Arlington Public Schools is proposing to significantly increase its budget next year to support more staffing and a pay raise for personnel.
The proposal, which Superintendent Francisco Durán and the Arlington School Board discussed at a work session yesterday (Tuesday), calls for gradually adding 252 new full-time positions and a 3% cost-of-living increase over the next three years.
To achieve this without cutting funds elsewhere, the school system estimates it would need to add $65 million in revenue in Fiscal Year 2026 and $103 million by Fiscal Year 2028 to avoid a shortfall.
A June 2024 planning study by Massachusetts-based Equity Education Partners found that, to meet its academic and growth targets, the school system needs to hire additional English-language learning assistants, more special education teachers at the elementary level, and new literacy and math interventionists to provide targeted support.
Additionally, the plan includes hiring more counselors, psychologists and social workers to bolster student support services, as well as increasing funding for instructional coaches and teacher mentors to boost professional development.
“The reason why we even began this study was because we were not serving our special education students [and] our English language learners in the way that we need to,” Superintendent Francisco Durán said.
While School Board members generally voiced support for adding more specialized instructional staff, APS staff highlighted expected financial challenges and recommended a phased approach to hiring over the next three years.
“Even if the Board said, ‘Yes, let’s move forward and do everything you see here,’ finding 252 additional [full-time employees] in these particular hard-to-fill areas will be a huge undertaking, and a lot of those [positions] would probably sit vacant,” John Mayo, the school system’s chief operating officer, said during the work session.
Durán said he would return to the Board with specific recommendations on which roles to prioritize for the FY 2026 budget cycle, though he did not provide a timeline.
This proposal follows the School Board’s approval of a FY 2025 budget of about $826 million, which includes a 3.55% average compensation increase for APS staff, a new grant writer position, and a raise in Board member salaries, alongside a 3% cut to Central Office discretionary accounts.
In order to phase in the proposed changes without making cuts elsewhere, APS is proposing to increase its budget to $949.4 million by FY 2028.
As the School Board gears up for an election to fill two open seats this fall, Chair Mary Kadera noted that by February, when Durán is expected to present his FY 2026 budget proposal, the new Board will face some “hard decisions.” Settling on a budget, she said, is more than “an exercise of closing a gap.”
“We could go through an exercise and just check a box and say, ‘We closed this gap, job done,'” she said. “But we don’t want to stop there, because we don’t want to be satisfied with the status quo, and we want to be able to free up funds to meet some of these opportunities head-on.”
