A Virginia man was arrested after he allegedly boarding a Page County Public Schools bus, yelled profanities and frightened students, reported WHSV News.
Daniel Wade Young, 39, of Stanley, was charged with one count each of trespassing on school property and disorderly conduct following an investigation into the incident.
A sheriff’s deputy reportedly learned of the situation while responding to an unrelated call last week. The deputy was told that a man had entered a school bus and was “yelling profanities and scaring the kids” on board.
The deputy responded and located the school schoolbus. However, the suspect had already left the area by the time the deputy arrived. The sheriff’s office did not disclose how the man gained access to the school bus, why he allegedly boarded it, or how many students were present at the time.
Authorities reportedly continued investigating the incident by interviewing witnesses and reviewing video footage. Based on the information collected during the investigation, deputies identified Young as the suspect and obtained warrants for his arrest.
Young turned himself in on Friday at the Page County Jail and was taken into custody. A magistrate later released him on a $2,500 unsecured bond. An unsecured bond generally does not require a defendant to pay the specified amount before being released but holds the defendant financially responsible for that amount if the conditions of release are violated. No injuries were reported.
“We would like to thank Page County Public Schools for their swift involvement and cooperation in this case,” the sheriff’s office said via the article.
Officials did not indicate whether Young was connected to a student or had authorization to be near the bus. The sheriff’s office said additional charges could be filed as authorities continue investigating the incident.
A Roanoke City Public Schools kindergartener was mistakenly placed on a school bus and dropped off at an apartment complex, prompting his parents to search for him for about two hours, reported WSLS News.
Terry Mills and Daniel Howard arrived Thursday at Round Hill Elementary School expecting to pick up their 5-year-old son, D’Terrion. His parents said he was a regular car rider and did not have a bus pass.
When D’Terrion was not at the designated pickup area, school staff checked buses and reviewed surveillance footage as the family tried to determine his location.
“I’m just still frantic,” Mills said. “At this point, I just, I want to know where my son is.”
According to the school division, D’Terrion mistakenly boarded a bus on his second day of attendance. The bus’ only stop was Westwind Apartments.
After the bus dropped him off, another student accompanied D’Terrion to the apartment complex’s leasing office. An assistant manager recognized that the child was at the wrong location and contacted the school.
The district said approximately 17 minutes elapsed between D’Terrion exiting the bus and the leasing office notifying school officials. His parents said the overall ordeal lasted about two hours from the time they initially began searching until they were reunited with him.
Mills said the family was relieved D’Terrion avoided walking into the street, entering a stranger’s home or getting into an unfamiliar vehicle.
Roanoke City Public Schools said it immediately notified D’Terrion’s parents after receiving the call. The family subsequently met with a school division leader to discuss the incident.
The district said it investigated the situation and is taking appropriate personnel actions. It is also working with its transportation provider, Zum, to reinforce bus and car-rider procedures among students, staff members and drivers.
District officials thanked Westwind Apartments management for helping keep the student safe.
Howard said the family shared its experience to emphasize the importance of closely monitoring young students. The parents are now working with the district to transfer D’Terrion to another school. Officials declined to provide additional information about that request, citing student privacy laws.
A trailblazing regional greenhouse gas partnership on the East Coast is considering possible changes or expansion that would allow it to keep building on its success — and the stakes grew higher last month with the reelection of Donald Trump.
The 11-state Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, established in 2005, is the country’s first regional cap-and-invest system for reducing carbon emissions from power generation. Since 2021, administrators have been conducting a program review, analyzing its performance since the last review in 2017 and weighing potential adjustments to make sure it continues to deliver benefits to member states.
The role of such programs is more crucial as Trump’s pledges to roll back federal climate action leaves it up to cities, states, and the private sector to maintain the country’s momentum on clean energy over the next four years. In RGGI, as the regional initiative is known, states have a potential model for scaling their impact through collaboration.
“RGGI has not only been an effective climate policy, it’s been an extraordinary example of how states can work together on common goals,” said Daniel Sosland, president of climate and energy nonprofit Acadia Center. “It is a major vehicle for climate policy now in the states, more than it might have seemed before the election.”
How RGGI works
RGGI sets a cap for total power plant carbon emissions among member states. Individual generators must then buy allowances from the state, up to the total cap, for each ton of carbon dioxide they produce in a year. The cap lowers over time, forcing power plants to either reduce emissions or pay more to buy allowances from a shrinking pool.
States then reinvest the proceeds from these auctions into programs that further reduce emissions and help energy customers, including energy efficiency initiatives, direct bill assistance, and renewable energy projects. Since 2008, RGGI has generated $8.3 billion for participating states, and carbon dioxide emissions from power generation in the nine states that have consistently participated fell by about half between 2008 and 2021, a considerably faster rate than the rest of the country.
“It has really thrived and been really effective across multiple administrations,” said Jackson Morris, state power sector director with the Natural Resources Defense Council. “RGGI is a winning model. It’s not theoretical — we’ve got numbers.”
Currently, Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Vermont are part of the program. Virginia joined RGGI in 2021, but in 2023 Gov. Glenn Youngkin repealed the state’s participation, a move immediately challenged in court; a judge ruled last month that the governor lacked the authority to withdraw the state from initiative, though a spokesman for the governor has declared the state’s intention to appeal.
There is widespread agreement that RGGI will endure despite likely federal hostility to climate measures. There was no attempt to take direct action against it during Trump’s first term, nor has there been any concerted industry opposition, said Conservation Law Foundation president Bradley Campbell, who was involved in the founding of RGGI when he was commissioner of the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection.
Supporters also note that the program has historically had broad bipartisan support: Participating states have been led through the years by both Republican and Democratic governors and legislatures.
Politics has had some influence over the years, though only at the margins. New Jersey, a founding member of RGGI, left in 2011 when Chris Christie was governor, but returned in 2020 following an executive order from his successor. Pennsylvania joined in 2022 through an executive order from the governor, but its participation is now being challenged in court.
Still, RGGI’s foundations are solid and will remain so, experts said.
“The basic infrastructure has weathered the political winds over the decades,” Campbell said.
Looking forward
Nonetheless, RGGI will need to make some carefully thought-out program design decisions during its current review to make an impact in the face of falling federal support for decarbonization.
One question under consideration is whether to maintain the existing trajectory for the overall emissions cap for the program — a reduction of 30% between 2020 and 2030, then holding steady thereafter — or to continue lowering the limit after 2030.
The RGGI states are also contemplating a possible change to the compliance schedule that would require power generators to acquire allowances worth 100% of their carbon emissions each year, and certify compliance annually. The current system calls for certification every three years, and only mandates allowances equivalent to half of carbon emissions for the first two years of each period.
The program is looking for ways to appeal to potential new participant states that have less aggressive decarbonization goals than current member states without watering down the program’s overall impact on decarbonization, said Acadia Center policy analyst Paola Tamayo. Acadia suggested possible program mechanisms such as giving proportionately more allowances to states with more stringent emissions targets to incentivize tighter limits.
“At this point it is critical for states to maintain a high level of ambition when it comes to programs like RGGI,” Tamayo said. “There are different mechanisms that they can implement to accommodate other states.”
The program review is expected to yield a model rule some time over the winter, though updates may be made into the spring as the RGGI states receive and consider feedback on how to accommodate potential new participants.
States will also need to maintain and strengthen their own climate policies to magnify the impact of RGGI, Campbell said. He pointed to Massachusetts, where Gov. Maura Healey needs to show “bolder leadership,” he said, and Maine and Vermont, where the Conservation Law Foundation has filed lawsuits in an attempt to compel the states to meet their own carbon reduction deadlines.
“It’s especially important that the states that have strong emissions reduction mandates speed up the implementation of their climate laws,” he said. “State leadership on these issues is going to be more important than ever.”
Login
