Shortly after she arrived at her first school board meeting, Jessica Miley watched a man with his hand on the knife in his waistband scream expletives at a security officer.

She was still wiping away tears when the meeting started. Outside, a crowd kept from entering because of COVID protocols flanked the entrance and chanted “let us in.”

After she finished speaking, security insisted on walking Miley to her car. The officer shone his flashlight on her tires to check them for tampering. He told the mom of two to get inside her car, lock the doors, turn on the headlights and waste no time leaving. And that’s exactly what she did.

Is this normal, she wondered. At a school board meeting?

Read more in Sunday's Main News section

Their PCS -- permanent change of station -- move to Hampton Roads didn’t go that easily for the Bernabe family and it got worse when their twin son and daughter started kindergarten, virtually, in September 2020.

“Within 20 minutes of his first virtual session, there was a loud noise. That was because of another student’s speaker system not being quite calibrated right, and it was very high pitch, and he covered his ears and he hit the floor,” Tosha Bernabe recalled.

“He just completely melted down, he freaked out screaming, yelling kicking. It was the first time that he ever got violent with me he began hitting me trying to rip my hair out,” she said.

Though it continued every day of virtual school sessions -- one tantrum lasted three hours -- it wasn’t until October, when her son started twice-a-week sessions with just six children in class that other people got a close look at what the Bernabes saw every day.

But even when school staff see children with special needs, it can be a struggle to secure the services they need, especially for Navy families that move frequently and often find themselves, as the Bernabes did, in postings far from family and support networks.

Read more in Sunday's Main News section

Excitement bubbled inside the small barrier fence encompassing the S. Nassau Street dig site.

The archaeology team working there fought against the excitement as they could not yet be sure of their latest discovery. Along the eastern wall, nearly reaching the asphalt street, sandwiched between walls of an 1856 building, was an older 16-by-20-foot foundation.

For Colonial Williamsburg’s Director of Archaeology Jack Gary, it was a good sign that the team had uncovered First Baptist Church’s first permanent church structure dating back to the early 1800s — after a year of excavating at the site of one of the nation’s oldest Black churches.

But Gary and his team had to be sure it was the original structure.

The team got to work digging up a portion of the foundation near the front steps of where the original building would have sat. There, the team uncovered an 1817 coin, hairpins, buttons and furniture tacks. For Gary, the discoveries solidified the team’s assumptions.

Read more in Sunday's Main News section

Some people refer to Wednesday as Hump Day but around Virginia Beach, many have gotten wind that it’s now referred to as WINDSday.

“We don’t get a new industry in this region very often,” Joel Rubin, CEO of Rubin Communications, said. “Here’s one that’s coming that I think we really need to understand, appreciate, take advantage of and let it really drive our culture.”

Well-versed in the market for 45 years, Rubin helped create the WINDSdays campaign to build awareness and enthusiasm for the power of wind, clean energy and a green environment in Virginia Beach and all of Hampton Roads. Rubin is part of the Virginia Beach Mayor’s Commission on Offshore Wind and Clean Energy, where the campaign originated, and was hired by Dominion Energy to help promote offshore wind in the region.

Read more in the Sunday Work & Money section

The previous time Ron Rivera faced the New Orleans Saints, he was on the brink of being fired from his job and in Washington’s sights to take over after the season.

Back then, Rivera was used to facing the Saints coached by Sean Payton and had plenty of experience against teams quarterbacked by Jameis Winston. Now he has to deal with both when Washington hosts New Orleans on Sunday in a matchup of teams with no shortage of concerns.

“He knows how to attack people,” Rivera said of Payton. “You have to be ready to counter when he does stuff. He’s really good at that.”

Payton’s Saints are coming off an overtime loss at home to the New York Giants to fall to 2-2 while missing a handful of valuable contributors on offense. Receivers Michael Thomas and Tre’Quan Smith have been out, and New Orleans has needed to plug holes along the offensive line because of injuries.

Read more in Sunday's Sports section

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