Does the Arlington school system need, and can county taxpayers afford, an ongoing capital-spending blizzard when the projected growth of the student body is expected to slow to a trickle in coming years?
That was among a brief set of questions posed to the four aspirants for two open Arlington School Board seats during a Sept. 3 forum sponsored by the Arlington County Civic Federation.
Nestled in between perhaps more marquee debates featuring candidates for County Board and 8th District U.S. House of Representatives, Democrats Kathleen Clark and Zuraya Tapia-Hadley faced off against independent Paul Weiss and James “Vell” Rives IV of the nascent Forward Party in their collective quests to succeed single-term School Board members David Priddy and Cristina Diaz-Torres. They are not seeking re-election, part of an ongoing revolving door of School Board members that has become more the rule than the exception over the past decade.
Rives, who has sought School Board seats before (the only one of the four that has), said it was time for the school system to focus on maintenance of existing facilities rather than embark on building more.
“We have got to get back to a sustainable [fiscal] path – hold off on additional new projects,” he said.
Weiss, who retired in the spring as a teacher in the school system, said School Board members need to “show some discipline” when approving capital funding, as excess costs ultimately trickle down to impact the budget’s bottom line.
“Bonds are not magic money,” he said, while calling out unspecified School Board members for having “specific agendas” that do not always benefit the entire community.
While acknowledging that debt service can impact the budget, Tapia-Hadley said it wasn’t always enough that there simply be enough seats for students.
“Capacity doesn’t always tell the whole story,” she said.
Clark, who with Tapia-Hadley emerged as Democratic endorsees in a four-way party caucus held in May, suggested one way to free up funding to balance capital and operational needs is to have the state send localities like Arlington more cash.
While the County Board has “stepped up” with funding, she said, the school system has “been spending our reserves for years.”
Virginia’s school boards do not have independent taxing authority as some elsewhere do – giving school board members the ability to press for more funding without actually having to tax people to get it – and about 70 percent of the school system’s budget comes down from the county government.
Even as Arlington tax revenues have ballooned to what some see as stratospheric levels, the appetite for school spending often outstrips available resources. Some years ago, a newspaper analysis found that Arlington spent more per student than was expended by the school district serving Beverly Hills, Calif.
School-system data project that the Arlington Public Schools’ overall budget will rise from around $800 million in the recently concluded fiscal year to a smidge more than $1 billion in fiscal 2033. During the same period, though, total pre-kindergarten-through-12th-grade enrollment is slated to fluctuate in a relatively narrow band between 28,000 and 29,000, depending on the year.
While School Board seats in Virginia are officially nonpartisan, political parties can and often do “endorse” candidates rather than formally nominate them. All five current Arlington School Board candidates won the Democratic endorsement prior to winning general-election victories; the last non-Democrat to win a seat was David Foster, who garnered double racess in 1999 and 2003.
It once was almost a certainty that Arlington School Board members, once in office, would serve at least two terms. But in recent years many exoduses have come earlier: Nancy Van Doren left after six years of service, Monique O’Grady and Tannia Talento, soon to be joined by Diaz-Torres and Priddy, after four. The departure last December of Reid Goldstein after eight years left the 2024 School Board with no member having served more than one term; come 2025, the average tenure among the five members will be just 1.2 years.
It also once was a given that some School Board members would use the post as a springboard to higher elected office. But the last person to accomplish that was Libby Garvey, who moved from School Board to County Board in 2012.
