My hope for Virginia in 2020 is that we continue to value each other — as individuals, as a community and as a Commonwealth.

That means we learn more about each other and we learn more about ourselves. We recognize ourselves in our neighbors and we teach our children to do the same. We treat each other as we want to be treated.

It means we honor our shared humanity, but we aren’t naive enough to pretend we’re all the same. We know some of us have been born with advantages we didn’t earn ourselves —advantages that come from the color of our skin, our birthplace or the family that raised us.

Valuing each other means being honest about this fact. It means we recognize that the playing field is not level and that past discrimination continues to play out in the inequities that exist today.

Most importantly, valuing each other means we do more than talk. We take action to right the wrongs of the past. We protect each other. We care for one another.

As your governor, I am committed to doing this work. In 2020, let’s continue to value each other, take care of each other and move forward together.

I wish you and your loved ones a happy and peaceful new year.

My wish for the 2020 new year is for the Commonwealth and the country to start the next 400 years by rejecting the old, negative and destructive politics of the past and instead embracing a new politics of positivity, results and hope.

Our time in public service should be focused like a laser on building people and communities up and not attempting to tear them down.

While the state’s current leadership has put Virginia on a highly successful course, we must continue to fight to provide more economic security and opportunity for all Virginians. We must fight for a living wage and more good jobs so families can rise. We must remake our crum- bling public school infrastructure and provide full access to technical and vocational training and multiple paths to affordable higher education.

We must make housing more affordable, health care more accessible and broadband universal. We must make our criminal justice system fairer and more humane and finally dismantle Virginia’s school-to-prison pipeline piece by piece.

We must do all of this and more.

But our politics must rise to the challenge of this unique moment in our history in order for us to succeed and rise together. I am prepared and excited about the future we will create.

My foremost wish for 2020 is that we, as Virginians, seize the opportunity to build a more just, fair and equal Commonwealth. Justice, equality and opportunity must be guaranteed for each and every person who calls Virginia home, no matter where they live, what they look like, how they worship, who they love or how much money they have. Virginia cannot have different systems and standards of justice, or different educational, housing or employment opportunities depending on the color of a person’s skin or their wealth.

We know there is a tremendous amount of work ahead to fulfill the promise of justice, equality and opportunity, and each of us has a role to play, whether as an elected official, community leader or simply a citizen of our Com- monwealth.

One area I will focus on in 2020 is enacting badly needed reforms to our criminal justice system. For example, I be- lieve we need to completely overhaul Virginia’s cannabis laws to reduce the number of Virginians saddled with a criminal conviction because of marijuana possession, and to address immoral and unacceptable racial disparities in enforcement.

We also need to expand opportunities for Virginians who have earned a second chance to have their records cleared of old convictions, move away from the “cash bail” sys- tem that causes too many Virginians to sit in jail for days or weeks on end simply because they don’t have enough money to pay bail, and increase safety, transparency and accountability in policing and use of force.

I believe we can do all this and so much more in 2020.

There are other huge challenges we must tackle, like making it easier to vote, investing in our schools and ex- panding access to affordable health care, but I have never been more optimistic about our ability to get it done.

Best wishes for a healthy and happy 2020!

My foremost wish for 2020 is that Richmond realizes its potential as a “can-do” city.

Too often, we have let past failures keep us from being bold, moving forward and seizing opportunities to improve the lives of all of our residents.

It’s time we believe in our ability to accomplish important things and stop being bogged down by fear and those who focus more on fighting than on working together and on problem seeking rather than problem solving.

I am optimistic we can accomplish big things because we are already on our way.

Richmond is changing — and changing for the better by becoming more diverse, inclusive and equitable. Three years ago, there was no Maggie Walker statue in Jackson Ward, no Arthur Ashe Boulevard and no “Rumors of War” monument of a man on a horse who looks like the majority of the residents in our city.

Our poverty rate and violent crime rate are declining, and our population and employment are increasing.

After years of disinvestment, stagnation and lost op- portunity, we are building new schools and sit on the cusp of the biggest economic empowerment project in the city’s history.

Simply put, Richmond, we can.

I see that spirit in our city workers, who are delivering better service, filling potholes and paving roads. I see hope in the faces of our city’s schoolchildren, whom I visit every year and who are bursting with promise and curiosity.

And finally, I see resilience in the hard-working residents of our city, our lifeblood, who are ready to make the next year and the next decade better for the next generation. They don’t want us to go backward. They don’t want us to stand still. They want us to move forward.

It’s time to stop talking about it and start being about it. Richmond is on the rise and poised to do great things. We need to believe it and make it happen.

My foremost wish for 2020 is the advancement of equity in public education.

It can be overwhelming to address an issue with so many facets. There’s only one way to start: “Think glob- ally, act locally.”

I want Henrico County Public Schools to continue the progress we’ve made in addressing equity and opportunity and be a leader in a continuing conversation about these issues.

The motto of Henrico Schools expresses our vision of equity for all our students: “The right to achieve. The sup- port to succeed.” Our school division has made progress in fulfilling that promise, but there is more to do. A small sample of our progress so far:

• We approved a school calendar for 2020-21 that includes student holidays in observance of Yom Kippur, Diwali, Christmas and Eid al-Fitr.

• Our Equity and Diversity Advisory Committee recently completed a comprehensive study on how to give more students the chance to take advanced courses and support them in those classes.

• Thanks to our citizens’ support, the Henrico meals tax is giving new life to aging schools, ensuring that all Henrico children have first class facilities.

• Because it’s crucial to keep students in school and learning, we completely re-imagined our approach to discipline, emphasizing continuity across the county, as well as student support, earlier intervention and conflict resolution.

• We are training all staff members in implicit bias, adding more culturally relevant materials to classes and developing a plan to recruit and retain a more diverse workforce.

• Because not all families have the same financial resources, we are reducing the student laptop fee and eliminating it entirely by 2021-22.

Working for equity isn’t just the right thing to do — it’s essential if we want to enable all our children to reach their potential and be creative, engaged citizens. Expanding opportunity creates stronger families, stronger economies and stronger communities. That is a vision for 2020 we can all share.

For 2020, I wish for more opportunities and assistance to engage in youth violence prevention. I wish for members of the community to seek out those who are at risk of and engaged in violence in our community and provide them with support, education and guidance in how to handle conflict without hurting others.

As a community, we need more people who are willing to come forward to build relationships with those most at risk. This is a difficult task, as every parent can attest. How we, as the older generation, communicate our life skills and knowledge to our younger generation is a challenge that has been experienced throughout time.

Modern life presents unique and unprecedented chal- lenges — the instant availability of internet information and communication with large audiences via social media create a challenging, emotionally charged environment that our children are expected to navigate. While I am glad I grew up without the internet, cell phones and social media, I know that I need to be a better communicator to convey life experience to young people.

The violent crime that we most frequently encounter are young adults and teenagers who respond to perceived slights using deadly weapons — a permanent solution to a temporary problem.

For our city to be safer and our communities stronger, our youths need better coping skills and mechanisms to prevent them from being victims or victimizers.

We all have a part to play, and it is for all these reasons that I wish for more opportunities and assistance to build a safer city for all.