Author: Jo DeVoe

Construction starts on a pair of apartment towers in Crystal City

By Jo DeVoe
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Construction has started on a pair of multifamily towers in a corner of Crystal City experiencing a bevy of development.

The two towers by developer JBG Smith, located at the intersection of Richmond Highway and 20th Street S., will add 775 apartment units and nearly 27,000 square feet of retail, and will be separated by a new S. Clark-Bell Street.

Demolition of the office building that the towers will replace began last spring, after the project was approved by the County Board in May 2021. JBG Smith expects the project will be completed in 2025.

The West tower (2000 S. Bell Street) will be 25 stories tall and glassy with 355 units and 15,000 square feet of street-level retail. Coming in at 19 stories and 420 units, the East tower (2001 S. Bell Street) will feature “a bold, green-glazed brick façade” and 10,000 square feet of retail, the developer said.

In addition to the new S. Clark-Bell Street, the project will add a tree-lined pedestrian passageway along the East tower and an enclosed, climate-controlled underground connection from 12th Street S. to 23rd Street S.

The underground connection responds to concerns from neighbors who wanted assurances that JBG Smith would protect a network of tunnels known as the “Underground” when building residential parking.

The project also includes funding for parks and open space for a new library at 1901 S. Bell Street — made possible through another under-construction project from JBG Smith at 1900 Crystal Drive.

The developer is currently overseeing the construction of 1,583 apartment units and has another 1,760 units planned for near-term development.

These projects are intended to meet an anticipated influx in housing demand created by Amazon’s HQ2 in Pentagon City and the Virginia Tech Innovation Campus in Potomac Yard, the developer says.

“The start of construction at 2000 and 2001 South Bell Street is a major milestone in National Landing’s ongoing transformation and delivers on our pledge to build new housing in lockstep with Amazon and Virginia Tech’s growth in the neighborhood,” said Bryan Moll, JBG Smith’s executive vice president of development, in a statement.

The first phase of Amazon’s HQ2 is still on-track to be completed in 2023 and the Virginia Tech facility will be done in 2024, according to JBG Smith’s announcement.

When complete, 2000 and 2001 S. Bell Street will be a stone’s throw from a stretch of recently revamped dining and retail spaces, named Central District Retail.

The retail development, also by JBG Smith, has an outpost of New York City-based taqueria chain Tacombi, which opened last month, NYC bakery Mah-Ze-Dahr and a CVS.

There’s also a forthcoming, mysterious, grocery store — possibly an Amazon Fresh location — that could fill Crystal City’s longtime need for a grocer.

New AG will pursue state housing discrimination inquiry into Serrano Apartments

By Jo DeVoe
Serrano Apartments (via Google Maps)

Attorney General Jason Miyares won’t be axing a state investigation into potential housing discrimination against residents of the Serrano Apartments launched under his predecessor.

Early last week, the civil rights division of the Office of the Attorney General — led by former AG Mark Herring — began searching for evidence of discrimination against tenants based on their race, national origin and disability by local affordable housing developer AHC Inc., which owns the Columbia Pike affordable housing complex.

“The ultimate goal of this inquiry is to determine whether unlawful discrimination is taking place, and if so, to eliminate those discriminatory practices and ensure that non-discriminatory housing opportunities are available to all,” two attorneys with the OAG’s Office of Civil Rights division said in a letter to the local branch of the NAACP requesting any information the group may have.

A few days after the letter was sent, the future of the investigation was thrown into jeopardy when Miyares fired at least one of the letter’s co-authors, Helen Hardiman, after taking office last weekend, the Richmond Times-Dispatch reported.

His dismissal of 30 staff — including 17 attorneys, the Richmond newspaper reports — generated a buzz over how his office will treat civil rights violations in Virginia.

Despite these changes, the inquiry into the Serrano apartments is set to go forward, Miyares spokeswoman Victoria LaCivita said.

“The inquiry into the housing conditions will absolutely still happen and any wrongdoing found will be pursued to the fullest extent of the law,” LaCivita tells ARLnow. “We’ve brought in a team full of bright and dedicated lawyers who are looking forward to examining every case with a fresh perspective and working with the OAG staff.”

The inquiry, which the local branch of the NAACP publicized on Wednesday, comes nine months after residents and advocates told ARLnow about the poor living conditions at the Serrano (5535 Columbia Pike). They described rodent infestations and mold as well as deferred maintenance and disrespectful treatment by management.

In response, AHC says it has made a number of changes under the eye of the Arlington County Board, undertaking repairs, installing new leadership, adding communication channels and establishing a claims process for damaged belongings. The saga has inspired a handful of bills going before the Virginia House of Delegates and now, the OAG’s investigation.

Tenant advocates say they’re encouraged the Serrano saga reached the state level at all.

“It set a precedent,” longtime advocate Janeth Valenzuela tells ARLnow. “We want this to continue and I hope that Miyares will see this not as a political thing we are doing.”

The investigation will explore if AHC imposed discriminatory terms on residents or made discriminatory statements based on race and national origin or refused reasonable accommodations for tenants with disabilities, wrote Hardiman and fellow attorney Palmer Heenan.

Susan Cunningham, the interim CEO of AHC, responded to the inquiry in the following statement to ARLnow.

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School Board Chair Barbara Kanninen to step down in December

By Jo DeVoe
School Board Chair Barbara Kanninen during an in-person meeting in December (via APS)

School Board Chair Barbara Kanninen will not seek re-election after her term ends this December.

The chair said in an announcement on Sunday that she will “continue the hard work of serving our students, staff, and the Arlington community” for the rest of her term, which ends on Dec. 31, 2022.

Kanninen, first elected to the School Board in 2015, was re-elected in 2018. Before assuming the role of chair in July 2021, she last served as chair in 2017-18.

“It’s a tremendous honor to serve the Arlington community as Chair of the School Board,” she wrote. “I love this job and truly believe it’s the most important one in Arlington, especially at this time… I’m proud of everything we’ve achieved together to improve Arlington Public Schools during my eight years on the board, but it is now time to hand over the reins.”

Her announcement continues below:

It is my sincere hope that the 2022 Democratic endorsement process will be a positive, constructive one. Arlington’s children deserve leaders who care deeply about them and will work hard every day to ensure they have the supports and opportunities they need. The superintendent and my colleagues on the School Board are exactly those kinds of leaders, and I hope that equally caring individuals will step up this year to run.

Thank you so much for your support. I look forward to continuing the hard work of serving our students, staff, and the Arlington community throughout 2022, and I promise that I will continue to find ways to serve beyond this year.

The Arlington County Democratic Committee process of endorsing School Board candidates, who are non-partisan in Virginia, through a caucus has recently been criticized by a pro-open-schools group Arlington Parents for Education, a number of self-identified Democrats, members of the Arlington branch of the NAACP and the Board’s newest member, Mary Kadera.

She follows in the footsteps of her predecessor as chair, Monique O’Grady, who announced when schools were still closed to most students that she would focus her “full and undivided attention” on reopening buildings until her tenure ended Dec. 31. Kadera officially took over O’Grady’s seat during the Jan. 6 School Board meeting.

When Kanninen assumed her seat last July, she said some of her priorities included improving staff compensation and navigating a “very challenging budget season” with the aim “to bring APS back to being a fiscally healthy and sustainable school system.”

During the 2021-22 school year, APS upped wages for bus drivers and substitute teachers, and redesigned the pay scale for all staff to make up for lost pay increases.

Meanwhile, APS has in recent years faced multi-million-dollar budget gaps that — during the pandemic — were balanced in part by federal funding. The 2022-23 budget is still under development and will be voted on in May.

Kanninen has lived with her husband Kevin Wolf in Arlington for three decades, and put their two sons through the public school system.

Neighbors ask county to reconsider dense residential development planned for Pentagon City

By Jo DeVoe
RiverHouse in Pentagon City at sunset (staff photo by Jay Westcott)

A group of neighbors is calling on the county to take a moderate approach to residential redevelopment in the shadow of Amazon’s HQ2.

Next month, on Tuesday, Feb. 22, the Arlington County Board is poised to consider adopting a new planning document that lays out a vision for the next 30-plus years of growth in the Pentagon City neighborhood. The plan calls for a significant amount of redevelopment and infill development, mostly residential, more green spaces and new “biophilic” walking and biking paths.

The Pentagon City Planning Study draft was created because Amazon’s arrival exhausted nearly all the development envisioned in the 45-year-old plan currently guiding the neighborhood’s growth.

One significant source of near-term infill development would be at RiverHouse apartment complex on S. Joyce Street. Its owner, once Vornado and now JBG Smith, has long eyed redeveloping its surface parking lots and open spaces. The document recommends no more than 150 units per acre on the 36-acre site, which currently has a ratio of 49 units per acre.

That’s excessive for a complex with 1,670 units already, according to members of “RiverHouse Neighbors for Sensible Density.” The group and an associated movement, “Dense That Makes Sense,” are made of nearby residents who say a lack of community engagement has allowed the draft to move forward that recommends adding too many units to RiverHouse, among other concerns.

Pentagon City Planning Study Area (via Arlington County)

“RNSD is especially concerned about the Plan’s proposal for developer JBG Smith’s property, RiverHouse — already the fourth largest apartment complex in the Greater Washington, D.C. area,” the group said in a statement. “Because the Plan was developed without wide and diverse community representation, the Plan 1) does not represent a balanced community perspective, and 2) fails to articulate how it will deliver the community benefits it promises.”

Since August 2020, the county’s outreach has included interviewing stakeholders and property owners, asking the public to submit slides showing their vision of Pentagon City, and holding focus groups, five virtual public workshops, and a walking tour, said Erika Moore, a spokeswoman for the Department of Community Planning, Housing and Development.

They received 60 slides from community members on their vision, and 146 responses on an online engagement after a virtual open house, she told ARLnow. County staff also met with several county commissions, committees and civic associations as the plan was being drafted. In addition to emails and newsletters, she said there have been signs sharing information on the plan in public spaces.

“The population growth scenarios in the draft plan are not requirements for development,” Moore said. “The scenarios were developed to analyze implications for population growth, transportation, urban design, economic development, and other factors.”

This is not a new concern. Neighbors pushed back against JBG Smith’s 2019 proposal to add 1,000 units to the site (for a density of 72 units per acre) and at the time, some Arlington County officials and planners were also skeptical of the plan. Now, the new plan’s upward limit of 150 units per acre has some Dense That Makes Sense members longing for JBG Smith’s initial plans.

With seven weeks until the County Board is set to vote, the group is urging the Board to pause the plan.

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Courthouse-based Lovelytics doubles staff as data analytics demand grows

By Jo DeVoe

Sponsored by Monday Properties and written by ARLnow, Startup Monday is a weekly column that profiles Arlington-based startups, founders, and other local technology news. Monday Properties is proudly featuring 1515 Wilson Blvd in Rosslyn.

Courthouse-based data visualization company Lovelytics is on a hiring spree.

The company, founded in 2018, helps clients gather their data in one place and organize, visualize and use the data. Last year, it moved from Rosslyn to Courthouse and doubled in size from 23 to around 50 employees. Founder and CEO Scott Love aims to end 2022 with upward of 100 staff.

“We’re growing quicker than we ever have,” said Love, who’s hired folks in Arlington, across the country and in Canada for Lovelytics’ Toronto outpost, founded in 2019.

In the last two months, a new partnership with data analytics platform Databricks has driven that growth, he says. Lovelytics helps clients who purchase Databricks figure out the best way to use it, which required Love to create and expand his machine learning, artificial intelligence and data engineering departments.

Lovelytics provides a similar service to clients who use the data visualization platform Tableau — and recently won an award for its work helping clients implement the software.

“It’s pretty exciting, since they have tons of partners, around 1,500,” Love said. “For us to win it, especially after only being in business four years at the time, it gives you good publicity, respect from clients you may potentially be working with and credibility.”

That’s not the only accolade the Courthouse startup earned in 2021. The Washington Business Journal recognized it as one of the best places to work in the D.C. area. Love says he tries to keep working for his company fun.

“For me, being a first time entrepreneur, it’s exciting to create a culture,” he said. “It’s been a lot of fun to bring that to life.”

Up until this point, the company has made money without funding rounds, but Love said he’d consider fundraising if he wants to scale up the company faster than it’s growing today, or launch new products.

While Lovelytics is mostly a service-oriented company, last year, it launched its first product called InstantAnalytics, which helps companies centralize and organize the data that multiple sources are collecting.

“That’s really what our job is: being able to translate business problems into technical solutions,” he said.

But many of the companies that needed organizational help with their data when Lovelytics was founded are more mature now, Love says. He’s focused on hiring employees to help those clients obtain insights using their data to solve complex problems through machine learning, artificial intelligence and predictive models.

“When you start to gather that much information, you’re able to get these crazy predictive insights because you know what 10 million customer transactions have done,” he said.

Lovelytics team picture (courtesy photo)

The Courthouse startup has also taken on special projects, building an interactive map of California wildfires for Pacific Gas and Electric’s website and visualizing dense reports by the international non-governmental organization World Economic Forum.

“We can create these concise, consolidated visuals that look good… and you grab that attention of a casual person who may or may not be interested in the topic,” he said.

Ultimately, though, Love aims to give companies the tools their employees need to do their own deep-dives.

“The big thing is self-sufficiency. You have to be able to enable people to do their own analysis,” he said. “Those employees are able to do much better work if they’re not having to wait on the IT department because they’ve been enabled to build their own reports and do their own deep-dive insights.”

APS may soon revert to virtual learning on snowy, icy days

By Jo DeVoe
Wakefield High School in the snow (staff photo by Jay Westcott)

Snow this week has nearly wiped out Arlington Public Schools’ snow days for the winter.

Two months ago, APS modified its winter weather plans to include six traditional “snow days,” in which school is completely canceled, followed by distance-learning days.

Snow overnight and this morning — coupled with Monday’s storm and fallout — resulted in a full five days home from school for APS students and staff this week. That means APS has one more snow day before reverting to virtual learning for future winter weather-related closures.

Virtual learning during winter weather is new for the school system, which, due to the pandemic, was fully virtual for the majority of students and staff for most of the 2020-21 school year.

The new policy will “allow learning to continue and avoid ‘makeup’ days at the end of the school year,” APS said when it announced the changes.

The six-day threshold is based on the number of days built into the current calendar for inclement weather, it said.

A pandemic-era innovation, virtual learning for bad weather is being implemented in a smattering of school systems across the U.S., but the Washington Post reports that Arlington and Fairfax County Public Schools kept some snow days to retain “some sense of normalcy.”

Alexandria City Public Schools was one of the only D.C.-area schools to start the snowy week with virtual learning, a change some bemoaned as the end of the snow day. But there were widespread internet outages and today (Friday), students and staff got their proper snow day.

APS, meanwhile, closed schools closed Monday through Thursday due to Monday’s storm and its effects. It had planned to return kids to school on Thursday but reversed course because many teachers and staff were dealing with child care challenges.

Arlington Parents for Education — a parent group that has advocated for full-time, in-person learning during the pandemic — used this week’s closures to renew its call for APS to align its calendar with that of neighboring Fairfax County Public Schools.

Snow days and virtual learning are a few ways APS can respond to winter weather. It can also delay start by two hours, release early and cancel after-school and weekend activities.

Sports and other extracurricular activities are already canceled until Friday, Jan. 14 due to the surge in COVID-19 cases, a decision that frustrated many parents and students.

The surge occurred among athletes, too, with more than 140 positives reported in a 10-day period late last month, Superintendent Francisco Durán told the School Board during its meeting last night (Thursday), which was held virtually.

Arlington recommends doubling CDC’s quarantine period for child care

By Jo DeVoe
Arlington County Health Director Dr. Reuben Varghese in March 2020 (via Arlington County)

Local child care centers will have to stay the course with longer quarantine and isolation periods, says Arlington County’s Public Health Division.

That could mean multiple contingency plans for parents with kids in child care, who have already weathered holiday closures and winter-weather closures. (Many facilities follow the snow closure or delay lead of Arlington Public Schools, which was closed all week.)

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shortened isolation and quarantine periods last month to five days for the general population. This week, the CDC announced it will be bringing its guidelines for K-12 schools in alignment with the shortened quarantine and isolation.

But the changes have been met with some criticism. The American Medical Association called them “confusing and counterproductive” and other medical providers have said they’re “reckless.”

There’s one place where the new quarantine and isolation guidelines won’t go into effect, save for fully vaccinated and boosted staff: Arlington’s child care settings.

That’s because Arlington’s littlest kids either should not wear a mask or do not wear them reliably, meaning the spread of the highly transmissible Omicron variant is highly likely in these settings, according to the public health division.

“A full 10-day isolation and quarantine period was recommended because of the difficulty to enforce mask wearing in such a young population (i.e. children under 2 years old should not wear a mask),” Public Health spokesman Ryan Hudson told ARLnow.

The interim guidance came out Wednesday, as Arlington and the Northern Virginia region continue to see high levels of COVID-19 transmission, and will be in effect until the CDC comes out with guidance specific to child care settings — which are known as places where kids pick up all kinds of germs.

“The CDC’s recent updates to shorten the isolation and quarantine period are for the general population, including K-12 school settings,” Hudson said. “In absence of specific guidance from the CDC regarding child care centers, Arlington County Public Health provided interim guidelines, subject to change based on updates from the CDC.”

One local child care provider that had started implementing the new CDC guidance acknowledged the flip-flop may cause disruption for families.

“We had been following the recent CDC 5 day isolation period, which we confirmed with [the Virginia] Department of Health last week,” the facility’s director wrote. “However, in light of the omicron variant and the current surge, Arlington County has recently announced interim guidelines for child care settings which we must follow. We understand that this recent change is frustrating but we are our trying our best to follow the policies, which do keep changing.”

Pre-pandemic child care was in short supply in Arlington, as it was in many parts of the country, in part because of a shortage of child care workers. The pandemic has exacerbated these realities and forced many parents, especially mothers, to quit their jobs.

Board Chair Katie Cristol, who has worked on a number of efforts to fight the local child care shortage, says she’s still learning about the new recommendations and the tensions that public health professionals and child care providers have to navigate right now.

But the biggest challenge facing child care providers during the pandemic remains staffing, which the guidelines could exacerbate.

“From my conversations with providers, their biggest challenges over the last year have been with staffing,” Cristol said. “I think this reflects the general upheaval in the labor market, as well as the ongoing difficulty of affording high-quality staff in a very low-margin business, and — at least anecdotally — the challenge of recruiting and retaining staff seems to be making it hard for some providers to expand hours or capacity as they try to adjust back to ‘normal’ after the first year of the pandemic.”

To boost child care employee recruitment during this time, the county has provided training and is working with the local Richmond delegation to pass legislation that would improve how benefits like retirement and health care get to employees.

“It remains a big challenge, for certain,” she said.

The county also supports centers through ongoing health consultations and informational resources, and has run targeted vaccination clinics for child care providers and employees, Cristol noted.

The new Arlington Public Health guidelines for local child care providers are below.

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Commonwealth’s Attorney touts falling rates of carjackings, car thefts and homicides in 2021

By Jo DeVoe
Commonwealth’s Attorney Parisa Dehghani-Tafti

Commonwealth’s Attorney Parisa Dehghani-Tafti is welcoming a drop in car-related crimes, which have trended upwards during the pandemic years.

Preliminary data from the Arlington County Police Department indicates carjackings dropped from 16 in 2020 to eight in 2021, while car thefts dropped from 323 in 2020 to 306 in 2021. Finalized numbers will be published later this year in ACPD’s annual crime report.

“After a temporary rise in car thefts in the first half of the year, our office helped to spearhead the formation of a regional task force, resulting in a marked decrease in car-related crimes in the second half of the year,” Dehghani-Tafti, the top prosecutor for Arlington and the City of Falls Church, said in her most recent newsletter. “Most of the recent car thefts are a result of cars left unlocked, unoccupied and idling.”

In 2020, at the height of the pandemic, carjackings soared in Arlington — from one case in 2019 to 16 in 2020 — and the rest of the D.C. area. This uptick prompted more police patrols in the first half of 2021 and, by the summer, a coordinated regional response.

Preliminary data on carjackings and car thefts in 2021 (via ACPD)

From January through June, ACPD recorded 160 motor vehicle thefts and from July to December, ACPD recorded 146 similar crimes, which is “a good percentage drop,” Dehghani-Tafti tells ARLnow.

Per the 2020 annual report, motor vehicle thefts have a ways to go if they’re to fall back to levels last seen in 2018 and 2019, when there were 171 and 227, respectively.

Property crimes from 2016 to 2020 (via ACPD)

Dehghani-Tafti said she called attention to the drops in car-related crimes — as well as the zero recorded homicides last year and the lower rates of gun violence compared to other U.S. cities — in her newsletter to provide a counterpoint those who are saying crime is up under her tenure.

Dehghani-Tafti was elected in 2019 on a pledge to reform the criminal justice system by reducing racial disparities in prosecution as well as recidivism and incarceration, and investigating wrongful convictions. Last year, there was an effort to recall her that accused her of offering criminals lenient plea deals.

“[T]he more general point I was making in the digest is twofold: the first is that, contrary to some of the overheated rhetoric in certain quarters, crime remained low and we’ve kept our word in devoting resources to serious crimes, hence our record in the last year, including tackling a number of cold homicide and rape cases; second, I wanted to be intellectually honest that a lot of people deserve credit for crime being low, and to give them thanks for it,” she tells ARLnow.

Specifically, she thanked the Department of Human Services and the county government for funding social services, the Arlington School Board for diverting kids from the criminal justice system — it removed police officers from schools in 2021 — as well as ACPD for its deescalation work and community policing and the Sheriff’s Office for helping to reduce the jail population.

She says the jail population “consistently remains at its lowest levels in Arlington history,” although it has increased from a record low of 209 in June 2020 to 265 in December 2021.

As additional evidence of crime remaining low, she pointed to the zero homicides recorded in 2021 and relatively low rates of gun violence compared to other jurisdictions.

ACPD confirmed that no 2021 deaths have been ruled a homicide, which would be down from three in 2020 and two in 2019. There is, however, an open investigation into the deaths of two people in a Ballston apartment in December.

Two reported deaths in Arlington in 2021 fall outside ACPD’s jurisdiction and reporting: the man who stabbed, shot and killed a police officer outside the Pentagon this summer and the death of a security contractor at the U.S. State Department’s National Foreign Affairs Training Center.

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Construction starts on phase two of Red Top Cab redevelopment in Clarendon

By Jo DeVoe
1/6

Work has begun on the long-awaited second phase of the Red Top Cab development in Clarendon.

This is the second of two phases for the “Clarendon West” project by Arlington-based Shooshan Company and its partner, Trammell Crow Residential.

“Construction has started with piles being driven,” CEO Kelly Shooshan told ARLnow this week. “So, we are a go.”

The local developer anticipates delivering the project by the end of 2023 or in early 2024.

The second phase, at the corner of Washington Blvd and 13th Street N., is comprised of one 269-unit multifamily building. Shooshan increased the number of units from 247 in the winter of 2020.

In October, Shooshan made a pitch for one extra hour of work on Saturdays, but the County Board denied that request, saying it would be too disruptive for nearby residents. At the time, work was expected to begin in November.

Project representative Adam Stone told ARLnow in December that construction had yet to start because some permits were still being finalized.

In 2015, the Arlington County Board approved a proposal for a three-building, mixed-use development, replacing the old Red Top Cab headquarters and dispatch center, and two small commercial buildings.

The first phase, comprised of two buildings with a total of 333 apartment units on N. Hudson Street and 13th Street N., was completed in the spring 0f 2021. Construction broke ground on the pair of buildings in March of 2019 and the complex, dubbed The Earl Apartments, was sold to another property owner last July.

Arlington County Board elects Cristol as chair, Dorsey as vice chair

By Jo DeVoe
County Board Chair Katie Cristol (via Arlington County)

Members of the Arlington County Board say they have their work cut out for them in 2022.

They were unanimous in their chief priorities for the new year — COVID-19, housing, climate change and equity — just as they were unanimous in choosing a new board chair, Katie Cristol, and a new vice chair, Christian Dorsey.

These aims and others need to be tackled with a budget that, despite being impacted by high office vacancy rates, must put the wages of county employees first, they said.

“By no means is this pandemic over, but since it’s clear that COVID-19 will be providing us no respite for reflection, we will have to make our own,” Cristol said in her opening speech as chair. “Given the uncertainty of our commercial revenues, let me be clear: These commitments almost certainly mean less funding available for implementing new priorities or programs, but after two pandemic years, it is time to put our money where our ‘Thank you essential workers!’ window signs are.”

She celebrated the county’s high vaccination rates as a sign that Arlington will get through the pandemic, and the newest wave of cases fueled by the Omicron variant, together.

“[E]ven in this peak, our hospitalizations numbers remain in the very low single digits, and if we keep getting vaccinated, getting boosted, masking and demonstrating responsibility to one another, we will get through this — not as fast as we had all hoped, nor with the finality with which we all long for — but we will,” she said.

Dorsey likewise expressed his confidence Arlington will come out on the other side of the pandemic as a stronger county.

“I am not going to predict when we get to our new normal or even what our new normal will be, but I am certain and quite confident that if we rely on the resilience that has been honed during the pandemic and remain focused on achieving our goals for sustainability, housing our community and achieving racial equity, we will emerge on the other side both better and stronger,” he said.

Cristol will pick up her chief priority — child care — where she left off when she was last the Board’s leader in 2018.

“This pandemic has exposed what we’ve always known to be true: Our country is a hard place to raise children,” she said. “Arlington alone can’t fix all the obstacles facing families, but we can continue to make progress on our own vision, which is that all Arlington County families have access to high quality, affordable childcare.”

This year, she said, the county will focus on increasing the number of child care providers and eligible families who participate in Virginia’s child care subsidy program and providing child care during non-traditional hours.

2022 will be a big year for working toward Arlington’s energy goals for 2025, 2035 and 2050, Dorsey said. Arlington aims to be carbon-neutral by 2050.

“I propose we prioritize taking every practical opportunity through our budget work this year to de-intensify carbon use in our government operations, and as we look to develop our capital improvements plan, we should plan to utilize sustainable products and systems — even if they are not quite practical today. Let’s envision and dare to dream for when it might be,” he said.

And on the eve of the one-year anniversary of the Jan. 6 insurrection, Board members Libby Garvey and Takis Karantonis were thinking about the state of the nation’s democracy. Garvey said she will encourage civil discourse as much as she can in 2022.

“There are lots of angry people in this country and they have guns,” Garvey said. “We here are relatively sheltered, but some of those who attacked the [U.S. Capitol building] stayed in Arlington and many drove through Arlington on their way to the Capitol. The danger to our democracy is not a local issue but it is a local threat. I am not sure what we should do about it, but I do know that we and the entire region need to stay close and keep our public safety systems strong and nimble.”

APS decision to pause sports and activities causes confusion, backlash

By Jo DeVoe
A sign in support of Arlington athletes playing amid Omicron concerns outside Arlington Public School headquarter (courtesy photo)

(Updated 2:35 p.m.) Some parents and students are pushing Arlington Public Schools to reverse its decision to temporarily halt sports and other extracurricular activities due to COVID-19.

After the snow clears, the majority of APS students will return to their classrooms for in-person learning, but their sports practices and games, band and choir classes and club meetings will be “paused” until Friday, Jan. 14.

APS announced its decision to cancel two weeks of extracurricular activities and prioritize in-person learning in response to the surge in new COVID-19 cases on Wednesday. Some families are speaking out about the impact this will have on students and are pressuring APS to reinstate extracurriculars, coaches are privately dismayed, and more than 1,500 people have signed a petition to resume sports and activities.

“We aren’t going to be able to practice for the upcoming meets, which means our risk of injury is pretty high — especially for gymnasts who are doing skills that require intense training and repetition on specialized equipment,” says Grace Chen, a senior varsity gymnast. “As a senior, it is especially disappointing because now the rest of the season could be a disaster. We are hoping to compete at States again for the fourth consecutive year.”

There was a similar outcry in November 2020, when APS decided not to participate in winter sports while most students were virtual. Within four days it reversed course, following the groundswell of support for sports and conversations with neighboring school systems.

Back then, parent Mark Weiser had a dozen “Let them play!” signs made. He almost threw them away last summer but decided to keep them. Now, they’re back up in yards around town.

“I didn’t want to have to use them,” he said.

Weiser says the decision is extreme. APS requires that student athletes be vaccinated or submit to daily Covid testing, and he says his son’s fully vaccinated team is also undergoing daily testing. Fairfax County Public Schools, which also requires vaccinations or negative tests, has not paused sports, he adds.

“For Arlington to go out on an island and do this by themselves is beyond frustrating,” he said. “We have no indication these games will be made up.”

Others say the risk for transmission will remain even with this decision, as kids will continue playing for club teams and find ways to play or practice together outside of school.

Weiser said parents couldn’t get more answers for four days after the news due to the holiday weekend and storm.

“There was no one to talk to,” he said on Monday. “Offices were closed Thursday through Sunday, and there’s snow today.”

He says some families intend to speak at the School Board meeting this Thursday, during which the newly-elected Mary Kadera will be sworn in.

The new guidance needs explaining, says the County Council of PTAs. President Claire Noakes says parents want more details on how the decision was made and how it will be implemented for non-athletic activities.

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