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Many people inaccurately believe that Hispanic students are new to public schools and higher education, state Secretary of Education Gerard Robinson said yesterday.

In 1931, he pointed out, Mexican-American parents in Southern California fought a court battle to end separate-but-equal education for their children — two decades before the landmark 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision banning segregation in public schools.

He made his remarks at the fourth annual Virginia Latino Higher Education Network’s Encuentro at Virginia State University, which drew about 60 people, mostly Hispanic college faculty and administrators from across the state.

That history “shows that Hispanic parents have been involved in their children’s education for a very long time,” said Robinson, who grew up in California.

Today, more Hispanic students are taking Advanced Placement courses and the ACT college entrance exams than ever, he said.

“We’re moving in the right direction,” he said.

The Latino Higher Education Network is nonprofit statewide organization made up of Hispanic and non-Hispanic college and university faculty and administrators.

The two-day conference, which ends today, focused on Hispanic leadership and students in higher education. Sessions included Hispanic women leading the way, planning and access for students, and challenges of illegal immigrants wanting to attend college.

While California has one of the largest Hispanic populations among the states, Virginia has experienced tremendous growth in the past decade, according to the U.S. census.

Census figures show the Hispanic population is now about 460,000, or about 6.8 percent of the Virginia population. Last fall, 4.3 percent of the college students were Hispanic, compared with 2.8 percent 10 years ago, according to the State Council of Higher Education.

Deborah Santiago, vice-president for policy and research from the Washington-based Excelencia in Education, said in her lunch speech that one of her priorities is to educate people about the Hispanic student population.

Hispanic students are commonly thought of as English-as-a-second-language learners, high school dropouts and illegal immigrants, she said.

“The data does not support that profile,” she said. Fewer than 20 percent of students in the nation’s schools are English learners and about a third are not legal, she said.

“There’s profound ignorance about our population, of how we go to college, how we retain students and how we complete college.”

These issues must be addressed fully, or the Hispanic student population will continue to be marginalized, Santiago said.

“This is a population that is part of us and is not going away.”

Contact Juan Antonio Lizama at (804) 649-6513 or
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A man found lying in the middle of street at the intersection of 27th Street and Nine Mile Road was transported to VCU Medical Center around midnight.

Richmond Police Capt. Paul Kiniry said witnesses reported hearing multiple gunshots in the area around 11:30 last night.

The man was found almost directly in front of Richmond Community Hospital but was transported to VCU for trauma care, police said.

Police did not identify the victim.

Steven Williams survived two deployments to Iraq. He saw the worst that war has to offer — bullets flying at him and bombs exploding around him.

But it was a near-fatal car wreck last April that resulted in the amputation of his left leg. The ensuing recovery was hard for the Marine who served with the 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit.

Last fall, he experienced something that began to lift his spirits — a trip to the Lonesome Dove Equestrian Center.

There, he rode a horse for the first time. He returned yesterday, wearing a big smile full of pride as he rode Paul, a 9-year old Clydesdale/saddlebred cross. Even an emergency dismount at the end of his ride wasn’t able to erase the pure joy he experienced.

Williams said the program offered at Lonesome Dove is vital to his, and other veterans’, recovery.

“It brings us back and let’s us know we can still do these things,” said Williams, who now wears a prosthetic leg. “It keeps my spirits high, even though I’m walking with a quad cane and I’ve got one leg.”

The driving force behind Lonesome Dove is Clint Arrington, a stonemason who is constantly in motion. The equestrian center, at 6137 Old Buckingham Road in Powhatan County, opened in 2008 to serve the special needs of veterans through therapeutic riding and equine-related activities.

It’s a place where there is no such thing as can’t and disabilities aren’t limitations.

The message Arrington hopes to impart on the veterans is sim ple — courage, confidence and hope.

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Yesterday, about 10 veterans from McGuire Veterans Affairs Medical Center and Sitter and Barfoot Veterans Care Center took turns riding Paul and Mary Grace, a 10-year-old quarter horse.

The veterans suffer from a variety of physical and mental disabilities, but still, they can experience the therapeutic release that comes from riding a horse. Therapists who work with the veterans on a regular basis say the benefits of this program are many.

“It has physical, emotional, cognitive and social benefits,” said April Yount, a recreational therapist at McGuire. “The patients really build their self-esteem.”

The safety of the riders and horses is of the utmost concern. Each of the volunteers is trained, and Arrington goes over safety tips with each rider, said Barbara Minnicks, a recreational therapist at McGuire.

Each rider has a volunteer leading the horse and two more walking beside the horse as a safety net should the horse need settling or the veteran needs assistance. The therapists maintain a watchful eye as their patients ride.

It takes a docile horse to handle the different riders that sit in the saddle. That defines Paul and Mary Grace, said volunteer Sherry Newark.

“They’re excellent with the riders, [and] they’re very forgiving,” she said. “If a rider is not balanced, most horses, that would irritate them. But these, they just take it in stride.”

For the veterans, it’s a few moments of escape from their problems. As they sit astride the horses, the veterans no longer need the wheelchair or cane that accompanies them in everyday life. Even problems with eyesight don’t hold them back.

“There are a lot of people that are hurting for one reason or another,” said Navy veteran James Williams.

But once a veteran gets on a horse, “everything just leaves your head,” he said.

Contact Jeremy Slayton at (804) 649-6861 or
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A ranking of Virginia’s most transparent local governments finds most of the Richmond area doing comparatively well at providing information on the Web.

In a recent report, the Thomas Jefferson Institute for Public Policy — a nonpartisan research and education organization in Springfield — scored localities on budget and expenditure information available online.

On the list of 134 localities, Goochland County was ranked fourth with a score of 65.5 out of 100. Goochland edged out Henrico County, in fifth place, with a score of 61.5.

The recognition is noteworthy for Goochland, which was beset by problems last year related to financial mismanagement, leading to questions of transparency. After a government shakeup led to the county administrator’s resignation, Rebecca T. Dickson took the helm in July.

Since then, the county has increased the amount of financial information provided online, going so far as to post a check register detailing county spending.

“We knew we had a problem with transparency, and now we’re addressing it,” said Goochland Supervisor Ned S. Creasey, who attributed much of the progress to Dickson. “It’s a whole lot easier to deal with your problems if you get them out there where people know you’re not trying to hide them.”

Only the counties of Arlington, Fairfax and Prince William did better than Goochland, taking the gold, silver and bronze respectively. Arlington’s score was an 80, leaving plenty of room for all the state’s localities to improve.

Especially the 23 localities with scores of zero, meaning no information was available.

“I think some of the counties with smaller staffs and lower budgets probably haven’t realized how easy it is to put some of this stuff up,” said Mike Thompson, president of the Thomas Jefferson Institute. “I don’t think in any of these cases it’s an effort to hide things as much as it is a self-deluded idea that it takes a whole lot of time to get this done.”

Added Thompson: “Frankly, they could go get themselves a high school junior and he could probably do it pretty quickly.”

Most other area localities fared reasonably well, with Richmond at 16, Hanover County at 27 and Powhatan County at 38. But not all made the top 50.

With a score of 15, Chesterfield was 105th on the list. Colonial Heights scored a zero.

Don Kappel, Chesterfield’s director of public affairs, said the report’s name — “Government Transparency in Virginia” — is slightly misleading.

He pointed out that the county makes a variety of information available in various ways, streaming its government meetings online and broadcasting them, and holding regular community meetings on the budget process.

“These are all transparency initiatives,” he said.

Chesterfield County Administrator James J.L. Stegmaier said the institute’s work on the transparency report is appreciated.

“It will be helpful to us in working to make our Web site more navigable so that this kind of information can be found more easily,” he said. “We also recently completely redesigned our Web site, which we believe works toward that end.”

The list looked not only at the amount of information available but also the ease with which it was accessed and how often it was updated.

“In some cases, it was just really hard to find the stuff. You had to click 17 different places,” said Thompson. “To us, transparency is not just if it’s there, but if you can get to it.”

Contact Wesley P. Hester at (804) 649-6976 or
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RICHMOND, Va.—One person was killed and two others injured during a shooting in the Gilpin Court public housing development late this afternoon. ¶

Police said one person was pronounced dead at the scene, in the 1100 block of St. John Street, and two people were taken to VCU Medical Center. Police did not know the extent of their injuries. ¶

Police cars and ambulances converged on several streets in the development. A police spokeswoman said that after the shooting two of the injured fled to other locations. Calls came in for police to respond to St. John Street and St. James Street. ¶

“It appears there were quite a few people out and about,“ said Karla Peters, Richmond Police Department spokeswoman. “We received a report of random gunfire shortly before 6 p.m. ¶

People with information are asked to call Crime Stoppers at 780-1000.

A Prince George man was charged yesterday in a 2008 fatal shooting that partly stemmed from damage to the victim’s car.

Derrick Coleman, 28, of the 4200 block of Montreal Avenue was charged with second-degree murder and felony use of a firearm in the Nov. 30, 2008, slaying of Wallace Wesson Jr., 21.

A co-defendant, Anthony Lorenzo “Amp” Green, 20, pleaded guilty last year to second-degree murder and felonious use of a firearm in Wesson’s death. Under a plea agreement, a judge sentenced Green to serve 13 years in prison.

According to trial evidence, Green fatally shot Wesson after the two men exchanged words outside Wesson’s house near Sixth and Accomack streets in Petersburg. The dispute stemmed from Wesson’s belief that Green’s family knew about, or was responsible for, some damage to his car. Green confronted Wesson after Wesson confronted Green’s mother, who lives in Wesson’s neighborhood.

Shortly before the shooting, Green retrieved a gun from one his companions and fired a single shot that struck Wesson in the back. Coleman is accused of supplying Green with the gun.

Contact Mark Bowes at (804) 649-6450 or
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The city of Richmond should start an inspection program for rental housing to confront the issues of neglect that often come from absentee owners, according to a report on the city’s property-code enforcement efforts.

A pilot inspection program should be launched and expanded if it is successful in keeping rental units in compliance with building-code and other standards, City Auditor Umesh V. Dalal said in a report released Tuesday.

The report estimates the program could generate $640,000 to $1 million annually, assuming a fee of $32 to $50 per inspection and 20,000 rental units built before 1960.

Mayor Dwight C. Jones’ administration said it would consider a program that would focus on areas with high concentrations of rental-property violations. The review is expected to be complete by January.

The operational audit of the Property Maintenance Code Enforcement Division of the Department of Community Development covered 2008. The division had 42 positions, including 30 inspectors, and a budget of about $1.9 million during the 12-month audit period.

Auditors said the city’s efforts to combat blight are critical to neighborhood revitalization and to keep crime at bay. The report praised recent initiatives, including last year’s effort to eliminate a backlog of 250 code violations on private properties, but it also cited:

•Poor record-keeping. Auditors were unable to determine the number of properties rehabilitated or the overall impact of the division efforts in resolving code violations. •Code violations on city-owned properties, including sidewalks and rights of way, in addition to ones on private property. •Improper supervision of field employees. A review of files over an eight-month period indicated that only 10 percent of 78 required field inspections and 60 percent of random file checks were conducted. •Inconsistent monitoring of the city’s nearly 1,400 vacant properties. Auditors looked at 73 vacant property inspections and found that 29 of them — 40 percent — occurred after the 45 days suggested by the city’s policy. Insufficient mechanisms to monitor, measure and manage departmental and employee performance.

Contact Will Jones at (804) 649-6911 or
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