Jefferson-Houston, with a student body of 361, has faced low enrollment for several years — a condition some in the community attribute to the school’s persistently low test scores — despite the district’s growing pains. The new building, scheduled to open for the 2014-15 school year, will house more than 800 students, more than double the enrollment this year.

“The capacity of the new building being built is going to save the district [in terms of overcrowding],” said Karen Graf, school board chairwoman.

Since 1999, enrollment at Jefferson-Houston has dropped from 486 students to 361 students, a trend that persisted even after administrators expanded the school to house sixth, seventh and eighth grades. But Graf is confident the new building will draw more students.

The building also will serve the expected influx of students stemming from Potomac Yard’s redevelopment, she said.

According to plans for the new school, the building will feature 10 early-childhood classrooms and 21 classrooms for first- through eighth-grade students. With more than 130,000 square feet of space, it will stand in stark contrast to the Cameron Street school, which was built in 1970.

Though Graf and Jefferson-Houston principal on assignment Mark Eisenhour are hopeful the structure will ease capacity issues elsewhere in the district, school board members have not ruled out redistricting, which last occurred several years ago.

“Eventually we’re going to have to look at [it],” Graf said.

Fellow board member Ronnie Campbell agreed. But Graf and Campbell said redrawing district lines would not occur until the Jefferson-Houston project wrapped up.
Still, opponents of the school’s construction argue a new building will do little to boost low test scores that left Jefferson-Houston without accreditation — and at risk for a state takeover.

But Jefferson-Houston administrators believe the state-of-the-art building, coupled with principal Rosalyn Rice-Harris’ leadership, will not only attract students, but improve the school academic performance.

“[She] has been the driving force behind turning the school around,” Eisenhour said. “Between the new building and her, the school will turn around.”

The proposed restaurant — called the Waterfront Market — will take up space in and around the Torpedo Factory and seat about 150 patrons. In exchange for using the nearby public space, Manor will add a little more than $11,000 to city coffers each year.

While the deal garnered quick support from most city councilors, Vice Mayor Allison Silberberg argued the lease fee was not high enough given the prime spot along the city’s Potomac shoreline.

“That fee … is incredible, and location, location, location,” she said. “I’m completely supportive of this project, but [the fee] struck me as low.”

Manor, owner of Old Town’s Bittersweet Cafe, defended the fee, which was proposed with city staff’s blessing, describing the project as anything but a given success.

“It’s a risk; it’s a big risk,” he said. “It’s a big space. There’s a reason it hasn’t been used or leased for 10 years, and I think we came forward with a very innovative proposal.”

Despite Silberberg’s initial protests, city council voted unanimously to approve the project and the three-year lease for public space.

Well, now’s the chance to share all of these favorites! Introducing the Alexandria Times First Annual Best of Alexandria Readers’ Choice. Nominate your favorite store, restaurant, park, entertainment venue … the list just goes on and on.

There are three easy options to submit your nominations: Complete the online form, print out a form and submit via mail or send an email to bestof@alextimes.com.

All nominations must be submitted by June 14. The only way to make sure your favorite place gets noticed is to nominate them and tell all your friends to do the same!

Police responded to 100 block of Lynhaven Drive after hearing reports of a gunshot about 12:45 a.m. and quickly found a badly injured 22-year-old Julian Dawkins. The Alexandria resident died after emergency personnel transported him to an area hospital.

Officials confirmed on Thursday evening that Dawkins succumbed to a gunshot wound, ruling his death a homicide. His death marks the city’s second homicide in months after going more than a year without a murder.

Though authorities questioned 44-year-old city resident Craig Patterson, of the Arlington County Sheriff’s Office, no one has been charged with Dawkins’ murder. But officials sought to quell any questions the lack of charges stemmed from Patterson’s connection to law enforcement, saying, “The fact that Mr. Patterson is employed as a law enforcement officer does not affect the process of investigation applied to this case.”

Whether or not criminal charges will be filed rests with the Commonwealth’s Attorney’s Office, authorities said.

ALEXANDRIA—In what could either be seen as one in a series of victory laps, or curtain calls, Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling touted the business successes of Gov. Bob McDonnell’sadministration to the Alexandria Chamber of Commerceon Thursday.

But halfway through his remarks, Bolling tacked toward the issue of hyper-partisanship, firing salvos in the direction at both the Left and the Right.

“I learned a long time ago in government that governing has to be about more than breaking the dishes,” said the two-term lieutenant governor who has served under both a Democrat and a Republican governor. “It has to be about solving problems and getting things done. And to do that, sometimes you have to compromise.”

The remarks contrasted what is expected to be a hotly-contested gubernatorial election this fall, but also help draw eyes to Bolling’s new undertaking, the Virginia Mainstream Project.

A PAC geared to the recruitment and support of moderate Republicans at the state level, the Virginia Mainstream Project stands at odds with the Cuccinelli-backed tea party grassroots movement that propelled the attorney general, and convention-stunner E.W. Jackson, to the top of the GOP ticket.

“I think our party is a party in search of an identity,” Bolling told Watchdog.org. “It all starts with the kind of candidates we nominate and the kind of campaigns we run.

“Clearly the (Virginia GOP) is prettily solidly controlled by tea party groups and the Ron Paul folks. The result of that has been the party has been pulled further to the right and that makes it more difficult to connect with moderate and independent voters you need to win elections in Virginia and it makes it more difficult to govern once you get elected.”

During his speech, Bolling harped on both the Democrat and Republican lawmakers in Richmond, saying they’re becoming more and more like the divided lawmakers in Washington. And that, he said, is the greatest challenge Virginia faces — avoiding the “Washington-ization of Richmond.”

“The solutions to the challenges facing our state will not be found in the extremes,” Bolling said. They won’t be found on the right extreme, and they won’t be found on the left extreme. The answers to the challenges facing Virginia will be found in the mainstream.”

Alexandria native Brendan O’Toole was fed up.

He served his country for four years in the Marines — and served it well — completing two deployments in Haiti and Afghanistan.  And now he was being told no from the very country he put his life on the line for.

O’Toole, who enlisted a year after graduating from T.C. Williams in 2007, sustained injuries to his back and neck during his time in the military and returned home with an honorable discharge.

Back in Alexandria, he watched many of the Marines whom he served alongside struggle with the transition back to civilian life. The Pentagon works hard preparing soldiers for battle but does little to outfit them once removed from service.

Then, one of his military buddies committed suicide, ending his personal war with the post-Iraq demons in his head.

Not long after ending his service, O’Toole visited the Department of Veteran Affairs to deal with his battle scars. He had been prescribed medicine from the military as treatment for a neck injury sustained in Afghanistan, and he needed more.

But Veteran Affairs told him no, that it couldn’t help him and sent him home. The very country he risked everything for denied him help.

It was the last straw.

“That was the last thing that pissed me off,” he said. “I found that shocking … after doing everything the country told me to do for four years … I started thinking about the guys I served with.”

So he decided to run — run far and wide for his fellow brothers and sisters in arms.

Hoorah.

GO EAST, YOUNG MAN

The VA is backlogged and the system is clogged, O’Toole said.

According to the California-based Center for Investigative Reporting, a veteran waits an average of 318 days before the government responds to a first-time claim. And for those who appeal, the wait time more than triples — to upward of 1,300 days.

The VA has more than 880,000 claims pending nationally.

“There’s a lot of people out there who need help,” O’Toole said. “Seeing guys putting their lives down and not being able to transition back to normal life needs to be addressed.”

After O’Toole saw first-hand the backlog problems with Veteran Affairs, he took measures into his own hands, creating a nonprofit called The Run for Veterans.

O’Toole decided to run 15 miles per day, five days a week, for a year in an effort to raise money for his fellow comrades. He started November 11 — Veterans Day — in Oceanside, Calif., and will end in Portland, Maine, exactly a year later.

By the end of his journey, O’Toole will have traveled 3,600 miles through 21 states.

While many organizations support wounded warriors, O’Toole focuses on the social, mental and physical well-being of soldiers, channeling his fundraising efforts toward three organizations — the USO, Team Red, White and Blue, and Give an Hour.

After a year on the road, O’Toole hopes to have raised $2 million — divided up between the three partner organizations. He’s brought in about $73,000.

“We didn’t want to reinvent the wheel,” said Beth Horrigan, O’Toole’s cousin and co-founder of The Run for Veterans. “Not every veteran that comes back is a wounded warrior. We wanted to focus on the holistic well-being of vets.”

‘ONE STEP AT A TIME’

Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays are the days O’Toole runs.

He tries to keep Wednesdays and Sundays as rest days, if all goes to plan. A typical day revolves around phone calls, emails, marketing events and, of course, 15 miles on the road.

“If you take it one step at a time, you’re going to cross the finish line together,” O’Toole said. “We’re keeping our word to who we said we’re going to help, and who we have helped is what’s keeping us moving forward.”

Days begin around 8 a.m. for O’Toole and his team. The first priority is coffee and breakfast, and then the team takes care of logistics and office duties — all part of the daily functions of The Run for Veterans. Afterward, water tanks are filled, stretches are done and O’Toole hits the road.

Longtime friends and fellow Alexandrians Joey and Timmy Dwyer follow O’Toole in a Toyota Tundra — decked out in the desert-fatigue color that O’Toole once wore. One brother drives while the other shoots film, documenting the entire run.

For the last four to five miles, O’Toole carries the American flag  — the stars and stripes rippling in the breeze as he finishes each day. You get a lot more honks when you’re running with the flag, Horrigan said.

“It’s amazing what one cheer from a random person … does for your endurance and your ability to say, ‘OK, I’m not in that much pain,’” said Horrigan, who ran with O’Toole last month.

Though he typically runs alone, O’Toole has enjoyed company along the way, including a Marine several weeks ago and an Army veteran in western Texas.

Alexandrian and Rear Adm. Roy Snyder also ran alongside O’Toole. And as he jogged past a charter school for delinquent juveniles, two 15-year-old students left the schoolyard to join him on his journey — blue jeans and all.

But aches and pains often creep up as O’Toole adds on the miles. He suffers from lots of back pain because of three misplaced discs in his neck, and his iliotibial (IT) bands get tight every once in a while.

A few months ago, O’Toole suffered a stress fracture in his right ankle, forcing him to rest for 26 days.

“We’ve run into several different literal and figurative road blocks,” Horrigan said.

Adding to the wear and tear on O’Toole’s body, the terrain at times has “kicked my butt,” he said.

New Mexico was cold, with runs taking place in negative 12 degrees and during snowstorms. And Texas, well, is big.

Still, O’Toole persists. He has crossed California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas and most recently Louisiana state lines, with 16 states left. He’ll come through his hometown of Alexandria, too, as he journeys up the East Coast. And he won’t stop until he hits Maine.

“We’re young and loud, and we want to inspire people who are in dark places,” O’Toole said. “That’s what we do best.”

FIGHTING THROUGH THE PAIN

The aches and pains grow as the miles and states add up, but there isn’t anything that will stop O’Toole.

“This journey is about talking about the issues that are facing our vets,” he said. “When people come out and realize what we’re doing is tough and fun — nothing we’re doing is ridiculous.”

He’s working hard to spread his message — the importance of focusing on the mental, physical and social well-being of the nation’s veterans — to those he encounters along his journey, too.

“I don’t know what the definition of a human being is, but they’re made up of their mental, physical and social well-being,” O’Toole said. “Those three things make up a human, and from there, you fix holes in the country and we built [The Run for Veterans] around that.”

His mission is spreading. As O’Toole and his team crossed into Texas, they met with Gov. Rick Perry and former President George W. Bush, Horrigan said.

“It was a moral booster,” O’Toole said. “It opened up our eyes that what we’re doing is so important that is warrants a meeting with a president.”

Additionally, O’Toole frequently meets with high schools and police departments in the towns he runs through, American flag and pickup truck in tow.

“There’s a big gap to fill,” he said. “The most important thing is raising awareness, sharing our positivity and letting people know there are services out there.”

For O’Toole, the mission has taken on more than raising awareness about the hurdles facing returning veterans. It’s about doing what’s right by his fellow soldiers — those who came before him and those who will come after him.

“I’m confident we can get there,” O’Toole said. “We are changing lives, and I’ve seen it first hand.”

Yet shopping downtown was largely a pedestrian experience. Customers often had to find parking and then walk from store to store — often blocks apart — to meet their personal needs. As more and more regional shoppers came to downtown Alexandria, local residents looked for alternatives to hasten their acquisition of basic necessities, such as food, pharmaceuticals, clothing and services.

One of the revolutionary retail trends that began before the war, but truly boomed afterward, was the advent of the commercial shopping center. These outlets were home to a wide variety of stores; shops were grouped along the strip facade of a large one- to two-story building.

These new centers — located at major intersections somewhat removed from downtown areas — appealed primarily to automobile owners, who took advantage of the easy access and acres of free parking. By 1950, Alexandria had three major shopping centers: the Arlandria along Mount Vernon Avenue, Fairlington Centre along Fern Street and Powhatan Shopping Center along Powhatan Street, just east of the old Monroe Avenue Bridge.

Although the Powhatan Shopping Center was the newest of the three — built about 1949 — it had the shortest lifespan and was demolished in the 1970s. This outlet was built on the west side of Powhatan Street along a curving alignment that once served as the northern gateway to what is now Old Town, providing a direct link between the Monroe Avenue Bridge over Potomac Yard and North Washington Street.

Although once one of the busiest corners in the city, the center’s original location — where Argall and Rolfe places intersect — is a quiet area of residential townhomes, far removed from the streaming traffic one block west on Route 1.

Out of the Attic is provided by the 
Office of Historic Alexandria.

On Saturday morning — the day after this year’s Bike to Work Day — I was walking from my house to the center of Old Town. As I approached the intersection of Queen and Payne streets, I noticed a bicyclist pedaling north. He approached the intersection and looked both ways without hardly slowing down — let alone stopping at the four-way stop.

Seeing no cars, he blew through the intersection. I asked, as he passed, “Isn’t that a stop sign?” to which he replied: “Stuff it!” As I crossed the street, I watched him pedal through the intersection of Princess and Payne streets at the other end of the block — also a four-way stop — without stopping.

So long as bicycles aren’t required to be registered and have visible forms of identification, like automobiles’ license plates, bicyclists will feel licensed to behave unaccountably.

- Dino Drudi
Alexandria

Of course the food cart program in Market Square failed (“Wheels come off food cart program,” May 16). The few carts that ever showed up had no menu or prices and were staffed by workers who were usually busy on their smartphones. Also, the food carts were put out by brick-and-mortar restaurants that never had a major investment in them and would have preferred customers go to their regular locations.

A food cart is not a food truck. The food is not cooked or prepared on the cart but rather prepared somewhere else and left to sit in the hopes that someone would come and buy it.

Because of an antiquated law, Alexandria is missing out on the food truck revolution, and the quick fix with food carts was never going to be able to compete. So the food cart program is dead, officially, several months after most thought it had been buried.

I will not belabor the idea that food trucks are not just for construction sites and back-alley dice games. People can do all that research and find websites, Twitter feeds, Food Network shows and Cooking Channel shows. The Alexandria City Council needs to move with the times and let food trucks in. It should do something for those who actually live here, rather than just hike taxes, spend money on rental bikes and triple density on the waterfront for boutique hotels.

- Michael Ford
Alexandria

Of course the food cart program in Market Square failed (“Wheels come off food cart program,” May 16). The few carts that ever showed up had no menu or prices and were staffed by workers who were usually busy on their smartphones. Also, the food carts were put out by brick-and-mortar restaurants that never had a major investment in them and would have preferred customers go to their regular locations.

A food cart is not a food truck. The food is not cooked or prepared on the cart but rather prepared somewhere else and left to sit in the hopes that someone would come and buy it.

Because of an antiquated law, Alexandria is missing out on the food truck revolution, and the quick fix with food carts was never going to be able to compete. So the food cart program is dead, officially, several months after most thought it had been buried.

I will not belabor the idea that food trucks are not just for construction sites and back-alley dice games. People can do all that research and find websites, Twitter feeds, Food Network shows and Cooking Channel shows. The Alexandria City Council needs to move with the times and let food trucks in. It should do something for those who actually live here, rather than just hike taxes, spend money on rental bikes and triple density on the waterfront for boutique hotels.
- Michael Ford
Alexandria