The Arlington School Board has unanimously passed an $826 million budget that, in the view of several board members, fails to accomplish key goals.
“This is a budget of status quos,” Chair Cristina Diaz-Torres said prior to a Thursday vote. “I said this the day that [Superintendent Francisco Durán] announced the budget. This is a budget of maintaining the status quo at a bare minimum.”
The budget provides for an average compensation increase of 3.55% for Arlington Public Schools staff, includes a new grant writer position and allocates a total of $67,250 to increase Board member salaries. However, it cuts the budget for Central Office discretionary accounts by an additional 3%, for a total of 15% in Central Office budget reductions.
The budget comes alongside updates to the APS strategic plan seeking to reduce student absenteeism, cut down on suspensions and improve student and staff wellbeing.
Overall, the budget “aligns with the School Board’s budget direction, limits new spending, and maintains core services amid significant budget constraints,” a press release says.
“Every budget tells a story, and this one is no different,” Vice Chair David Priddy said. “This budget tells a story that we would like to compensate our staff, but we need help from the county to do so. It tells a story that we’d like to find new funding streams, and that’s where the grant writer comes in. It tells the story that we’re trying to support a more robust candidate pool to serve on the School Board, and that’s the driving force behind raising School Board salaries.
“So in summary, the story is that we need more funding to pay our employees, and we need to find additional savings as we move forward in the future.”
Diaz-Torres said the budget “does not do very much” to advance goals of making classrooms more inclusive for students with disabilities, reducing racial achievement gaps or providing more support for English-language learners.
“This budget holds us steady and keeps us consistent in a time when we are financially constrained, and it’s the beginning of what is looking to be a series of budgets that are going to look like that,” she said.
Though smaller than some officials would like, the school system’s budget is about $31 million larger than the budget Durán originally proposed in February. That’s partly thanks to a bigger split of revenue from the county, which allocated a total of $637.9 million to APS this fiscal year.
The rest of the APS budget comes from federal and state funding, reserves, local revenue and carry-forward funds.
Despite constraints, the APS 2024-30 Strategic Plan seeks to improve numerous outcomes by 2030. Goals include reducing chronic absenteeism from 13.5% to no more than 8%, reducing suspensions by 25%, and ensuring that at least 80% of LGBTQ+ students respond favorably to questions related to a sense of belonging.
The percentage of APS students who are chronically absent has doubled since 2019, according to a staff presentation, mirroring national trends. Suspensions, meanwhile, disproportionately affect Black and Hispanic students.
Any changes in policy will maintain suspensions for drug offenses, weapons offenses and other incidents that pose safety risks.
“We have, for example, close to 50 suspensions this year for attendance infractions — kids coming to school tardy, late,” Special Projects Advisor Jonathan Turrisi said. “There’s some real opportunities there to reduce [suspensions] and focus on some other alternatives to hold students accountable while still providing those supports.
Other new and revised strategic plan goals include:
- Improving retention, recruitment and diversity among APS staff
- Making free meals available to all APS students
- Transitioning to renewable energy sources for 100% of energy consumption
- Transitioning 5% of the current bus fleet to zero emission, with the goal of reaching 100% by 2050
- Ensuring that at least 80% of students respond favorably about their school climate, mental health and self-management skills
- Increasing students’ feelings of safety at school
APS plans to begin implementing changes based on the new strategic plan this summer.
An earlier version of this story erroneously stated the compensation increase for APS staff and the impact of Central Office budget reductions.
