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Virginia Schools Closed Remainder Of Term; Some Businesses Ordered Shut

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From restaurants and music venues to beauty salons and grocery stores, Governor Northam’s executive order sets rules for how Virginia’s businesses will operate — or not — during coronavirus.

Virginia will close public and private schools for the remainder of the academic year, Gov. Ralph Northam said Monday during a press conference. He also outlined stricter guidelines for which businesses can remain open.

The move, which applies to K-12 schools, is part of an executive order that goes into effect March 24 at 11:59 p.m. and remains in force until April 23. 

“We have a health crisis and we have an economic crisis but the sooner that we can get this health crisis under control, the sooner that our economy can recover,” Northam said. 

Currently, the state’s 1.3 million public school students are in the middle of a two-week break due to the coronavirus. With 254 positive cases in Virginia and seven confirmed deaths, the governor finds it best to practice social distancing because “social distancing matters everywhere,” he said. Northam encourages schools to use online tools to finish students’ education for the rest of the academic year.

“School closures are necessary to minimize the speed at which COVID-19 spreads and protect the capacity of our healthcare system,” Northam said.

Northam said school division leaders will officially decide how students will learn the information they were meant to cover for the remainder of the year. The Virginia Department of Education will issue guidance to help school divisions think through those decisions and ensure every student is served fairly, Northam said. VDOE will submit a waiver to the federal government to lift end-of-year testing requirements and is exploring options to waive state-mandated tests, he said.

G.W. Carver Elementary School in Richmond. Photo by Noah Daboul.

The governor also placed additional restrictions on businesses. Restaurants must close their dining rooms but can remain open for carry-out and delivery. Recreational and entertainment facilities — including racetracks and historic horse racing facilities, bowling alleys and theaters — must close. Beauty salons, spas, massage parlors, and other non-essential establishments that can’t keep people more than 6 feet apart must close. Essential businesses such as grocery and convenience stores, pharmacies, pet and feed stores, electronic and hardware retailers, and banks can remain open.

Autumn Carter, who has owned Red Salon Organics in Richmond for 20 years, said she has a loyal clientele. However, she is concerned about making lease payments and managing other business-related bills, with no new revenue. Her salon made the decision to close last week for two weeks, but did not anticipate shuttering business for this long.

“I agree with the governor’s decision but he has given us no debt relief and no guidance,” Carter said. “He has put us in a terrifying situation with no support.”

Public and private gatherings of more than 10 people are banned. Northam explained that local law enforcement could approach people gathering, say at beaches or the river, but that the goal isn’t to penalize people, “but to encourage people to do the right thing.” 

The governor noted that the commonwealth is moving into a period of sacrifice. Virginia had one of the lowest unemployment rates in the nation, but Northam said that last week around 40,000 people filed for unemployment.

“We must put aside what we want and replace it with what we need,” he said. “It will require everyone to sacrifice.”

Written by Zobia Nayyar, Capital News Service. Top Image via Governor of Virginia/Facebook

Northam Signs Bill Mandating Statewide Policy For Transgender Students

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Under the new law, Virginia’s Department of Education has until the end of 2020 to create a policy that establishes a baseline for the way transgender students in the Commonwealth’s public school districts must be treated.

From Gavin Grimm’s years of legal struggles to the Stafford County student left alone in a gym during a lockdown drill, transgender students in Virginia have contended with a great deal of confusion, uncertainty, and buck-passing while trying to exist within the Commonwealth’s public school system over the past several years. However, that should all change in coming years, and it starts with a bill signed into law last week by Governor Ralph Northam, one that requires Virginia’s Department of Education to, by the end of 2020, create a statewide policy for the treatment of transgender students.

“In Virginia, we fully expect our schools to treat all students with the dignity and respect they deserve,” Northam said in a statement. “This bill represents an important step towards making Virginia more welcoming and inclusive.”

The bill, which was introduced by 53rd District Delegate Marcus Simon in the House and by 33rd District Senator Jennifer Boysko in the state Senate, requires the Department of Education to create a model policy for transgender students to be released to all public school districts in the state. The policies those individual school districts adopt must be “consistent with, but may be more comprehensive than, the model policies developed by the Department of Education.”

“It is past time we put in place comprehensive policies to protect Virginia’s transgender students,” Simon said. “This bill will ensure the safety and dignity of all students in Virginia, regardless of how they identify or where they live.”

The need for such a policy is obvious to anyone who has been following the issue of transgender student rights in Virginia. Gavin Grimm’s years of legal action, culminating in a federal judge ruling last year that Grimm suffered from discrimination when school authorities wouldn’t let him use the boys’ bathroom at his school, is not the only situation in which the issues Virginia’s transgender students face were illuminated: a former West Point teacher is currently suing the West Point School Board for firing him after he refused orders to use male pronouns when referring to a transgender student.

The policy should be available to Virginia’s school districts by December 31, 2020.

Top Photo By Varmin, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia

Hundreds Rally At the Virginia Capitol For Education Reform

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Dressed in red and demanding that the General Assembly “Fund Our Future,” Virginia’s teachers showed up in force at the Capitol building Monday.

Bells chiming through Capitol Square were drowned out Monday as hundreds of education advocates dressed in red chanted for lawmakers to “fund our future.” 

The Virginia Education Association and Virginia American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations organized the rally to restore school funding to pre-recession levels, increase teacher pay and reinstate collective bargaining. The VEA is made up of more than 40,000 education professionals working to improve public education in the commonwealth. Virginia AFL-CIO advocates for laws that protect current and retired workers. 

An estimated 600 to 800 people attended the rally, according to The Division of Capitol Police. Participants wore red in support of Red for Ed, a nationwide campaign advocating for a better education system. 

Speakers took to the podium, including VEA President Jim Livingston and Vice President James Fedderman.

“We do this for our children, they are the reason we are here,” Livingston said. “They are the reason we put our blood, sweat and tears into this profession that we call public education.”

Stafford Public Schools Superintendent Scott Kinzer and Fairfax County School Board member Abrar Omeish also spoke, along with teachers from multiple counties.

Richmond Public Schools announced last week that it would close for the rally after a third of teachers, almost 700, took a personal day to participate. 

“We are proud that so many of our educators will be turning out to advocate for RPS and all of Virginia’s public schools,” RPS Superintendent Jason Kamras stated in a press release.

The 2020 budget puts average RPS teacher salary projections at $51,907 on average, which is near the 2018 level of $51,530.  

“Last year we demonstrated our power to tell the General Assembly that it is time, it is past time, to fund our future,” Livingston said.

A rally held last year called for higher teacher salaries and better school funding. Legislators announced that teachers would receive a 5 percent salary increase in the state budget.

The Virginia Department of Education stated that the budgeted average salary for teachers statewide in 2020 is $60,265; however, teachers in many counties and cities will be paid less than that, with the lowest average salary in Grayson County Public Schools at $39,567. Arlington County Public School teachers will have the highest average salary in the state at $81,129, with other Northern Virginia schools close behind. 

The VDE report showed that in 2017, Virginia ranked 32nd in the country with an average teacher salary of $51,994, compared to the national average of $60,477. 

“We are often putting our own money into things and we need help,” said Amanda Reisner, kindergarten teacher at E.D. Redd Elementary School. “We have buildings that are falling apart, we don’t have enough supplies, we don’t have enough technology.”

The Commonwealth Institute, a Richmond-based organization that analyzes fiscal issues, reported that state funding per student has dropped 7.6 percent since 2009, from $6,225 to $5,749. In addition, public schools in Virginia since 2009 have lost over 2,000 support staff and over 40 counselors and librarians, while the number of students has increased by more than 52,000. 

HB 582, patroned by Del. Elizabeth Guzman, D-Woodbridge, proposes the reinstatement of collective bargaining for public employees. According to the VEA, Virginia is one of three states that does not allow collective bargaining, the power to negotiate salaries and working conditions by a group of employees and their employers. 

The bill would also create the Public Employee Relations Board, which would determine appropriate methods of bargaining and hold elections for representatives to bargain on behalf of state and local government workers. 

“Collectively we bargain, divided we beg,” said AFL-CIO President Doris Crouse-Mays. “The Virginia AFL-CIO and the VEA, we stand hand in hand together.”

Written by Emma Gauthier, Capital News Service. Photos by Noelle Abrahams for RVA Magazine.

Sex Ed Is Key to Reducing Teen Pregnancy, Advocates Say

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States requiring schools to teach sex education have lower teen pregnancy rates; some say high teen pregnancy rates in some Virginia localities are a direct result of the lack of a sex ed requirement in the Commonwealth’s schools.

In the early 2000s, Martinsville, a city of about 13,000 near the North Carolina line, had one of the highest teen pregnancy rates in Virginia. In a typical year, nearly 75 of every 1,000 teenage girls got pregnant.

More than a decade ago, the school opened a teen health clinic, which provides birth control and treats sexually transmitted infections. Since then, the city’s teen pregnancy rate has plummeted.

“It’s just been amazing because I’ve seen success,” said Beth Holyfield, the clinic’s health coordinator. “I think everybody was a little nervous about it because it was Bible Belt area, you know, offering birth control for children.”

Under the federal Title IX program, the Martinsville High School Teen Health Clinic can treat STIs and provide birth control without notifying the student’s parents. Holyfield and two nurse practitioners don’t discuss abortion, but they do routine checks on student weight and blood pressure and administer prescriptions.

According to new data from the Virginia Department of Health, among the state’s 133 localities, Martinsville ranked 16th in teen pregnancy rates in 2018. For every 1,000 teen girls, there were about 21 pregnancies.

Martinsville’s increased access to sex education and contraception coincided with the drop in the city’s teen pregnancy rate. Experts say preaching abstinence over other methods — Virginia’s official policy — has been ineffective. States with more schools teaching contraceptive methods tend to have lower teen pregnancy rates.

Localities vary widely in teen pregnancy rates

Virginia’s teen pregnancy rate in 2017 was 15 pregnancies for every 1,000 teenage girls, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Thirteen states had a lower teen pregnancy rate than Virginia’s. Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Connecticut all had fewer than nine pregnancies per 1,000 teenage girls.

Within Virginia, the rates vary widely, according to data obtained by Capital News Service from the Virginia Department of Health through a Freedom of Information Act request.

The data showed the number of pregnancies for every 1,000 adolescent girls in each city and county of Virginia. That way, it’s possible to compare localities regardless of population.

Petersburg, 30 miles south of Richmond, had the highest teen pregnancy rate in the state in 2018: about 44 pregnancies for every 1,000 teenage girls.

Norton, a city at the southwest tip of Virginia, was second with 35 pregnancies per 1,000 teenage girls. Lancaster County, along the Chesapeake Bay, followed at about 30 pregnancies per 1,000 adolescent girls.

The cities of Roanoke, Richmond, and Hopewell all had rates around 25 pregnancies for every 1,000 teen girls.

Sex education is optional in Virginia

Under the Virginia Standards of Learning, the state’s public school curriculum, schools in the commonwealth may teach sex education but are not required to do so. State law requires an emphasis on abstinence, but the SOL curriculum also includes recommendations for teaching about contraception and condom usage.

More than 90 percent of Virginia schools teach abstinence. Fewer than 40 percent of the state’s high schools teach contraceptive methods recommended by the CDC, according to the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States, or SIECUS.

Virginia Department of Education spokesperson Charles Pyle says the curriculum is designed to promote parental involvement and help students cope with peer pressure during developing stages.

Pyle said classes “include age-appropriate instruction in family living and community relationships, abstinence education, the value of postponing sexual activity, the benefits of adoption as a positive choice in the event of an unwanted pregnancy, human sexuality, and human reproduction.”

Dr. Samuel Campbell, an obstetrician-gynecologist at the Virginia Physicians for Women health-care service, says pregnant teens need more than that.

Pregnant teenagers encounter a specific set of problems because of limited resources and support, Campbell said.

“They have difficulty with transportation. They frequently will seek care later because they are afraid to tell their parents (or) family. They have to continue with their schooling,” Campbell said. “And they have to deal with the social stigma of being a teen mom.”

Most states require sex ed

Thirty-two states require schools to teach sex education, according to the most recent statistics from SIECUS. Eighteen states — including Virginia — do not.

There are seven types of recommended contraception: the birth control pill, patch, ring and shot; implants; intrauterine devices; and emergency contraception. In 2017, no states reported that all of their schools were teaching about all seven methods as well as how to properly use a condom.

According to SIECUS, 19 states reported more than half of school districts teaching students about a variety of contraceptive methods. Fifteen of those states had teen pregnancy rates below the national average of 18 pregnancies per every 1,000 adolescent girls.

Of the 10 states with the lowest teen pregnancy rates, eight required sex ed in all school districts. They include New Hampshire, Wisconsin, and Minnesota, which had pregnancy rates under 15 per 1,000 teenage girls.

The six states with the lowest teen pregnancy rates — Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Vermont, New Jersey, and Rhode Island — reported that three quarters of their schools taught students how to use a condom.

On the other hand, of the 10 states with the highest teen pregnancy rate, seven do not require sex ed in schools. Those states include Arkansas, Texas, and Alabama.

Nationwide, 89 percent of school districts teach abstinence, which recommends that teens put off having sex until marriage. Many schools teach both abstinence and contraceptive methods. That is the case in New Jersey and New Hampshire, where teen pregnancy is below the national average.

Dr. Elizabeth Broderick, a pediatrician in Newport News, calls abstinence education “insufficient information.”

“Abstinence is an excellent way to prevent pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections,” Broderick said. “But eventually, many people choose to become sexually active, and they should have accurate and complete information so they can make the best decision that fits their beliefs and values.”

Broderick says long-acting and reversible contraceptives are generally best for adolescents, but they can be hard to get.

“Access to contraception is difficult for most teenagers,” Broderick said. “Education about anatomy, physiology, contraception, sexually transmitted infections, and consent is appropriate at school and at home.”

‘Educate them on the facts’ to make good decisions

The CDC’s teen pregnancy prevention guidelines say implants and intrauterine devices, or IUDs, are the most effective and reversible birth control methods. Broderick says these are more difficult to obtain than condoms or spermicide because they require a trip to the doctor and a prescription.

Dr. Natalie Dogal, an OB-GYN with Virginia Physicians for Women, said talking about contraception is important for preventing teen pregnancy. She said she discusses contraceptive options with all her teen patients.

“They tend to have heard good or bad stories from friends, parents, or from reading online, and I like to educate them on the facts to help them make good contraceptive decisions,” Dogal said.

According to SIECUS, about 40 percent of male and female high school students nationwide report having had sexual intercourse.

Nationally, the teen pregnancy rate has decreased in recent decades. According to data from the CDC, the rates dropped by 50 percent from 2005 to 2017.

Nearly a third of teen moms reported not using contraceptives because they didn’t think they could get pregnant. Another quarter of teen moms reported that their partners did not want to use contraception.

“Many teenagers think they are invincible,” Dogal said. “That includes thinking they will never be the one who gets pregnant or gets an STI.”

Resources for Teen Mothers in Virginia

The Virginia Department of Health has resources for first-time teen mothers. In the “Resource Mothers” program, a community health worker develops a supportive mentoring relationship with the teen and her family. The free resources include information about prenatal care and health care, assistance finishing school, and tools to avoid drugs and alcohol. Mothers can also sign up for free text messages on prenatal and infant care.

The Healthy Teen Network has a variety of resources for teen parents across the country, including #NoTeenShame, “Mom, Dad — I’m Pregnant,” and Healthy Families America.

To find a health assistance program near you, call 1-800-311-BABY. This will connect you to the nearest health department. For information in Spanish, call 1-800-504-7081.

The U.S. Bureau of Maternal and Child Health has resources for women nationwide. The programs and initiatives include home visiting, which provides at-risk pregnant women tools for mother and child health, raising children, and preventing neglect. The bureau seeks to promote child development and encourage positive parenting.

Planned Parenthood has a webpage for teens to get information about sex, puberty, pregnancy, and birth control, as well as a private chat function for additional questions.

Planned Parenthood has health centers in Charlottesville, Richmond, Hampton, and Virginia Beach. There are also two health centers in the Washington, D.C., area.

How We Got and Crunched the Data

For this report, we downloaded teen pregnancy rates for each state from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

In addition, we needed the teen pregnancy rates for each city and county in Virginia. The Virginia Department of Health posts such data on its website; however, at the time, the most recent statistics available were for 2017.

We filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the VDH, asking for the 2018 data. The department emailed us the file we requested and then posted it online.

The VDH provided the data as PDFs. We exported the data as an Excel file and cleaned up column headings and other formatting. We have posted all of the data we obtained from the VDH and CDC.

One question we wanted to explore was whether there was a relationship between teen pregnancy rates and the sexual education curriculum taught in schools. To examine this on the national level, we used 2017 data from the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States.

We compared the council’s data, which explains how comprehensive sex ed is in each state, with the pregnancy rates from the CDC.

Written by Hannah Eason and Emma North, Capital News Service. Top Photo by kyo azuma on Unsplash.

Post-Accreditation, Former and Current Teachers Assess the City’s State of Education

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Richmond’s public schools are deep into the 2018-2019 semester, with midterm exams on the horizon for some, and the long shadow cast by the condition of the city’s education hanging over all.

That condition, detailed in a report released on September 27 by the Virginia Department of Education (VDOE), revealed that less than half of Richmond Public Schools (RPS) met the state education standards required to be awarded accreditation. Additional data released by VDOE also showed RPS had statewide lows in on-time graduation rates and attendance, and statewide highs in dropout and absentee rates at a middle school and high school level. The sole omission was George Washington Carver Elementary, who became embroiled in a cheating scandal earlier this year.

For Gladys Wilder, a retired teacher with 30 years of experience in RPS primary, correctional, exceptional and special education that includes establishing an annual “book tasting” event at Swansboro Elementary, the effort to meet state standards is still fresh in mind.

“It was a struggle to get there. But Swansboro broke out because of leadership,” Wilder said. “I mean local leadership, in-school leadership, principals and assistant principals. It was a whole school effort.”

“No child, no human learns the same way. There’s no box where you can put every child and this is it. Our philosophy, and I’m sure the philosophy now, is every child can learn, every child can achieve. You just have to meet that child where it is.”

RPS Superintendent Jason Kamras seems to share some of Wilder’s beliefs.  In a statement published following the report’s release, Kamras was adamant that any cause for the data’s findings didn’t come from the learning ability of RPS’s students, instead serving as “a reflection of our failure to provide them with the education they deserve.”

My administration is committed to changing this – once and for all – for every young person in RPS, Kamras said.

Wilder, for her part, stressed the importance of not placing guilt for educational failures on individual error, including parents and educators, something she felt may been implied in the wording of Kamras’ response.

“To me, is that like placing the blame on those who are in the trenches, the teachers? I will not do that,” Wilder said, instead drawing attention to the curriculums teachers are expected to abide by — and may occasionally have to veer away from to ensure all students learn what they need.

True to her skillset, Wilder referenced Alfred Lord Tennyson’s poem The Charge of the Light Brigade in describing this situation RPS teachers are placed in.

“There’s blame all over,” Wilder said.

The state requirements for accreditation, recently updated in 2017, include increases in academic performance and decreases in failures in advancement, with special focus for high schools on absenteeism, graduation and dropout rates, in addition to the Standards of Learning (SOL) pass rates that were the sole criteria for accreditation in the past.

The continued presence of SOLs, and the challenges they bring to education, was a point of concern for both Wilder and Sharonda Ragland, an instructor in Virginia Union University’s Department of Mathematics.

“We need to stop teaching to the test,” Wilder said. “If you just teach to the test, and if the words in the test are not what you’re teaching, the kids are going to fail. Teach the child.”

Joining the conversation, Ragland adds, “And they don’t learn at the same rates, but they’re expected to take a standardized test that all of them may not be prepared for.”

Just because it works for one doesn’t mean it’s going to work for all. You’ve got to see what works for your school.

The topic of preparation for students is one Ragland is familiar with, serving last year in a math and science summer program designed to act as a “stepping stone” to college-level coursework for high school students, complete with college credit, improved study habits and early connections with other students. Virginia Union is also home to the Upward Bound program, offering graduating high school students in the RPS system a brief but direct experience at college-level courses and residential life.

Referring to her experience in the summer program, Ragland said, “The ones that have come in through that bridge seem to retain better versus the ones just coming from high school to college without any preparation. It makes a difference.”

The question of how RPS moves forward following this report is one with a number of answers. Tinkhani Ushe White, Ed.D., whose experience stretches from RPS teacher to principal in the Henrico County Public School system to School Improvement Specialist with Chesterfield Public Schools, suggests a path forward may lie in greater cooperation between state authorities, school divisions and the schools themselves. However, White acknowledges the difficulty this method may have with solving “issues outside the school’s control,” like absenteeism or poverty.

“The big thing there is for schools divisions and states to work hand in hand with their schools to try to figure out the issues that are preventing schools from reaching those minimum benchmarks, and then working to supply those needs and close those gaps,” White said.

Gary Broderick, an advocate for Richmond education and School Board candidate in Richmond’s 7th District, had his own ideas in his diagnosis of what he described as a “moral crisis for our city” in a statement to RVA Mag. Broderick wrote that fair funding and compensation should serve as parts of creating an ”atmosphere of support that makes long term investment in RPS a sustainable choice for teachers.”

Gary Broderick, School Board Candidate. Photo by Gary Broderick

“The path forward is clear,” Broderick wrote. “We must exert the political courage to demand corporations pay their fair share of taxes, so that we can staff our schools properly and wholly counteract the racist and systemic defunding of our schools.”

Some measure of Broderick’s recommendation may be coming to RPS, as Richmond City Council prepares for an uphill battle in requesting greater state support for public education as part of the city’s legislative package during the upcoming General Assembly session.

The Rise of Bullying in Trump’s America and How a Local Singer is Helping to Combat the Issue

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“We must teach each child the values of empathy and communication that are at the core of the kindness, mindfulness, integrity, and leadership, which can only be taught by example.”

Those words were spoken by First Lady Melania Trump two months ago at the United Nations. Does she know who her husband is?

In Virginia and across the country, educators have been reporting a disturbing rise in hate-filled bullying among students of all ages, from the youngest in grade-school to college students. While bullying has a long history in American classrooms, the current surge stands out both for the similarity of its targets—Muslim students, immigrants and children of immigrants, children of color, girls, Jews—and the language used against them. And educators have a shared theory as to the cause: Donald Trump and the degraded discourse of our society.

The evidence is abundant. Indeed, the Southern Poverty Law Center has concluded the “Trump effect” is helping to create “an alarming level of fear and anxiety” in children and “inflaming racial and ethnic tensions” in America’s classrooms.

According to the Virginia Department of Education, there were 2,694 incidents of bullying during the 2015-2016 school year.  Bullying certainly isn’t isolated to the commonwealth. This past June, BuzzFeed reported that it confirmed 54 cases across 26 states, including a number of incidents in which students were harassed with references to Trump’s proposed border wall.

In one incident reported by BuzzFeed, a third grader chased a Latina student around the classroom yelling “build the wall!” In another, an eighth grader said to a black classmate: “Now that Trump won, you’re going to have to go back to Africa, where you belong.” The Commonwealth has taken some action recently, passing legislation this summer. HB 1709 was introduced by Del. Eileen Filler-Corn (D-Fairfax). It requires school principals to notify the parent of any student involved in an alleged incident of bullying of the status of any investigation within five school days of the allegation. Still, much more work needs to be done.

“Bullying is only getting worse and it’s driving young children to suicide,” says Miranda Bash, a QMHP A-C (qualified mental health professional) in Richmond. Parents don’t always know everything about their children. I say that from experience.”

Many families across the Commonwealth can relate. One Richmond family, originally from Mexico, have reported that their son has been taunted frequently at school. Being called a “churro,” getting threatened with “the wall;” this is the environment children are forced to deal with now.

All too often, these children suffer in silence. One local songwriter, Tyler Layne, is trying to change that.

“In high school, I went through a lot of bullying,” Layne told me in our interview. “Being bullied in school and online, put a lot of pressure on me,” Tyler kept everything he was dealing with inside, knowing things could get worse, “I just didn’t want to talk about it.”

Things did indeed get worse, with Layne dealing with worsening depression, “I just didn’t value my life.” By junior year of high school, Layne “didn’t want to get out of bed in the morning.” Fast forward two years, and Layne began work on his latest single, “Breathe.”

“The song is me reflecting on that time in my life,” he said. Layne told me that by sharing his story, he can hopefully make people more comfortable sharing theirs. In fact, “Breathe” is Layne’s first time sharing his story, “even to my parents.” With this song, the songwriter wants people to know “it’s okay to not be okay.” To stress that point, Layne teamed up with the “Buddy Project,” a movement that aims to prevent suicide and self-harm by pairing people as buddies and raising awareness for mental health. Tyler started a chapter of the project at VCU. Together, they’re aiming to decrease the suicide rate by 20 percent by 2025.

Unfortunately, Trump is still president, with impressionable children everywhere seeing everything he does. First Lady Melania Trump, speaking at the U.N. this September, said, “By our own example, we must teach children to be good stewards of the world they will inherit.” As she should know, that lesson starts at home.

Top photo credit: Huffington Post