(Updated at 11:05 a.m.) Arlington Public Schools Superintendent Francisco Durán has proposed a 2024-2025 budget that he says avoids new expenses in a lean fiscal year compounded by state funding uncertainty.
He presented an $824.7 million budget — which increases the current budget by $12.2 million, or 1.5% — to the Arlington School Board last week.
The superintendent said his budget includes a $29.5 million gap, in part because APS could lose some $5.7 million in state funding. These come from cuts Gov. Glenn Youngkin proposed in his budget for preschool, tutoring and compensation supplements.
“Here’s the bottom line: with everything I’ve shared, with the revenues that I have provided, the cuts that we have done, the expenditures that I’ve outlined [excepting staffing changes tied to enrollment, a part-time custodian and $100,000 for a new student safety software] are not new expenditures,” Durán said during his presentation on Thursday night. “Everything else is currently things that we’re maintaining and sustaining.”
In the best-case scenario, the nearly $30 million gap would drop to $5 million with a 2.5 cent tax rate increase and a competing state budget proposed in the Virginia senate that would send $11 million to APS. The Arlington County Board authorized hearings on a 2.5 cent tax rate increase in large part to address funding gaps if Youngkin’s budget is approved.
“This is not the budget that any of us want to be presenting,” said Board Vice-Chair David Priddy, who read comments from Chair Cristina Diaz-Torres, who could not attend the meeting. “At best, this maintains the status quo of APS, but we know the status quo is not sufficient for our students, for our staff or for our community.”
Youngkin’s conservative budget comes despite a recent report from the Joint Legislative Audit & Review Commission, which found Virginia gives less funding to schools than the national average, using outdated models from the Great Recession, Durán noted.
On top of this statewide deficiency, APS receives less funding from the state, says School Board member Mary Kadera. State funding accounts for 29% and 27%, respectively, of the budgets for the public school systems in Loudoun and Fairfax counties, compared to 15% for APS, she said.
To mitigate the gap, the budget includes some $21 million in cuts. Durán axed $15.7 million in Central Office expenses and reduced staffing by 38 full-time equivalent positions: 19 in the Central Office, of which four are vacant ($2.7 million) and 19.8 school-based art, music and PE positions ($2.15 million).
This change corrects outdated planning calculations without increasing class sizes or impacting classroom instruction, per Durán’s presentation.
“There may be ways in which we can do better with this year’s budget, even with the challenging numbers just presented,” School Board member Miranda Turner said. “I very much appreciate that you focus cuts on… Central Office and not within the schools, but we need to compare the proposed position cuts… We have essentially the same number of positions being cut in Central Office, several of which are vacant anyway.”
Durán says APS began the budget process with a much larger, $73.4 million gap, largely due to the use of $53.7 million in one-time funding in the current budget. Most of this sum was used to make salaries more competitive with surrounding jurisdictions.
For the 2024-2025 budget, Durán proposes $17 million in step increases and a cost-of-living adjustment, which could be augmented by the 3% compensation increase included in the state Senate’s proposed budget. (Youngkin’s plan includes a 2% salary increase for teachers, per the Virginia Mercury.)
The APS proposal disheartened June Prakash, the leader of the local teachers union, the Arlington Education Association.
Four School Board hopefuls are now jockeying for the endorsement of Arlington Democrats this May.
Kathleen Clark, Larry Fishtahler and Zuraya Tapia-Hadley launched their School Board bids during the Arlington Dems monthly meeting at Lubber Run Community Center on Wednesday night.
They and Chen Ling, an APS parent who threw his hat into the ring last month, will face off in the School Board caucus process in May.
While School Board races are non-partisan, the Democratic party picks a candidate to endorse in the general election and those who lose agree not to run in the general election. The designation generally is a strong predictor of victory in November, when voters will pick who will replace outgoing Chair Cristina Diaz-Torres and Vice-Chair David Priddy.
Clark, the vice-chair of the 2024-30 Arlington Public Schools Strategic Plan steering committee, kicked off with her summary of what roughly 4,000 APS school community members said were their hopes for the system.
“Every student deserves to achieve academic success. Every student has the right to feel safe and included at school,” she said. “Every teacher wants and deserves to feel heard, supported and appreciated and our community wants high-quality schools and a school system that is operationally effective and sustainable.”
Clark served for six years on the Special Education PTA and has spoken out in other media outlets about bullying of students with disabilities, including her son, who has autism.
An APS alumna whose children attend Cardinal Elementary and Swanson Middle schools, Clark is an internal auditor with Gap, according to APS.
“Arlington deserves a School Board member who prioritizes instruction while developing long-range plans, ensuring that there are seats available where our population is growing,” she said. “My experience as an internal auditor has taught me to ask the right questions around priorities and budget.”
Fishtahler, who once led the Advisory Council on Instruction and County Council of PTAs, returns to the School Board race after two failed School Board races in 2012 and 2003. He says he is concerned about waning confidence in APS.
“The Covid experience and the return-to-school have done significant damage to the confidence that our schools are providing the best value,” he said.
“The most valuable asset that we have in our schools are our teachers and school-based staff. It is here that confidence in the leadership of the central administration and the School Board itself continues to decline,” he continued. “The improvements that parents see happening because particular teachers particularly have taken on increases in workflow and additional stress.”
He pulled out of the 2012 race against candidates Noah Simon and incumbent Emma Violand-Sanchez in a two-seat race, including one seat vacated by Libby Garvey, now serving her last year on the Arlington County Board as its Chair. He said at the time he saw his chances were slim.
He previously ran for School Board in 2003 but lost to incumbent and Republican Dave Foster.
Tapia-Hadley, who was born in Mexico, raised in D.C. and has lived in Arlington for two decades, says she is uniquely suited to help ensure the School Board hears from everyone in the APS community.
Arlington School Board Vice Chair David Priddy says he will not be seeking another term.
He was elected in 2020 along with Cristina Diaz-Torres, who currently serves as the School Board Chair and last month announced that she too would step down after one term. Both of their terms expire at the end of this year, meaning two seats are up for election this year.
“Although I’m making this announcement tonight, there is still one year left on my term,” Priddy told Arlington Democrats during the party’s reorganization meeting last night (Wednesday). “So I will continue to stand on the pillars that you put me in office to enact. Thank you for allowing me to serve the Arlington community.”
Priddy said he would not repeat the “litany of accomplishments and the progress that we have made on the School Board” that Diaz-Torres mentioned in her farewell speech. Instead, he rallied Democrats around the presidential election year ahead.
“The Arlington Democrats are truly a force to be reckoned with,” he said, pointing to the work local Democrats have done, in Arlington and beyond, to promote the values of the Democratic Party. “I bring this up because this year is a presidential election year, which means it’s time to mobilize and elect the right people for office.”
Priddy noted School Board hopefuls have until Feb. 16 to file with Arlington Democrats. The party cannot officially nominate a candidate but it can opt to endorse candidates who pledge to be a Democrat.
The party decided to hold an in-person caucus if at least three candidates emerge, according to the 2024 caucus rules discussed last night. The caucus would be canceled if only two emerge and the party would decide whether to endorse those candidates in March.
Nabbing the party endorsement carries significant weight in Arlington and, though some have criticized this process for tipping the scales in favor of well-connected establishment candidates, it remains popular among party members.
After Priddy’s announcement, Chen Ling announced his candidacy for School Board. He introduced himself as the parent of a third grader at Ashlawn Elementary School and the director of engineering at a Fortune 500 company.
He said the School Board needs a “culture of transparency, respect and trust.”
“Some of the actions taken by the School Board in the last few years instead caused confusion and discontentment between parents and teachers,” he said, noting “seemingly suboptimal proposals” that created an “antagonistic relationship between the community and School Board.”
“That is a real shame because I’ve watched the School Board work and these are some really caring, thoughtful people and they are trying their best,” he said. “What I think they lack is tools to make the best decisions, they lack the tools to provide transparency and build trust.”
The School Board should share with parents all the proposals they consider, as well as their trade-offs and reasoning behind a decision, Ling said.
“It’s okay if the final proposal is somehow detrimental to my child if I know that it serves for the community and the school system at large. That’s something that I haven’t seen at that level,” he said. “It’s not enough to provide an answer, even if it’s the correct answer. We need to show our work.”
Ling said he would like to see fewer curriculum changes, as well as more automation of mandated state and federal reporting, so teachers can focus on students. Lastly, he would like to see class size reductions, too.
During the meeting, Arlington County Board candidate Natalie Roy made her pitch to Arlington Democrats. She, and opponent Julie Farnam, both seek the party’s nomination this June in the County Board race to fill the seat occupied by Chair Libby Garvey. Garvey has not yet announced if she will seek reelection.
“I believe the County Board needs a voice like mine, advocating for transparency and responsiveness, I am committed to common sense leadership that brings us all together,” Roy said.
(Updated at 2:50 p.m.) Arlington School Board Chair Cristina Diaz-Torres will not be seeking re-election.
Diaz-Torres, who became chair this July, announced the decision last night (Wednesday) at the Arlington County Democratic Committee meeting, to a chorus of dismay from some meeting attendees.
Her term on the School Board ends on Dec. 31, 2024. She is the second sitting member to announce this year a decision not to seek reelection, following Reid Goldstein, whose term ends this month.
Diaz-Torres ran in 2020, securing the endorsement of Arlington Democrats in June and a place on the School Board that November.
She was sworn in on Jan. 1, 2021, amid “truly wild uncertainty,” when schools were still shut down and a vaccine was not yet widely available, she told local Democrats.
“Just three years later, our world looks a lot brighter,” she said, per a recording of her speech she posted on social media.
“As a part of this job, I spend a lot of time talking to staff, especially school leaders, and the sentiment I hear over and over again is how different this year feels,” she continued. “It’s not a return to the before times we were all longing for, but to the after times: something new, something different, something that we were longing for all those months.”
Diaz-Torres reflected on several changes APS made during her tenure — many of which garnered applause from meeting attendees — and credited staff, Superintendent Francisco Durán and his cabinet and the School Board for this work.
The school system changed its approach to reading instruction, one she says has narrowed Arlington’s achievement gap and identified more students for extra help, she said.
She added that the School Board removed School Resource Officers from school grounds, reintroduced collective bargaining for employees and increased teacher compensation across pay scales.
“I am proud of the initiatives we have undertaken, I am proud of the policies we have implemented, and I am proud of the positive changes we have brought to our schools,” she said on social media. “We have strived to create an APS that serves ALL students by name, strength, and need.”
That work must continue, her statement continued, but under new leadership.
“This chapter will forever hold a special place in my heart and will be among the most significant and impactful work I’ve ever done,” she said. “This next chapter will look a little different but I look forward to bearing witness to the continued success of @APSVirginia.”
Her next chapter includes taking on the role of being “mom to a future APS grad in the class of 2042,” she told Democrats. The outgoing School Board chair announced her pregnancy on social media last month.
Happy Thanksgiving, from our growing family to yours! 🍁👶🏾 pic.twitter.com/pfFevKeH1c
— Cristina Diaz-Torres (@cdiaztorres240) November 23, 2023
Arlington Public Schools has a new internal social media platform for families but its anonymous commenting policy prompted a tense discussion among some School Board members.
This year, the school system launched ThoughtExchange, which allows people to comment on topics or proposals administrators bring to the community for public comment. Users can also rank the comments others make 1-5 stars.
ThoughtExchange is intended to be a simpler and faster alternative to answering surveys and writing emails. APS has used it to gauge reception of its proposed school calendar and its plans to turn Nottingham Elementary School into a “swing space” and relocate the Spanish immersion program from Gunston to Kenmore Middle School.
“The goal of ThoughtExchange was for us to get more comprehensive feedback from our community,” APS Director of Strategic Outreach Daryl Johnson said in a work session last week. “One of the biggest requests that we continually receive from the community is transparency, and so people are actually able to see the thoughts of others in real time.”
But the platform’s anonymous commenting function raised red flags for School Board member Reid Goldstein.
“In the 10 or 15 years that social media has been around, I have yet to hear anybody, worldwide, say, ‘Boy, this social media is the greatest thing since sliced bread,'” Goldstein said. “I’m curious as to what thought we were going to achieve by creating another social media conduit and allowing commenters to sign up anonymously.”
Johnson said APS allows anonymous feedback so people speak up without worrying their opinions will blow back in their face at, for instance, the next Parent-Teacher Association meeting.
“So yes, sometimes it may go to the other end of the spectrum where it allows someone to say something that may not be the most favorable or the most constructive feedback, but however, it allows people to actually give that honest feedback without the retaliation,” he said.
Goldstein asked Johnson if staff expect “unfavorable” comments to increase, how much time they devote to content moderation and whether the communications team will request a future full-time moderator position.
Johnson noted that staff spend significant time moderating comments and responding to those “spreading misinformation.” He said a full-time moderator is unnecessary because ThoughtExchange uses AI to flag words and notify staff and participants can also report comments.
“We also are able to comment and respond to what people are saying,” he said.
Responding to Goldstein, School Board Chair Cristina Diaz-Torres said anonymous negative comments already exist on other platforms and, with ThoughtExchange, APS at least can moderate.
“These are comments that were happening already in different venues. If you’ve seen an ARLnow comment, if you’ve seen DC Urban Moms and Dads, Arlington Education Matters, these comments have been happening,” she said.
“The reality is that these comments were being made,” she continued. “A lot of these comments are incredibly disrespectful and are incredibly unkind and are incredibly inappropriate, however, here is an area where we can in fact do that moderation, using the tools that Mr. Johnson just mentioned.”
Goldstein agreed these comments have always existed but stressed with the new platform, “we are giving a platform to them and rewarding bad behavior that we have historically…”
“We’re not, though, if we’re taking them away,” Diaz-Torres interjected.
“…historically spent too much time [rewarding],” Goldstein continued, reprising his comment.
Diaz-Torres, who added that she appreciates the ability to rank comments, concluded the discussion with a message to the community “to be kind.”
“This is a new piece of software. And yes, you can be a keyboard warrior to your heart’s content, behind your keyboard, in the privacy of your own home, but remember, that there are humans on the receiving end of this,” she said.
Arlington Public Schools is pausing an impending middle school boundary process, citing stable enrollment this fall.
Earlier this year, APS was bracing for overcrowding at a few middle schools. It proposed busing some students from Dorothy Hamm and Swanson to under-capacity Williamsburg Middle School. It also floated moving the Spanish language immersion program from overcrowded Gunston to Kenmore Middle School.
Now, administrators say enrollment needs are not pressing enough to warrant these changes just yet. The Arlington School Board endorsed a plan Tuesday to postpone the process for one year. The changes would now affect students going into grades 6 and 9 in the fall of 2026.
“As of last week at each middle school, only one school exceeds capacity: Gunston has two students beyond its design capacity,” Dept. of Planning and Evaluation Executive Director Lisa Stengle told the board on Tuesday. “Every middle school fits right now. So the urgency that we had to change middle school boundaries may not be as urgent as it was when we started this process.”
She attributed this to the home address confirmation process this summer, when APS changed how it verifies students living in Arlington and unenrolled non-resident fifth and eighth graders.
While this effort was underway, several families were voicing their opposition to the proposed boundary changes. Most vocal were Hamm families opposed to plans to bus students to Williamsburg, who said their children would forfeit the option to walk to school.
School Board members opined that walkability becomes the sticking point of most boundary processes and these efforts prioritize walkability — above other priorities, such as demographic diversity — as a result.
“The knottiest problem here… is the dichotomy between walkability and demographics because they both can’t be achieved at the same time,” School Board member Reid Goldstein said.
“We’ve heard, in the past, that when staff goes out to the community and talks about potential boundary changes, they hear ‘Well, we like walkability,’ and then we we just lean in the direction of walkability, which of course does not enhance demographics at all,” he continued.
APS may still, one day, move the immersion program from Gunston to Kenmore, in an effort to get more secondary students to stick with the program, says Director of Strategic Planning Iliana Gonzales.
Most immersion students live within the boundaries of Kenmore and Thomas Jefferson middle schools and may discontinue the program because of travel distance to Gunston, she said. Last year, a task force convened to develop a vision for the dual-language immersion program recommended moving the program to a more centrally located middle school — a change afforded by the then-forthcoming boundary process.
But School Board members and administrators are also concerned about where to put the program because it may impact the balance of native English and Spanish speakers. Only about a third of immersion students in elementary and middle school were classified as English learners, according to a 2022 report.
Arlington Public Schools is kicking off the new school year with a bit of good news related to academic performance.
Last school year, students as a whole made gains in math, social studies and science, and in almost all areas, generally exceeded statewide scores, per new testing data.
Between the 2022 and 2023 school years, the percentage of students passing state tests increased by 4 points for math, 7 points for social studies and 1 point for science, according to a presentation to the School Board on Thursday. Reading remained flat and writing dropped 2 percentage points.
Black and Hispanic students, students with disabilities and those learning English, in particular, demonstrated progress. APS highlighted math pass rates that increased by 8 and 11 percentage points for Hispanic and English-language learning students, respectively.
Administrators says the data demonstrates that students are gaining ground after pandemic-era learning loss. It may also indicate long standing achievement gaps based on race, English proficiency, ability and socioeconomic status are narrowing.
Crediting teachers and new academic tools for that progress, Chief Academic Officer Dr. Gerald Mann, Jr. told the School Board on Thursday APS has its work cut out for them.
“We are seeing the work that our team is doing starting to pay dividends and recover some of the loss from the pandemic,” he said. “We’ve come a long way but we’ve got more work to do.”
Future focus areas include reading — where pass rates remained flat over last year, at 80% — and writing, which fell 2 percentage points.
Facing what one committee described a “literacy crisis,” APS overhauled how it teaches reading to elementary school students. Like other schools nationwide, APS is working to reverse years of reading instruction that critics say glossed over the basics, such as phonics, and disadvantaged students for whom reading did not come naturally.
That effort is starting to bear fruit, according to Superintendent Francisco Durán, who noted that this fall, some 91% of kindergarteners could meet benchmarks such as recognizing rhymes, words and letter sounds, up from 81% last year.
“[That] is building them up for bigger success later,” Durán said.
But this leaves a group of students, fifth grade and up, who were taught to read before these changes were made, and might still be struggling today. This year, APS is turning its attention to them.
“Our hope is that the work that we’re doing for secondary literacy this year also pays dividends in the future,” Mann said.
When School Board members asked about falling writing scores, Durán emphasized that the state test measures one type of writing: responding to a social studies or science text.
“We want students to be writers across all different types, and genres and ways,” he said. “I just want to make sure we all are aware of that because, I think long term, it could be misunderstood if we’re just speaking about writing, generically.”
Writing, more broadly, may still be a concern.
A 2019 survey of APS graduates found many graduates wished they had been better prepared for collegiate writing. School Board watchdog group Arlington Parents for Education, which recapped last week’s meeting, previously highlighted the survey, saying students were “practically begging for more… ‘writing assignments.’”
Even as the number of assigned essays increased, Mann said teachers already feel they cannot give adequate feedback on assignments.
“The biggest barrier that I’ve also heard is that ‘I just don’t have the time. I will assign it, but then I can’t give [them] appropriate feedback,'” he said.
(Updated at 2:30 p.m.) The Arlington County Council of PTAs is criticizing plans to close Nottingham Elementary School and make it a “swing space” where students go when their school is being renovated.
In suggesting this change, the coalition of PTAs, or CCPTA, says Arlington Public Schools has not considered how little money it has in the next decade to spend on sorely needed renovations. It adds the move would disadvantage low-income, diverse neighborhoods that rely on schools for county and community-based services.
This spring, APS proposed closing Nottingham, in the Williamsburg neighborhood at 5900 Little Falls Road, and making it a swing space as early as 2026. It was part of a suite of proposed changes to solve for projected capacity imbalances: several schools below Langston Blvd are over-full while their counterparts north of the highway have many empty seats.
Nottingham was chosen because it would cost the least to retrofit — $5 million to expand its ability to receive buses — compared to other schools, county facilities or commercial buildings. APS also argued it would be more fiscally responsible to use the under-capacity buildings it currently has, rather than build a new school.
This proposal quickly rankled current and future Nottingham parents, some of whom argue APS made the decision on faulty projections of falling enrollment. The CCPTA joined their chorus during the School Board meeting last Thursday.
“Recent spending decisions and currently proposed spending projects have monopolized our bond issuance capacity until at least FY 2032, leaving insufficient funding for a major renovation,” CCPTA President Claire Noakes said in a statement released after the meeting.
She notes 17 of 37 school buildings have not had a major renovation in at least 20 years and are in need of upgrades, creating “a backlog of need.”
“The lack of available funds for a major renovation will cause the swing space to stay empty for six years, while other identified needs that could have been paid for with that $5 million will go unmet,” she continued.
The CCPTA illustrated its argument in a chart that shows how much money APS estimates it can issue in bonds for major renovations over the next decade.
It estimates a major renovation would exceed $25 million, based on estimates for one such project down the pike. The CCPTA say that APS would have to accumulate a few years of bond capacity, from Arlington County, to embark on a major renovation.
This squeeze is due to projects APS already has in the queue, including the new, forthcoming $180 million Arlington Career Center building and related plans to retrofit the current Career Center for the Montessori program now housed in the former Patrick Henry Elementary School. This building is set to be demolished and turned into a green space.
(Note: The chart below lists $7.5 million for the Career Center because this was tacked onto the project’s costs after APS approved the project via the previous Capital Improvement Plan.)
An independent candidate for the Arlington School Board is bowing out of the race.
On Monday, four months ahead of the general election in November, James “Vell” Rives announced in an email that he was suspending his campaign. His announcement hinted that he may run again for School Board in a later election cycle.
“For various reasons, I am suspending my 2023 campaign and am instead working on a future run for Arlington County School Board,” he said in the email. “Thank you for your encouragement and support this year! For now, please stay involved in our schools, and help out where you can.”
Rives was running for the second time as an independent after a failed challenge to Democratic-endorsed candidate Bethany Zecher Sutton last year.
The psychiatrist and a member of the School Health Advisory Board — a citizen committee advising Arlington Public Schools — has campaigned on student health, improving academic performance and reducing technology use.
His opponent, Miranda Turner, who has the endorsement of the Arlington County Democratic Committee after its May caucus, will be running unopposed.
This is also Turner’s second School Board bid, losing two years ago in the Democratic endorsement caucus to now-School Board member Mary Kadera.
This year, Turner bested political newcomer Angelo Cocchiaro, who had the endorsement of outgoing School Board Chair Reid Goldstein and that of the local teachers union, the Arlington Education Association.
Ahead of the Nov. 7 general election, the first day of in-person early voting will begin on Sept. 22. The last day to apply for a mail ballot is Oct. 27.
A new proposal from Arlington Public Schools (APS) would send Nottingham Elementary students to other schools and use the building to house other students temporarily displaced by school renovations.
Parents of students at Nottingham were notified of the proposal yesterday (Thursday) by APS, ahead of a School Board work session discussing the proposal last night.
Within 24 hours, some current and prospective parents mobilized and formed a group, Neighbors for Nottingham, to learn more about the proposal and formulate next steps before a potential School Board vote a year from now.
The school system says it needs a “swing space” to prepare for renovation projects and balance enrollment in North Arlington, where there are more seats than students. APS staff are currently developing a timeline and list of schools to be renovated for the 2025-2034 Capital Improvement Plan, which will be approved next June.
“By serving as swing space, our school will continue to play a vital role in supporting education in our community while other schools undergo necessary improvements,” planning staff told parents in an email, shared with ARLnow.
APS considered 61 sites before settling on the Williamsburg neighborhood school at 5900 Little Falls Road, eliminating options based on size, location and cost needed to prepare the building for young students. It says Nottingham works because enrollment is low and stable, and nearby schools can absorb many of the 413 displaced students — though APS noted that receiving schools may need to add some capacity.
If the CIP is approved next year, Nottingham could be repurposed as early as the 2026-27 school year. Students would be transferred to surrounding elementary schools such as Discovery, Jamestown, Taylor, and Tuckahoe, and staff would begin to be reassigned in the spring of 2026.
Would-be parent Coco Price says she and her neighbors are devastated.
“We have been so looking forward to sending our now-toddler-age children there when they reach elementary-age in a few short years and would be sincerely crushed to see them reassigned to another Arlington school — one that is potentially either not within walking distance or not as highly-rated as Nottingham,” Price said.
The proposal could disrupt educational plans for new homeowners, like Price.
“Should the motion pass, it would… potentially drive us to consider moving to a more stable school district outside of Arlington,” she said. “We also worry how this decision would impact our home’s resale values down the line.”
Others questioned the need for this work and criticized APS for not evaluating alternatives to a “swing space” in its 272-page report.
“We didn’t see any serious discussion about options such as portable learning trailers for schools going under renovations or for temporarily displacing just the students at schools that were under renovations for the limited time period of those renovations,” would-be parent Jeff Heuwinkel told ARLnow.
School Board candidate Miranda Turner has found success on her second go-round.
Following a three-day caucus process, Turner has captured the Democratic endorsement for Arlington School Board, with 1,004 votes to 332 for Angelo Cocchiaro. Turner will face at least one independent candidate in the November general election: James “Vell” Rives, who is also running for the second time.
Cocchiaro appeared to be considering dropping out of the race in April, but ultimately stayed in and picked up some key endorsements, including from outgoing School Board Chair Reid Goldstein. Cocchiaro’s promise to be “a prizefighter for our teachers and school staff” also helped to win him the endorsement of the political action committee of the local teachers union.
Following the release of the caucus results, the 22-year-old youth organizer said in a statement that “Arlington Democrats have made their voices heard, and I am proud to give my full-throated and unequivocal endorsement to Miranda Turner.”
“It is critical that Arlingtonians elect a candidate this November who will uphold, defend, and advance the progress achieved by this School Board, and who will advocate for every student,” he continued. “Miranda Turner is that candidate.”
Turner notably advocated for a swifter return to in-person school at Arlington Public Schools in the fall of 2020, at a time when concerns about the health impacts of such a move were heightened. Her campaign this year has focused on classroom instruction and support for teachers and students.
“The need for high-quality instruction, appropriate intervention, and the use of data to support our students is more urgent than ever,” her website says. “If elected, I will ensure a laser focus on instruction and providing an excellent education for all students.”
Turner is a Brown- and UVA-educated attorney, focused on insurance litigation, and a partner at a prominent D.C. law firm. On her website, she highlights her pro bono work and representation of Planned Parenthood.
Turner’s website notes, additionally, that she has been an APS parent since 2015 and has been active in her elementary school’s PTA and in the Green Valley Civic Association.
More on the caucus results, below, from an Arlington County Democratic Committee press release.