Gerald Ford was in the White House the last time Arlington voters rejected a school bond in a local referendum.
But the two local residents tasked with making sure such ancient history doesn’t repeat itself are taking no chances as they make the case for passage of the 2024 school bond.
“It usually does pass,” acknowledged Tenley Peterson, who along with Monique Bryant was selected by school leaders to serve as co-chairs of the school-bond committee.
Both are parents of Arlington Public Schools students or graduates.
Despite the almost guaranteed passage, “we don’t want to take it for granted — we want to work hard,” said Peterson, a Planning Commission member who this spring made an unsuccessful bid for the Democratic nomination for County Board.
The $83.98 million school bond is one of five local referendums in Arlington this fall. Traditionally, school bonds are the only ones that have an organized support system.
If approved, slightly more than half the school-bond money will pay to eventually convert the existing Arlington Career Center into a new home for the Montessori Public School of Arlington, once the replacement for the career center is completed.
The remainder of the funds will support a variety of roof-replacement, HVAC-replacement and kitchen-renovation projects at schools, as well as field replacements.
Peterson and Bryant last Tuesday, Oct. 8 were in friendly territory, speaking before the Arlington Senior Democrats, a group that meets monthly at Busboys & Poets in Shirlington.
Bob Platt, who organizes the monthly meeting and is a veteran Democratic activist, said that despite odds favoring passage, “you have to arm up and have a good campaign.”
Two years ago, when the last package of bonds was sent to voters, the school bond received 72% of the vote and won a majority in all 54 precincts, according to state figures reported by Virginia Public Access Project.
A landslide? By nearly any measure. But the passage rate for the school bond trailed county referendums to fund utilities (85% support), stormwater (80%), transportation (79%) and parks (also 79%). Only a neighborhood-conservation bond received a lower winning percentage.
Percentage-wise, the most significant “no” vote was concentrated in single-family neighborhoods of northwest areas of the county.
This year, the powerful Arlington County Democratic Committee has followed its normal practice and endorsed all five bonds on the Nov. 5 ballot. The Arlington GOP is opposing all five, while the Green Party is supporting a utilities bond but opposing the others, including the school bond.
You have to go back to 1975 to find a school bond rejected by what apparently that year were very cranky Arlington voters. The electorate voted against all eight local bond referendums on the ballot, including one totaling $1.5 million for a new auditorium at what was then Washington-Lee High School.
Because the student population in Arlington was declining in the late 1970s and 1980s, school leaders did not come back to voters with another school bond until 1988. It and all subsequent school bonds have passed by relatively large margins.
