Arlington’s Colonial Village neighborhood is the No. 2 “Best Place to Live in America,” according to a recent set of rankings.
Two other Arlington neighborhoods, meanwhile, ranked in the top 25.
Colonial Village is best known for its historic garden-style apartments and condos, built between 1935 and 1940. Lush, landscaped and tree-lined, the community is both verdant and urban — it’s in easy walking distance to Courthouse and the Courthouse Metro station.
From Niche, which ranked neighborhoods across the United States:
Colonial Village is a neighborhood in Arlington, Virginia with a population of 2,895. Colonial Village is in Arlington County and is one of the best places to live in Virginia. In Colonial Village, most residents rent their homes. In Colonial Village there are a lot of bars, restaurants, coffee shops, and parks. Many young professionals live in Colonial Village and residents tend to be liberal. The public schools in Colonial Village are highly rated.
A check-in with adults in National Capital Treatment & Recovery (via National Capital Treatment & Recovery/YouTube)
Women in the Demeter House, a treatment program for women through National Capital Treatment & Recovery (via National Capital Treatment & Recovery/YouTube)
The logo for National Capital Treatment & Recovery (via National Capital Treatment & Recovery/YouTube)
Seven years after ending its substance use treatment options for youth, a local facility is poised to resume providing some outpatient services.
National Capital Treatment & Recovery CEO Debby Taylor tells ARLnow that Arlington County approached the center about providing therapeutic services to youth in the county after 14-year-old Sergio Flores fatally overdosed at Wakefield High School. The center has since obtained licensure to provide intensive outpatient and outpatient services and could be ready to debut its programming this spring.
“We had always hoped to get back in adolescent treatment, but we felt that we needed to do just the outpatient services at this point,” she said.
Since Flores died in late January, the county and Arlington Public Schools have mounted a “full court press” to address this issue, Dept. of Human Services Deputy Director Deborah Warren told the Arlington County Board during a joint work session with Arlington Public Schools this past Friday.
“The tragic loss of the 14-year-old has knitted the county and APS in a way we weren’t before,” Warren said. “I’m really impressed with the rapid response and the alignment on the urgency of the problem. We are developing all kinds of innovative ideas for how to help children and adolescents to address the emotional mental health crisis.”
In addition to the forthcoming contract with National Capital Treatment & Recovery, the county is looking to put DHS clinicians in high schools and work with neighboring jurisdictions to open a medicated withdrawal and treatment facility for adolescents. Arlington Addiction Recovery Initiative has ramped up training in the opioid reversal drug naloxone and the distribution of Narcan and fentanyl test strips.
“All staff members will be trained in the use of naloxone by the end of April,” APS Executive Director of Student Services Darrell Sampson told the County Boar. “Naloxone is available on all floors in secondary schools and we are exploring additional mental health education for school staff and high school students.”
Warren said fatalities from overdoses have reduced 40% through AARI’s training and distribution efforts.
“This is literally saving lives,” she said.
The number of fatal overdoses peaked in 2021 and has since decreased dramatically, Suzanne Somerville, the county’s bureau director of residential and specialized clinical services, tells ARLnow.
“AARI believes that it is related to the distribution and accessibility of harm reduction services,” she said. “The county has made a strong push to get Naloxone and Fentanyl Test Strips to anyone who is interested. We tracked the distribution of harm reduction tools and number of overdoses and extrapolate that there is a correlation between the two.”
Fatal overdoses versus harm reduction (courtesy of AARI)
That said, AARI has noticed “a significant increase in younger people overdosing” related to pressed pills, she noted. There have been seven juvenile overdoses, of which one was fatal, seven juvenile Narcan uses and 17 total opioid incidents involving minors.
That is why DHS is focused on filling the gaps in substance use treatment for youth, beginning with National Capital Treatment & Recovery, with which Warren said her department is “on the cusp” of a contract.
“We have significant gaps in our system of care for substance use disorders in kids,” Warren said. “We have really developed these services for adults in the last five to six years, in response to the opioid crisis. We are working hard to develop contracts with vendors to fill in these gaps.”
Taylor anticipates opening in about a month, after finalizing the paperwork and hiring clinicians, preferably those who are bilingual. The county has offered to cover operating costs until the program is accredited and can take insurance reimbursements.
Their approval came with the caveat that the $803.7 million budget could change between now and the final approval, which is set for a future School Board meeting on May 11.
The changes last week added more funding for virtual tutoring and uniforms for bus drivers and reduced funding for trailers and a compensation study by a total of $300,000.
Revisions to the proposed 2024 Arlington Public Schools budget (via Arlington Public Schools)
Board Chair Reid Goldstein signaled that members have the next month to smooth over “many items that we were not able to come to a consensus on.”
“In many past years, the School Board’s proposed budget gave a good indication of what the final budget will look like. That may not be the case this year,” he said. “I cannot say there will be radical changes between this proposed and the final on May 11, but I also can’t say there will be minimal changes. I just have to say we are continuing to work on it.”
He is concerned that Superintendent Francisco Durán’s budget relies on $40 million in reserve funds, an emerging trend giving other board members and school staff pause, too.
“Besides the concern that those reserve buckets may not be able to be refilled, there’s the fact that that puts us in a $40 million hole when we start the budget process next year,” Goldstein said.
Next fiscal year, APS could use years of savings from a number of sources, including unfilled positions, to fund cost-of-living adjustments and salary increases for all staff.
Durán told the Arlington County Board on Friday this aligns APS with Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s proposed budget and makes the school system’s compensation scale more competitive with nearby districts.
County Board Chair Christian Dorsey said it is “a reasonable choice to use savings in personnel on personnel that you actually have.”
“I can tell you, anecdotally, [Assistant Superintendent of Finance and Management Services] Leslie Peterson is worried, if that tells you anything,” Board Vice-Chair Cristina Diaz-Torres replied.
“This has been an ongoing discussion for many, many years, in the sense that we have had a habit of needing to use reserves in order to cover for core instruction in the past,” she added, noting the proposal leaves APS with $17 million in reserves “to sustain us for any ongoing overages for next year.”
Durán pointed out more than 55% of the reserves used comes from compensation reserves, which are replenished annually with savings from unfilled positions or new hires, who earn less than the longer-tenured staff they replaced. That money is earmarked for future compensation spending.
“It’s been a practice for us to separate that out and show the public and show our staff that all the money coming from lapse and turnover at closeout is going to be dedicated toward compensation reserves,” he said.
Willmore began his career at APS in 1995 as a teacher at the Spanish immersion school Escuela Key. After briefly leaving the school system, he returned in 1999 as a teacher in the Gunston’s immersion program. Willmore became an assistant principal at Wakefield High School in 2002 and eight years later, was named principal.
“I have loved my time at Wakefield and I am very proud of what the Wakefield community has accomplished and what the Wakefield student body and community represents,” Willmore told the School Board during last Thursday’s meeting. “As I hear time and time again, Wakefield is what the world will look like and our students at Wakefield get to experience that now, every day that they come to school.”
In an email to the school community, shared with ARLnow, Willmore said he poured his heart and soul into his work “because I feel strongly that that is the bare minimum of what our incredible students and staff deserve.”
After a 13-year tenure, which he described as an anomaly, he said he asked Superintendent Francisco Durán about changing jobs.
“This was a difficult decision for me to come to, but I feel that this is the right path forward for me and ultimately for Wakefield,” he continued.
The high school experienced difficult times earlier this year after a 14-year-old overdosed in a school bathroom and later died at the hospital, prompting the School Board to act and teachers to voice their fears this could happen again if protocols did not change. In late February, the school launched a confidential online form for people to report unsafe situations concerning a student.
Wiggins, meanwhile, has been with APS since 2012, serving as the principal of Gunston Middle School for the last 11 years.
Before coming to Arlington Public Schools, Wiggins worked in West Virginia as the executive director of the Office of Professional Preparation in the state Department of Education. In West Virginia, she also served as a middle school principal and assistant high school principal. She got her start teaching Spanish in East New York, Brooklyn.
Wiggins earned her bachelor’s degree from Messiah College, her master’s from California State University, Northridge, and her doctorate from West Virginia University.
“I am excited about this opportunity,” she told the School Board. “I’m looking forward to being able to grow, being able to bring lessons learned from my 11 years at Gunston, a passion for school leadership, a relentless drive to improve outcomes… and to work with a community that is highly mission driven.”
Men’s restroom sign at Sequoia Plaza (staff photo)
A controversial decision by Arlington Public Schools to change staff bathrooms so they do not lock from the outside has incited backlash from a number of teachers.
APS is embarking on a “lock and key” project to maintain the safety and security of buildings and “improve the key inventory process” at its 42 school buildings, per an email sent from Washington-Liberty High School Principal Antonio Hall to staff, shared with ARLnow.
As part of that work, single-occupancy staff bathrooms would be changed to only lock from the inside, granting access to students and staff who previously could not use these facilities.
Bathrooms within classrooms and clinics would have no locking mechanism at all, and for these facilities, “it is encouraged that signage be created if desired,” per an FAQ document prepared for staff, also shared with ARLnow.
The changes will “ensure all staff including maintenance, bus drivers, etc. have access without access to a key. In addition, this conversion ensures that all students have access to a single use bathroom regardless of the reason,” the document said.
Staff were informed of these changes on Wednesday and told they would be happening over spring break, which starts after school lets out today (Friday), teachers say. APS was not able to return a request for comment before deadline.
Teachers, some of whom shared comments to ARLnow under the condition of anonymity, say they feel disrespected by administrators. They are also frustrated that administrators made the decision without consulting any of the three teacher committees, according to Josh Folb, a leader within the teachers union Arlington Education Association.
The teachers who spoke to ARLnow said a number of staff restrooms have already been converted into single-use restrooms accessible to all students, prompting concerns that this will give students another place to use drugs.
Here is what one high school teacher had to say:
It is dumbfounding that less than two months after the death of a student due to overdose and countless more incidents of drug usage and risk assessments, the school district [is] determined to apply an overwhelming mandate that increases student risk (not safety) without any input, thought of execution, within a minimal timeline, and what would be assumed as an astronomical cost. All of this on top of the fact that it would now wholly remove any location for teachers to access a private restroom consistently during the already limited time that we do have.
My imagination runs wild at this notion considering we find new Instagram accounts every year created by students where pictures of teachers are unknowingly taken and posted on social media. This move would allow students to do so with literally our pants down.
A Washington-Liberty High School teacher with 25 years of experience told the School Board in a letter, shared with ARLnow, that he was “surprised and dismayed” by the decision.
“The currently shared single-use restrooms are already busy, and teachers have limited time for access, mainly between classes,” he said. “This decision represents a major change in my working conditions and environment… As a professional, do I also have reasonable access to a single-use restroom without having to use a group restroom with high school boys?”
During a speech to the School Board last night, Folb said the safe and orderly operation of the schools depends on teachers having a private place to respond to nature’s call and students not having a lockable space to consume drugs.
Arlington Education Association members wearing red in the May 26, 2022 School Board meeting, when a collective bargaining resolution was passed (courtesy of Virginia Education Association/Olivia Geho)
Local teachers union Arlington Education Association is vying to become the exclusive collective bargaining representative for public school staff.
Arlington Public Schools educators, led by AEA, will hold an election to certify AEA as the official union for teachers and support staff. Currently, the membership-based organization advocates for employees but cannot guarantee benefits through legally binding contracts.
The forthcoming election would reinstate collective bargaining after more than 40 years without it, according to a press release from the AEA sent yesterday (Tuesday) afternoon.
“The time has come,” said AEA president June Prakash in a statement. “No more decisions about us, without us.”
The Arlington School Board unanimously approved collective bargaining last May, becoming the second school system in Virginia, behind Richmond, to do so. The Virginia General Assembly repealed a ban on unionizing in 2020.
The road since has been rocky. Last fall, some AEA members said they were taking more time to review language in the resolution and were stymied by a communication breakdown between staff and administrators. At the time, only school administrators had elected a bargaining unit.
The next step forward for AEA will be providing APS with its 20-day notice for a union election.
In a statement, AEA Collective Bargaining Committee Chair Juan Andres Otal said collective bargaining will make a positive difference for students and employees of APS.
“Collective bargaining is our opportunity to have a voice in improving our working conditions, compensation, and benefits. We can’t wait any longer for more planning time,” Otal said. “We can’t wait for a wage that keeps up with the cost of living.”
AEA said in its release that it is grateful to the educators and community leaders who “show up and fight for” school employees and students.
“While there is still much work to do before securing a contract, educators acknowledge and celebrate this achievement for the historic moment it is,” the union said.
The statement added:
We know we will ultimately prevail with your ongoing support, leadership, and commitment to what is right. Our schools must acknowledge that to recruit and retain the best, the division must offer better conditions to all employees. We will continue to press forward and ensure our schools remain strong for our community, our educators, and most importantly, our students.
AEA is itself recovering from recent controversies. Earlier this year, former president Ingrid Gant was arrested for embezzling approximately $400,000 in funds from the organization she led for six years, before she and her executive board were ousted. AEA’s national affiliate, the National Education Association, temporarily took the helm.
Prakash became president last year after working as a kindergarten teacher in APS for six years. Since then, she has advocated for better pay and working conditions for employees and more respect from the School Board.
Earlier this month, she called out APS for telling bus drivers to pick up trash. She has also advocated for more equality in raises in the proposed 2023-24 schools operating budget.
“Two things can be true: We can love our jobs and our students, but also, we can demand to be paid what we’re worth,” Prakash said at the March 2 School Board meeting.
Panelists at the Arlington County Council of PTAs event on drug use on Monday, March 13, 2023 (via CCPTA)
(Updated at 4:15 p.m.) As more parents and caregivers grapple with substance use addiction among youth, they are increasingly turning to the juvenile justice system as a last resort.
Over the past year, there has been upwards of a 100% increase in the number of petitions being made for court-ordered services, such as drug treatment, according to Hon. W. Michael Chick, Jr., a judge with the Arlington County Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court.
He noted “a dramatic increase” in Child in Need of Services or Supervision petitions, “CHINs” for short, filed by parents. These days, most are related to fentanyl.
“They are coming to the court to say, ‘We’re desperate, please save my child,'” he said in a video message to parents shared during a panel discussion on drugs last night (Monday) hosted by three high school Parent-Teacher Associations and the Arlington County Council of PTAs.
“They are children with severe substance addictions and they’re desperate,” said Chick.
“To have kids come in front of you, asking for a treatment program and you’re not able to provide it — to have a kid beg you to put them in detention to save them from themselves — it’s heartbreaking,” he continued, reinforcing reports that youth are effectively detoxing in the Northern Virginia Juvenile Detention Center in Alexandria.
There have been at least seven juvenile overdoses in Arlington County this year, including the death of 14-year-old student Sergio Flores after a fatal overdose at Wakefield High School. Following his death, teachers, parents and School Board members have called on Arlington Public Schools and all of county government to do more for children.
A slew of school– and community-sponsored panels have brought together first responders, counselors and addiction specialists and prosecutors to educate parents. The most recent was held last night at Thomas Jefferson Middle School, featuring a live panel discussion as well as pre-recorded messages, drawing some 200 virtual and in-person attendees.
An emerging theme at these meetings is the role of parents. The panel was as an outlet for a handful who shared first-hand observations as well as obstacles they face obtaining resources for their kids and getting through to them, with some panelists suggesting different ways parents can step up.
Some attendees from the Arlington County Council of PTAs event on drug use on Monday, March 13, 2023 (staff photo)
One mother shared how her daughter recently attempted suicide twice, part of a mini-rash of student deaths and attempted suicides this school year, and how long it took to schedule meetings with the right school officials to obtain accommodations to keep up with her schooling.
Michelle Best, who co-facilitates a parent support group through the local branch of the National Alliance on Mental Illness, empathized with how hard it can be for parents to receive services from the public schools in these situations.
“There’s a lot of information that could be better given to parents, out there in a better way,” she said.
A few panelists put the onus on parents, including Deputy Chief Wayne Vincent, the leader of the ACPD Community Engagement Division, who encouraged parents to tip the police to known drug dealers.
“I can’t tell you how many times, when I’m in our community, I hear, ‘Wayne, how do you not know who’s dealing? Everybody knows,'” he said. “Here’s a flash. No, not everybody knows. The police don’t know. There are so many ways you can help identifying who they are.”
Arlington Public Schools is giving its website a facelift.
A redesigned website is set to go live on July 1. It culminates more than a year of work to revamp a website last redesigned seven years ago, which is well beyond the industry standard of 3-5 years, says Assistant Superintendent of School & Community Relations Catherine Ashby.
“The redesign aims primarily to address a common complaint about the current website, that it is difficult to find information because there is so much available,” she said. “The new design also shifts to a more graphics-oriented, intuitive layout which should make navigation easier for all audiences.”
The navigation scheme, she continued will be “centered on student and family needs, to make it easier to find the most-requested information like registration processes, school boundary zones, and student health and wellness information.”
Indeed, last month, an ARLnow reader reached out to highlight difficulty she experienced when trying to find information about the elementary school options.
“It just seems a little strange that out of the five option schools, threehave broken links for their school profiles, and the other two link to press releases, not profiles,” the reader wrote. “One of the press releases is a story about a reading carnival held at the school. It is oddly difficult to get information about the schools.”
Ashby says work began with an internal committee of school-based and central office staff, who reviewed feedback and website use statistics and reviewed current best practices and trends in K-12 education websites. Last summer, an outside consultant reviewed the school system’s plans and tested out navigating the website.
This month, Ashby says, the visual design has been completed and the technical development is well underway. APS will invite staff, parents, students and community members to form a robust testing panel to try out the website in mid-April.
There will be various page layout options to make it easier for staff editors to present information that gets uploaded to the website clearly and accessibly. It will continue to feature instantaneous translation, compliance with web content accessibility standards, interactive calendars and quick access to common tools.
After the APS website launches on July 1, the school system will start rolling out the new design to the sites for individual schools.
The division webmaster will work with each school web liaison to prepare their site for the new design and to communicate with school staff and families, Ashby said. All 39 school sites should get upgraded to the new design by the end of the 2023-24 school year.
Progress on the information architecture, visual design and technical development has been reported to the Superintendent’s Cabinet and to the School Board, most recently in January of this year.
“I’m very excited about the website redesign this has been a long time coming,” Ashby said during that School Board meeting. “We’ve wanted to do this for a long time.”
People on smartphones (staff photo by Jay Westcott)
Should Arlington Public Schools keep students from using their phones in schools?
The School Health Advisory Board — a committee of parents, some of whom are nurses and doctors, and a few administrators — has recommended APS adopt a policy for the next school year requiring smartphones to be off and put away during school hours.
This group has been advocating for a system-wide phone policy since 2019 but today, principals and teachers are following this policy on a school-by-school and classroom-by-classroom basis. Kenmore, Dorothy Hamm and Swanson and middle schools have these phone policies in place, says APS spokesman Frank Bellavia.
There, students are not allowed to have their cell phones out in school unless for very specific instructional purposes, he says. Phones are not allowed during passing time or in the cafeteria, too.
This ad-hoc approach “makes it difficult to enforce for both teachers and principles,” committee chair Desiree Jarowski told the School Board during a work session this January, advocating for a system-wide policy.
“It creates more problems for the students because there is no consistency in policy, and no consequences if they don’t follow the rules — particularly if the teacher is the one requesting the student puts the cell phone or other device away,” she asserted.
Jarowski described instances of students cheating with their cell phones and refusing to put away their phones when teachers asked. She said that SHAB has heard from “many parents” concerned about cell phones use in schools, while an informal survey of parents on the Arlington Education Matters Facebook page showed some 88% of respondents would want “away for the day” policies at all secondary schools.
A parent of a Swanson Middle School student tells ARLnow that despite the policy, his son has observed kids use their phones in the hallways and during class to play music, watch videos, play games and look at dating apps.
SHAB is urging APS to adopt a draft policy it created in 2019. Doing so, Bellavia says, would have to follow the usual APS process for policy development, including drafts being written and shared with stakeholder groups and made available for public comment.
If APS agreed to draft such a policy, it would follow the lead of Fairfax County Public Schools. Last summer, it updated the student conduct guidelines to say phones have to be silenced and put away for the duration of the school day for elementary and middle schoolers and during instructional periods for high schoolers, “to help foster a learning environment that is conducive to learning.”
This change came after Herndon High School cracked down on record-high phone use last spring with some positive results.
Current APS policies stipulate when and how kids can use their phones and ways schools can teach them proper phone use.
“APS is committed to assisting students and staff members in creating a 21st century learning environment,” the APS student handbook says. “To support this progress, with classroom teacher approval, students may use their personal devices smartphones, laptops, netbooks, tablets, etc.) to access the Internet and collaborate with other students during the school day.”
It has an acceptable use policy that stipulates, among other things, a digital citizenship curriculum “educating students about appropriate online behavior, including interacting with students and other individuals on social network sites, public websites, blogs, and other electronic communication tools.”
Reactions among School Board members to the idea of a system-wide policy were mixed.
School Board Vice-Chair Cristina Diaz-Torres strongly opposed it. She said the draft policy is concerning and based on research with disputable sample sizes, while enforcement would eat into instructional time.
“What I would strongly consider that we do is really double down on our efforts to encourage our students to use these devices responsibly,” she said.
“There’s no version of the world where cellphones are ever going to go away,” she continued. “In the same way we’re teaching our students to self-regulate emotionally, as one board member, I would strongly encourage instead that we be leaning into ways to teach our students to self-regulate, to self-moderate, to really understand the utility of the tool, and use it in appropriate moments.”
Counterfeit OxyContin with fentanyl, also known as ‘blues’ (via Drug Enforcement Agency/Flickr)
Drug use intervention programs for youth are in short supply in Arlington County, according to people who help youth with substance dependencies.
The need is particularly acute for younger teens, as the onset of exposure to and abuse of drugs is trending younger, National Capital Treatment and Recovery Clinical Director Pattie Schneeman said in a recent panel.
“‘There’s nothing out there for adolescents.’ I hear it all the time,” says Schneeman, acknowledging that National Capital Treatment and Recovery, formerly Phoenix House, stopped serving children in 2015 because insurance reimbursements did not cover operating costs.
“If you have money, you can send someone to a posh program. You can pay for services,” she continued. “But if you are average, middle-class or a low socioeconomic family, you have no resources, and it is very sad and devastating to our communities.”
Arlington is seeing a rise in youth obtaining and using opioids, with an increasing number overdosing both on and off school grounds — or effectively detoxing in the Northern Virginia Juvenile Detention Center in Alexandria. In some cases, they are prescription, but in many others, they are buying illegally manufactured pills laced with the deadly drug fentanyl, from local gangs or through social media, police say.
The death of 14-year-old student Sergio Flores after a fatal overdose at Wakefield High School has driven teachers, parents and School Board members to call for more action and support from APS and Arlington County. Conversations since then have revealed the barriers throughout the continuum of care to actually treating kids.
For instance, school-based substance abuse counselors can only educate — they cannot provide treatment, according to School Climate Coordinator Chip Bonar, while appropriate treatment options can have a months-long waitlist. The division of the Arlington County Dept. of Human Services that works with children and behavioral health has 43% of its job positions unfilled and acknowledges there are few residential substance use treatment options.
It will be at least two years before VHC Health — formerly Virginia Hospital Center — opens its planned rehab facility. Two years is a long time, however, considering that less than a month passed between the death of Flores and a near-fatal teen overdose Wednesday.
To beef up treatment options, and expand services in the nearer term, Arlington is turning to settlements with manufacturers, distributors and pharmacies it alleges have been key players in the opioid epidemic. Just last week, the Arlington County Board agreed to participate in a proposed settlement against Teva, Allergan, Walmart, Walgreens, CVS and their related corporate entities.
The Board voted to approve the settlement in an unannounced vote at the end of a lengthy meeting.
“This is the latest in a series of settlements that are part of the larger National Opioid Settlement,” said county spokesman Ryan Hudson. “The total funding awarded to the County from these agreements continues to evolve as more settlements are finalized. All opioid settlement funding will be used on approved opioid abatement purposes.”
School Board member David Priddy holds a copy of the proposed 2023-24 budget for Arlington Public Schools (via APS)
Arlington Public Schools Superintendent Francisco Durán has proposed an $803.3 million budget — an increase of more than 7% over the current budget.
And the messaging around the budget picks up on some themes, including the mental and physical health of students and more support for teachers, which arose from major events this school year, including a series of student deaths and drug overdoses.
“This budget reflects our commitment to supporting continued success for every APS student through investments in both academic and mental health support,” Durán said in a statement.
“We are also continuing our focus on compensation for our teachers and staff to ensure we remain a highly competitive employer at a vital time for public schools, while further strengthening division-wide safety and security measures,” he added.
Durán writes that the budget process for the 2023-2024 school year began with “a large deficit” after APS used some $41 million — partially from reserves — last year to avoid significant reductions.
“This deficit was also driven by the need to provide staff with a step increase as well as a cost of living adjustment next year in order to partially mitigate rising inflation,” he said.
Like last year, APS is once more drawing from its well of reserves, spending $41.2 million in addition to the county transfer of $607.6 million. This transfer, $23 million larger than last year, comprises three-quarters of the school system’s revenue.
Both enrollment and cost-per-pupil are on the rise, per the budget. Next year, APS projects enrollment to increase by 710 students, according to a six-page budget explainer, while per-pupil expenditures to reach $24,560.
APS enrollment projections compared to cost-per-pupil (via APS)
It also projects a rising number of students receiving special education services and learning English.
Population projections for students with disabilities and English language learners (via APS)
When it comes to school staff, the budget includes $25.6 million for step increases for eligible employees and a 3% cost of living adjustment for all employees. The average pay increase will be a little over 5% for teachers, administrators and professionals and more than 6% for support staff.
“Anything less than a step plus 6% doesn’t beat the current cost of inflation,” said June Prakash, the president of the Arlington Education Association, the local teachers union, in a statement. “How can you expect us to give 100% of ourselves to APS when many employees must have second (or even third) jobs to make ends meet? Our staff will continue to struggle with housing, food, and furthering the education of their own children.”
She said employees are still paid less than colleagues in surrounding districts.
Teacher salaries in Arlington and neighboring Virginia jurisdictions, per Virginia Education Association data (created by ARLnow)
In response to staffing shortages, Durán proposes $2 million for a Summer School bonus for teachers and assistants and increased substitute teacher pay rates and substitute coverage pay for teachers. APS has taken this approach before.
The substitute teacher shortage is not new nor unique to Arlington. About 77% of school systems nationwide report substitute shortages, as teachers retire or quit in higher numbers, a trend some media outlets and research have linked to the pandemic.
