullivan helped round up the neighbor’s loose chickens and returned to finish the interview.

“In a truly just world and a truly reciprocal, mutual-aid world, there wouldn’t be this food waste to be redistributed and folks would be more connected to the food process,” Price said. “We understand that that’s not such an easy thing, to just suddenly flip a switch on, so you do what you do in the meantime.”

Capital News Service is a program of Virginia Commonwealth University’s Robertson School of Media and Culture. Students in the program provide state government coverage for a variety of media outlets in Virginia.

RICHMOND, Va. – Krysti Albus taught multiple subjects for 20 years and now teaches early childhood special education. She saw many colleagues leave the classroom in the middle of the year for better-paying corporate jobs.

“What we have had to go through to have a net income of 30-some thousand dollars a year, but to also have the increased expectations that we have had to have during this pandemic, has been unreal,” Albus said.

Schools in Virginia are facing a critical teacher shortage, according to Adria Hoffman, president of the Virginia Association of Colleges and Teacher Educators.

The teacher shortage has resulted in about 1,000 to 1,200 unfilled positions statewide, according to Hoffman.

“It’s not just about how many teachers are we missing, but also how many human beings who care about kids and understand human development and child development,” Hoffman said.

Teacher shortages were something the state grappled with before the pandemic. Former Gov. Terry McAuliffe said in a 2018 Washington Post article that the “teacher shortage will be the steepest education challenge” that his successor would face.

Teaching vacancies increased by nearly 62% from the 2018-19 school year to the 2020-21 school year, according to an article published by Virginia Mercury. That resulted in an increase from 877 vacant positions to 1,420.

Data from an annual Virginia Department of Education report in October 2021 showed over 2,500 teaching vacancies. The numbers have likely changed, but school divisions do not report daily, weekly or monthly data on unfilled positions, according to the VDOE.

School districts with the highest student populations, such as Fairfax County with more than 178,000 students and Prince William County with around 90,000, currently have hundreds of vacancies, according to representatives for both counties.

Fairfax County Public Schools, as of April, has around 200 teaching vacancies, according to media outreach specialist Jennifer Sellers. The school is “1% shy of being fully staffed,” Sellers stated.

The numbers are typical of trends over the last few years and don’t indicate a shortage, Sellers stated.
Prince William County Public Schools has 453 vacant positions. Prince William County hires between 700 to 900 teachers per year on average, according to Diana Gulotta, PWCS communications director.

Richmond City Public Schools, with over 21,000 students, has listed at least 90 open teacher vacancies this year.

Filling a “leaky bucket”

Schools are filling these open positions by hiring individuals who carry provisional licenses, according to Hoffman. The licenses allow individuals to start teaching without completing teacher preparation programs, according to Hoffman. They must obtain full licensure requirements before the provisional license expires. However, these individuals have significant attrition rates, according to Hoffman.

“Recruiting pools of people and making it easier for them to enter doesn’t actually solve the crisis,” Hoffman said. “I equate it to filling a leaky bucket.”

The pandemic also caused many educators to be out on sick leave for weeks at a time due to COVID-19, according to Hoffman. This led to schools utilizing staff members who traditionally don’t work in the classrooms to alleviate the shortage.

Office administrators, superintendents, professional learning coordinators, and curriculum specialists across the state were deployed to be full-time substitute teachers for months at a time, according to Hoffman.

The Virginia Retirement System is also being used as a critical teacher shortage recruiting resource. Employees who retired through a VRS position, and who hold a state Board of Education license can apply for temporary teacher or administrator positions only in designated critical shortage positions. They can continue to receive retirement benefits while teaching.

Contributing issues

As the retention rate continues to drop, Hoffman said better working conditions, pay raises, and infrastructure improvements will likely help retain teachers.

Many schools need infrastructure improvements as they lack updated ventilation systems or windows that open, Hoffman said. This creates bad air quality, which can hurt those who are either immunocompromised or live with such individuals at home, according to Hoffman.

“Even losing 1, 2, or 3% of your workforce due to lack of safe and clean air quality makes an impact,” Hoffman said.

Lawmakers amended the state budget last year to put $250 million from the American Rescue Plan Act toward improvements to school ventilation systems. School districts were required to fully match their allotment.

Denise Johnson, associate dean of teacher education and community engagement at the College of William and Mary, conducted an exit interview of teachers in 2018. Teachers listed reasons for leaving such as lack of support from the administration, workload, and pay.

A third of teachers surveyed indicated that a pay raise would have been an incentive to stay in the classroom. However, 23% said that no incentives would have encouraged them to stay.

Teachers are leaving the classroom due to high-stress levels due to the pandemic, according to Shane Riddle, director of government relations and research at the Virginia Education Association.

Teachers are nervous that they will be blamed for students’ learning losses from being in and out of the classroom so often due to the pandemic, Riddle said. “How do you get students back to where they need to be if the state is going to hold them accountable for something they can’t control?”

Teachers need to feel like they’re being better supported by their administrators and school districts as a whole, according to Riddle.

Many parents started homeschooling their children during the pandemic because they felt there was “no real structure,” and they had lower confidence in the school system, according to Riddle.

“The writing on the wall”

The number of students being home-schooled throughout Virginia for the current school year is over 61,000, including students home-schooled with religious exemptions. That total number in the 2019-20 school year was just over 44,000. The number of students being home-schooled now is currently almost 40% higher.

Homeschooling jumped even higher the school year after the pandemic hit and decreased a little as vaccines became available and schools opened back up the classrooms.

“Most of the time, parents and teachers work together really well,” Riddle said. “I just think the pandemic added a different aspect to the parent-teacher relationship and then added some stress to it.”

Albus said teachers pivoted when schools closed in 2020 and found ways for students to learn and obtain materials virtually.

Teachers needed to be flexible because many students didn’t have the proper guidance or support at home to help with virtual education, according to Albus.

“You can imagine the amount of learning loss that we had because so many of these children were not monitored appropriately,” Albus said. “It had nothing to do with the parents, it just had to do with this whole horrendous situation.”

Children also have internalized trauma from the pandemic, which comes out in the classroom, according to Albus. It is stressful for teachers to deal with these behavioral issues, Albus said.

The school where Albus works received a mental health counselor this year, according to Albus. School counselors help prepare students academically and behaviorally. Mental health counseling provides additional support, Albus stated. Legislation passed in 2020 required local school boards to employ one full-time equivalent school counselor position per 325 students in K-12, effective with the 2021–22 school year.

“It gets to a point where you’re weighing your options and you’re like, is this really worth my net pay of $30,000 a year with all the student loans I have,” Albus said. “Or, why am I not getting paid more to do more of what they expect me to do since the pandemic.”

Erin Chancellor taught in multiple counties around Virginia but left the classroom in 2021 after six years, due to the stress and demands of the job during the pandemic.
Chancellor cited her top reason for leaving the profession “without reservation” was due to health security because teachers were called back to the classroom during the uncertainty of the pandemic before there was a vaccine.

Teaching is Chancellor’s lifelong calling, she said. But it was hard to continue dealing with the stress of her students’ academic performance dropping due to the pandemic. The constant switching between virtual and in-person learning environments affected student learning, she said.

“I don’t know if I have it in me to live with the pressure of having my students get test scores that are high enough to show progress and also meet criteria for X, Y, and Z,” Chancellor said.

Many teachers across different counties left the profession because of the difficulty of virtual teaching and the realization that the pandemic would have lasting effects in the classroom, according to Chancellor.

“I just feel like I saw the writing on the wall and I wanted to leave in time to get out and get into a new profession before everyone quit,” Chancellor said.

The “most important thing right now” is for teachers to be heard and be a part of the decision-making process for public education, she said.

“Education is just trying to catch up with the pandemic and figure out how to move forward with it,” Chancellor said.

Financial assistance for teachers

Del. Karen S. Greenhalgh, R-Virginia Beach, introduced House Bill 103. The measure seeks to provide an income tax deduction of up to $500 for teachers, counselors, and other educators that work a minimum of 900 hours, to help with curriculum, supplies, textbooks, and other educational equipment purchases. The bill continued to the special session when lawmakers could not agree on an amendment. The special session began on April 4, but the measure has not been picked back up.

House lawmakers proposed a 4% salary increase for public school teachers in 2022 and 2023 with a bonus of 1% for each year. If the House version is passed, the first salary increase would take effect July 1.

Lawmakers have not finalized the budget at this time, and negotiations are ongoing.

By Anna Chen and Reid Murphy
Capital News Service

Capital News Service is a program of Virginia Commonwealth University’s Robertson School of Media and Culture. Students in the program provide state government coverage for a variety of media outlets in Virginia.