School Board

APS superintendent recommends ‘pausing’ virtual learning program next school year

By Jo DeVoe

(Updated at 12:45 p.m.) Superintendent Francisco Durán says Arlington Public Schools should hit the “pause” button on its Virtual Learning Program for next school year.

He’ll deliver this evaluation to the School Board during its meeting tonight (Thursday).

“The recommendation is to pause the program for next school year, as we take the time necessary to build a comprehensive virtual option program that will be sustainable and serve the needs of students who thrive in the virtual setting, for the long term,” APS Chief of School Support Kimberley Graves said in an email to families sent yesterday (Wednesday).

APS set aside $10.5 million in federal pandemic relief funds to create an in-house virtual option last summer for families with health and safety concerns about in-person learning as well as those waiting for the vaccine and those whose kids preferred online school.

Today, the VLP serves some 420 students, mostly children of color and many of whom have a disability, are economically disadvantaged students or are English-learning.

It got off to a rocky start due to severe staff shortages, and was plagued by issues related to communication, leadership turnover, teacher treatment and a lack of needed resources. By December, with enrollment dropping, rumors swirled that the program could come to an end — despite a mid-year update on the effort to aright it. Last month, administrators again reported progress, but did not address the speculation about the VLP’s future.

The proposed pause depends on a School Board vote scheduled for Thursday, Feb. 17. APS will hold a virtual town hall this month to address families’ questions and concerns, and staff will help students transition back to their home schools.

But APS is signaling that it’s open to running a virtual program long term. Graves said families will have opportunities to join a task force led by VLP Principal Danielle Harrell to develop a framework for a future virtual option.

Meanwhile, students may continue with virtual instruction through the state’s online learning platform, Virtual Virginia, if they or a family member has a medical condition that complicates going to school every day. APS staff will supplement whatever Virtual Virginia courses don’t cover and will support students during the transfer to their home schools.

“The success and well-being of your student(s) through the remainder of this school year, and throughout the transition back to in-person school at their school of record for the 2022-23 school year, are our priority and are the priority of our administrators and staff,” Graves said.

A special-education teacher told ARLnow that VLP staff were told they would be given priority for jobs within APS. She’s skeptical that a scheduled job fair for VLP staff will work for most teachers’ schedules, however.

A second grade teacher told ARLnow she feels betrayed by the decision.

“I’ve worked tirelessly over nights, weekends, and holidays to ensure my students have the best learning experience,” she said in an email. “Teachers came together to fight for this program every day, while having to welcome in new students on a consistent basis.”

She said teachers organized virtual events, field trips and after-school programs, spent hours creating content and bought their own programs, subscriptions and technology “so that our students never felt the inequities that were inevitably placed on them.”

“When there were staff shortages, we covered each other without extra pay. We skipped our personal lunch to eat with our students, missed prep periods, and took over classes without subs day in and day out to ensure our students were provided the best or nothing,” she said. “This is devastating to every individual who fought for VLP and worked hard to bring the program to fruition. It is a sad evening for us all.”

APS relaunches Career Center expansion project after delaying it due to cost overruns

By Jo DeVoe
The Arlington Career Center (via Arlington Public Schools)

Arlington Public Schools is ramping up planning work to build a new school and parking garage at the Arlington Career Center site.

A group tasked with developing the project from 2018-2020 has reconvened and will be working quickly to flesh out the project before the School Board reviews designs this spring.

Planning documents indicate APS envisions building a new, 5-story Career Center along S. Walter Reed Drive that would provide a modern space suited to the 21st-century career and technical skills taught inside.

APS is working on two plans: a “base” plan for a $170.5 million, 260,000-square-foot building for 1,795 students, and an “alternative” plan for a $153 million, 225,000-square-foot building for 1,345 students that is designed to accommodate a future expansion.

Building next to the current ACC building (816 S. Walter Reed Drive) will minimize disruptions and lower costs, according to APS administration.

“One of the things we learned through the last process is that building around an existing high school while the students are in there is cost-prohibitive,” said Lisa Stengle, the APS executive director of planning and evaluation, in a January planning meeting.

ACC houses college and career-readiness programs as well as programs that help recent immigrant students pursue their high school diploma and provide job training for special education students and support for teen parents.

In 2018, APS launched an expansion project to add up to 800 seats to the Career Center, and designs were being finalized in the spring of 2020 when the pandemic hit. The School Board removed the project from its 2021 Capital Improvement Plan (CIP) because it was $84 million, and then $34 million, over budget.

At the time, the board told the school system to focus on smaller renovations to meet rising enrollment. Since then, completed renovations to the Columbia Pike Branch Library created more space for students, and APS is spending around $31 million to add more seats to the current ACC building over the next three years.

But now APS is looking to build once more. The School Board directed Superintendent Francisco Durán in October to add the project to the 2023-32 Capital Improvement Plan, set for approval in June. If approved, the project will go to voters in November as a School Bond referendum.

APS expects to start construction in December 2023 and finish the building in December 2025 and the entire project in 2027.

The graphic below shows how the site will change through the project. (The current ACC building is in light gray, the Columbia Pike library is in dark gray and the above-ground parking garage is in tan.)

Preliminary site plan for the Arlington Career Center building (via APS)

Part of the current ACC building (indicated with red dashes) will be demolished to accommodate the above-ground, 400-space parking structure at S. Highland Street and 9th Street S.

The Columbia Pike Branch Library will remain where it is, as will the rest of the ACC building, which APS intends to use as a flexible space. Separately, APS is figuring out what to do with the building long term.

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NAACP urges Arlington Dems to end its School Board caucus process

By Jo DeVoe

The Arlington Branch of the NAACP levied sharp criticisms against the local Democratic party’s School Board endorsement caucus, which is up for debate next week.

On Wednesday at 7 p.m., the Arlington County Democratic Committee is set to consider the objections to its caucus and vote on whether and how to change this process. The vote will be just one month after new leadership took over ACDC.

In Virginia, all School Board races are nonpartisan, meaning parties like Arlington Dems can only endorse candidates, not nominate them as in a primary. But as part of the endorsement caucus, typically held in May, candidates agree not to run in the general election, making the end result similar to a primary.

Or, as the NAACP puts it, the caucus is a “shadow election overriding the democratic and regulated process.”

It argues that, months before the general election, the process influences who runs, how much they spend and how they campaign, who wins and whose votes matter.

“[H]olding a partisan caucus outside the general election schedule leads to voter confusion and thus undermines voter engagement, equitable voter representation, and candidate recruitment,” the group said in a letter to Arlington Dems President Steve Baker.

Part of the problem, the NAACP says, is that voters don’t understand the role of the caucus and will likely just pick the Democrat favored by the caucus when voting down-ballot at the polls.

“The partisan sample ballot and the ‘D’ designation of the endorsed candidate has the effect — in a county so heavily comprised of registered Democrats as Arlington — of rendering the official election in November predetermined by the prior shadow election of the partisan caucus,” the letter said. “Absent reform, the default winner of the proper democratic process always has been and presumably always will be the winner of the endorsement caucus.”

Defenders of the caucus say that’s the point.

“Many County residents lack the time to attend candidate debates or study candidates’ written policy positions and understandably look for a shortcut to winnow the field — the R or the D next to candidate names,” writes resident John Seymour, a precinct captain with Arlington Dems, in Blue Virginia.

Another issue is representation in terms of candidates and turnout, the NAACP says. Voting in the caucus heavily skews toward White Democrats living in North Arlington, meaning candidates with firm northern networks are more likely to run and receive support, according to the letter.

More from the NAACP:

[T]he 22207 zip code was consistently one of the highest represented areas in the caucus process, with almost one-third of the caucus votes (32%) in 2021; however, this zip code comprises only 14% of the total Arlington population and is 79% White. In contrast, the 22204 zip code is the most highly populated in Arlington (23%) and the most diverse (18% Black, 27% Hispanic, and 38% White), but disproportionately made up only 15% of the caucus vote in 2021.

… “If left to the insular implementation, the voting will continue to skew to benefit a specific geographic region in Arlington. It has for all of the years for which we have data and presumably the entirety of the endorsement caucus.”

Still, in recent years, voter participation in the caucus has trended upward, according to ACDC. Last May, 6,207 ballots were cast, exceeding the last county caucus record of 5,972 votes, set in 2017.

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Morning Notes

By ARLnow.com
Rosslyn at sunset (staff photo by Jay Westcott)

Dems to Discuss School Board Caucus — “Unsurprisingly, perhaps, into this climate of culture war skirmishes surrounding public education comes opposition to the Arlington County Democratic Committee’s long-standing caucus process and even opposition to Democratic endorsement of candidates for school boards seats… At its February meeting, Arlington Democrats will debate the issues raised by its critics and vote on whether and how to change its caucus and endorsement process.” [Blue Virginia]

Winter Outdoor Dining Guide — “Before the pandemic, we never imagined that al fresco dining season in Northern Virginia would stretch into the teeth of winter. And while the wave of the latest Omicron cases seems to have peaked (fingers crossed!), those who are cautious about Covid but still want to support local businesses might choose to eat outside in the fresh air. Here are 11 restaurants cranking up the heat on outdoor dining spaces, and adding fun elements like fire pits or tented igloos.” [Arlington Magazine]

Steep HQ2 Energy Offset Costs — “The cost for Amazon.com Inc. to offset carbon emissions at its PenPlace development and meet Arlington County’s energy expectations will run upward of $5 million, according to a study by the company’s Seattle consultant.” [Washington Business Journal]

Beyer Calls for Long Covid Data — “A pair of Democratic House members asked the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in a letter Tuesday to release data on the number of Americans who suffer lingering symptoms of coronavirus infection, including breakdowns along race, gender and age… Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.), who has sponsored legislation to fund studies of long covid, co-signed the letter with Pressley.” [Washington Post, U.S. House of Representatives]

More on Pentagon City Apartment Upgrades — “An existing 12-year-old apartment high-rise adjacent to what will be Amazon’s massive HQ2 campus, Metropolitan Park, in Arlington County, Virginia, has been acquired… and the investors plan a multimillion makeover fitting for HQ2’s panache. ‘We are going to make these apartments the coolest and most desirable homes on the park,’ said Steve Schwat, UIP founding principal.” [WTOP]

Two Crystal City Hotels Sold — “An Atlanta real estate investment manager has acquired a pair of Crystal City hotels a little more than a month after their former owner primed them for future redevelopment. Affiliates of Noble Investment Group paid a combined $64.3 million in mid-December for the 162-room Hampton Inn & Suites Reagan National Airport and the 248-room Hilton Garden Inn, according to Arlington County land records… There do not appear to be immediate changes planned for the hotels themselves, except for their names.” [Washington Business Journal]

It’s Wednesday — Today will be sunny, with a high near 30. Sunrise at 7:18 a.m. and sunset at 5:23 p.m. Tomorrow will be sunny, with a high near 33. [Weather.gov]

Arlington School Board sues to challenge Youngkin’s mask order

By Brandi Bottalico

(updated at 3:35 p.m.) The Arlington School Board is suing to stop Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s executive order that doesn’t allow school systems to require students to wear masks.

The lawsuit filed this morning (Monday) challenges the order issued by Youngkin on Jan. 15, his first day in office. Arlington joined school boards from Fairfax County, Alexandria City, Falls Church City, Hampton City, Prince William County and the City of Richmond in the suit.

The order states parents should be able to “elect for their children not to be subject to any mask mandate in effect at the child’s school or educational program.”

The order was supposed to take effect today but school districts across the state, including Arlington, already made decisions at the local level to go against the order and keep a mask requirement in place as part of a strategy to reduce the spread of Covid and maintain in-person instruction.

The lawsuit challenges the constitutionality of the executive order, and defends the right of school boards to enact policy at the local level. The lawsuit also claims the executive order goes against Senate Bill 1303, which was adopted in the General Assembly’s 2021 special session. The law states school boards should follow the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s health and safety requirements.

“Everyone in our community plays a role in keeping schools open and safe for students through consistent mask wearing and other mitigation measures,” APS Superintendent Fransisco Durán wrote in an email to families. “Our shared goal remains to make sure every student continues to access in-person learning five days per week. We look forward to the opportunity to ease these requirements in APS once public health guidance indicates it is safe to do so.”

APS spokesman Frank Bellavia said the schools continue to follow the same guidelines in place since the beginning of the school year.

“If a student is not wearing a mask, our schools are advised to speak to the student and provide them a mask to wear,” he said.

He said the vast majority of APS families support and adhere to the health and safety guidelines and when students arrived at school Monday, there were “very few incidents.”

The Arlington School Board put out a statement as well, stating it “stands together with participating school boards across the Commonwealth to defend our constitutional right to set policies and supervise our local schools. We continue to make decisions that allow us to keep schools open and safe for in-person learning, in accordance with Virginia law SB 1303 and the CDC’s guidance regarding the use of universal masks and other layered prevention strategies.”

Over the last seven days, 467 students and 98 staff members were positive for Covid, according to the school system’s COVID-19 dashboard.

The full press release from Arlington Public Schools is below.

Today, the Schools Boards of Alexandria City, Arlington County, City of Richmond, Fairfax County, Falls Church City, Hampton City and Prince William County, filed a lawsuit to challenge the constitutionality of Executive Order 2 issued by the governor on January 15, 2022. The legal action, representing over 350,000 students across the state, defends the right of school boards to enact policy at the local level, including policies that protect the health and well-being of all students and staff.

This legal action centers on fundamental questions about the framework of public education in Virginia, as set out in the Virginia Constitution and by the General Assembly. At issue is whether locally elected school boards have the exclusive authority and responsibility conferred upon them by Article VIII, § 7 of the Constitution of Virginia over supervision of the public schools in their respective communities, or whether an executive order can unilaterally override that constitutional authority.

Also at issue is whether a governor can, through executive order, without legislative action by the Virginia General Assembly, reverse a lawfully-adopted statute. In this case, Senate Bill 1303, adopted with the goal of returning students to safe in-person instruction five days a week in March 2021 and still legally in effect, provides that local school boards should follow The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) health and safety requirements.

Without today’s action, school boards are placed in a legally untenable position — faced with an executive order that is in conflict with the constitution and state law. Today’s action is not politically motivated. These seven school divisions would welcome the opportunity to collaborate with the governor to ensure the safety and welfare of all students.

This lawsuit is not brought out of choice, but out of necessity.

With COVID-19 transmission rates high, our hospitals at crisis level, and the continued recommendation of health experts to retain universal mask-wearing for the time being, this is simply not the time to remove this critical component of layered health and safety mitigation strategies. School divisions need to continue to preserve their authority to protect and serve all our students, including our most vulnerable, who need these mitigation measures perhaps more than anyone to be able to continue to access in-person instruction.

APS says it has ironed out many wrinkles in virtual learning program

By Jo DeVoe
APS Chief of School Support Kimberley Graves (via APS)

(Updated at 12:05 p.m. on 2/3/21) During the Arlington School Board meeting last night, public school administrators made the case for why the fledgling, controversial in-house virtual learning platform now deserves better grades.

Last fall, Arlington Public Schools launched its Virtual Learning Program for families with reservations about in-person school amid the pandemic or whose students preferred online classes.

But the program got off to a rocky start due to a teacher shortage and lack of administrative support. Parents said many students were sitting unsupervised in virtual “waiting rooms,” doing individual work overseen by assistants, struggling to get into third-party online classes and not getting needed special-education services.

Teachers, meanwhile, reported getting switched to different subjects on short notice, scrambling to find instructional resources, not knowing who to talk to and feeling unsupported.

“We were not pleased with the rocky start and we wanted to make sure things were moving on a little more smoothly by about this time of the year,” School Board Chair Barbara Kanninen said during the meeting.

Yesterday, APS administrators outlined what it’s done since then to extinguish the VLP’s myriad little fires. They didn’t, however, address the rumors swirling of an uncertain future for the VLP beyond the 2021-22 school year amid dropping enrollment, mostly at the elementary level, as families transition back to their home school or leave the school system. The program had 282 elementary students in October and has 247 students today.

Kimberley Graves, APS’s chief of school support, said communications with parents and home schools have improved under the new principal Danielle Harrell, but that the connection between the online and the brick-and-mortar school still needs work — an assessment shared by some teachers.

“While there’s been tremendous support from home schools, there is still work to be done to ensure that our students in the VLP have a direct connection to their home schools and really define what those connections look like,” Graves said.

A parent from the VLP Parents’ Coalition echoed Graves’ evaluation of the program.

“Although VLP has made good progress, there are still a number of challenges to be addressed, and the VLP Parents Coalition looks forward to continuing our collaboration with APS to ensure the program is a successful option for those that need and want it,” the parent, who wished to remain anonymous, told ARLnow.

Those connections are crucial because, compared to the overall APS student body, the VLP has higher proportions of students who received additional services from their brick-and-mortar buildings pre-pandemic. Sixty percent of students are eligible for free- or reduced-price lunch, while 24% are special-education students and 36% are English-language learners.

Graves outlined a few bright spots: Harrell was onboarded with the temporary help of three retired principals who also addressed the program’s immediate concerns. She now meets regularly with the school systems’ other principals. Every vacant instructional position is now filled and teachers had opportunities last November to access instructional training.

APS is calling more families of students who don’t log in frequently, but Graves said, this isn’t “catching all students.” Meanwhile, those students who were teacher-less in September won’t receive first-quarter grades in those classes.

Going forward, Graves said APS will make sure more students can participate in extracurricular activities and athletics through their home schools and increase the number of middle- and high-school classes taught by live APS teachers.

All elementary classrooms are taught by APS teachers but third-party vendors such as Virtual Virginia, the state’s online learning platform, are used in the middle and high school levels, she said.

More than 70% of middle school classes are taught by live APS teachers; at the high school, two-thirds of classes are taught by third-party vendors to give students a wide variety of courses to choose from.

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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.

APS targets two overcrowded schools in latest boundary change proposal

By Jo DeVoe
The Arlington School Board during the Nov. 16 meeting (via APS)

The Arlington School Board will vote on boundary changes tomorrow (Thursday) targeting two overcapacity schools in South Arlington.

This fall, Superintendent Francisco Durán launched a “limited” fall 2021 boundary process to relieve overcrowding at Abingdon Elementary School, Gunston Middle School and Wakefield High School.

The newest version of the plan postpones changes to Abingdon, where enrollment is currently manageable for next year, according to Durán. Students would have been moved from the school in Fairlington to Charles R. Drew Elementary School in nearby Green Valley, echoing a similar proposal in 2018 that became controversial.

Gunston and Wakefield are still over-capacity, so some planning units will be moved to Thomas Jefferson Middle School and Washington-Liberty High School.

“The proposed changes are manageable among the identified schools that we’ve talked about and we’ve engaged with. The planning units included in this process should not need to be moved again in the next few years, and this limited process provides some additional to understand enrollment fluctuations we’re seeing caused by the pandemic, and any shifts in projects we may see,” he said during the Nov. 16 School Board meeting.

APS also proposes to change which neighborhood schools feed into Arlington’s Spanish-immersion schools, following previous boundary changes and the relocation of one immersion program, Key School.

“We want to make sure access to immersion schools is convenient to families and students nearest the location,” Durán said.

Relief for Gunston and Wakefield

The boundary changes for Gunston and Jefferson will reassign 140 third- to fifth-graders while the Wakefield and W-L changes will reassign 162 students.

The changes will impact the Penrose, Foxcroft Heights, Arlington View and Columbia Heights neighborhoods.

The proposal to move Wakefield students to W-L comes as the latter is about to unveil a new wing of the school — the former Education Center administrative offices — with room for up to 600 students.

APS says the extra space at the Education Center will provide enrollment relief for Wakefield and cut down on W-L’s waitlist for the International Baccalaureate (IB) program.

“The number of applicants to the IB Lottery and number on the waitlist has increased each year over the last four years,” according to the 2021 boundary process website.

APS may consider targeted transfers from Wakefield to Yorktown if forthcoming enrollment projections for 2022-23 suggest unmanageable levels at Wakefield — even with the boundary adjustment.

The new high school boundaries would reverse moves made in 2016 to address overcrowding at W-L, but those who were moved away from W-L in 2017 will not be moved back.

In 2017, APS redirected Boulevard Manor kids from W-L to Yorktown High School. Students say when they graduate from Kenmore Middle School and head to Yorktown, they lose many of their middle school friends. To avoid that, they apply for W-L’s IB program or for a neighborhood transfer.

“I can make new friends, but the point is that it’s completely reasonable that I want to go to high school with my friends — just like all the middle schoolers in Arlington,” said Kenmore eighth-grader Xavier Anderson, during the Nov. 16 meeting.

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In a crowded County Board race, independent candidates laud a spirited campaign on election eve

By Jo DeVoe
Political signs on N. Kirkwood Road in Virginia Square (staff photo by Jay Westcott)

On the eve of Election Day, some of Arlington’s candidates are hopeful that this election cycle will bring a refresh to local politics, even while history suggests otherwise.

This year, four candidates are vying for one seat on the County Board — including three independents — and two candidates are competing for a seat on the School Board.

On the County Board side, Democrat incumbent Takis Karantonis is competing to keep his seat against Mike Cantwell, Audrey Clement and Adam Theo, while for the School Board, Mary Kadera and Major Mike Webb are running for the seat of outgoing member Monique O’Grady.

Independent candidates for the County Board in particular say the loaded independent slate could be a good thing for local discourse. Karantonis was not available to respond to a request for comment.

“The independent candidates brought new ideas and fresh perspectives this year’s election,” Cantwell said. “Arlington voters want change. They know instinctively that one party rule is bad for democracy and bad for Arlington. They want to vote for someone who is free from partisan ties and conflicts of interest.”

Adam Theo also praised the ratio of four candidates to one County Board seat.

“I hope to see every race in the future be this competitive and hopefully even more diverse,” he said. “I’m well aware that despite the competitiveness, unfortunately all four candidates are middle class white people. Although there are some good policy differences among us… we could have even more differences in policy solutions with greater gender, racial, ethnic, and religious diversity in our candidates.”

But perennial candidate Audrey Clement was more pessimistic.

“While I am impressed with the professionalism of Arlington’s election operations, I am profoundly disappointed that the vast majority of voters are fixated on one thing — the blue ballot,” Clement said. “That voters will not consider an alternative to the current Democratic Party machine guarantees corrupt government and ever escalating taxes for the foreseeable future.”

Independent and Republican candidates typically are resoundingly beaten out in Arlington elections, which favors establishment Democrats. Last year, 80.7% of voters voted for Joe Biden and 71.6% voted for incumbent Democrat Libby Garvey. Karantonis himself won his 2020 special election in a landslide, and likewise won the Democratic primary in June with a two-thirds majority.

Despite Arlington’s deep blue streak, Clement praised “the robust turnout for the six virtual candidate debates” she attended.

Clement also responded to the recent controversy over misrepresenting her age in a Washington Post candidate questionnaire, comparing age discrimination to racial discrimination 50 years ago.

“I maintain that all those over age 40 are in a federally designated ‘protected class’ that bars discrimination against them on the basis of age,” she said. “That means that they cannot be compelled to divulge their age except for an overriding government purpose.”

Overall, the independents say they’re happy with the campaign they led.

“I always spoke the truth and treated everyone with respect,” Cantwell said. “Because I am a true independent, I listened to all voters, not just the voters on Team Blue or Team Red.”

Theo says he didn’t set hard exceptions for himself this year, since he was focused on warming up to debates and introducing himself to voters. He says this year prepared him for future races, when he hopes to repeat the 2014 upset that landed John Vihstadt a spot on the County Board.

“I’ve now set up everything I’ll need for a future run in 2023 or 2022,” he said. “I go into a future race better positioned and prepared than any other independent candidate since John Vihstadt in 2014, I believe.”

Meanwhile, education is an increasingly hot-button political topic in Arlington and across Virginia. Division has seeped deeper into local Arlington school politics, says Democrat-endorsed School Board candidate Mary Kadera.

“To some extent public education has always been political, but this year more so than others,” she said. Her opponent, Mike Webb, was not available for comment.

This year, school choice, school curriculum and COVID-19 safety measures such as mask requirements have made education a hot-button issue in Virginia elections, she says.

“Local school board races are by Virginia law nonpartisan, but that doesn’t mean local school districts aren’t affected by education policies and investments made at the state and federal levels,” she said. “I am hoping all voters will examine the candidates’ education platforms carefully because it’s such a significant time for our students and staff, who need our full support as schools have reopened and we’re doing the important work of recovery.”

Meanwhile, voters will also be able to cast ballots in favor or against about $86 million in local government bonds.

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Morning Notes

By ARLnow.com
Dark clouds move across the region, seen from the Shirlington pedestrian bridge over I-395 (staff photo by Jay Westcott)

Reduced Metro Service Continues — “Metro continues working to finalize plans in cooperation with safety officials to return the 7000-series railcars to passenger service and fully restore its rail system. As a result, Metrorail service will remain at the current reduced service levels through at least October 31, 2021. During this time, trains will operate basic service every 15-20 minutes on the Red Line and every 30-40 minutes on all other lines.” [WMATA]

APS Online Learning Update — “Arlington Public Schools leaders say they have triaged some of the most pressing fallout from a rocky rollout of the new online-learning initiative, but still have steps to take to ensure the program meets its promises to students and their families. ‘We have had a lot of regretful growing pains – that has been bad,’ frustrated School Board member Cristina Diaz-Torres said after an Oct. 14 update on the situation.” [Sun Gazette]

Charges Dismissed in Police Shooting — “A federal judge in Alexandria on Friday dismissed all criminal charges against two U.S. Park Police officers who fatally shot unarmed motorist Bijan Ghaisar in 2017, saying that they reasonably feared that one of the officers was in danger and that their actions following a pursuit of Ghaisar were ‘necessary and proper.’ Prosecutors for the Virginia Attorney General’s Office and the Fairfax County commonwealth’s attorney said they would appeal the ruling.” [Washington Post]

It’s Monday — ⛈ A chance of showers between 2-5 p.m., then showers and thunderstorms — some potentially strong, with heavy rain — in the evening. Partly sunny, with a high near 77. South wind 6 to 13 mph, with gusts as high as 18 mph. Sunrise at 7:27 a.m. and sunset at 6:15 p.m. Tomorrow, it will be mostly cloudy and breezy, with a chance of showers and thunderstorms and a high near 65.

APS Prepares for ‘Limited’ Boundary Process Targeting Three Over-Crowded Schools

By Jo DeVoe

Arlington Public Schools is preparing to redraw boundaries for a half-dozen schools to relieve high enrollment and over-capacity at three of them.

The boundary process, which will go into effect next fall, is “limited in scope” and will target Abingdon Elementary School, Gunston Middle School and Wakefield High School.

“The boundary process will bring enrollment at these three schools to more manageable levels for the 2022-23 school year by re-assigning some planning units to neighboring schools with capacity to accommodate additional students,” APS said in a School Talk update to parents last week.

For each school, staff will focus on planning units where neither school is in walking distance, according to APS’s 2021 boundary process webpage.

APS says it will move some planning units from Abingdon to Drew Elementary School, which is two miles away. As of Sept. 30, Abingdon has 688 students and a projected capacity utilization rate of 119%, compared to the 433 students and use rate of 76% at Drew.

This direct step to balance enrollment comes on the heels of a less successful attempt to alleviate the overcrowding without redrawing boundaries. During the 2020-21 school year, APS set up a program encouraging families zoned for Abingdon to choose to send their children to Drew, with transportation provided.

Only 12 students took the “targeted transfer” option. School Board members said a dozen students would not make a dent in the schools’ enrollment imbalance and predicted the need for a boundary process.

“[The option] did not come out with numbers that were able to solve the problem,” Board Member Monique O’Grady said during an Aug. 26 School Board meeting. “I did want to point out that we have given the community the choice to go to what I think is a phenomenal school. After trying that, I think we’re at a different point in time, where we maybe need to take more intentional action.”

The renewed focus on Abingdon and Drew also comes three years after another boundary process that would have moved students at both Abingdon and Henry elementary schools to Drew proved controversial.

Some Gunston planning units will be moved to to Thomas Jefferson Middle School, but current Gunston students will not be affected. Gunston has 1,109 students and a projected capacity rate of 112%, compared to Jefferson’s 849 students and 101% use rate.

APS intends to move some planning units from Wakefield to Washington-Liberty High School, but the moves will not impact current Wakefield students. Enrollment and capacity rate margins are closer for the schools: 2,241 versus 2,174 students, and 108% versus 102%, respectively.

APS says the move will also make better use of the additional 500 or so seats at the former Arlington Education Center (1426 N. Quincy Street), which is set to open September 2022.

Despite the limited success of targeted transfers at the elementary level, APS plans to offer them so that current Wakefield students can opt to attend W-L next fall.

During the same August meeting, Executive Director of Planning and Evaluation Lisa Stengle said APS is offering the option because she’s “not sure moving ninth graders will be enough” to balance out Wakefield’s rising enrollment.

“With boundaries we want to be cautious, because we may have to come back and make changes in the future, and we don’t want to have to redo things,” Stengle said. “This way, it’s a choice.”

Community engagement sessions on the boundary process will begin with a virtual meeting on Saturday, Oct. 16. Engagement will run through the end of October.

Superintendent Francisco Durán will propose a more detailed plan during a meeting on Tuesday, Nov. 16. Two weeks later, on Tuesday, Nov. 30, there will be a public hearing. The School Board is expected to vote on his proposal on Thursday, Dec. 2.

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